entertainment manchester

2008-10-27T10:30:00.001-07:00

TOP TEN... BOND BOOKS

Ahead of Friday's release of Quantum Of Solace, we reveal our top ten James Bond books...

1. Moonraker (1955)
They may share characters, locations and plots, but Ian Fleming and Albert Broccolli’s James Bonds are very different beasts indeed. On screen, Bond has always been something of a hollowed-out shell, a bombastic action man who rarely displays the depth, humanity and vulnerability Fleming allowed his 007 to show. Moonraker sees this point writ large. In celluloid form, Fleming’s third novel is a ramshackle Star Wars rip-off which is comfortably the weakest of 007‘s 21 cinematic outings. On the page, however, it’s a grounded, melancholic tale which presents the reader with a very human hero, one who doesn’t even leave Britain, never mind the planet. That means no hover-gondolas, no rocket ships and no grandiose scheme to take the human race into space, just a painfully bruised Bond sighing his way through paperwork, covertly working his way into Hugo Drax’s lair and falling in love with Gala Brand, one of Fleming’s most complicated leading ladies. In a melancholic twist, she fails to be wooed by Bond‘s dangerous lifestyle in the sombre finale, and instead returns to her normal, far safer life. How something so subtle and nuanced could spawn the abomination cinema screens witnessed is a mystery. Time for a remake, perhaps?

2. From Russia With Love (1957)
Coming after Diamonds Are Forever’s poor critical reception, Fleming intended this to be 007’s final outing, and wanted to give him a fitting send-off. He certainly did that. From Russia With Love is a triumph of a novel, perhaps the only Bond book to transcend its pulpy roots and rank alongside the more serious, less fantastical thrillers Fleming‘s peers created. Shot through with an air of death and finality, it spends the first half of its weighty page count deep in the bowels of SMERSH introducing us to the Russian organisation’s odious officials, primary among them those magnificent creations Rosa Klebb and Red Grant. Fleming’s portrayal of Grant as a cold, mechanical assassin is utterly chilling and perhaps the birth of the modern fictional serial killer, while his descriptions of Klebb ooze with grotesquery. However, it‘s the landscapes that steal the show, the renderings of Istanbul and the Orient Express (where most of the rest of the story takes place) dripping with foreboding menace. The novel culminates with a showdown between Klebb and Bond and a closing line that is among the best Fleming ever wrote. Thankfully, it would not be the last…

3. Doctor No (1958)
Doctor No is a novel written by an author brimming with confidence. Vindicated by the success of From Russia With Love, Fleming embarked on the fifth Bond novel reinvigorated, and what he created is a bright and breezy piece of work; a wonderfully simple, but still hugely satisfying, read set almost entirely in his beloved Jamaica. Before we get there though, we are stuck in London, and Fleming takes huge pleasure in the drabness of the capital, describing it as a windswept wasteland in which M stews as he grumpily hands Bond what he dismissively calls a “holiday in the sun”. As if to prove the point, Fleming describes the Jamaican-set passages in stunning terms. The island’s lush greens and deep blues pop from the page, the tropical warmth glows in every syllable and the lovely Honey Ryder seems so astonishingly beautiful it’s almost a let down to watch the film and see Ursula Andress rather than the angelic Venus Fleming describes here emerge from the sea. The ending, which involves a bizarre fight with a giant squid, almost undermines the whole endeavour with its ridiculousness. But Fleming’s prose is so rich and detailed that even the most absurd of sequences proves, like the book as a whole, utterly compelling.

4. For Your Eyes Only (1960)
Taken from the anthology of the same name, this melancholic short story was adapted almost verbatim for the 1981 film. Bond is tasked with assassinating a hitman, only to find his path obstructed by another assassin, who turns out to be the daughter of the people the killer bumped off. However, while the film is a rather drab affair, Fleming lights up the dark subject matter with some glorious descriptive prose. The opening scenes, in which the elderly couple are killed in their home in Jamaica, are filled with the same luxurious detailed descriptions of the island as Doctor No, only here Fleming indulges his love of the wildlife, describing one bird in detail so rich you‘re almost convinced the story will be about it instead of Bond. The rest of the tale takes place on the American-Canadian border and while there a lonely Bond reflects on why he is on this mission and what gives him the right to take the life of a man who has done nothing to harm him. Great, compact stuff, which, in an added bonus, comes sans the Maggie Thatcher cameo.

5. Casino Royale (1953)
Here’s where it all began. The book that defined an icon, made a name for its author and would go on to make cinema history, Casino Royale is the most legendary of Bond novels, and not just because it’s the first. Featuring devious villainy, tense card games and, naturally, a beautiful girl, it’s astonishing to think that (rubbish 60s spoof aside) it took over half a century to bring this story to the big screen. But it is perhaps a good thing that we had to wait so long. With any other Bond at the helm, a cinematic version of Casino Royale wouldn’t have worked. Bond here is too normal, too every day (he described himself as a civil servant) to have been properly fleshed out by Connery’s charm, Moore’s cheek, Dalton's intensity or Brosnan's suaveness. But Craig has a realism that illuminates the human, cynical (that iconic last line from the film is taken directly from the book), bruised, but still effortlessly cool Bond that Fleming describes here. Good thing too. Because Fleming's Bond will always be the best.

6. Live and Let Die (1954)
Perhaps the most controversial and dated of the 007 novels, Live and Let Die finds Fleming dropping the N bomb. Repeatedly. Deplorable certainly, but even in our politically sensitive times the frequent and highly unpleasant use of that particular word doesn’t make Live and Let Die any less enjoyable. A scuzzy, sweaty crime tale that features the grizzly meeting between Felix Leiter and a bunch of sharks that would inspire one of Licence to Kill’s best sequences, Live and Let Die is Fleming at his pulsating best. Sentence and chapter length are short, the words are never minced (frequently to the book‘s detriment), chosen as they are with huge precision for maximum effect, and the action is swift and punchy. Indeed, more than a spy book, Live and Let Die is an excellent action novel, one that comes with the obligatory bonuses of exotic locations, mouth-watering food and gorgeous women, including Solitaire, who comes across as a far more interesting character here than she does in the film. Another 007 outing that could (with careful censorship) benefit from a do-over.

7. The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)
If Live and Let Die displays Fleming’s racial ignorance, Spy Who Loved Me shows his ignorance towards women. An unusual interlude between Thunderball and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, this novella is barely about Bond at all, 007 not appearing until the final few chapters. Instead, we focus on Vivienne Michel, a luckless young woman who stumbles into trouble and has to be saved by the spy. The book proved highly controversial upon release, being reviled by critics for it lack of Bond and, more importantly, its line about women enjoying ‘semi-rape’. Even in context, a line like that is pretty unforgivable, but leaving such slips aside, SWLM is actually a pretty bold move, one that engrosses with its unusualness and complicated leading lady. The story was, of course, utterly changed for the screen, and it’s unlikely to ever be adapted wholesale. But characters and scenarios could be cherry-picked to form the basis of future films, particularly the grotesque mobster villains Sluggsy and Horror.

8. You Only Live Twice (1964)
The culmination of Fleming’s ‘Blofeld trilogy’, You Only Live Twice is a novel tinged with melancholy, the book where it really becomes clear that the Bond saga is gradually winding to an end. Dripping with death, this magnificently macabre story follows on directly from the devastating end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and finds Bond tracking Blofeld down to Japan, where the SPECTRE head has set up a fiendish Garden of Death. Very different from the film in terms of plot, then, but the dubious race relations remain, with Bond, like in the film, disguising himself as a Japanese, and, even worse, Fleming portraying the people of Japan as death-obsessed crackpots. What stays with you though is the melancholy. The Land of the Rising Sun seems steeped in sadness for Fleming, and, as Bond ponders his future in the novel's closing pages, it's difficult not to feel a twinge of sadness for both the character and the author who created him.

9. Quantum of Solace (1960)
Those still wondering why this exotic title has been chosen for Bond 22 should read the short story it is borrowed from. Fleming sends Bond to a dinner party, where his only refuge from boredom is a story told to him by a fellow guest of government official Phillip Masters’ unhappy marriage to an air hostess. The relationship begins well, but gradually deteriorates and soon she is cheating on him. Humiliated and stripped of any kind of basic human compassion towards his one-time love, Masters cuts off relations with her and eventually leaves her with nothing. Bond leaves the party contemplating the story and concluding that real life is far more interesting than his fantastical adventures. Sounds like a great way to describe the series’ new direction to me…

10. Goldfinger (1959)
One of Fleming’s most uneven novels, Goldfinger would have been higher in this list had the final part measured up to the first two. Told in three segments, the seventh Bond novel is a blast for the most part, a tense double-header between Bond and Goldfinger in which each man tries to work out exactly what the other is up to without giving his own secrets away. Sadly, as we all know, the story does not come to a close in such style, instead exploding into a bombastic heist of Fort Knox which tests plausibility to its limit and turns on a huge contrivance, with Goldfinger forcing Bond to help him with his scheme when it would have been easier to just kill him. Baffling. Still, those first two parts are incredibly strong, finding Fleming at his bold best and Bond at most normal. 007 on the Tube? Shocking. Poshitively shocking.

2008-10-05T11:12:00.001-07:00

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.

2008-09-05T13:50:00.001-07:00

WATCHING, READING, LISTENING TO

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

THE WRITER

WATCHING: My love of the Star Wars: Clone Wars movie has reignited my interest in all things Jedi, so all my choices are Star Wars related this time around. First up, I’ve been watching the original Clone Wars TV series by Genndy Tartakovsky. Many fans reckon this is the pinnacle of the modern Star Wars era, and it’s certainly very, very impressive, Tartakovsky using the short cartoon format to strip the franchise back to its bare components of cool planets, bizarre aliens and kick-ass battles - basically all the things you want from a Star Wars story. However, many seem to have forgotten that there’s some pretty ropey dialogue in there as well, and while it is better than the film, it’s not quite the Empire Strikes Back of the present day.

LISTENING TO: In my review of The Clone Wars I described Kevin Kiner’s score as “workmanlike”, and I stand by that statement - to an extent. Kiner’s score is certainly not as good as John Williams’s work (naturally) and it takes quite a while to get used to the more run-of-the-mill, action oriented sound he‘s created. However, after a few more listens, the pounding war drums and rock guitars that inspired my original complaint actually mix quite well with Williams’s trademark themes, ensuring the more militaristic tone doesn‘t overshadow that distinct Star Wars sound too much.

READING: I’ve been considering delving into the vast expanded universe for a while now, and the film inspired me to pick up Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire. Set five years after Return of the Jedi, it’s the first in a trilogy of books in which the villainous Grand Admiral Thrawn attempts to overthrow the New Republic and restore the Empire’s control over the galaxy. In less capable hands, it could have been a retread of the films, with the plots being essentially similar, bar the role reversal of Empire and Rebellion. But Zahn’s intelligent development of the three core characters and creation of a host of new players, planets and conflicts means that this is every bit as good as the original trilogy.

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: Having only recently discovered the joys of Virgin On Demand (which isn't anywhere near as dodgy as that sounds), I've watched the entire first four series of Peep Show (across about four days), which I've always quite fancied watching without ever managed to catch it at the start of a series. It's really good, though my total immersion has affected me and made me have a load of internal monologues in my head, which isn't good. Other than that, there's The Wire (not long to go now) and Dexter, both of which are really good, obviously.

LISTENING TO: Autumn means Sinatra for me. As soon as the dark nights start to come in and the rain and the leaves start blowing around (earlier than usual this year, seemingly), I start to really REALLY love listening to Frank Sinatra's torch songs, which just seem to fit perfectly with the gloomy weather, making it all seem to cinematic and romantic (in a doomed sort of way). The same goes for Harry Nilsson's A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night, which has the most gorgeous version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow you'll ever hear.

READING: My Sherlock Holmes odyssey continues and I'm still enjoying these stories a lot. I want to read some other books, but I still want to finish the Holmes stories, so I think I'll get through the remaining few books before moving on to somewhere else. Thankfully, the schools are back and the double trams have started again, so there's more opportunities to sit down and read, so I'm getting through them a lot quicker. Flipping kids...

2008-08-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

TOP TEN STAR WARS MOMENTS

Ahead of the release of the new Clone Wars animated movie, our film critic gives us his top ten Star Wars moments...

1. Death Star Assault (A New Hope)
Vader’s paternal revelation at the end of Empire is probably the saga’s most famous scene, but it’s the end of A New Hope that best sums Star Wars up. From John Williams’s driving score to the brilliant effects of a young ILM, the destruction of the Death Star is just, well, it’s just awesome. There’s no other word to describe it. Even to this day, I still feel captivated as Luke fires that last gasp shot, still sense that deathly breath on the back of my neck as Vader homes in on his prey, and still jump for joy as Han swoops in right at the last second. It’s what cinema was made for, and nothing before or since has come close to matching its unique adrenaline rush.

2. “No, I am your father…” (Empire Strikes Back)
Well duh.

3. Battle of Hoth (Empire Strikes Back)
It’s the AT-ATs. The second those mechanical behemoths move gracefully through the Hoth fog, you know you’re in for something special. Beautifully crafted by ILM they’re probably the series’ most impressive effects achievement, and lend the Battle of Hoth a grandeur that most other Star Wars war sequences lack. Throw in vicious wampas, those nifty snowspeeders and the nicely tense relationship between Leia and Han and you have the perfect opening to the deepest and darkest of all the Star Wars films.

4. Darth Maul vs. Qui Gon and Obi Wan (Phantom Menace)
Arguably the coolest (though not necessarily the best) lightsaber fight in the saga, this is all about the visuals. Because while it’s impossible to invest much emotion in what’s going on - what with Qui Gon and Darth Maul being mere fillers designed to flesh out Episode I’s scant story - it’s still undeniably cool watching a big red evil guy fighting two Jedi with a double-ended lightsaber. And with John Williams whipping up a storm on the music front, you can even ignore Jar Jar Binks’s wacky antics and just sit back and enjoy some classic Star Wars escapism.

5. Zam Wessell Attacks! (Attack of the Clones)
For my money, Attack of the Clones is the best of the prequels, boasting as it does some of the finest action the modern trilogy has to offer. The coliseum battle, the Jango Fett versus Obi Wan fight, and the sight of Yoda arming-up for his duel with Count Dooku were all contenders for a spot on this list, but the chase for bounty hunter Zam Wessell takes the crown. Delivering both eye popping spectacle and some pretty well-written banter between Anakin and Obi Wan, it’s a great way to open the film and prime the audience for a long-awaited roller-coaster ride after the staid exposition of Menace.

6. Order 66 (Revenge of the Sith)
Lucas has often said that he thinks of Star Wars as a silent movie, and while that goes a long way to explaining the verbal diarrhoea he calls dialogue, it also contributes towards scenes like this. Palpatine is on his way to becoming Emperor and as he executes Order 66, the directive that turns the army of Clones against the Republic, Lucas shows us Jedi across the galaxy meeting their maker. The fact that their names are known only to the most ardent of Star Wars geeks doesn’t really matter. This is all about sound and vision, with Williams’s haunting music setting a tragic tone and the astonishing CGI vistas for once coming up trumps.

7. “How about…sister?” (Return of the Jedi)
Another example of Williams’s fine music, this is the high-point of the lightsaber battle between father and son that concludes Return of the Jedi. Trying to work out a way to finally lure Luke to the Dark Side, Vader turns his attentions to his friends and, in particular, his sister. His threat to seduce Leia encourages Luke to attack his father and Williams’s guttural music (in what is arguably the finest of his Star Wars scores) is suitably epic accompaniment for one of the series’ most emotionally-charged moments.

8. The Rebel Fleet (Empire Strikes Back)
Before The Dark Knight, this was the darkest ending any blockbuster had ever seen. A lot of its bleakness is due to the set-up, of course, with Han encased in carbonite, Luke’s hand located in Cloud City several hundred parsecs from the rest of his body and Chewie and Lando heading off to Tatooine to take on the might of Jabba the Hutt. But there’s also a lot to be said for the scene itself. Kersher shoots a simple wide shot which has Luke and Leia looking out into the bleakness of space, their futures undecided. Star Wars wouldn’t be this depressing again until Episode I.

9. Twin Suns (A New Hope)
It’s hard to believe that the guy who filmed this iconic shot of Luke staring meaningfully into Tatooine’s two suns is the same man who drenched the prequels in messy CGI, because what makes this sequence work so well is its simplicity. Stripped back to its bare components - just the scenery, the actor and the music - it’s one of the banner moments of A New Hope, and acts as a reminder of what Lucas seems to have forgotten: that he’s an incredibly talented visualist even without all his technology.

10. “Begun the Clone War has…” (Attack of the Clones)
As well as being jam-packed with action, Attack of the Clones is the only prequel which neatly connects with the original films (Sith is a little too ham-fisted for me). We see some of Anakin’s anger and arrogance bubbling up to the surface, the origin of Boba Fett and the start of the Clone Wars. Time will only tell if the campaign is worth fleshing out in the latest no-honest-this-really-is-the-last-ever-Star-Wars-film film, but the start is stunning stuff. Look at all those Clone Troopers…

2008-08-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT... ISAAC HAYES RIP

For most people of my generation, Isaac Hayes is the guy who played Chef in South Park and sang about his chocolate salty balls. Sadly, he's also the guy who seemingly couldn't take jokes about Scientology and quit the show because of it, amongst various rumours about exactly who was making his decisions for him. That was pretty much the last thing he did that hit the headlines, so it's a shame they were mostly negative, with accusations of hypocrisy from the show's creators, as he'd been happy to make fun of other religions, but drew the line when it came to his own.

But Ike won't be remembered for that in years to come, he'll be remembered as one of the greatest musicians ever to walk this earth, with his output from the late 60s to the late 70s breaking new ground for black culture. Even if you only know Theme From Shaft, you can appreciate just how incredible his talents were, as it's a song that shatters all kinds of boundaries and defies all kinds of conventions for the way it uses orchestration in the lengthy and famous intro.

The Shaft soundtrack was an incredible achievement, arguably making the film more famous and important than it actually deserved on its own merits, but his greatest work was probably the album Hot Buttered Soul, which demonstrated his ability to take pop songs and turn them into funk-soul epics. The album starts with Walk On By, lasting over 12 minutes and incorporating more great pop hooks than most artists can manage in their whole careers.

Across the next four or five albums, Ike proved himself time and time again to be a genius arranger and composer, even if many of his most famous tracks were covers. Along with David Porter, he co-wrote and performed on so many of Stax Records' biggest hits (like Soul Man, for example), and his legacy is an incredible one, even if his later work didn't match up to his golden years. Ike's gone, but he won't be forgotten.

2008-08-09T02:56:00.000-07:00

WATCHING, READING, LISTENING TO

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

THE WRITER

WATCHING: The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The Mummy franchise is one of the better Indiana Jones rip-offs and this second sequel to the 1999 original is a solidly entertaining piece of fluff - despite its flaws. Rachel Weisz replacement Maria Bello is a particular problem as she grapples unconvincingly with an English accent, while Mark Millar and Alfred Gough's screenplay is limp and uninspired. Still Brendan Fraser's on top charismatic form and there are enough wildly OTT action scenes to make this a worthwhile Friday night out.

READING: Goldfinger. Last summer I decided to work my way through all twelve of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and I‘m currently on book seven: Goldfinger. I've heard that it gets a little silly towards the end (although it's hard to see anything being dafter than the giant squid at the end of Doctor No), but I'm only half-way through so far and at the moment it's quite a low-key head-to-head between 007 and Goldfinger. They've met twice, first in a Miami card game and then for a few rounds of golf, and Fleming has built a taut, gripping tale of two men trying to get the better of each other. Let's hope it doesn't slip quite as badly as its reputation suggests.

LISTENING TO: I've had two albums on my iPod recently: Coldplay's Viva La Vida and The Dark Knight soundtrack. The former is an entertaining but frustrating listen. It certainly has the variation that X&Y lacked and there are some fantastic songs on there. But it feels like the band are trying too hard to defy their critics and I'd prefer them to go back to the maligned but more satisfying 'indie schmindie' of Parachutes. Meanwhile, James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer have created another corker for The Dark Knight. It incorporates the epic grandiosity they perfected on the Batman Begins soundtrack, but fittingly for something Joker-related, it possess a vicious twist that cuts through you like a certain criminal's famous pencil trick.

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: No thanks to Richard Branson, I've been watching The Wire and Dexter on FX, which has now disappeared from Virgin's cable TV just after the new series of both of them had started. Thanks for that, Dicky. Luckily my parents are now recording them off Sky for me. The most recent episode of The Wire was awesome, and while Dexter isn't quite up to the high standards of the first series, it's still better than most other things out there.

READING: Taking a break from Sherlock Holmes, I read Grace After Midnight, the autobiography of Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson from The Wire, where she plays, erm, 'Snoop'. She was born a crack baby in Baltimore, grew up on the streets and was sent to prison for killing a woman in self-defence before getting spotted by the guy who plays Omar on the show and getting hired to basically play herself. Not your usual actor's story, then.

LISTENING TO: Sometimes, you can forget just how great an album really is, and I 'rediscovered' Curtis by Curtis Mayfield this week when it came up on my iPod. Every single track is genius personified, with powerful socio-political lyrics, funky soulful pop hooks and such dense and varied instrumentation that new sounds appear to you every time you listen to it. The man really was a legend.

2008-07-30T11:24:00.001-07:00

TOP TEN TV SHOWS

With classic 90s TV show The X-Files returning to the big screen for a second time, The Editor lists his top ten programmes...

1 - The Wire

Those who love The Wire, REALLY love it, but the vast majority of people have never seen it and would probably give up after one episode if they did, scared off by the slow-moving storylines, lack of an obvious 'star' and tales of life on some of the worst and most violent streets in America. Fans compare it to Dickens, Tolstoy and Greek tragedies, which all sounds very pompous, but in the case of this show, it's the only way to describe it. The Wire tells the stories of a wide cast of characters in Baltimore, from the Mayor down to a homeless junkie, and it does so at its own pace and by its own rules. With some of America's top crime authors joining the show's creators (an ex-cop and an ex-journalist) each series is like a chapter in a novel, with a theme to each - the war on drugs, the plight of the working man, the machinations at City Hall, the failing school system and the media. The Wire really does live up to the hype and make everything else on the small or big screen look a bit cheap, easy and hollow by comparison.

2 - The Sopranos

The Sopranos would have been top of this list at the start of the year, but its drop to second is only a reflection of the incredible quality of its HBO stablemate, and the gap between the two is paper-thin. An awe-inspiring piece of TV drama, this show took obvious influences from the likes of Goodfellas and proceeded to spend six seasons bettering them in every way. A great cast - augmented by guest appearances from people like Joey Pantoliano and Steve Buscemi - and a great story told with style and class made for a show that redefined what kind of quality you could get on television. And its uncompromising approach lasted right up to the gloriously gutsy and controversial ending.

3 - Six Feet Under

The third HBO show in our top three, Six Feet Under is about death. People die in every episode and there's a funeral in pretty much all of them too, which probably makes it sound very morbid, but yet the first season had some very funny moments as the recently deceased offered advice (or abuse) to the members of the Fisher family (or at least, they did in their imaginations, there were no ghosts in Six Feet Under). Gradually, this faded out as it became more and more driven by the characters and their lives, but the black humour was still as important as the more emotional scenes in a show that could make anyone with a soul cry at least once an episode.

4 - The West Wing

Compared to the three shows above, The West Wing looks a bit cosy and old-fashioned, but that doesn't take away from how great it was, particularly at its peak. The first few seasons were a masterclass in snappy dialogue and 'making politics interesting', rattling along at such a pace that even if you didn't understand the minutae of American domestic politics, that didn't matter. With Martin Sheen as the ultimate liberal president and a welcome antidote to the real person doing the job, The West Wing may have gone into decline after creator Aaron Sorkin left, but even then it was still better than most.

5 - The Simpsons

Yes, another American TV show. They just seem to do it better. There's not a lot new that can be said about The Simpsons, and even though the quality has slipped over the years and the likes of South Park and Family Guy have offered challenges to its supremacy, it's still the best comedy on TV, animated or otherwise. Most importantly, it's also one of the most endlessly watchable shows around, a quick half hour of genius that can mostly be seen hundreds of times without losing its appeal or its laughs.

6 - Blackadder

The first British show to get on the list, Blackadder is the perfect example of British humour. It's intelligent, knowledgeable, sarcastic, cruel and not afraid to wear silly tights to get a laugh. The first series was a bit hit and miss, but once Ben Elton came on board and brought a sharper edge in place of the early surrealistic touches, Blackadder kicked into gear and taught us all we needed to know about life in Elizabethan Britain, Georgian Britain and World War I trenches.

7 - The Shield

On the face of it, The Shield is just another of those cop shows that are ten-a-penny on TV, but this is no CSI, NCIS or, indeed, The Bill. How many of those would be brave enough to have their hero shoot a fellow policeman dead in cold blood in the first episode? Vic Mackey treads a precarious moral line, fighting the bad guys and bloodthirsty gangs while not being afraid to get his hands dirty when it comes to dodgy dealings. Guest stars like Glenn Close and Forest Whittaker have come in during recent seasons to add further class to a show that has got better and better.

8 - Only Fools And Horses

Like The Simpsons, Only Fools And Horses is almost a victim of its own overwhelming success. It is so ubiquitous, so universally popular and so often repeated that it's almost becoming the kind of programme that you don't want to admit liking. But it is a remarkable programme that managed to be incredibly funny for a very long time as well as making you care as much about the characters as if they were in a moving drama series. The only shame was that they were persuaded to bring it back for three shoddy specials when the story had reached the perfect emotionally-rewarding conclusion back in 1996.

9 - Fawlty Towers

A few of these programmes have been guilty of going on for longer than they should have, but the ultimate example of a show living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is Fawlty Towers. With just 12 episodes ever being made of it, there are simply no weak links in the Fawlty chain, which is more than can be said for the hotel itself. The Office and Sacha Baron Cohen may have re-popularised 'cringe comedy' in the last decade, but John Cleese and Connie Booth perfected it here with set-pieces like the fire drill scene in The Germans.

10 - The X-Files

Unfortunately, The X-Files did go on too long for its own good, and Chris Carter and his creative team have to take the blame for including so many twists and turns in the show's alien mythology that you sense not even they knew what was going on at the end. However, the X-Files was often at its best when ignoring the aliens and letting Mulder and Scully investigate the darker fringes of American society, like the Fluke Man, the Peacock Family and Eugene Tooms, one of the scariest characters in any TV show anywhere, ever.

2008-07-21T11:18:00.001-07:00

TOP TEN: CLOWNS

Clowns. In theory, they're zany and humorous beings designed to keep small children amused between the trapeze artist and elephant show at the circus. In reality, however, they're psychopaths hell bent on world domination. In honour of The Joker's return to the big screen in The Dark Knight, we look at popular culture's best clowns, and ask them all to kindly leave us alone.

1) Pennywise the Dancing Clown (It)
It's Halloween 1992, and the BBC is marking the occasion by showing both parts of the TV movie version of Stephen King's It on successive nights. Intrigued, the eight-year-old me, in all my youthful naivety, decides that a film starring a child-murdering clown is appropriate viewing and not at all a ticket to terror. But, after three hours of torment at the hands of that wretched beast, I learned my lesson. Not only could I not sleep properly, but I actually felt something…something sitting at the end of my bed, watching, waiting for its time to pounce. Thankfully, there was nothing there (I think), but my paranoia and lasting mistrust of clowns is testament to the power of Tim Curry's performance. Pitched perfectly between outrageous camp and spine-chilling menace, Pennywise is a fiendish creation who inserted himself into my head that terrible night in '92 and wouldn‘t bloody leave. Credit too should go to director Tommy Lee Wallace, who creates a fearful atmosphere with minimal budget, through a clever blend of long shots and extreme close-ups, meaning you never quite know where Pennywise is going to pop up. I watched the film back recently for the first time since 92, and Pennywise's first appearance between the bed sheets on little Lori Anne's washing line still made me shriek. Just a little bit mind. Honest.

2) Krusty the Clown (The Simpsons)
Right, let's cut to the chase here. Krusty is a legend and we all know why. So, let's just let the man speak for himself with a collection of Krusty's greatest quotes. "If this is anyone but Steve Allen, you're stealin' my bit!". "Now for my favourite part of the show....What does that say? Talk to the audience! Ugghhh, this is always death...". "Tonight I'm going to suck... [switches the cue cards] your blood!". "It wasn't my fault! It was the Percodan! If you ask me, that stuff rots your brain. And now a word from our new sponsor... [reads card] ...Percodan?! Ahh crap!" And finally, my particular favourite: "Hey! Hey! Hey! It's great to be back at the Apollo Theater!" [Krusty looks at the sign behind him that reads "Krusty Komedy Klassics" or "KKK" for short] "KKK?! That's not good. Unghhhhh."

3) The Joker (Batman)
Like Pennywise, The Joker has probably been expelled from the clown trade union because he's more obvious about his dastardly nature than the sly little bastards like. But he, also like Pennywise, probably just bumped them all off and took over the union himself. Just for the hell of it. It‘s not as if it‘d be difficult for The Clown Prince of Crime. Not content with having haunted Batman and the good people of Gotham for well over half a century, he's also killed Robin and paralysed Batgirl! All while laughing like a loon. No other supervillain got under his enemies’ skin like that. No other supervillain could. Because no other supervillain goes round dressed like a clown...

4) Xander's clown (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Buffy fought vampires, hell demons and werewolves many times over during the seven year run of the TV series which bore her name, but gladly evil clowns only crossed her path once. In first season episode Nightmares, she and the Scoobies are haunted by real-life incarnations of their worst fears. Willow has to perform Madame Butterfly in front of a packed house, despite not knowing a word of the opera, Buffy is turned into a vampire and comes across The Master for the first time, and Xander, well, poor old Xander gets lured by a trail of chocolately goodness into the clutches of a frightening clown he encountered at his eighth birthday party. As he proved in another Buffy episode, Hush, Joss Whedon understands that to be truly frightening you don’t need to talk, so the only sounds emanating from the mouth of this particular psychopath is a terrifying high-pitched giggle which, understandably, encourages Xander to leg it. However, our hero has the final say as he turns, thumps his foe in the face and says: "You were a lousy clown. Your balloon animals were pathetic. Everyone can make a giraffe!" HA! Take that clown!

5) The toy clown (Poltergeist)
As if that ruddy tree wasn't bad enough, director Tobe Hooper decided what he really needed to sell Poltergeist as the devil’s own film was a scary looking toy clown. For most of the flick, the little bastard mercifully just sits there. But then, once the evil has passed and the Freelings go back into their home (Why?! Why did they do that?!) the satanic little beast strikes. Disappearing under Robbie‘s bed, he bides his time, waiting for his owner to look under. Nothing. A thousand small children breathe a sigh of relief. But then…BANG! Out come the hands, up pops the head and from the back he drags the kid under. Thankfully, Jo-Beth Williams is on hand to save the day, but how long before it strikes again?!

6) Bubbles the Clown (The test card)
There are many things I can forgive the BBC for. Eastenders, BBC Three, Alan Sugar… all ok. Just about. But the old test card? Sorry, that’s just beyond the pail. For thirty years that gaudy image was put up every night after BBC One went off air, sitting there throughout the wee small hours begging an endless list of questions. Who is that girl? What is she doing? Will she ever win that game of noughts and crosses? But this isn't a top ten of confused little girls. The most important question is what the hell that clown is doing there? There doesn‘t seem to be any logic to it, it‘s just there. Waiting, patiently for its moment. Ruminating the attack, working out tactics, pondering weak points and biding its time until…the inevitable. She never grew up, you know, that little girl. In thirty years she never aged a day. We all know why….

7) Captain Spaulding (House of 1,000 Corpses/The Devil's Rejects)
"But he's just a psychopath in make-up," came my reply when The Editor suggested putting Captain Spaulding on this list. "Exactly," he said. Well, how could I deny that? Probably inadvertently considering the film is utter dreck, House of 1,000 Corpses director Rob Zombie discovered the ultimate and undeniable truth about clowns. They are, every single one of them, just psychopaths wearing make-up. Seriously, think about it. What kind of a person wakes up in the morning and thinks "I know, I'll slap on some deathly white make-up, smear a smile on my face, don some oversized shoes and then, dressed like this, go out and entertain children"? A dangerous and disturbed person, that's who. And that's why Captain Spaulding made it on the list.

8) James Bond (Octopussy)
Many would say that Roger Moore was a clown from the very start of his tenure as 007, but it took until his penultimate outing for him to finally go all the way and stick on the make-up, silly wig and floppy shoes. Here Bond is tasked with tracking a jewel thief, and his journey leads him into the path of an Afghan prince and his associate, the titular Octopussy. For some reason, he eventually stumbles his way to a circus where, dressed as a clown, he defuses a bomb. Jumping the shark? Sadly, the Bond series did that years before…

9) Ashes to Ashes clown (Ashes to Ashes video)
"Ashes to ashes/Funk to funky/We know Major Tom's a junkie/Strung out in heavens high hitting an all-time low". Quite what that has to do with the miserable clown that appears in the video is known only to David Bowie. The rest of us can just sit there trying not to look directly at him. He'll probably turn us into stone or something. Evil. Very, VERY evil.

10) Insane Clown Posse members (Insane Clown Posse)
The only thing worse than one insane clown is a whole posse of them. Making music. Rubbish music. Ten albums worth of it. Worst band of all time? Absolutely.

2008-07-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT... PIXAR'S SHORT FILMS

Everyone has a favourite Pixar film. The Incredibles, Toy Story, Finding Nemo…Their list of hits is seemingly never-ending and even the so-called weaker pictures like A Bug’s Life and Cars still have more heart, ideas and freshness in a minute of celluloid than most rival animation houses have in their entire output. But what about their short films? So often overlooked in favour of their famous features, Pixar’s shorts gave the company their big break back in the 1980s and still prove a treat for cinemagoers today.

It all began in 1984 when Pixar was still owned by Lucasfilm and specialised in computer hardware production instead cartoons. Looking to create something special to show off their latest developments at an industry expo, John Lasseter and a small team of computer boffins decided to make a short film and came up with Andre and Wally B, a minute-and-a-half long short about a weird, big-nosed creature and giant bee bickering in a glorious, autumnal forest.

The animation is crude by today’s standards, but it proved a story could be told with computer animation and three years later they followed it up with the famous Luxo Jnr. The simple story of a parent lamp who watches as his son plays with and then accidentally deflates a ball, it exhibits Lassester’s genius for generating a wealth of emotion - everything from joy and sadness to shame and sympathy - from characters who are comprised of little more than three or four geometric shapes stuck together.

He achieved a similar feat with the following year’s Red’s Dream, a three minute film about a red unicycle with unrealised ambitions of juggling, before 1988 flick Tin Toy, in which the titular plaything tries to escape the clutches (and slobbering mouth) of his infant owner, gave the company a huge shot in the arm by winning an Oscar. Again, Lasseter’s mastery of visual storytelling shines through, and while the animation is crude, they and the following year‘s Knick Knack proved the company had enough imagination to fill a full-length film, and so Toy Story was born.

At this point, Pixar could have abandoned their short film output and concentrated on features instead. But, understanding that shorts are the perfect arena to test new technologies and untried talents, they continued the tradition with 1997’s Geri’s Game, a sweet story about an old man playing chess against himself. The first time Pixar truly perfected human skin and movement, Geri’s Game was an important breakthrough that would later allow them to make human-centered flicks like The Incredibles and Ratatouille, and added a little complexity to the simple storytelling they had in Tin Toy and Knick-Knack.

Up next was the magnificent For The Birds, the story of a group of bullying little avians who get their comeuppance after picking on one of their larger cousins. Another important flick for Pixar’s technological developments, it helped pioneer the realistic feathers and fur that would be so important to Monsters Inc. More importantly from a non-geeky point of view, it is arguably their finest short film, with director Ralph Egglestone creating a rich, detailed and funny story, which is as satisfying as any feature, despite its short length.

With the DVD release of Monster’s Inc, Pixar branched out into shorts featuring characters from their existing films. Mike’s New Car, the self-explanatory short included on the aforementioned film’s DVD, came first followed by Cars’ Mater and the Ghost Light, Ratatouille’s Your Friend The Rat and, best of all, Jak-Jak Attack, the hilarious story of what happened at the Incredibles’ home when a young babysitter bit off more than she could chew with the heroes’ baby. Short but perfectly formed, they’re so good you wonder why Pixar haven’t produced more and turned them into a TV series. I know I’d tune in.

Yet there remains something special about the original shorts Pixar creates for their pre-feature entertainment. Their most recent offerings, music-tinted One Man Band and alien abduction caper Lifted, have again found the company producing funny, inventive and sweet films that prove perfect tasters for the movies they are attached to, yet manage to exist as masterful works of art in their own right.

For Wall*E, they’ve come up with Presto, the story of a magician and his rabbit battling for a carrot. It will last only a few minutes and probably be missed by a significant portion of cinemagoers who are still waiting in line for their popcorn and Coke. But, like all Pixar’s output, it will charm and delight those who are in their seats and act as another reminder of the humble origins of one of the finest studios, live action or animated, working today.

2008-07-11T12:19:00.001-07:00

READING, WATCHING, LISTENING TO

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

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: I've mostly been watching Dexter over the last few weeks, cramming in all of the first series on DVD just in time to start watching the second on Sunday on FX, which has started very well. Now I'm on another race against time to watch the fourth series of The Wire in time for the fifth to start later this month. Filmwise, I saw Prince Caspian at the cinema last weekend, which was pretty dull and and long-winded. At least Warwick Davis got to be in it as he was in the TV show too, though playing a different character. Not sure the Narnia series can keep on going all the way to the end on the big screen...

READING: Having bought myself a box-seat of Sherlock Holmes books ages ago with a post-Christmas book voucher, I've finally got around to reading them, and am currently most of the way through the third one, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. They're great, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of them, particularly as they are quite easy to dip in and out of whilst on the tram...

LISTENING TO: I'm on a classic rock tip at the moment, with Motley Crue and Whitesnake both very popular. Dr Feelgood and Kickstart My Heart by the Crue are just awesome rock anthems and have been very useful in the last week to help kick Rock Star by Nickelback out of my head (thank you very much to whichever generic sofa company have that awful song in their terrible advert). And finally, there's Ronald Jenkees, the YouTube legend (look him up) and his ace version of the Rocky theme...

THE WRITER

WATCHING: Doctor Who. This season of Doctor Who has been the best since its return in 2005, and it got a suitably epic finale on Saturday. Well, according to me anyway. Many others found problems with the season-closer, complaining that the lack of regeneration and metaphorical rather than literal death of the assistant were cop-outs. Nonsense. The regeneration sidestep was perfectly legitimate (come on, this is sci-fi), and the ‘death’ of Donna was one of the darkest, most bleak endings to a mainstream TV show I think I’ve ever seen, offering up something far more tragic than a simple, straightforward death. There were minor issues, of course, with the Daleks being defeated a little too easily and Rose settling too quickly for the cloned Doctor. But when the episode also threw up a bonkers Davros threatening to destroy reality itself, the sight of the Tardis hauling a kidnapped Earth back to its original place and, best of all, German Daleks it just seems silly to nitpick. This was Russell T. Davies’s last season as show-runner, and he leaves the series, Saturday night telly and science-fiction as a whole far richer places.

READING: Indiana Jones comics. To coincide with the release of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Dark Horse have recently published two anthologies of their 1990s Indy comics, much to the delight of myself and geeks everywhere. It‘s not all good news though. With George Lucas preferring to set many of the established movie characters aside for future cinematic outings, these adventures sadly seem separate from Steven Spielberg’s films, and sometimes even from each other, with the use of different writers and artists for each tale making it difficult to build up consistency from one story to the next. The limited length of comic books also proves a hindrance, something not helped by the exposition that the complex, globe-trotting plots lumber each story with. However, they’re still rip-roaring entertainment, with the writers capturing Indy’s voice perfectly and the MacGuffins being unique enough to make sure these aren’t just nostalgic retreads of the films.

LISTENING TO: Radiohead: LIVE!!! Ok, this is a bit of a cheat considering the Editor and I went to see The Mighty Head (as absolutely nobody calls them) two Sundays back, but as I’ve listened to nothing of note since then it still counts. As was mentioned in the review, the casual-fan crowd was often unresponsive, but the band themselves were on top form, playing a perfectly-judged set with a fine balance of pre and post-Kid A tracks. As good as the likes of Paranoid Android, Just and Fake Plastic Trees were though, the gig really came alive for me when they played the more obscure stuff. The Gloaming, Bangers and Mash and Myxamaotosis are all more interesting tracks live than they are in album form, and it’s quite a sight watching Thom thrust all things thrustable and shoot the audience with an imaginary gun during the latter song. All in all, a fantastic experience…even if I did have a dirty hoodie thrown at me during the first encore.

2008-06-26T22:50:00.001-07:00

TOP TEN: RADIOHEAD

With Radiohead playing at Lancashire County Cricket Ground on Sunday, The Writer and The Editor (who are both going) offer up their own Top Ten Radiohead Songs lists. And one of them couldn't even stick to just ten...

THE WRITER

1. No Surprises (OK Computer)
The glockenspiel, the video, the use on The Royale Family…there are so many reasons to love No Surprises (it also begins arguably the finest ending to any album ever, segueing perfectly into Lucky and then The Tourist). But the reason why No Surprises is at the top of this list, why it’s the greatest Radiohead song ever, is that it’s the finest example of what they do so brilliantly: filter their political interests through personal stories. In its mentions of “bringing down the government” and “handshakes of carbon monoxide”, this is every bit as angry a song as Electioneering. But unlike that track, No Surprises introduces us to an everyday protagonist. He’s sick of his job, yearning for a more simple life (“such a pretty house, such a pretty garden”) and concerned for his girlfriend (“you look so tired, unhappy”). The imagery Yorke creates in telling this character‘s story (hearts filled like landfills, handshakes of carbon monoxide, final fits and bellyaches) is some of his most evocative ever, and the simple chorus of “no alarms and no surprises, please” is heartbreakingly simple. By the end, he’s not describing some random guy any more, he’s describing you and I in our darkest hour. Yet, the song’s ultimate triumph is that it leaves you not with a feeling of despair, but one of hope and happiness. We all have “bruises that won’t heel”, and there’s something about hearing that in a song that’s deeply cathartic.

2. Motion Picture Soundtrack (Kid A)
I know what you’re thinking. ‘Well, this list is just a barrel of laughs’, right? But much like No Surprises, Motion Picture Soundtrack is a dark song (probably about suicide) with a hopeful edge. Musically a simple blend of acoustic guitar and organ, it introduces us to someone who has lost or split up with his girlfriend. The line “red wine and sleeping pills help me get back to your arms” seems to suggest our hero is going to commit suicide after his partner‘s death, but the reference to ‘sent letters getting burned’ points more towards a painful break up the protagonist has not yet got over. Whatever the reason for his unhappiness, he seems absolutely sure he will “get back where he belongs” and even if the final line does point almost unavoidably toward death, the little flurry of harp which joins it adds a positive flavour which allows the listener to leave the otherwise dark and apocalyptic world of Kid A with a sense of optimism.

3. Pyramid Song (Amnesiac)
So, that’s three songs possibly about death in the top three. I’d like to make it perfectly clear at this point that I am not some kind of death-obsessed nut case. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. What I like about these songs is that, despite their dark, brooding music, the lyrics are hopeful and positive. Pyramid Song is the most complex example. The opening line (“I jumped in the river…”) certainly points to a dark subject matter, but the rest of the track is beautifully upbeat. Our hero is shown “a moon full of stars” and “astral cars”, before going to “heaven in a little row boat”. Death, right? Nope. While on this journey, our protagonist is introduced to “all the figures I used to see”, “all my lovers” and “all my past and future”…And if he has a future, he’s not dead. Indeed, for me, this song isn’t about death at all, it’s a musical companion to It’s A Wonderful Life. Seriously! Like George Bailey in that film, our hero is given some divine intervention, shown his past, future, everyone he’s known and everyone he will ever know and told, ultimately, that there’s “nothing to fear and nothing to doubt”. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I was told that and then given the choice between life and death, I know what I’d choose.

4. Paranoid Android (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttNE-QZWR0c)
Ok, why is this some random demo version rather than the official recording on OK Computer? Well, one reason could be that I‘ve listened to Paranoid Android so many times that I‘ve become bored of it. It’s shocking, but a possibility. More than that though, ever since I found this early demo recording of the track on YouTube, I’ve just about preferred it to the OKC offering because it lends the song a completely different tone. For the most part, both versions are identical. A line here, a word there are different, but essentially they’re the same. Until, that is, the final section comes along. In the ‘rain down…’ chorus Thom sings ‘Hallelujah’ and adds an ‘Amen’ to the end, almost like a prayer, and the outro is longer and has Jonny Greenwood’s organ higher in the sound mix. A subtle difference perhaps, but it adds a more melancholic, less angry feel to the piece which turns Paranoid Android into a sad, plaintive cry for help. The official version remains fantastic, of course, but this one just has that little bit extra humanity that makes Radiohead a cut above the rest.

5. Fog (Knives Out B-side)
Here‘s another song that comes in two different incarnations. One, the second to be released, is on the Hail to the Thief-era ‘Com Lag EP’. It’s a simple, piano-led version of the song and apparently Yorke considers it the superior one. On this rare occasion, Thom, I beg to differ. For me, the best version of this magnificent track can be found on the B-side to the single version of Knives Out (itself a classic). Unlike most Radiohead songs, I have no clue what Thom is singing about. As far as I can tell, it’s something about small children, alligators and things going bad. What that has to do with fog I don’t know, but the track is on here mainly because of the music. It begins with some ambient noise, almost like wind blowing by outside. Then Colin Greenwood’s bass kicks in joined by some gentle tapping. Yorke’s vocals begin, before the guitars are put into the mix as well. The drumming becomes more insistent, the gentle lullaby sounds in the background grow louder and then, finally, it explodes into life. The Yorke solo version is wonderful too, but this is a cracking mix of OKC Radiohead and Kid A/Amnesiac Radiohead, and it’s a shame it never found its way onto an album.

6. True Love Waits (I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings EP)
Ah, now here’s a lyric I can understand. Probably one of the few straight-up Radiohead love songs, True Love Waits looked set to be one of their great lost classics as the band went years without ever being able to agree upon a releasable version. It became a firm fan favourite though and was often played live, leading to its release on the I Might Be Wrong live EP. Written from the point of view of a lovelorn protagonist begging his partner to stay with him, it’s a simple acoustic number that boasts some of Yorke’s finest lyrics. “I’ll dress like your niece to wash your swollen feet” is a curious but sweet expression of devotion, while “your tiny hands, your crazy kitten smile” is just plain lovely. But it’s the penultimate verse that is my favourite. “True love waits, in haunted attics, and true love lives, on lollipops and crisps.” It was apparently inspired by the story of a young boy, abandoned at home by his holidaying parents for a week, who got by on crisps and lollipops alone, and is another great example of the positive element to Radiohead’s songwriting that many overlook.

7. A Reminder (Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP)
You want an example of Radiohead’s genius, this is it. Yorke apparently wrote this song while bored one day. Yep, he wrote one of the band’s best songs out of boredom! A Reminder is based on an idea Yorke had about writing a song that someone could play back to a friend in their old age to remind them of their youth. It begins with disillusionment: the hazy sound of indistinguishable voices at a train station and some loose guitar strumming. But once Yorke’s vocal kicks it, it gains in pace as he sings: “If I get old, I will not give in. But if I do, remind me of this”. The second verse continues with the same affirming tone: “Remind me that once I was free, once I was cool, once I was me”. The music continues to build until it hits a crescendo in the fourth verse. Then, to finish us off, Yorke sings the song’s sweetest line: “If I get old, remind me of this, that night we kissed, and I really meant it. Whatever happens, if we’re still speaking. Pick up the phone, play me this song”. Whoever said Radiohead were depressing?

8. Reckoner (In Rainbows)
Bang up to date now with what I reckon (see what I did there?) is the best song off In Rainbows. Bizarrely though, I wasn’t very keen when I first heard it, thinking it was musically rather ho-hum. I know, sacrilege, right? What made it click for me was when I received my shiny-wonderful disc-box and read the lyrics, and suddenly what was a rather middle-of-the-road Radiohead number suddenly transformed into the heartbeat of the whole album. In Rainbows is Radiohead’s most humane and heartfelt work since OKC, and while a Reckoner sounds quite scary, the song is “dedicated to all human beings…because we separate like ripples on a blank shore”. With ethereal vocals sighing the name of the album in the background and the music hitting the high notes, I don’t think I’ve heard alienation and loneliness expressed in such a beautiful way.

9. Fake Plastic Trees (The Bends)
With its slow start, buildy-uppy (yes, it’s a word) middle and raucous end, Fake Plastic Trees arguably set-up the anthemic structure Radiohead would perfect on OK Computer and then shy away from on Kid A. It deserves its place on this list for that reason alone. But, as you might be able to tell from my choices, I’m a big fan of Yorke’s lyrics, and Fake Plastic Trees’ words make the song more complex than just a simple festival anthem. With its references to “green plastic watering cans”, “fake Chinese rubber plants”, and “cracked polystyrene men”, it seems like quite a cold, bitter song about the consumer culture of modern Britain and the obsession we have with superficial beauty. But there’s also a lot of empathy in there, with Yorke sympathising with the worn out plastic surgeon who always loses to gravity, the aforementioned polystyrene man “who just crumbles and burns” and the character at the end, who I’ve always read as being the plastic surgeon’s customer desperately doing herself over to keep hold of the man she loves, who melancholically repeats: “if I could be who you wanted…all the time”. They may be shy and withdrawn in public, but songs like this really do prove that Radiohead are a band of the people.

10. Big Boots (Man-O-War) (http://youtube.com/watch?v=EYAHxZfKiuA)
A sort of brother song to In Rainbows’ Nude, this unreleased track about adultery has now sadly been ditched by the band as unrecordable. Perhaps it’s a bit of a cheat to include it here then, but click the above link and tell me it’s not one of the band’s finest tracks. Musically they wanted to create something with a bit of a James Bond twist to it, and Big Boots would certainly sound great accompanying a Maurice Binder credit sequence. But it’s in the lyrics that the song is most interesting. Written, it seems, from the point of view of a very angry housewife who is about to take revenge on her adulterous husband, the song insists that “drunken confessions and hijacked affairs will only make you more alone” before threatening to “bake you a cake, made of all their eyes.” “What a nasty surprise,” she adds. No kidding. Fascinatingly, she also says: “You’re my man-o-war,” hinting she still loves him as part of some kind of mutually self-destructive relationship. With Bond going through a bit of a dark phase at the moment, and his relationship with women under particularly close scrutiny, this is exactly the kind of song the producers should be going for. Broccolis: find Thom Yorke’s number and demand he and the band finish it!

Honourable mentions (AKA: The Cop-Out Section): Just - The Bends (Sod off Mark Ronson!), Idioteque - Kid A (It’s a dance song. About the apocalypse!) , Like Spinning Plates - I Might Be Wrong EP (Piano led and better than Amnesiac’s version), Street Spirit - The Bends (Obviously), Melatonin - Airbag/How Am I Driving EP (Another reason to get this awesome collection), How To Disappear Completely - Kid A (One of Yorke’s most evocative lyrics), The Tourist - OKC (Best. Album. Closer. Ever), Anyone Can Play Guitar - Pablo Honey (No they can’t - I’ve tried), Myxamatosis - HTTT (does anybody know what this song is about?), How I Made My Millions - No Surprises single (released demo with Yorke’s wife cooking in the background. Reality TV for Radiohead fans), Thinking About You - Pablo Honey (“I still love you, still see you in bed, but I'm playing with myself.” Ahem), Analyse - The Eraser (Yes, it counts).

THE EDITOR

1. Fake Plastic Trees
For me, this is still the undisputed high point of Radiohead's career. Apparently recorded after they saw Jeff Buckley perform, it demonstrates perfectly the influence that he had on them on The Bends, the album that turned them from a decent indie rock band into something more special. Deceptively simple musically, but incredibly effective and with anti-consumerist lyrics that tread the line between 'good pretentious' and 'bad pretentious' perfectly, this is the song I would always choose to explain to someone why I like Radiohead.

2. Idioteque
The most successful of their experimental tracks from the Kid A/Amnesiac era, Idioteque manages to defy the convention of what a Radiohead song was supposed to be, whilst also being one of the catchiest and most memorable songs they've ever released. The lyrics were supposedly cut up and put together at random, and it certainly sounds like it, and that only adds to the mood of apocalyptic dread. Always a great live track, if only to see Thom Yorke's dancing, honed by hours of practice in the bunker...

3. Street Spirit (Fade Out)
Partly thanks to its astonishing video, this was the track that really introduced me to Radiohead, and was one of the first songs I ever tried to learn on the guitar. Like Fake Plastic Trees, Street Spirit is a really simple but effective song with one of the most instantly recognisable guitar riffs around. You can see why people might criticise it for being 'depressing' because of the way the 'fade out' refrain drags, but if that puts you off, you're missing out on a classic.

4. Lucky
This is where I get to mention Six Feet Under, as I tend to do in most of my blogs. Lucky was used in an incredibly emotive and cathartic scene involving the Fisher family stood around a bonfire of old possessions that they hadn't been able to sell in a yard sale, seeing their pasts literally go up in smoke. Even though it wasn't the song that was originally supposed to be used, this OK Computer track was perfect for the scene, but a song this powerful and classy would be great in any scene.

5. Paranoid Android
Radiohead at their prog-rock best, Paranoid Android is completely insane and one of the most uncompromising top five chart hits (their biggest UK hit) ever. One of their longest songs, with some of their heaviest guitar riffs, most beautiful melodies and most unintelligible lyrics, Paranoid Android is one of the bravest and best singles released in the 90s. A natural set-closer, I readily admit that I'll be disappointed if they don't play it on Sunday, even though I did hear it the last time I saw them.

6. No Surprises
Sure, the beauty of this song might be slightly tainted by the association of it with Dave and Denise Best on The Royle Family simpering over their little baby, but it's still another awesome OK Computer single. Like Street Spirit, it's a surprisingly simple repetitive melody that is devastatingly effective, showing that, for all of their reputation for making 'clever-clever' music, Radiohead can be at their best when keeping it simple.

7. Pyramid Song
Even though it got into the top five, Pyramid Song hardly had anything like the kind of impact on the general public as the singles from Ok Computer or The Bends had, but it's right up there (obviously) with their best tracks. Recorded during the Kid A sessions, but left off that album, it is beautiful, haunting, epic and unforgettable. To be honest, I can't write anything about it to match the stuff The Writer said, so I won't even try...

8. The National Anthem
One of the all-time great bass-lines (played by Thom Yorke apparently) gives The National Anthem a real hook and makes it one of the most instant tracks from Kid A even though it's also one of the most 'out there'. The fact that it combines the experimental electronic approach of so much of that album with obvious free-form Miles Davis/Charles Mingus jazz influences and still manages to be catchy and a live favourite just shows how great it is.

9. Nude
The fact that this is the only track from In Rainbows to make it into my list, even though In Rainbows is one of my favourite Radiohead albums, perhaps goes to show that it is a record that works best as a cohesive collection of tracks, rather than individual songs, so not many of them really stand out for me. Nude is the exception though, a gorgeous, gorgeous tune that apparently dates back to 1997, but sounds perfect in the finished form on In Rainbows. If they can make it sound that good live, it could be a highlight on Sunday.

10. Knives Out
The recurrent theme here of 'simple' songs ends with arguably the most straightforward track they've recorded since OK Computer. Famously, they agonised over it during the recording process because they were worried that it wasn't complex enough at a time in their career when they were trying to push the envelope: "We just lost our nerve," said Yorke." It was so straight-ahead. We thought, 'We've gotta put that in the bin, it's too straight.' We couldn't possibly do anything that straight until we'd gone and been completely arse about face with everything else, in order to feel good about doing something straight like that. It took 373 days to be arse-about-face enough to realise it was alright the way it was." It certainly is.

2008-06-19T23:07:00.001-07:00

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT... JOE DANTE

Zany, wacky, warped...they're not words you'd normally use to positively describe a film-maker, but when it comes to Joe Dante they're entirely complimentary. One of the most unique students of the Roger Corman school of film-making, Dante hit his stride with 1978's Jaws spoof Piranha after debuting in 1976 with Hollywood Boulevard, and has excelled in making irreverent, tongue-in-cheek horror/sci-fi films ever since. Here, we run down five of the best Dante efforts to get a clearer picture of the man who has taken on gremlins, psychotic toys and curtain-twitching neighbours...

The Howling (1981)
Following the success of Piranha, Dante stayed in the horror genre with The Howling. Written by Piranha scribe and indie legend John Sayles, it's a smart, sassy upgrading of werewolf lore which stars Dee Wallace as a newswoman who stumbles across a colony of the lupine beasts while on the trail of a serial killer. Released in the same year as John Landis's An American Werewolf in London, it received less acclaim than its brother film, but is an arguably more intelligent and complex affair, with Sayles's smart script neatly plundering the sexual and psychological undertones of lycanthropy and Dante placing more emphasis on suspense and scares than Landis's more gory picture. It spawned an amazing seven sequels (the first of which was subtitled ‘Stirba - Werewolf Bitch’), each one more absurd than the last, but don’t hold that against it…

The 'burbs (1989)
Ah the burbs. In all my years, I've never met anyone who doesn't like it. A classic tale of small-town paranoia, it stars Tom Hanks as an ordinary guy who suspects his neighbours may not be all they seem. Blending horror and science-fiction, it's a typically playful Dante film, but for once more credit must go to his writer, Dana Olsen, whose script plays its cards close to its chest and keeps you guessing as to what exactly is going on right till the very end. The ’burbs is also notable for having a fantastic use of the Universal logo. Once the company's name has moved from the screen, the globe remains and the camera zooms in closer and closer and closer, until finally we're on the street where all the forthcoming action will take place. It's a wonderfully off-kilter way to set up the movie and lets the audience know from the very start that something is very much amiss...

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
This space was going to be taken up by the original Gremlins film as it is - just about, in my opinion - the superior picture. However, it’s also more of a straight-up horror film, and with The Howling already taking care of that side of Dante's oeuvre, I felt it best to highlight his madcap, cartoony talents with this sequel. Phoebe Cates and Zach Galligan reprise their role from the first film, but they (and even the loveable Gizmo) play second fiddle to the Gremlins, who have now mutated into bats, spiders and Tony Randall-voiced cultural commentators. Dante subverts movie sequels by turning much of the film into a live-action cartoon and when the big finale comes, it’s not an action-packed special effects spectacular, but a Gremlin sing-along to New York, New York. What other director would give you that?

Small Soldiers (1998)
On one level, this tale of toys going on the rampage is exactly the same as Gremlins, but in terms of tone, Small Soldiers features Dante in a more melancholic mood. Starring the late Phil Hartman and a young Kirsten Dunst, it finds hyper intelligent soldier toys the Commando Elite waging war upon their peaceful alien counterparts the Gorgonites on a small suburban street. Although it boasts all Dante’s usual subversion (Denis Leary gives a great turn as the sleazy CEO whose company creates the toys) and spot-on movie references (the Gorgonites are played by Spinal Tap; Commando Elite by the Dirty Dozen), this is arguably his most mainstream and accessible film to date and, as it makes explicit the nostalgia which courses through all his films, Small Soldiers plays as well to wistful adults as it does to bloodthirsty kids.

Masters of Horror: Homecoming (2005)
Bringing us bang up to date, Dante has directed two episodes for anthology TV series Masters of Horror in recent years. The second of the duo is The Screwfly Solution, which I have yet to see, but it'll have to be something of a masterpiece to trump its predecessor Homecoming. Dante's most brutally satirical work yet, it's a zombie film in which the dead from the Iraq war return not to chomp on brains but to vote in a forthcoming election. Government officials tow the party line by insisting that the dead support the war that they died in, but soon the amount of deceased returning grows, putting one of the president's top advisors in danger...By turns sharp and melancholic, this is one of the most unique zombie films you'll ever see, featuring almost no bloody killings or brain eating. It's also a pretty original protest film, questioning not only the war, but the false rhetoric the government churns out to keep the public quiet. All in all, essential viewing which proves Dante is still one of the most interesting film-makers around, despite Hollywood’s seeming hesitance to give him work.

2008-06-15T08:15:00.001-07:00

READING, WATCHING, LISTENING TO

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

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: Saw The Incredible Hulk at the cinema, which was alright. I was a big fan of the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno tv show and movies, and this doesn't really match the pathos of those, and nor does it aim as high as Ang Lee's Hulk, but it's pretty good for what it is, and you can't go too far wrong with the likes of Ed Norton, Tim Roth and Tim Blake Nelson in the cast. On on a completely different level, I'm now on Season Three of The Wire on DVD and it just keeps on getting better and better. The Incredible Hulk may have the special effects, the explosions and the smashing, but The Wire is the one that is truly epic.

LISTENING TO: Weezer's sixth album, erm, Weezer. Going back to the self-titled album approach, I'd hoped that they might bounce back from the mediocre Make Believe, but if anything, this is a further step in the wrong direction. Rivers Cuomo has been playing dumb for so long now, it's tempting to wonder whether he really has become dumb. Certainly that moustache begs a few questions. Other than that, the usual mixed bunch of White Zombie, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Live, Gun, Luciano and Leonard Cohen - in the hope that I might still get into his shows at the Opera House this week.

READING: Still Phra Peter Pannapadipo's Phra Farang tale of a British man's life as a Buddhist monk in Thailand. Coming to the end of it now and it's been a very good read with a good sense of humour and a great insight into a completely different world and way of life, Phra Peter's experiences are never dull, both as a 'fish out of water' travel guide and a book about Buddhism. His attempts to communicate in Thai are certainly always entertaining, as he describes the bewildered expressions of fellow monks as he explains that there are four elephants on top of his hut, when he was actually just trying to say that his roof was leaking. This is why everyone should just speak English...

THE WRITER

WATCHING: The Happening. Oh dear. Despite feeling let down by M. Night Shyamalan‘s recent films, I was cautiously optimistic that he would regain his form in The Happening after being impressed by the creepy trailers. Sadly, it’s his worst to date. A relentlessly silly thriller about a poisonous gas which forces people to commit suicide, The Happening is full of hamfisted direction, convoluted character motivations and reams of dreadful dialogue. An impressive cast led by Mark Whalberg and Zooey Deschanel could have saved it, but they‘re unique, often quirky, actors miscast in a film which calls for everymen, and seem wooden as a result. Hopefully, Shyamalan can regain his form one day, but he needs to ditch the big ideas, forget the convoluted plots and turn back to the complex character work that made The Sixth Sense and Unbreakeable so good.

LISTENING TO: She & Him - Volume One. Talking of the lovely Zooey Deschanel, I’ve been listening to extracts from her debut album this week. She’s been writing music all her life apparently, and been in a band - If All The Stars Were Pretty Babies, with fellow actress Samantha Shelton - for the last few years, but with She & Him (a collaboration with M.Ward), she’s finally got something released - and it’s pretty damn good. Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? is a fantastic bouncy summer tune, Sentimental Heart displays Deschanel’s talent with lyrics and Take It Back is a darker, more bruised love song than you‘d perhaps expect from an actor. This Is Not A Test is a little too country-schmuntry (yes, it’s a word!) for my liking, but all in all this is very promising, with Deschanel’s expressive voice proving that a history in acting can sometimes be beneficial to a career in music.

READING: Devil May Care. This has been written by Sebastian Faulkes in the style of Ian Fleming to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the Bond author’s birth, and some have suggested it reads like a pastiche of his work. Nothing could be further from the truth. The first 007 book to be released since 2002‘s The Man With The Red Tattoo, Devil May Care is certainly a perfectly studied replica of Fleming’s novels, but it’s original enough to stand on its own two feet. Bond finds himself in the Middle East crossing swords with the villainous Dr Julius Gorner while hunting down his new ladyfriend’s drug addict sister. Gorner has a vendetta against England, and his crimes are revenge for those the country committed during the Empire years, so there are some stinging attacks on England’s past that you get the feeling Fleming wouldn’t entirely approve of. Hardcore Bond fans may not be impressed by it either, but for me the political edge only adds more brilliance to Faulkes’ work. He’s updated a classic character, while at the same time staying true to his roots and, as obvious as it is to say this, DMC would make a great film.

2008-05-25T07:20:00.001-07:00

TOP TEN SPRINGSTEEN SONGS

With Bruce Springsteen playing at Old Trafford this week, we preview it with our list of his top ten songs...

1 - Born To Run

Every legendary song needs its own legend, and Born To Run's comes from the story of how it was written. After two promising but commercially unsuccessful albums, Bruce Springsteen was in his last chance saloon as far as his music career was concerned. So he wrote a song about having one last shot at glory (a trademark - almost to the point of cliche - theme for him over his career). But it's not the lyrics that mark this out of one of rock music's all-time classics, it's the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to the music, clearly inspired by Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound, and climaxing perfectly with the few seconds where the song seems to fade away before exploding back to life, as thrilling as any other moment in music history.

2 - Thunder Road

Another Born To Run classic that is thematically close to the title track, Thunder Road is another 'let's get out of here' track, but stylistically it's very different. Starting with a plaintive piano/harmonica-led verse, it gradually builds up and manages to be very catchy despite lacking a traditional chorus. The lyrics are amongst Springsteen's best, not least the closing line "It's a town full of losers, we're pulling outta here to win", while throwaway lines like "You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright" (picked by Julia Roberts as the song lyric that described her most accurately) sum up his appeal to the everyman and everywoman of America (and the world).

3 - Atlantic City

"Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night, and they blew up his house too." As anthemic as any opening line in Springsteen's oeuvre, it comes from the most accessible track from his folky acoustic album Nebraska. Released in 1982 in between The River and Born In The USA, it stands out from both of those for its sparse instrumentation, mainly because he took the decision to release his 4-track demos as the album rather than the version he had recorded with the E-Street Band. Atlantic City is another tale of a young couple making an escape to the titular city, which was racked at the time by crime families (the 'chicken man' was a real mob boss named Philip Testa, who was blown up in March 1981) and general decline and despair. Basically, it's a less optimistic version of the two songs above.

4 - The River

Coming from the double album of the same name, this is one of his best downbeat songs, with the river acting a symbol of hope for the working class protagonist and his young girlfriend, but circumstances soon overtake them, leaving him with just his memories of that hope: "That night we went down to the river, though I know the river is dry, it sends me down to the river tonight." As for unfulfilled hope, does any line sum it up as well as this one: "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?" A truly great song that may not have been a massive hit, but will always be remembered as one of his best.

5 - Highway Patrolman

Another song from Nebraska, this is one of his clearest examples of story-telling, so much so that Sean Penn actually made a film based on it (The Indian Runner). The highway patrolman is called Joe, and his unruly brother Frankie goes off to war in Vietnam while Joe stays home and marries their sweetheart Maria. When Frankie comes back, he gets in trouble at a bar and possibly kills another man before going on the run, with Joe having to chase him like any other suspect but eventually letting him escape over the border because: "Man turns his back on his family, well he just ain't no good."

6 - Racing In The Street

Coming after the optimism and yearning of Born To Run, you might have expected follow-up album Darkness On The Edge Of Town to be pretty upbeat, considering that Springsteen had enjoyed plenty of success and acclaim for that album. However, the follow-up's title said it all, as Darkness was full of stories of tragedy, failure and the loss of hope, none more bleak and affecting than Racing In The Street, "She sits on the porch of her daddy's house, but all her pretty dreams are torn, she stares off alone into the night, with the eyes of one who hates for just being born." If that sounds depressing, Springsteen's plaintive vocals and simple piano-led instrumentation make it even more of a dirge. But an incredible one and the first one to play anyone who thinks that there's nothing more to him than the anthemic rock of Born In The USA.

7 - Hungry Heart

During the late 70s, Springsteen wasn't too interested in recording upbeat poppy songs, prefering to focus on the darker side of life (see above), so whenever something commercial popped in his head, he gave it someone else instead. Patti Smith's Because The Night is one of the best examples of these, and Hungry Heart was meant to be too. He wrote it for The Ramones, but was convinced to keep it for himself. The lyrics are still fairly dark, about a broken relationship and a constant unfulfilled yearning for love, but he sugarcoats it with his poppiest production of all, echoeing the treatment he'd give to his tale of a bitter Vietnam veteran (Born In The USA) a few years later.

8 - Gypsy Biker

The newest song on this list, it comes from last year's Magic album and showcases the E-Street Band at their very best, with a pounding drumbeat, soaring harmonica and duelling guitars all creating a wall of noise to back Springsteen's tale of the homecoming of US soldier killed in action in Iraq. An outspoken opponent of Bush and the war, his lyrics here say it all: "The favored march up over the hill, in some fools parade, shoutin' victory for the righteous, but there ain't much here but graves." You can maybe see it as a kind of sequel to Born In The USA, with the betrayed veteran replaced by the hidden victim of a more media-savvy war.

9 - Into The Fire

A lot of American musicians tried to write songs about 9/11 in the years after it happened, but sadly a lot of them ended up like Toby Keith's braindead jingoistic rant Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue. Seven years after his last album, Springsteen returned (with the E-Street Band in tow for the first time in 18 years) with The Rising, an album partly written as a reaction to America's great tragedy. Of course, he did it well, with Into The Fire's heartfelt tale of a fire fighter's widow getting the tone and emotion right: "It was dark, too dark to see, you held me in the light you gave. You lay your hand on me, then walked into the darkness of your smoky grave."

10 - 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)

One of Springsteen's best love songs, Sandy is also the best track from his formative first two albums, and sees love conquer all in a troubled area (Springsteen's hometown in New Jersey). Musically, it's a lot more whimsical than most of what was to follow, with clear references to Van Morrison and a bit of a Gallic flavour too. Like most of second album The Wild, The Innocent And The E-Street Shuffle, it's a little bit rambling, but it's a rough gem whose sweetness is untarnished by the fact that a young Tony Blair used to listen to it while he was courting Cherie.

2008-05-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

Top Ten Spielberg Moments

After nineteen years of waiting, the new Indiana Jones film is finally released this week, which of course means that the new Steven Spielberg film is released too. So, to celebrate the beardy legend‘s twenty-sixth movie, we've decided to dedicate this week's blog to the best bits from Spielberg's iconic oeuvre.

Now, we could fill this with the obvious suggestions: flying bikes, marauding dinosaurs, giant boulders, what have you, but that would be boring and predictable. So instead we're going to try to take a look at the less-celebrated moments from Spielberg's iconic films, not an easy task in a career as well-known as his. Wish us luck...

1) "I thought I'd lost you boy!" (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)
Well, Indy had to be at the top didn't he? There are many well-known and not so well-known moments in the Indiana Jones series that could have taken top spot on this list, but for me it had to be this heart-wrenching scene between Indy and father Henry from Last Crusade. After busting his dad out of a marauding Nazi tank, Indy has apparently fallen to his death off the side of a cliff. Henry, Sallah and Marcus Brody peer over the edge hoping for a sign of life, but there’s nothing. All seems lost until Indy hauls himself back on to land and creeps up behind the trio to see what they’re looking at. Henry double takes, grabs his son and, with tears in his eyes, says: "I thought I'd lost you boy!" "I thought you'd lost me too, sir,” comes Indy’s reply. Last Crusade was one of the last times Spielberg told his familiar father-son subtext from the point-of-view of the son. Fittingly, it's one of his best.

2). Truffaut's connection (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
A major part of Spielberg's genius is his ability to imbue seemingly silly stories with the kind of intelligence only peers like Scorsese and Coppolla are attributed with displaying. Close Encounters is his finest example of this. What for some is just a big science-fiction epic with funny little space aliens at the end is really a film about spirituality, the search for meaning and, above all, connection (one of the key themes in any Spielberg film). Nowhere else is this better conveyed than in Francois Truffaut's hand-signal conversation with the aliens in the film‘s closing stages. John Williams's music is, of course, majestic, as is Spielberg's orchestration of the scene, but it’s Truffaut’s acting that really makes the moment fly. The innocent joy on his face perfectly epitomises the wonder of much of Spielberg’s oeuvre.

3). Cadillac of the Sky (Empire of the Sun)
One of Spielberg's most overlooked films, Empire of the Sun finds the director focusing on themes of tolerance (another often-overlooked key idea), communication and respect. Based on JG Ballard's autobiographical novel, it's the story of Jim, a young boy who gets separated from his parents and put in an internment camp after the Japanese attack on Pear Harbour. In the typically Spielbergian way, Jim is obsessed with flying and this forms the basis of the film's best scene. Wandering through an aircraft hanger, Jim spots a Japanese plane and reverently approaches it. A Japanese officer sees him and arms his gun, ready to shoot the boy down. Three pilots arrive and Jim turns round to salutes them. They salute back and the soldier lowers his weapon. The scene then dissolves into a young Japanese boy playing with a toy plane, which he accidentally throws over a gate separating his side of the camp from Jim‘s. Jim picks it up and throws it back. A beautifully understated and too-often overlooked scene from one of Spielberg’s first out-and-out serious pictures.

4). Mary's breakdown (E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial)
Yes, E.T’s teary farewell is one of the most well-known scenes in film history never mind just Spielberg’s oeuvre, but it’s the peripheral action that I’m talking about here. Avert your attention from Elliott and E.T and you find some wonderful grace notes going on in the background with Elliot’s siblings, friends and, above all, his mother. Played by Dee Wallace, Mary is one of the more interesting female characters in Spielberg’s canon (he tends to focus more on men) and her reaction to E.T’s departure is heartbreaking. As her son says goodbye to the most important thing in his life at that moment, she sinks to the floors, tears in her eyes, looking on with a mixture of powerlessness and pride at the maturing Elliot. Another fine example of the often-overlooked subtlety and texture Spielberg‘s films are packed with.

5). Alex Kitner's death (Jaws)
Some say Spielberg can't do dark. The death of young Alex Kitner in Jaws proves otherwise. Coming early in the film, this scene is a master class in slowly building up tension, with Spielberg letting us know that the shark will attack but not who it will attack. Alex who, in an added twist of tragedy is only allowed to go back into the water after begging his mother, seems the least likely candidate, so when Jaws does sink his teeth into him you know the film means business. But it‘s the end of the scene that I want to concentrate on most here. Once the shark has taken his prey, we see concerned parents rushing into the water to collect their children. Blind panic is replaced by deathly silence as all but one return. The image of Mrs Kitner, alone on the shore, calling her son‘s name is one of the most quietly devastating scenes Spielberg has ever shot.

6). Anything Goes! (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)
Raiders of the Lost Ark screenwriter Philip Kaufman apparently declined the offer to work on Temple of Doom because he felt it was too mean-spirited, and it's difficult to disagree. From the dubious humour of the banquet sequence to the heart-ripping of the Thugee temple, Doom almost entirely lacks the lightness of touch that made its predecessor so iconic. I say almost, because it opens with one of the series' best sequences. A glorious, Busby Berklely inspired musical number, it features the film's banshee in distress, Willie Scott, singing Cole Porter's Anything Goes in Mandarian. Spielberg has often said he one day hopes to make a full-blown musical, and this sequence has enough vim and vigour to suggest he‘s more than capable of pulling it off.

7). Restaurant conversation (Catch Me If You Can)
Many recent Spielberg films have focused explicitly on the parent's responsibility to their child, but Catch Me If You Can looks at the child's responsibility to the parent. Based on Frank Agbagnale’s autobiography, this 60s-set caper movie finds our hero trying to use the money he earns from his cons to help his divorced father win back his mother. Of course there’s no hope of that happening, and this scene, in which Frank has bought his father a new Cadillac which he can‘t accept due to a government investigation into his finances, is one of the film‘s most heartbreaking. Walken's performance is beautifully understated as he tells the story of how he and his wife first met and starts to work out what his son is up to. The character is later revealed to have died in a freak accident while running to catch a train. Maybe, Spielberg seems to be suggesting, he wouldn‘t have needed that train has Frank quit his fantasy life sooner and stayed behind to help his father ease his woes in a more realistic way.

8). Wonderment (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
Spielberg himself has identified the scene in Close Encounters in which young Barry Guiler stands in front of the open door at his family home with an extra-terrestrial inferno blazing in front of him as the key image of his career, and it’s difficult to disagree: that moment embodies the wonderment and promise inherent in all Spielberg films. But Close Encounters also contains another key Spielberg shot, one which is perhaps more significant than the Barry scene. As the mothership prepares to take off at the film’s climax, the gathered scientists look on with wonder and awe. In three simple shots, Spielberg shows us their reactions, slowing tracking in on their awestruck faces. It’s a shot Spielberg has used to varying effect in virtually all his films, but this is my favourite example.

9). Viktor’s Matchmaking (The Terminal)
I’ve said it before in this blog and I’ll probably say it again, but just to make it totally clear The Terminal is so, so much more than just a silly romantic comedy. It’s a post 9/11 satire on immigration. Seriously! Think about it: Viktor Naborski arrives in the US from Krakosia and instead of being welcomed with open arms, he’s imprisoned in an airport which is covered from head to toe in ads. The country that once promised to take “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” has mutated into a world dominated by individualism, epitomised by Stanley Tucci airport head who is hoping to dupe Viktor into escaping the airport and ultimately being arrested so he can gain promotion. Spielberg contrasts this character with the thriving multi-cultural community within the airport, which consists of Hispanics, African-Americans and Indians. Working menial but important manual jobs, they are the heartbeat of the airport and in this wonderful scene Spielberg blends his political point with fun romantic comedy as Viktor hooks cleaner Enrique up with immigration officer Dolores.

10) Smoke Gets In Your Eye (Always)
Spielberg may be famous for science-fiction and fantasy, but it’s drama Always that is arguably his least grounded film. A remake of Victor Fleming's 1943 romance A Guy Named Joe, it finds Spielberg indulging his love of the falseness of movies. Nobody is as quick-witted as Richard Dreyfuss’s maverick aerial firefighter Pete, nor as humorously earthy as his friend and colleague Al (John Goodman), or as sweetly spunky as girlfriend Dorinda. Nobody, that is, except the inhabitants of movie land. A film drenched in the moxy and occasional schmaltz of classic Hollywood, Always is the kind of movie you wish you lived in, but sadly don’t; a point best typified by an early scene in which Dreyfuss surprises Hunter with a party to celebrate her birthday. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is played by a cheesy band; Hunter, clad in a beautiful white dress, offers to dance with the rest of the pilots, encouraging them to, in unison, run off to clean their soot-ridden hands and faces; and Goodman and Dreyfuss roam about the scene cracking a bunch of ridiculously quick-witted jokes. Wonderful stuff in an imperfect but warm-hearted flick.

2008-05-18T12:42:00.001-07:00

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.

2008-05-04T11:31:00.001-07:00

ENTERTAINMENT ESSENTIALS: Temple Of The Dog

When Pearl Jam followed Nirvana out of Seattle and onto world domination, Kurt Cobain gracelessly called them sell-outs who were just cashing in on grunge, which was as wildly inaccurate as it was unfair. Indeed, Pearl Jam were much more entrenched in the Seattle scene than Nirvana ever were, because guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament had been in some of the bands who helped lay the foundations for the success that Nirvana had, like Green River and Mother Love Bone.

In March 1990, Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood died of a heroin overdose just before their first album came out. That left Gossard and Ament to start setting up another band, initially called Mookie Blaylock (catchy name, eh?) while their friend Chris Cornell from fellow Seattle band Soundgarden went off on tour just after Wood's death and began writing some songs as a tribute to him. Those songs were called Reach Down and Say Hello 2 Heaven.

Cornell approached Ament and Gossard about getting together a group to record and release these songs as tribute single and they added Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron and a guitarist called Mike McCready, who had known Gossard since high school. Cornell had continued writing songs, meanwhile, and it was decided there was enough to make a full album, particularly as most of this material was much more melodic than he would normally be writing for his day-job band.

And so Temple Of The Dog was born, taking their name from a line in a Mother Love Bone song. The self-titled album came out in April 1991, and while it didn't particularly garner much attention at the time, its importance in the grunge timeline is unmistakeable. One of the best tracks and the only single released from the album is Hunger Strike, a duet between Cornell and an at-the-time-unknown singer called Eddie Vedder, who had been in town auditioning for Mookie Blaylock.

His now-unmistakeable vocals work perfectly alongside Cornell and make it one of the best and most significant songs in Seattle music history. Temple Of The Dog went their separate ways after the album came out, with Cornell and Cameron carrying on with Soundgarden until they split up in 1997 and Ament, Gossard, McCready and Vedder forming the band that soon became known as Pearl Jam. Fittingly, after Soundgarden's implosion, Cameron joined his former Temple mates as the full-time Pearl Jam drummer.

At a show in 2003, Cornell joined them for a show and performed Reach Down and Hunger Strike, while he also delighted this writer at an Audioslave show at the MEN Arena in 2005 when his solo acoustic mini-set included the beautiful Call Me A Dog, even if virtually no-one else seemed to know what it was. The effect that Temple Of The Dog had on Cornell as a songwriter can't be underestimated, as this period seems to be the pivotal moment in Soundgarden's career, where they stopped being a heavy metal group and moved towards becoming a hugely-popular grunge group with hits like the melodic Black Hole Sun.

For that reason alone, this is an important album, even without the effect it had in bringing all of the current members of Pearl Jam together for the first time. And, more than that, it's also a fantastic album on its own merits, and a fitting tribute to a now-mostly-forgotten talent in Andrew Wood. With rock supergroups like Audioslave and Velvet Revolver crashing and burning in recent years, Temple Of The Dog is a reminder of how something special really can happen when members of your favourite bands get together and make music...

2008-04-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

ENTERTAINMENT ESSENTIALS: Roger Corman

If box-office figures are anything to go by, modern filmgoers love a good bit of blood and gore. Horror films such as Eli Roth’s Hostel, the Saw franchise and the innumerable American remakes of Japanese fright flicks like The Grudge and The Eye have all done big business in recent years and the genre has seen budgets increase and Hollywood stars attracted to it as a result. But it wasn’t always like this. Way back in the 50s and early 60s, in between its two boom periods in the 20s and 30s and 70s and 80s, the genre was dismissed as the stuff of B-movies, a playground for cheapo flicks which could produce a tidy profit from a tiny budget. One man who excelled in this arena was Roger Corman, whose The Pit and the Pendulum is the subject of this week’s Entertainment Essentials.

Known today primarily for being the producer who handed big breaks to the likes of James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, Corman has also proven himself a highly talented director. His early, sci-fi tinged B-movies boasted absurd titles like Swamp Women, Naked Paradise and Attack of the Crab Monsters and are admittedly hardly great works of art. But they do stand as entertaining slices of hokum, and the fact they were highly profitable (a direct consequence of the low budgets which were being worked with) attracted the interest of burgeoning studio American International Pictures, who handed Corman a (slightly) bigger budget and asked him to create a horror film.

The result was 1960’s House of Usher. Based on the short story by master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe, it was directed by Corman, written by legendary horror scribe Richard Matheson and starred Vincent Price as the doomed Roderick Usher, a paranoid patriarch whose fear of repeating the sins of his murderous ancestors leads to madness and death. Costing just $270,000 to make (by way of contrast, Hostel 2 cost $10million), it proved an unexpected success (the cheapness of the production again meaning profits were high) and inspired AIP to hire Corman, Matheson and Price for a second modestly-budgeted Poe film, this time an adaptation of The Pit and the Pendulum.

However, there is a major problem with the second in Corman‘s seven-film Poe cycle: it’s barely Poe at all. Because the writer’s original tale stretches to only a few meagre pages and doesn‘t really have much by way of plot, Matheson created an original story in which Price plays Nicholas Medina, a frail old man who as a child witnessed his Inquisitor father bury his mother alive and fears he may have accidentally subjected his own wife Elizabeth to the same fate. Soon, Elizabeth’s brother arrives at Medina’s castle to discern what has happened to his sister and, as he attempts to solve the mystery, Matheson gradually cranks up the tension with a series of ghostly goings-on.

A song often played by Elizabeth is given an eerie airing, her old room is vandalised despite no-one having access to it and her voice can be heard wailing through the corridors at night. Photographed by Floyd Crosby and scored by Les Baxter, these scenes - and indeed the film as a whole - have a great stripped-back menace to them, and they are complemented well by a collection of flashbacks in which Corman, still on a small budget, innovatively experiments with expressionism. Wide-angle lenses, titled camera angles and blue and red-tinted film stock are used to create a dreamy but still oppressive atmosphere which brilliantly reflects Medina’s fevered state of mind, as well as the tone of Poe’s story.

Finally, all the hauntings drive Medina insane and his madness makes for a ghoulishly twisted end to a glorious slice of filmmaking. But sadly Corman, Matheson and Price could never quite match it. Their final Poe adaptation, 1964’s Tomb of Legeia, is praised in some quarters but mostly forgotten along with 1962’s The Premature Burial and anthology Tales of Terror. Disappointingly, Poe’s most famous work, The Raven, was turned into an overlong 1963 farce which bears little relation to its source, meaning 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death is the only other Poe cycle film that can be favourably compared with the first two.

Still, despite this, Corman, Matheson and Price contributed massively to horror cinema with their Poe films, with a scare in Pit being named as one of the most significant moments in post-60s American horror by Stephen King. Of course, time is rarely kind to the horror genre, and some may find Pit and its brother films laughable, over-the-top and cheap by today's glossy standards. But horror is not the domain of big budgets and A-list actors. It's the B-movie world of creaking walls, cobwebbed dungeons and subtle suggestion. Corman grasped this better than anyone and proved that when it comes to scaring the pants off you, less really is more.

2008-04-02T13:17:00.001-07:00

READING, WATCHING, LISTENING TO

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

THE WRITER

READING: With the latest Indiana Jones film out next month (hurrah!), I'm going through a bit of a Steven Spielberg phase, so my entry into this edition will be slightly (well, very) 'Berg-centric. In terms of books, I'm currently reading Warren Buckland's 'Directed by Steven Spielberg', an in-depth analysis of Spielberg's directorial style (average shot length, camera position etc). I’m on the Jaws section at the moment and it’s very dry and serious stuff, but don’t let that put you off. Buckland really knows what he’s talking about and this (along with Joseph McBride’s stunning biography) is the first port of call for anyone studying Spielberg.

WATCHING: Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I tried to watch Duel the other day, but my elderly DVD player was having none of it, so the last film I watched was CE3K, which I haven't seen for a while but is still a masterpiece. It's the slow build-up that makes it work. What so many imitators of Spielberg's blockbusters fail to recognise is that you've got to tease the audience, make them want to see the mothership, the shark or the dinosaur, not just hand it to them on a plate. Spielberg does that brilliantly here and because of it he really allows you to become Roy Neary, rather than just passively observe him, as he desperately seeks the meaning of that mash potato Devil's Tower.

LISTENING TO: I've been listening to pretty much nothing but John Williams soundtracks in recent weeks, some of which have been the obvious ones (Indy, Close Encounters - especially his ethereal music for the mothership scenes), but mostly the lesser praised stuff such as Saving Private Ryan and War of the Worlds. It’s perhaps a shame that neither album has the immediacy of some of Williams’s more well-known work and that they don‘t quite play as well in isolation as a Raiders March or Flying, but both are full of reflective, haunting music which perfectly fits the sombre mood of the films.

THE EDITOR

READING: My Life by Fidel Castro. It's not exactly an autobiography but is still his life story, as told by him in a series of interviews with Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet. One of the most divisive political characters of the 20th Century, Castro certainly has a story to tell and it's not one that you often get to hear in a Western world where he is so demonised by America. I haven't got far enough into it to make any judgements myself, but he's clearly a charismatic, passionate and fiercely intelligent man, and having recently finally stepped down, it seems a perfect time to hear what he has to say for himself.

WATCHING: On Tv over the last few weeks I've watched a couple of new American imports, one very good, one not so good. The very good one is Mad Men, rather deceptively hailed as being from 'the writer of The Sopranos', when 'a writer of The Sopranos' would have been more accurate as it isn't by David Chase, but Matthew Weiner, who was quite heavily involved in the stunning last series of that classic TV show. Mad Men isn't quite at that level, but it's very classy stuff nonetheless. Dirty Sexy Money though, despite a cast featuring Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland and one of the Baldwins (William probably), didn't really seem to have anything below the glossy and shallow surface.

LISTENING TO: Dangerous Game by Mary Weiss, one of the most underappreciated and remarkable albums of last year. Weiss was the lead singer in legendary girl group The Shangri-Las, but pretty much retired from the music industry when they imploded in 1968. Astonishingly, she reemerged last year with an cracking debut solo album backed by garage rockers The Reigning Sound, and while her voice has aged, her attitude and energy remains intact. Also impressive and retro is Chris Rea's latest album-book, The Return Of The Fabulous Hofner Bluenotes, an immaculately-presented three-album set that tells the fictional story of a 60s guitar instrumental group called The Delmonts and their progression into blues-rockers The Hofner Bluenotes. If that sounds a bit pretentious, it isn't because the music is awesome.

2008-03-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

ENTERTAINMENT ESSENTIALS - BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA

He's met Abbott and Costello, had the likes of Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi don his pointy teeth and thick, black cape, and been the subject of parody in everything from Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers to cult kids show Count Duckula. So, when Francis Ford Coppola brought the century-old gothic legend of Count Dracula to the big screen in the early 90s, he did the only thing he could to make it fresh and new: he crafted an opulent romance in which the iconic bad guy is a lovesick good guy.

The Count of Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of the most unique interpretations of the character cinema has yet seen. He doesn't creep out of the shadows to claim his victims, he doesn't flap his cape around grandly in his cobweb-covered castle and he doesn't particularly 'vant to suck your blood'. No, what the dear old Count really wants is someone to love. The film begins with a 15th Century prologue. We find Vlad the Impaler returning from a bloody battle only to discover his wife has committed suicide having been misinformed that her husband had died

Feeling betrayed by God and desperate to save his beloved from eternal damnation, Vlad renounces his faith and embraces vampirism, vowing to return and avenge his wife. Skip forward four centuries and we’re in the late 1800s. London-based real estate agent Jonathan Harker has been called to Transylvania to discuss business with the now old and decrepit Count. When Dracula sees a picture of Harker’s fiancée, Mina Murray, however, Harker finds himself imprisoned in the old man’s mansion and Dracula bids to find a way to London to be reunited with the woman who he believes to be the reincarnation of his dead wife.

Considering Coppola’s film is otherwise more or less faithful to its source material, this diversion from the text could have been rather jarring. Stoker’s novel never entertained the notion of Mina and Dracula being lovers, and most cinematic incarnations have cut the former out of the adaptation altogether or at least reduced her significance. Yet, between the lines, Dracula has always been a sympathetic, romantic figure. Forever needing to kill to live and doomed to immortality, his is a story of the nature of existence, man‘s relationship with God and repressed passion, and the film’s brilliance is that it emphasises this neglected subtext by attaching it to an elaborate opera of sound and vision.

A film you can sense and smell, Coppola’s Dracula drips with grand colours and rich vitality, utilising every aspect of the medium to craft a sort of religious-horror-romance. Michael Ballhuas's lush velvet black and blood red cinematography pops from every inch of the screen, Wojciech Kilar's over-the-top score hums in the speakers with romantic strings and foreboding brass which sound like audio interpretations of heavan and hell, Eiko Ishioka's costumes have enough grandeur to make you believe they’ve been stolen from the gods of some lost opulent civilisation, and the decision to shoot everything on a soundstage and perform the effects in-camera creates a falseness which only adds to the film’s unnerving mood.

Aside from Keanu Reeves and Wynona Ryder as the rather stilted leads (hardly their faults really; the romantic leads in gothic horrors are rarely their most fascinating aspect), the acting is brilliantly bombastic too. In the second of a number of early-90s villainous roles, Gary Oldman is terrifically OTT as Dracula, exuding both the vulnerability and single-minded evil of the title character. Anthony Hopkins, Tom Waits and Sadie Frost also get in on the act, shouting, growling and writhing their way through the film, with Frost particularly impressive as the sexually liberated Lucy Westenra. In many ways they’re mime artists in a film which is arguably best viewed as a modern day silent movie.

Receiving favourable reviews and massive box-office, Dracula sadly marks the last time Coppola really achieved critical and commercial success. He followed it up with the saccharine Jack in 1996 before moving onto ho-hum John Grisham adaptation The Rainmaker in ‘97 and the critically-derided Youth Without Youth a decade later. Yet, even after all these setbacks, Coppola remains one of the most ambitious and unique directors still working. As Bram Stoker’s Dracula proves, he can craft new modes of storytelling from old stories and breath fresh life into clichéd legend.

It’s a skill which is all too absent in today’s filmmakers, and will hopefully return in full force in his next film, 2009’s family drama Tetro.

2008-03-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

TOP TEN MUSIC VIDEOS

The Writer selects his favourite music videos...

1. Radiohead ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’
I'm constantly amazed at how little attention this gets on Top Music Videos lists. If a good video is one that reflects and heightens the emotion of the song, then Jonathan Glazer's promo for Street Spirit is unquestionably the finest. Opting largely to avoid a linear recreation of the lyrics, Glazer shows us a visual interpretation of the actual music, playing with slow motion to craft a collection of unconnected, avant garde images. And it works far better than that rather pretentious explanation sounds. From the moment Thom Yorke falls backwards in slow motion with lightening flashing in the background, you know you're in for something special. There's savage dogs, massive dragonflies, unnervingly unconcerned little boys and Ed O'Brien falling off a chair from then on, but it's one of the final images that remains the best. As Yorke sings "immerse yourself in love" a flying/dancing nun lady, in one of the few direct lyrical references, does just that, running out of a trailer in super fast motion before slowing down when jumping up and scooping some air across herself. The perfect way to end four minutes of visual and audio bliss.

2. Fiona Apple ‘Across The Universe’
There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't just make awesome films, you know. Having a few mates in the music biz has allowed him to try his hand at video-making and, as this promo for Fiona Apple's gorgeous cover of The Beatles' Across The Universe proves, he‘s pretty good. Made for 1998's Pleasantville and homing in on that film's themes of repression and violence, it features Apple floating her way through a 1950s diner which is being ripped apart by hoodlums. Glass, debris and even the occasional pie fly by but "nothing's gonna change" Apple's world as she continues her tour of the eatery completely oblivious to the carnage. It's sweetness is added to because Apple and Anderson were dating at the time, and you can really tell. Apple's never seemed quite so smiley and Anderson has never made one of his leading ladies look quite as lovely as his now-ex does here.

3. Weezer ‘Buddy Holly’
Fourteen years on, I'm still not entirely convinced that Spike Jonze doesn't own a time machine. How else could he have made this promo for Buddy Holly quite as brilliant as it is? The superimposition of Weezer into Al's Diner from Happy Days is too perfect, too seamless to have been done with the technology of the time, and shows exactly why the director has gone on to make such technically innovative films with such verve and accomplishment. It also shows that someone on the production team is one a hell of a geek. Every clip from the classic show has been perfectly selected and you have to look very, very closely at the changing clothes and hair styles to see that they have been taken from different episodes rather than one lost show in which River Cuomo and co came to town.

4. Pulp ‘This Is Hardcore’
Thanks to Common People and the accompanying Sadie Frost-starring video, Pulp are a band who have lamentably been consumed by the big black void of Britpop. However, This is Hardcore shows a darker side to the band, one that sets them aside from the Blurs and Oasises of the mid-90s. The promo seems like a pointless pastiche at first, the 40s film noir setting perfectly recreated but ringing ever so hollow. However, the use of ‘behind-the-scenes footage’, ‘deleted scenes’ and ‘screen-tests’ from this fake film add an element of reality to the piece, meaning the scenes of slaughtered femme fatales, fighting PIs and corrupted young women seem unnervingly authentic. There’s also a lot of random imagery thrown in for good measure and one moment is especially unsettling as a young starlet tries to grab an apple dangling in front of her face with her mouth. Weird, but utterly hypnotic.

5. REM ‘Everybody Hurts’
I'm a sucker for a video in which a great amount of people suddenly come together to sing, dance or do something similarly communal, and this is one of pop music's finest examples. Directed by Ridley Scott's son Jake, it takes place on a congested motorway, cutting from one frustrated motorist to the next, each one revealing a problem in subtitles, some comedic, some serious, some both, such as the car in which a boy begs his father to stop singing along to the radio before the camera pans back to his younger brother contemplating the nature of death in the back seat. It's all beautifully peaceful and incredibly engrossing, until the song kicks into gear and each person files out of their car and walks down the road. The closing news report is a nice touch, also. So often used as a gimmick now, it adds a dash of realism to help the intimacy of the song really hit home.

6. Johnny Cash ‘Hurt’
Is there anything else that can be said about Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' Hurt? Probably not, but let's give it a bash anyway. Music videos are not normally known for their subtlety, but this one makes a virtue of it. Clips of Cash's life and career are cut into scenes of him singing the song in his house. The imagery is perfectly selected (the scene of his wife watching from the stairs with a mixture of pride and sadness is especially affecting), while Cash's 'performance' feels too real and honest to be included in anything as trivial as a music video. But credit should also be given to the editor, who speeds the imagery up as the song grows more intense, flashing images quicker and quicker, before ending on a long held take of Cash closing the lid on his piano for one last time. A fitting send-off indeed.

7. Bjork ‘It's Oh So Quiet’
Now what was I saying about videos with people dancing in them? Bjork's It's Oh So Quiet once more features Spike Jonze's love of pop culture, as the director this time turns his hand to the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s. In the vid, he follows Bjork from a dirty bathroom through a garage and out into the street where she's joined in her merry escapades by dancing deliverymen, jigging postboxes and cartwheeling business drones. Jonze attempted a similar thing when he got Christopher Walken to flip flop about in his video for Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice, but this remains the finest example of the musical's influence upon pop videos.

8. Chemical Brothers ‘Let Forever Be’
More people dancing. Or rather, one person, multiplied, dancing. Directed by Michel Gondry, this is perhaps the most technically audacious video on this list. The promo features an attractive ginger lady. And that's about all I can tell you. She wakes up, multiplies, grows a large head, dances, gets back into bed, dances, does her job, dances, gets scared in a shopping mall, dances and dances a little bit more as she goes through what Gondry would probably call an ordinary day. What does it all mean? God knows. Does it look awesome? Hell yeah! For more Gondry weirdness check out his promo for Radiohead's Knives Out. Thom Yorke dressed as a mouse!? What more could you need?

9. Smashing Pumpkins ‘Tonight, Tonight’
As you'll be able to tell from this list, I'm a fan of technically innovative videos made by film directors who like to riff on popular culture. This is another one. Directed by Little Miss Sunshine creators Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and inspired by George Mellis' early silent film A Trip To The Moon, it features a young couple doing just that: taking a trip to the moon and beating away some curious lunar creatures along the way. The video perfectly echoes the gentleness of the song, but it's the technique behind it that makes it so special. This really does look like something from the turn of the century and is still a delight to look at some ten years after its creation.

10. Joy Division ‘Atmosphere’
Control director Anton Corbijn was criticised by some for this 1988 video for Atmosphere. Coming eight years after the death of Ian Curtis, it was accused of accelerating the cult that had grown around the Joy Division singer, and watching it back today Corbin probably does go a little over the top with the Curtis imagery. However, there's also something beautifully hypnotic about it. The stark black and white, the monochrome druids and the moment where one of them falls over while trying to carry a spire are strangely beautiful and a fitting tribute to Curtis’ legacy.

2008-02-24T23:30:00.000-08:00

Oscars - The Results...

Four hours, twenty-five gongs and more fancy frocks than you can shake a Jimmy Choo shoe at later, and the 80th Academy Awards ceremony is over. And, despite all the hubbub over writers' strikes and rain-sodden red carpets, it all went pretty much according to plan.

The biggest surprise of the night was Marion Cotillard scooping Best Actress ahead of the more fancied Julie Christie and Ellen Page for her turn as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. Tilda Swinton's triumph over Cate Blanchett in the Supporting Actress category was also a slight shock, but as both women won at the BAFTAs two weeks' ago, their victories were hardly without precedent.

The Actor categories were foregone conclusions. Javier Bardem rightly claimed the Supporting prize for his subtly unnerving portrayal of hired assassin Anton Chigurh in the Coens' No Country For Old Men, while at the other end of the scale, Daniel Day-Lewis was an equally deserved winner for his brilliantly barmy turn as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood.

As was predicted, Paul Thomas Anderson's masterpiece was overlooked for the main two prizes. Instead, it was No Country that took home the Best Picture and Director awards, and although it remains one of the best films of the Coens’ career, I can't help but feel the Academy wimped out slightly by not handing at least one of the two to TWBB, which is a far more daring and innovative piece of work.

Aside from Cotillard, the only other prediction we got wrong in this blog came in the Adapted Screenplay category. We tipped Ronald Harwood's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; those darn Coens picked it up for their faithful rendition of Cormac McCarthy's book. Meanwhile, Diablo Cody won the Original Screenplay for Juno (and gave one of the sweetest speeches of the night), which means the former stripper is now a member of the Academy.

The perfect opportunity for that long overdue Showgirls reappraisal methinks...

2008-02-23T04:30:00.000-08:00

OSCARS 2008 - OUR PREDICTIONS...

Best Picture: There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, Juno, Atonement, Michael Clayton
The big one and, fittingly, the most difficult to call. I think we can rule out Michael Clayton, which was a surprise nomination ahead of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in the first place, and Juno, which has proven popular enough to earn a nod but is still too niche to have a shot at winning the prize. Despite its unfortunate BAFTA win, the ho-hum Atonement is also an outsider, lacking the momentum (and quality) to take it over the finishing line. So, it comes down to the two westerns: There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men. Personally, I think Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is the superior one, but it’s just too damn out there for the conservative Academy members who are likely to be more turned on by the ‘the world ain’t what it used to be’ message of No Country.

WHAT SHOULD WIN: Blood just pipping No Country
WHAT WILL WIN: No Country just pipping Blood

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, Joel & Ethan Coen, Jason Reitman, Julian Schnabel, Tony Gilroy
At the risk of repeating myself, we‘re likely to get a bit of Best Picture déjà vu in the Best Director category. Tony Gilroy and Jason Reitman are very much outsiders for Michael Clayton and Juno respectively, while Atonement’s Joe Wright is absent altogether. Taking his place is Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s Julian Schnabel, who’s a decent outside bet if you’re looking for a dark horse, but certainly not a favourite. Instead, it’s Anderson and the Coens who will battle it out. Again. And again I want Anderson to win, because you’re unlikely to see a more unique film this year than There Will Be Blood. Thankfully, he’s got more chance of winning here than in Best Picture, but it’s still likely to go to the Coens, as much for their illustrious career as No Country.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Paul Thomas Anderson
WHO WILL WIN: Joel and Ethan Coen

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Tommy Lee Jones, Viggo Mortensen
The most open and shut category at this year’s awards. Daniel Day-Lewis is all set to run away with the prize and more than deserves to. Some have called it pantomimic, but the theatricality of Day-Lewis’s performance in There Will Be Blood is core to the character of Daniel Plainview and blending that with a turn of very real menace makes Mr Method a much-deserved shoo-in for the second Best Actor gong of his career.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Daniel Day-Lewis
WHO WILL WIN: Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Actress: Ellen Page, Julie Christie, Laura Linney, Marion Cotillard, Cate Blanchett
This is another category with a clear favourite, though one not quite as cut and dried as Best Actor. Despite being an awards favourite, the only one we can pretty much rule out is Cate Blanchett, whose turn in Elizabeth: The Golden Age hasn’t got enough momentum to bag the prize. The Savages is a bit too indie for the Academy so Laura Linney can probably be ruled out as well. Therefore it comes down to three. Marion Cotillard is in the running after her surprise win at the BAFTAs, but they are rarely precise indicators for the Oscars so the two main contenders are Ellen Page for Juno and Julie Christie for Away From Her. Newcomer vs. Veteran? With the Oscars, the veteran always wins, and in this case it’s just about right.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Julie Christie
WHO WILL WIN: Julie Christie

Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, Javier Bardem, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Hal Holbrook, Tom Wilkinson
After his Best Actor win for Capote in 2006, Philip Seymour Hoffman is an outsider for his turn in Charlie Wilson‘s War, especially as the film has little awards momentum. Tom Wilkinson is also doubtful for Michael Clayton, as is Hal Holbrook who was a surprise nomination for his turn in Sean Penn’s Into The Wild. Javier Bardem is clearly the favourite, and it would be a big surprise if he were to miss out. But don’t discount Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Long title, but it’s been heavily praised and Oscar always throws up at least one major shock. This could well be it. Having said that though…

WHO SHOULD WIN: Javier Bardem
WHO WILL WIN: Javier Bardem

Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, Ruby Dee, Saoirse Ronan, Amy Ryan, Tilda Swinton
The most difficult category to call, probably because I’ve not seen most of the performances up for the prize. Out of the five, I’ve only seen Saoirse Ronan, who was superb for a girl so young in Atonement. Still, I'll have a dig at predictions. Ruby Dee and Amy Ryan seem outsiders, having not really picked up any momentum in the awards season so far, and Ronan is probably too young to be claiming the gong. So I’m going to say it’s between two people: Blanchett and Swinton. Blanchett is an old pro at the Oscars, but despite the difficulty of her performance (playing Bob Dylan), I reckon Swinton could claim the prize, especially after her success at the BAFTAs two weeks ago.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Dunno. Saoirse Ronan? Yeah, why not.
WHO WILL WIN: Tilda Swinton

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Atonement, Away From Her, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood.

Because of their dominance of the main prizes, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood will be considered favourites here. However, I don’t think TWBB will take the prize because Anderson's script bears little in common with Upton Sinclair's source novel, and No Country could miss out because the Academy may be wary of a whitewash. So I'm going to tip The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It's been too heavily praised to be ignored completely and the screenplay categories are where the indie, niche films usually get recognition.

WHAT SHOULD WIN: No Country For Old Men
WHAT WILL WIN: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Juno, Lars and the Real Girl, Michael Clayton, Ratatouille, The Savages.
One of the easiest catergories to predict. Original Screenplay is traditionally the category where the year’s ‘little film that could’ triumphs. Lost In Translation and Little Miss Sunshine have done it in the past, and Juno will do it this year.

WHAT SHOULD WIN: Juno
WHAT WILL WIN: Juno

2008-02-03T04:55:00.001-08:00

TOP TEN MOVIE SCENES

Here The Editor and The Writer pick their top ten movie scenes of all time, but be warned, there will be some spoilers here, so be careful what you read if you've not seen some of the films...

THE EDITOR

1. The Godfather Part II
My all-time favourite movie scene was quite easy to pick. It's from The Godfather Part II and it's the ending, so if you hadn't already heeded the warning about spoilers and haven't seen the film, STOP READING NOW. The film could easily have been subtitled The Fall Of Michael Corleone, not in a business or mafia sense, but as a human being, having started the first movie as a brave and decent war hero. The key scene is where his weak brother Fredo is going on a fishing trip with Michael's son, but henchman Al Neri stops the boy from joining them. Great acting from John Cazale shows that Fredo realises what is going to happen, and he is executed out on the boat, while Michael watches from inside. We don't see the death, nor do we see more than a silhouette of Michael, but it's perfect, as is the closing shot of Al Pacino sitting out in a chair staring with eyes that show just how emotionless and ruthless he has become. Cinema gold.

2. Edward Scissorhands
A rather less violent one here, perhaps surprising as it's from a Tim Burton movie, given the amount of blood currently on display in Sweeney Todd. Instead it's one of the most beautiful scenes of any movie, and the perfect combination of Burton's eye for visuals and Danny Elfman's ability to make haunting and lovely music to go with the scene. The Ice Dance is Elfman's crowning glory as a score, just as the film is Burton's finest achievement, and when Edward is carving a statue out of ice and creating a a snowfall effect that Kim dances under, it's balletic and beautiful. No wonder the film works so well as a ballet by Matthew Bourne.

3. The Godfather
For one of my favourite movie scenes of all time, it had to be one that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up for one reason or another, and one of the select group of films to have completely blown me away the first time I watched it was The Godfather. I was absolutely loving it from the very start, but the scene that literally left me open-mouthed was where James Caan's volatile Sonny is tricked into going to sort out his abusive brother-in-law and is ambushed and murdered at a toll booth. Having watched the film with no knowledge of the story whatsoever, seeing one of the main characters die in a hail of bullets halfway through was just awesome, and the direction of the scene was incredible.

4. Heat
And back to the violence. Ironically, Heat isn't a violent film particularly, and its strengths mostly lie in the more subtle scenes, with the legendary Pacino/De Niro coffee shop scene definitely a contender for this list for the understated magic of it all (let's face it, nowadays if they were in the same film, it would be in an awful comedy). However, I'm going for a scene that could never be considered understated - the bank heist. It's the big score for De Niro's gang, but Pacino's cops arrive just as they are escaping. Cue the best gunfight you'll ever see (or hear - it's one of the loudest things I've ever heard in film), with Michael Mann showing most action directors how it should be done.

5. American Beauty
Never mind the overheated plastic bag scene or the stuff with the petals. The scene that makes American Beauty special is the very last one, just after Lester has been shot by his neighbour. His voiceover about the beauty of life mingles with visuals of the things that made his life special (his young daughter with the pretty dress and sparkler is the part that usually gets me) and the rest of the people in the house reacting to the gunshot that kills him, with Thomas Newman's lovely piano theme over the top. The film was like a dry-run for Six Feet Under and this scene shows why.

6. Manhattan
Another case of the perfect marriage of music and visuals here in the opening scene of Woody Allen's masterpiece Manhattan. From the opening flourishes of Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue you know it's going to be special, particularly as Allen and Gordon Willis decided to film in black and white, giving the Manhattan scenery a very special tinge. With Allen's faltering introductory narrative over the top. It gets even better when he shuts up and Gershwin's tune explodes into life, and if you can think of a better start to any film I'd like to hear about it...

7. The Big Lebowski
My favourite Coen Brothers film by a mile and one of my favourite films of all time, The Big Lebowski is nothing BUT great movie scenes all the way through, but my personal favourite is where John Turturro's sex-offender bowler Jesus is melodramatically bowling to the sounds of the Gypsy Kings' cover of Hotel California. As well as the music and the dancing from Turturro - and the deadpan reactions of Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi and John Goodman to this bizarre sight - what I think I love best about it is that it has no real purpose to the story at all. Mad geniusness.

8. Hotel Rwanda
By far and away the most affecting scene in my list as well as the most recent, this is also probably the one thing that has ever made me cry at a cinema. Hotel Rwanda tells the true story of hotelier Paul Rusesabagina during the Rwandan genocide and the scene that made the most impact on me was when the UN pull out all of the Western tourists and journalists (including Joaquin Phoenix), leaving the Rwandans behind at the mercy of their enemies. Most heartbreaking of all is when a foreign priest arrives with a group of children, but is prevented by the UN peacekeeping army from taking any of them to safety. Great dignified acting from Don Cheadle as Rusesabagina and haunting music makes it all so powerful, as well as the inevitable sense of guilt and outrage.

9. Swimming With Sharks
"What did I tell you on your first day? Your thoughts are NOTHING. You are NOTHING." "If you were in my toilet bowl I wouldn't bother flushing it. My bathmat means more to me than you. See this? (picks up desk diary) This means more to the company than you, but do you hear it complain when I do this? (throws desk diary at Guy)" In my opinion Kevin Spacey has never been better than as the ultimate boss from hell in this tale of Hollywood movie moguls and their hapless underlings. This scene, where Frank Whaley's Guy plucks up the courage to ask his boss Buddy to not shout at him quite so much is awesome, right down to the satisfied smirk on Buddy's face after Guy's hasty and undignified retreat.

10. Ringu
Ahhh, thank goodness that evil Sadako's curse has been lifted. Now our heroes can relax for the rest of the film and so can we. Look, there's the ex-husband, back at home and happy that his ex-wife and son are safe and of course, so is he. Oh look, the TV's just turned on. Odd. Hmmm, that well looks familiar. So does that freaky looking girl climbing out of it. But the curse was lifted wasn't it? Oh dear. She even walks evilly, in a 'I've been pushed down a well' kind of way. Still, she's on the TV, what could she go in there? AAAARRRGHHH! SHE'S CLIMBED OUT OF THE TV!!!! Look at her freaky, nailless fingers! LOOK AT HER EYE!!!! AAAARRGGHHH!

THE WRITER

1. Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park is not a classic film. Hell, it's not even a classic Steven Spielberg film. It's an effects movie, one created more out of a desire to show off a new toy than artistic necessity. But when those toys are as shiny and fun as the ones Spielberg got to play with on JP that's all you really need. The film is, of course, filled with magnificent scenes - the sick Triceratops, the Raptors in the kitchen, the classically Spielbergian closing shot - but it's our first glimpse of the T-Rex that is the finest. Not only does the beast still look astonishingly realistic, but the built up is beautifully played: the shivering water, the missing goat, the immense electric fence being cut through like a knife through butter. Objectively speaking, it may not be the best scene in cinema history, but it rocked my ten-year-old world and began my life-long love affair with the movies.

2. Punch-Drunk Love
Speaking of love, Paul Thomas Anderson's magnificent romantic comedy Punch Drunk Love is comfortably the finest of its kind in recent years. Not that most people noticed. Despite the fact it stars bankable star Adam Sandler, Anderson's fourth feature left many befuddled. Is it a mainstream film? An arthouse film? An Anderson picture? A Sandler flick? A comedy? A drama? The truth is, it's all these things and more; a delightful evocation of the blinding fear and roaring delight of falling in love at the most unexpected of times. And smack in the middle of it comes the crowning achievement of Anderson’s career. Sandler's character Barry has finally resolved to find the woman of his dreams (Lena, played with otherworldly charm by Emily Watson), who is currently on a business trip in Hawaii. Anderson tracks Barry through the airport, into the sky and then to his final meet-up with Lena all to the sounds of Shelley Duvall's bizarre rendition of He Needs Me from Robert Altman's Popeye. Lush, heartfelt and very, very weird, it the perfect encapsulation of the film's sensibilities and, dare I say, the ultimate cinematic evocation of being in love.

3. A Clockwork Orange
From one extreme to the other now. There's very, very little love in A Clockwork Orange (well, not unless you count Alex's love of violence), only anger, hatred and typically Kubrickian misanthropy. And yet, from these undesirable emotions, Kubrick musters one of the most perfect images in cinema history. Right at the start of the film. Just as you're settling in, preparing for a master class in film-making, the music starts up, sounding like something created by the warped, evil brother of Vangelis, and the camera tracks slowly away from Alex and his droogs sat in some kind of bar, wearing some kind of clothing, staring in the camera, through it even, and straight to the audience. Kubrick was a master of setting mood, and this is a scene so perfect not even Blur could bugger it up in their video for The Universal.

4. Singin' In The Rain
Earlier this week, I watched Tim Burton's version of Sweeney Todd, and was severely disappointed. True to Burton's form, it was a joy to look at and featured a corking turn from Johnny Depp as the titular demon barber, but as a musical it was left severely lacking. What so few cinematic musicals realise is that songs should be used sparingly; to elevate the emotions of a scene, rather than to get the audience to buy the soundtrack once they've left the theatre. Yet there is one that bucks the trend: Singin’ In The Rain. From the Good Mornin' singalong to Donald O'Connor's ballistic rendition of Make 'Em Laugh, Rain grasps that when music and visuals combine they can create otherworldly slices of cinema that can get our pulses racing and mouths smiling like no other, and in the title song, it has the single most joyful scene in cinema history.

5. From Russia With Love
As a fan of the Connery Bond films I was excited to hear Daniel Craig reveal that Quantum of Solace (it's a perfect title, naysayers!) will be a return to the "60s style spy movie". Craig explicitly referenced production designer extraordinaire Ken Adam, so are we to expect some grandiose hollowed out caves in Quantum? After the realism of Casino Royale, perhaps not, but what I do reckon (and hope we'll see) are down and dirty fights, much like the train carriage one between Connery and Robert Shaw at the end of From Russia With Love. Relying only on his attaché case and wits, Bond has to fight off SPECTRE assassin Red Grant in any way he can. Brutal, bloody and nasty, what follows is one of the finest mano-a-mano fight in cinema history. Let's hope Craig has been studying it.

6. Spider-Man 2
An odd entry onto the list, perhaps, but let me explain. The scene I refer to comes at the end of the film. An unmasked Spider-Man has just talked Doctor Octopus out of his villainous ways and as the eight-limbed scientist goes off to stop the imminent apocalypse he has created, Spidey turns around to see long-time love Mary Jane Watson staring at him with bewilderment. Finally, after two films she knows his secret. They can, at long last, confess their love for one another and all will be well in the world! But the wall behind MJ has other ideas, and as it begins to collapse on top of her, Spidey rushes over and catches it. An entire wall! And what does he say after this act of superheroic derring do? "This is really heavy". Romance, action and self-deprecating humour. It epitomises everything that is great about Sam Raimi, his Spider-Man films and the comics that inspired them.

7. The Apartment
It's such a shame that Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine only ever appeared in two films together (Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce being the second), because they have such a unique chemistry they really should be regarded among cinema‘s finest on-screen couples. A world apart from the smouldering passion of, say, Bogart and Bacall, MacLaine and Lemmon are the normal people, Mr and Mrs Everyman, a couple who you aspire to be, until you realise that, in fact, you are them. There are plenty of beautiful moments between them in Irma, but it's the end of The Apartment that takes the honours. After realising she loves him, Fran (MacLaine) runs to Bud Baxter’s (Lemmon) apartment and stops him from leaving town. Having loved her from the start of the film, Baxter finally tells her as much. Fran shuffles some playing cards, looks at Bud and says: "Shut up and deal". Pure cinematic perfection.

8. Alien
A bit of horror now. There have been many scenes throughout cinema history that have perfectly epitomised our fear of what could be out to get us. The ending of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the iconic shower scene in Psycho spring to mind. But for sheer, raw primal power, nothing can compete with Alien's dinner table scene. You all know the drill by now (and if you don't then what have you been doing with your life) and perhaps it's become cliché (when I saw the director's cut a few years ago, the scene inspired a few giggles of derision). But Ridley Scott's masterpiece has lost none of its fear factor and this sequence is the perfect encapsulation of that.

9. Raging Bull
Martin Scorsese is often credited as the master of realism and innovative camerawork. And yet it’s his most expressionistic and relatively still scene that is his best. The opening credits of Raging Bull find boxer Jake La Motta in a boxing ring, shadow fighting in slow-motion to the sounds of Pietro Mascagni‘s Cavalleria Rusticana: Intermezzo. It's so simple, but so perfect, summing up the themes of floundering masculinity that the film so magnificently explores.

10. Marie Antoinette
As this is the most recent film on the list and as it's the final scene that I'm citing here, I won't explain it. Suffice to say, Sofia Coppolla is a master of mood and the last shot of her unfairly maligned biopic of Marie Antoinette is a perfect denouement which brilliantly captures the tragedy and wasted youth of the doomed queen.

2008-01-25T10:28:00.000-08:00

Entertainment Essentials: Andy Palacio & The Garifuna Collective - Watina

Sometimes you discover someone wonderful just too late. This week has seen a lot of media coverage about the death of Heath Ledger, an actor that I have to confess I've seen next to nothing of in films. That's largely because I've still never got round to watching Brokeback Mountain, and maybe when I've seen it I'll understand why Ledger was rated so highly. But while his death has gained masses of media coverage, it's another sad event recently that has inspired this blog.

Andy Palacio died on January 19th, and like Ledger he was on the cusp of getting real recognition, even if it was always likely to be a much smaller scale. You've probably never heard of him, and I hadn't until not so long ago when someone recomended his most recent album Watina to me. So now I'm recommending it to you, particularly those of you who are fond of really great 'world music' (terrible genre title though that is).

Palacio was a Belizean singer in the Punta style of Central America and he died in his home country - where he was also a government official and dedicated champion of the culture of his Garifuna people (they were ship-wrecked African slaves who formed an inter-racial community with the people of St Kitts before being expelled to Honduras by the British in 1797). Watina features a more acoustic-led and soulful form of his music, inspired by his Garifuna roots and it is nothing short of a masterpiece.

It's all in his native language, which means that you won't know what the songs are about beyond the English translations of the titles, but that hardly matters because it is the music that makes the emotional impact, particularly on tracks like Baba and Águyuha Nidúheñu. Palacio took inspiration from the Caribbean forms of reggae and soca, parts of Cuban son music and the unmistakable rhythms of Africa to come up with an album that is all about his roots and the roots of his people.

One of the aims of Watina was to ensure that Garifuna culture did not disappear and Watina's success around the world has certainly helped to revive it, with Palacio named as a Unesco Artist For Peace late last year and he and his Garifuna Collective set to be amongst the winners in the Radio 3 Awards For World Music. Sadly, when the award is handed over in April, Palacio will not be there to receive it, but hopefully his death will have one positive effect in that it might spread the word about the wonders of Watina. It's the power of music to inspire a whole people and that is an incredible thing.

Through that, he will continue to be a champion for his people, and if that is the case, then it is never too late to discover Andy Palacio.

2008-01-22T11:01:00.000-08:00

Say What?! - The Coens Are Best Outside Of Coenworld

“There's more to life than a little money, ya know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are. And it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it.”

The above quote comes from the mouth of pregnant police officer Marge Gunnarson when she is lecturing accosted crook Gaear Grimsrud in a scene which comes close to the end of the Coen Brothers' 1996 masterpiece Fargo. It is, perhaps, slightly unusual to start a blog entry with a quote from the end of a film, and even more so because this particular quote is relatively bland compared to the deliciously witty words the Coens usually write for their actors. But I mention this for a reason.

Watching the writer/director team's latest film, No Country For Old Men, I was reminded of Fargo, and Marge in particular. Based on Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel, No Country blends the Western with a bit of black comedy, a pinch of thriller and a dash of horror to tell the three-pronged story of the repercussions of a failed drugs deal. The first leg of this tripod of tragedy is Llewelyn Moss, a hapless stooge in the great Coen tradition who stumbles into trouble when he picks up the money from the aforementioned drug job. He's an innocent goon in hopelessly beyond his depth brilliantly portrayed by Josh Brolin. But while he may be the character who instigates the film's chaos, Moss is merely a McGuffin.

Instead, the film's central themes revolve around the two remaining characters. First up is the man who peruses Moss in order to get the cash back, assassin Anton Chigurgh. Played with chilling stillness by Spanish actor Javier Bardem, Chigurh is like the Terminator made flesh, a monosyllabic manifestation of your worst nightmares who will coolly blow up a car just so he can create a diversion to rob a chemist of the supplies he needs to heal a battle wound. It’s another stunning, Oscar-worthy performance, and once you’ve seen it, the question “What time do you go to bed?” will take on new, terrifying meaning.

Caught in the middle of this chase is Tommy Lee Jones' Ed Tom Bell, the aging local sheriff who acts as the benevolent yin to Chigurgh's Satanic yang as hopelessly peruses he and Moss across the Texan borderlands trying to fathom just what kind of man would be capable of Chigurgh's evil. Jones is, as ever, laconically perfect and although the character was created by McCarthy, he feels decidedly Coenesque, comparable, in fact, to Marge. Bell is a traditional kind of guy, a humane man, cut adrift in a world without morals and when he opens the film lamenting the crime that's about to take place, it's impossible not to be reminded of Marge's soulful lecture to Grimsrud.

Fargo and No Country For Old Men are, to my money at least, the Coens’ finest films, and it strikes me as no coincidence that the best words to describe them are humane, moral and soulful. The Coens' critics accuse them of intellectual smugness, of placing their films in a hermetically sealed box that makes audience connection nigh on impossible. While I would certainly disagree with the former point (surely the Coens are too withdrawn to be smug), I find evidence of the latter in the overbearing quirkiness of O’ Brother Where Art Thou, the suffocating intellectual surrealism of Barton Fink and the distancing noir coldness of The Man Who Wasn’t There.

This isn’t to say any of them are bad films (except perhaps O’ Brother - but that’s more to do with my loathing of bluegrass, a musical genre so hideous only an oxymoron could aptly describe it) or that I don‘t enjoy the Coens’ sense of humour (you’d have to be dead not to laugh at The Big Lebowski), only that they will never hold a candle to Fargo and now No Country, because every time I hear George Clooney proclaim himself “a Dapper Dan man” or Fink make another reference to wrestling pictures I hear Joel and Ethan giggling behind camera and see an imaginary brick wall being built between myself and the screen.

There are plenty of reasons to giggle at Fargo and No Country, of course; the accents, the hopelessness of William H Macy’s small-time crook, Javier Bardem’s haircut. But each them is couched in a real world scenario stripped of overt quirks, and seem to communicate something of the characters: a naivety, a desperation, a sense of unpredictable, sociopathic evil. All of these are very real human emotions, allowed to breath thanks to the fact the Coens have poked their heads out of the Coenworld bunker for just long enough to connect with the rest of the world.

Burn After Reading, an original black comedy about a gym instructor who is targeted for assassination after stumbling across an ex-CIA man’s memoirs, will be their next film, and hilarious I’m sure it will be. But it sounds like the brothers are dipping their head back in the bunker again, something I‘m a little disappointed by. The Coens are as good, if not better, at creating moments of touching human connection as they are at moments of surreal comedy, and the endings of both No Country and Fargo prove as much.

The former I won't ruin here (although it's at once brilliantly ambiguous and emotionally touching), but the ending of Fargo (which bears a semi-similar resemblance to No Country's coda) reads:

Norm: They announced it.
Marge They announced it?
Norm: Yeah.
Marge: So?
Norm: Three-cent stamp.
Marge: Your mallard?
Norm: Yeah.
Marge: Oh, that's terrific.
Norm: It's just a three-cent stamp.
Marge: It's terrific.
Norm: Hautman's blue-winged teal got the 29-cent. People don't much use the three-cent.
Marge: Oh, for Pete's sake. Of course they do. Whenever they raise the postage, people need the little stamps.

Bland and unremarkable it may be, but accompanied by a tinkly interpretation of Carter Burwell’s Fargo theme and a beautiful performance from Frances McDormand, it’s the best and most human scene the Coens have ever written, touching upon a nobility and appreciation of simple homelife that they are often deemed too cynical to understand.

Surrealism may have made their name, but you can keep your Soggy Bottom Boys, your Satanic hotels, hell, even The Dude’s beloved rug. Norm’s three-cent mallard is the pinnacle of the Coens’ career, and No Country For Old Men is a sign they can surpass it in the future.

2008-01-06T23:08:00.000-08:00

WATCHING, READING, LISTENING TO

Over the Christmas holidays, everyone watches more, reads more and listens to more than normal because we've got spare time to fill, so here's our SPECIAL BUMPER EDITION of Watching, Reading, Listening To...

THE WRITER

WATCHING: As with every Christmas, my free time this year was spent slouching in front of the TV watching so many films it's probably easiest just to list what I watched one by one and then give a pithy remark. So, here goes:

Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Night: An hour and a half of dreadful Christmas animation that, on the one hand, appealed to Sandler's usual dead-headed fans, but on the other, tried to capture the family Christmas market. Deservedly, it ended up attracting neither.

Ella Enchanted: Anne Hathaway is a charming, likeable actress, but this postmodern fairy tale is way beneath her talents. For a better 'little girls' princess' film go watch Enchanted.

Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events: Liked it when it was out at the cinema, like it now. Brad Silberling is an underrated little director (check out the wonderful drama Moonlight Mile for more evidence) and this pleasingly dark kids' film shows why you really should check out more of his work.

Princess Diaries 2: See Ella Enchanted.

A Christmas Carol: Charles Dickens' most famous story has been made so many times that you only really watch each one to see what each actor brings to it. Sadly, despite this 1999 effort's commendable loyalty to the source and a great turn from Richard E Grant as Bob Crachit, Patrick Stewart's performance as Scrooge is so surprisingly hammy it could have been served up at Christmas dinner.

The Polar Express: Watching Robert Zemeckis's Christmas film on the small screen really shows how much motion capture needs 3D IMAX technology to make it fly. Sure, the story's all Christmassy and warm, but the script's stretched beyond recognition and it's actually quite boring at times without a REALLY BIG SCREEN to make it all fancy.

Doctor Who - Voyage Of The Damned: Good stuff, but the weakest of the three Christmas specials for two reasons. Firstly, Kylie, as good as she was, was just playing Rose and Martha by another name. Secondly, it was too long. 70 minutes seems great, but it's a bit of a no man's land, giving enough scope to create character arcs and subplots, but not quite enough time to develop them satisfactorily, thus making some parts of Voyage of the Damned seem like filler.

Moonraker: The Editor and I have had many a long talk about the merits of Roger Moore's run as James Bond. I hate his tenure, The Editor doesn't. So, as the open-minded type, I sat down and watched the three Moore Bonds on this Christmas to see if I was wrong. I was not. Moonraker is utter garbage from start to finish, taking one of Ian Fleming's best novels and turning it into a structureless excuse to cash in on the Star Wars phenemonon.

For Your Eyes Only: I was assured that this was a slightly edgier effort from the Moore era after Moonraker was poorly received. It's certainly got its feet on the ground in comparison with its predecessor, but it's still aimless tosh in which the 104-year-old Rog flirts with women not even half his age.

Octopussy: Sir Rog, now 136 years of age, goes to more exotic locations, beds more women and even finds time to dress up as a clown. How apt.

Garfield: You know who'd make an interesting Bond? Bill Murray. Well, he certainly does a good job as Garfield in this seriously underratted cinematic debut for the lardy cat. It's certainly no masterpiece, but I dug this entertaining little kids film, which managed to blend decent, semi-subversive jokes, with a reasonably sweet love story between Breckin Myer and Jennifer Love-Hewitt.

The Terminal: Silly romantic comedy or subervise satire on the death of the American dream at the hands of commerce and capitalism. I think the latter, the Editor goes for the far less interesting choice of the former. Either way, The Terminal is one of Spielberg's most underrated recent efforts.

The Simpsons Movie: And speaking of underrated, I'm not quite sure why The Simpsons Movie has been so harshly written off. Watching it a second time on DVD, the jokes still fly, the characters still have heart and the structure is still sound. This is certainly not just an overextended single episode.

Ice Princess: Look, I watched Ella Enchanted, so why not this? Young girl wants to be an ice skater, but she's a geek played by Michelle Trachtenberg. Guess what happens next. Entirely predictable, but notable for creating a bizarre dystopian nightmare in which Kim Cattrell's bitchy skating coach wins out over Joan Cusack's sweet and intelligent mother character. Truly frightening.

The Spy Who Loved Me: The Bond continues. This is one of only two Moore efforts I enjoy (Live And Let Die being the second) and, despite the fact it doesn't really add up to anything more than the sum of its parts, it's very watchable.

Goldeneye: Pierce Brosnan. Great Bond, bad films. Goldeneye is, by some distance, the best flick of his tenure, blending a rich story, interesting characters and some cracking action set pieces.

Diamonds Are Forever: Why is everyone so down on DAF? Okay, it's not great and Shir Shean looks a few years too old (and a few pounds overweight), but it's a decent little thriller and features a great fight between Bond and a diamond smuggler in a lift.

READING: Everyone must fink I'm dead clever like, cos I got loads of books this Christmas, so again, I'll just list 'em with a quick comment:

Complete Bond Box-Set: A friend bought me a boxset including all fourteen Fleming Bonds, so now I can discover exactly how many great stories were ruined by Sir Rog's arching brow. First up, having already read the first four is book five: From Russia With Love. Best Bond film. Best Bond book? Hopefully.

Long Way Down: Slightly disappointed by the TV series, which seemed a little too well-planned to have the same sense of danger as Long Way Round, so I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into the book which has started reasonably well.

Charlie Brooker's Dawn Of The Dumb: Knowing I'm a grumpy old man who enjoys the writing of fellow grumpies, The Editor bought me The Guardian columist's second book. It's basically a compilation of his work from 2004 onwards, but when that includes gems as good as "David Cameron's like a big hollow Easter egg with all the sweets taken out" what more do you need?

The Marvel Museum: It's a history of Marvel comics! In a big book! With a load of replica memorbilia! What more could a geek want? Well, complete control over their headquarters so I can stop them buggering up Spider-Man wouldn't be bad. But this comes a close second. Now I own an invitation for Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson's wedding. Hurrah!

Directed By Steven Spielberg: Bought this for myself before Christmas because I wanted to read a serious examination of Spielberg's directorial style. Only read the first page, but it was a good one, so let's hope it continues...

LISTENING TO: Not being a huge music fan, I've only been listening to two things over Christmas. First, Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood, which is a unique piece of work every bit as magnificent as I hope the film will be. Secondly, the fancy-dan discbox thing of Radiohead's In Rainbows. Obviously, it's still awesome, but now it's even awseomer, because it comes with an extra disc. True to form, In Rainbows CD 2 has two curious instrumentals (MK 1 & 2), but they work well in the dreamy context of the album, extras, bonus disc...thing. Down Is The New Up is a cracking little slice of funk every bit deserving of the hype it has received, while Last Flowers and Four Minute Warning are slow, ethereal ballads right up their with the likes of Motion Picture Soundtrack and Street Spirit. Bangers and Mash is slightly dissapointing, but only because it lacks the venom of its live performances, and it's more than made up for by the two remaining tracks (Go Slowly and Up on the Ladder) and the beauty of the discbox's presentation. To be honest, I hope this is how Radiohead release all their albums. Disbox aside, the songs on CD 2 deserve better than B-side status and the cutting room floor and this is the way to save them from that fate.

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: Unlike The Writer, I didn't watch many films on TV this Christmas, and judging by the stuff he watched I think I chose the right option. Here's what I saw:

The Wire Series 1: Rented it from LoveFilm as I'd heard a lot about how good it is, and as The Sopranos finished last year and there's not much else that I like on TV. It takes a lot of concentration to get into the intricate and expansive tale of life in Baltimore for police and drug dealers alike, but it's richly rewarding and awesome stuff. I haven't seen the whole first series yet and I'm already looking forward to the second one and beyond. God bless HBO.

Six Feet Under Series 1: Speaking of HBO, my fiancee bought me the complete SFU box-set for my birthday before Christmas and I've watched the first series so far. I've seen it twice before and it's still just as funny, moving and powerful as the first time, perhaps even more as it's the first time I've watched it since the show ended.

Transformers: Another DVD, this time a Christmas present. I saw it at the cinema and really enjoyed it then, and I still liked it on the smaller screen. Having grown up with Transformers, obviously some of the characterisation was a bit off, but you can't take it that seriously as it doesn't take itself very seriously. It's a good laugh and there's lots of fun to be had from it.

The Stingiest Man In Town: A Rankin/Bass animated remake of a musical version of A Christmas Carol, with Tom Bosley as 'The Christmas Humbug' (the narrator basically) and Walter Mathau as Scrooge. It's something that I've had on tape since I was young and I loved it then and now. It might not be that good really and it's a bit sentimental at times, but that's Christmas for you and I love the songs.

The Muppet Christmas Carol: I'd never seen this before and I was a bit disappointed really. There's some good jokes as you'd expect from the Muppets, but I thought Michael Caine was very flat as Scrooge and that stopped it from ever really taking off.

First Daughter: One of the few films I saw on TV, this was my fiancee's choice rather than mine and it wasn't great, despite being directed by Forest Whittaker. Katie Holmes plays the President's daughter, going off to uni and falling in love, etc, etc. It's like a schmaltzy version of a storyline from The West Wing and doesn't really go anywhere.

Stephen King's Rose Red; Another birthday present, this DVD was part of a Stephen King box-set and it lasts about four hours, so provided plenty of viewing. Like most King adaptations it's a bit cheesy at times and packed with the kind of cliches that get edited out of the better ones, but it's a pretty spooky haunted house tale and was good fun.

READING: Didn't really have much time for reading over Christmas, so the only thing I really flicked through was a book about The Sopranos that The Writer got me for my birthday. It's a really good book with all the background info and stories from the making of my favourite TV show of all time, so I'm sure I'll enjoy dipping in and out of it. I got given a lot of books for Christmas and bought some more with book tokens, etc, so i should get a move on with the two I'm currently reading...

LISTENING TO: Unusually, I didn't listen to much music over Christmas, mainly because I watched so many DVDs. Apart from Xmas music, I listened to Sia's new album (reviewed on the main site), the Transformers The Movie soundtrack (a present), some Timi Yuro and albums that I bought with iTunes vouchers. Two of them were inspired by hearing songs on Six Feet Under (The Amboy Dukes and Craig Armstrong) and the rest were classic Aretha Franklin albums that I'd never got around to buying before. All good stuff.

2007-12-18T23:24:00.000-08:00

Top Ten Christmas Films - By The Writer

1. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
Come on, what else was it going to be?! It may be as predictable as your uncle telling an off-colour joke at Christmas dinner, but It’s A Wonderful Life is quite simply the best Christmas film ever made, quite simply because it’s the only one that’s good at any time of year. Take out the Bedford Falls snow and Christmassy-setting of the final scenes and this is an evergreen tale of one man’s personal struggles - and a bloody depressing one it is too. Sure, you may remember Frank Capra’s classic for it’s ‘every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings’ mantra, but deep down this is really a dark, depressing tale of an ambitious young man finding the hopes and expectations of his youth battered into submission by the Dickins-esque spectre of real life. No wonder the poor guy wanted to kill himself. Thankfully, guardian angel Clarence swoops down to remind Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey that it is indeed a wonderful life and creates a beautiful finale into the bargain. I once saw this on the big screen in a packed auditorium a few weeks before the big day. If you get the opportunity to do the same take it. It’s one of the best cinematic experiences I have ever enjoyed.

2. Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Here’s another film that’s not just for Christmas. It is also regularly viewed at Halloween. Indeed, one of the finest pleasures of my youth was in seeing just how badly ITV would bugger up the scheduling of Nightmare Before Christmas (I was a very lonely child). Halloween? Christmas? Morning? ‘Noon? Night? They never got it right of course (they are ITV, after all), but it’s really not too difficult to work out. Despite its ghoulish stars and ‘Created by Tim Burton’ credit (Henry Selick, we should remember, is the man who toiled in the director’s chair), this is really all about Christmas and its heartwarming magic, as witnessed in Danny Elfman’s magnificent song ‘What’s This?’. “There's children throwing snowballs, instead of throwing heads. They're busy building toys and absolutely no-one’s dead.” Is it just us or is this the most weirdly perfect description of Christmas ever?

3. How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
Here’s the story that inspired Burton’s Nightmare. Dr Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas is, of course, a classic in book form. However, in taking it to the animated arena, Looney Tunes legend Chuck Jones added something extra to it. Extending it slightly to fit 25 minutes, he and Seuss managed to craft a sweet but not sentimental tale of a grumpy green ghoul who attempts to ruin Christmas for all the innocent Whos in Whoville. Of course, he sees that Christmas “can’t be bought in a store” and that “maybe it means a little bit more”, but it’s Jones animation that shines just as much as the message. The whitish-blue snow, the primary colours of Whoville and the marvellous scene where the Grinch’s mouth spreads and spreads and spreads into the world’s wildest villainous smile make this a true classic.

4. Gremlins (1984)
Does this count? It’s not strictly a Christmas film, and even if it were, it’d be a damn nasty one, but therein lies the charm of Joe Dante’s demonic inversion of Wonderful Life. This is the anti-Christmas film, in which a load of nasty beasties run riot, the nice boy doesn’t get to keep the cute little critter at the end and his charmingly mad next door neighbour appears to die (he doesn‘t, but he is run over by a gremlin in a snow plough). Yet, despite this, it’s still chock full of ingenious comedy which adds levity to the anarchy. See, for example, the Gremlin being chucked in blender, the Gremlins hanging out in the bar, drinking smoking and flashing, and the evil Mrs Deagle riding her malfunctioning stairmaster out the window…Okay, maybe they’re not quite jolly little slices of silly comedy, but everyone needs a bit of cynicism at Christmas…and Dante delivers it in spades.

5. Die Hard (1988)
The best action film ever made is also one of the best Christmas films ever made. Sure, it may only be tenuously set at Christmas and, considering the events take place in LA, it’s a fairly sunny Christmas. However, the whole point of Christmas is to conquer work/the traffic/irritating relatives to get to the people you love. The only difference for Bruce Willis’s John McClane (still his best performance) is that he must stop an evil German terrorist and his gang of Teutonic henchmen from blowing up Nakatomi Plaza before he can get to the woman he loves. Cue big explosions, flying limbs and swear words galore. Yipee-kay-yay motherfudger!

6. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
As someone who grew up mostly watching the 1980s Charlie Brown Specials I was shocked to see how dark and neurotic the character was back in the 60s. Sure, when I was a kid he was a bit depressed, but back when he first made the jump from Charles Schultz’s comic strip to moving animation, he and Snoopy made Scrooge look like a happy little camper and had the evil angry eyes and growly voices to prove it. So why is this one in here if its so depressing? Well, while it is quite sad, its message (Christmas is about more than flashy trees and presents) is spot on and frankly there’s something classic, almost Norman Rockwell-esque, about the animation that screams Christmas. Come on, what would the yuletide be without the Peanuts gang skating on a frozen lake as the snow falls?

7. The Muppet’s Christmas Carol (1992)
This was only the second Muppets feature film to be released after the death of Jim Henson and it‘s one of the best. Christmas Carol remakes are ten a penny at this time of year, but Brian Henson’s version stays surprisingly close to the source to make for bizarrely one of the most faithful adaptations of any book ever. As if that isn’t enough, you also have the fact one of the greatest stories ever told is being played out…by Muppets. Kermit takes on Bob Cratchit, the Marleys are, of course, Statler and Waldorf and Charlie Dickens himself is played by none other than Gonzo. He should be flattered.

8. The Apartment (1960)
You’re going to have to bear with me on this one. Billy Wilder’s masterpiece The Apartment isn’t strictly a Christmas film. It takes place over the festive season and it’s big finale happens on New Year’s Eve, but it’s not technically a Christmas film. So, why is it here? Because I’m the one writing this list and you’re not, so sod off. The Apartment is my favourite film of all time, boasting one of Jack Lemmon’s best performances as the down-and-out Bud Baxter and one of the most well-rounded screen romances in the shape of his infatuation with Shirely McLaine’s Fran Kubelick, an elevator girl at Bud’s office who tries to kill herself when her own relationship goes down the pan. Not very Christmassy, you may think, but then there’s that New Year’s finale. Hearing that Bud has done the right thing and told the bosses who rent his apartment to have extra-marital affairs to go hang, Fran goes to find him just as he’s about to leave town. Do they get together? I won’t ruin it for you, but the answer includes the finest closing line since Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, so check it out.

9. Scrooged (1998)
Christmas is great. Bill Murray is great. Christmas plus Bill Murray is simply magnificent. Scrooged is arguably one of the most under-rated Christmas films ever. Directed by Harold Ramis before he and Murray found a bit of critical respectability with Groundhog Day, it’s a bitter and cynical reworking A Christmas Carol with Murray installed in the Scrooge role, re-imagined here as a heartless TV executive. It doesn’t scrimp on the horror, with the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future really quite nasty. However, the heart is still very much there and, simply because its Murray, it’s probably one of the funniest Christmas films ever made even if, as The Editor told me a few weeks back, it does get slightly less amusing with each viewing.

10. Elf (2005)
Here’s another festive treat that doesn’t really get the respect it deserves. Will Ferrell is a fine comic talent, but his wide-eyed naivety and aptitude for slapstick has only really been exploited fully in this tale of an human who was raised as an elf and finds himself thrust out into the real world in a bid to find his real father. Former Swinger Jon Favraeu makes an impressive directorial debut, showing all the zest and vigour he would later display in the also-underrated Zathura and will hopefully bring to next summer’s Iron Man, while the Christmas Eve-set finale is a heart-warmingly sweet moment that never descends into sentimentality. And as Zooey Deschanel dressed up as an elf? Well, I know what I want to find in my stocking on Christmas morn...

Top Ten Christmas Albums - By The Editor

1. A Christmas Present For You From Phil Spector (1963)
Phil Spector made so many incredible records in his time as the best pop producer in the world, but the best album he ever made was this one, which is also the best Christmas album of all time by a distance. Ironically, it wasn't a success at the time, with festive spirit rather sapped by it being released on the day of JFK's assassination, but it's grown in popularity ever since, and with so many definitive versions of Christmas classics by the likes of The Crystals and The Ronettes as well as the awesome Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love, this is the best present anyone's ever given us.

2. A Charlie Brown Christmas - Vince Guaraldi (1965)
The Writer quite rightly cited the first Peanuts cartoon as one of the best Christmas films of all time, and the soundtrack from it is just as great. Vince Guaraldi's piano jazz music became synonymous with the Peanuts cartoons down the years and his Linus and Lucy theme is instantly recognisable, but the rest of the music here is just wonderful and smooth Christmas music. The opening song of the show, Christmastime Is Here is delightful and so are all of the tunes here that aren't even in the TV special (after all, this album is longer than that was)...

3. The McGarrigle Christmas Hour - Kate & Anna McGarrigle (2005)
The McGarrigle Hour was a landmark album for the Canadian folk sister act, bringing in their family and friends for an album that sounded like the best party you never got invited to, so it was only fitting that they should repeat the formula for a Christmas record. With family like Rufus and Martha Wainwright and friends like Teddy Thompson and Emmylou Harris, it's not difficult to see why this is such an awesome record, and the mixture of old Christmas tunes, new Christmas tunes and the vast array of talent make this a Christmas album for people who don't want to listen to Slade.

4. Barenaked For The Holidays - Barenaked Ladies (2004)
Not ones to just cash in on the festive spirit, Barenaked Ladies give value for money on their Christmas album with a collection of carols (all delivered in their trademark jokey way), festive favourites and original tracks. Being polite Canadian types, they also through in a few Hanukkah songs as well and it all makes for an album that is fun and intelligent and while at times it can get a little irritating, the positives outweight the negatives.

5. Songs for Christmas - Sufjan Stevens (2006)
When you get a Sufjan Stevens album, you know that you're going to get a lot for your money and you also know that it's going to take a while to really get into because it's so long. Clocking in at over two hours of material, Songs For Christmas is actually a compilation for a few different festive EPs recorded between 2001 and 2006, and features all the usual songs plus a whole load of original songs. It doesn't all work, but it's certainly the best album you can get for that indie kid.

6. Dig That Crazy Christmas - The Brian Setzer Orchestra (2005)
His second collection of Christmas tunes in three years, this is probably the best of Setzer's holiday albums, mainly because of the song choices. Jingle Bell Rock, Zat You Santa Claus? and Cool Yule all benefit from his big-band-meets-surf-rock style of music, while originals like Santa Drives A Hot Rod make this a very cool and very fun alternative at Christmas.

7. The Beach Boys' Christmas Album - The Beach Boys (1964)
A rather rushed cash-in album, this doesn't come close to standing up to the kind of music that the Beach Boys were making at this time,but there's enough great stuff here to make it worthwhile. The best part is the first half, with original tracks like Little Saint Nick, Santa's Beard and Merry Christmas Baby all having that Brian Wilson magic, and while the second half - arranged by Dick Reynolds and featuring carols and Xmas favourites - is a bit dreary, it's still a decent album altogether.

8. One More Drifter in the Snow - Aimee Mann (2006)
Aimee Mann and Christmas shouldn't really go together, but somehow this works. Perhaps it's because she was inspired to make it by A Charlie Brown Christmas, or perhaps it's just the sheer wonder of hearing her and Grant Lee Phillips sing You're A Mean One, Mr Grinch. But whatever it is, One More Drifter In The Snow manages to tread the line between depressing Christmas and merry Christmas well and with plenty of class.

9. Winter Carols - Blackmore's Night (2006)
Those who haven't heard Blackmore's Night before might be rather surprised if they get Winter Carols on the basis of Ritchie Blackmore's work with Deep Purple and Rainbow, because this is a world away from those rock bands. This group is basically a Rennaissance folk group (seriously) with Blackmore on acoustic guitar and Candice Night (get it?) on vocals. However, this works perfectly for a collection of carols and a couple of original tracks, as the music sounds like what Christmas music was before Wizzard or even Bing Crosby were around. Lord Of The Dance is never a good thing, but there's plenty of other good stuff to make up for it.

10. A Christmas Together - John Denver & The Muppets (1979)
I've changed this one since we posted the blog, mainly because A Christmas Together appeared on my iPod's shuffling about ten minutes later and reminded me why it should be in the list. It's from a TV special by country legend Denver and those crazy Muppets, where they sing a bunch of Christmas tunes together, making for a real contrast between his sweet vocals and some of the more 'colourful' singing voices of the various characters. Musically, it's sublime and the presence of the Muppets helps cut through the treacle to make it an album with heart and a sense of fun. Sorry Jethro Tull...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

2007-11-23T23:25:00.001-08:00

WATCHING, READING AND LISTENING TO

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: I don't go to the cinema often, but I've not seen many films this year better than Into The Wild. Sure, Chris McCandless was selfish, cocky and reckless, but his journey and eventual fatal stay in the Alaskan wilderness still makes for a haunting tale and it's very well told by Sean Penn, who stays remarkably faithful to the book (which I've since started reading). The cinematography is sublime throughout, with stunning scenery as Chris wanders around the fringes of American life, and Eddie Vedder's soundtrack is good on its own and awesome in the context of the film. Penn rightly realised that the true tragedy of this story comes from the people that Chris meets, charms and then walks away from, not least the poor old man (played with class by Hal Holbrook) whose heart is clearly breaking when he has to say his goodbyes. A gorgeous road movie that cuts deep and leaves a mark.

READING: Like I said, I've been tearing through the Into The Wild book, written by journalist Jon Krakauer in 1996, inspired by an article he wrote about McCandless. It's a great book, particularly as it fills in all the gaps around what you see in the film and sticks to the hard facts of what we can know about what happened, while obviously some of the film is fictionalised, not least the parts where he is in Alaska on his own. When I finish that, it'll be back to Anna Karenina, appropriately as Tolstoy was one the authors who inspired McCandless' adventures. Then when I finish that, it'll be back to Wild Swans by Jung Chang. Only three books on the go at the moment then...

LISTENING TO: Erm, Into The Wild! Seriously though, the soundtrack has taken on a whole new depth since seeing the film, and all the short songs that didn't make much impact on their own have suddenly developed a real spine-tingling quality. Good work Vedder! As well as that, I've been listening to lots of very good albums from 2007 to start trying to finalise my Top 20 lists. Some albums haven't sounded as good as I first thought they were, and have fallen down or out of the list, while some have shot up the rankings. And I think we have a winner, unless something special comes out in the next few weeks...

THE WRITER

WATCHING: Frankly, it's not been a great week for films. I've only watched two flicks this week and both have been pretty rotten. Firstly, I watched High School High, a John Lovitz-starring Dangerous Minds parody whose jokes were so lame it came off as more of a bad drama than a good comedy. The second film I watched was Cannonball Run, which was marginally better, but did feature Burt Reynolds at his most irritating and Roger Moore parodying his James Bond, which is quite an achievement really seeing as his Bond was a parody anyway. Meanwhile, on a random point, I saw that Coca Cola ad with the people chanting 'Holidays are coming' that hasn't been showed for the past few years, but appears to have made a comeback. Evil company, great advert.

READING: I'm back on the Bonds. Earlier in the year, I embarked upon a literary James Bond marathon by reading some of Ian Fleming's original novels. They're all really enjoyable reads (especially Moonraker, which only make the unrecognisable film 'adaptation' even more unforgivable), but I struggled to get through Diamonds Are Forever and have only just returned to it. It's widely regarded as one of the weaker 007 books, and it's not hard to see why, with its slow-moving plot and un-engaging villains. Still, in emotionally scarred Bond girl Tiffany Case, Fleming has created a rich, grounded femme fatale who would fit well in the Casino Royale sequel.

LISTENING TO: Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. I've never been quite as convinced by Danny Elfman's score writing talents as most other people are. He‘s certainly very talented, but his work has a trademark to it that makes it sound fairly uniform and, despite my enjoyment of both scores, its sometimes difficult to differentiate his work on the Batman and Spider-Man films. Having recently listened to the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, though, I am now well and truly in the Elfman camp. This is a rich, textured score that is not only good enough to be ranked up there with any of the truly great musical soundtracks, but also displays his sadly unexplored talent with lyrics. What's This perfectly describes the childlike wonder of Christmas and This Is Halloween has the phrase 'tender lumplings' in it. No real analysis to add to that, I just think it's a phrase that should come in to more common usage.

2007-11-06T12:33:00.000-08:00

WATCHING, READING AND LISTENING TO

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: Since last time, The Sopranos has come to an end on E4 and I'm still really digesting THAT ending (I won't spoil it here for anyone who is waiting for C4) and deciding whether it was the best thing ever or the worst thing ever. And indeed, what actually happened. But one thing for sure is that the show itself was awesome from start to finish, though I'm resisting the temptation to watch it from the start on More4 in the hope that someone will buy me the DVD box-set for Christmas and I can watch at my own pace. It's certainly the kind of programme that deserves much closer attention than you can pay to it over the course of six series in eight years. The plot-lines and characterisation are so intricate that I'm sure there's going to be loads that I missed first time around.

READING: As I had a week away recently I managed to read Michael Palin's Diaries: The Python Years, which much more interesting than reading one man's diaries from ten years of his life might sound. For one thing, it runs from 1969 when the Pythons were starting out, to 1979 when they had made Life Of Brian and were very famous and important and coming to the end of their work as a team. It's very interesting to read about the inner workings of it all and while Palin is as fair-minded as you'd expect from him, there's still some snide digs at Eric Idle and John Cleese to keep things ticking over nicely. Through in all of his trips to work on Saturday Night Live and all the famous and talented people he meets, and you've got a great antidote to the blog culture (yes, this is being written in a blog, so what?) of mediocre people writing about their mundane daily lives...

LISTENING TO: A bit of a hangover from WATCHING, but having seen the original Godzilla (Gojira if like) at the weekend, I bought off iTunes a compilation soundtrack of music from the Godzilla films between 1954 and 1975. With around 40 tracks, I did worry that it might be a bit repetitive, with lots of uses of the main theme, but instead it was quite the opposite, with Akira Ifukube using all kinds of different music for the various films in the series, making it very fun listening throughout. The only pity is that I now want to rent the rest of the films and virtually none of them are out on region 2 DVD. Sort it out someone, there's so much tripe out there on DVD that surely no-one ever watches, so why can't these be released?

THE WRITER

WATCHING: The last thing I saw at the cinema was In the Shadow of the Moon, a majestic documentary about the Apollo moon missions of the late 60s and 70s that pays fitting tribute to the men involved without descending into the overbearing patriotism or trite spiritualism that might have been expected. On TV, I’m currently enjoying Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s travel chronicle Long Way Down, which occasionally becomes a little too laddish but remains an engagingly intelligent watch. And on DVD I’m working my way through the magnificent third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Which leads us nicely onto…

READING: Buffy Season 8. I had put off buying this official comic book continuation of the Buffy story until recently because I wasn’t too keen on the team of potential slayers that emerged at the end of season seven or the idea of them now being a sort of military organisation scattered across the world. However, just seven issues in, this is shaping up to be one of the finest seasons in the series’ history. The military idea is working surprisingly well, the various slayers are all getting enough page time to give them all individual personalities, and, best of all, the Scooby Gang has been reunited. Seeing Buffy, Willow and Xander together again for the first time since 2003 is one of my highlights of the year so far.

LISTENING TO: Amid all the hype over the download-only release, I struggled to get to grips with Radiohead’s In Rainbows on the first few listens. While I enjoyed it, it seemed to lack the stand out songs of their other albums. However, after a few weeks of solid listens, it emerges as one of their finest records, arguably challenging OK Computer and The Bends for all-time classic status. Bodysnatchers finds them rocking out in a way they haven’t done since National Anthem. Nude and Videotape are haunting little pieces filled with the band’s usual melancholia. And All I Need builds to the kind of ethereal crescendo of noise that only Radiohead can pull off. All in all, it’s a classic and I can’t wait for my discbox thingy to arrive next month.

2007-11-02T13:49:00.001-07:00

Top Ten... Alternative 90s

Concluding our (mini) series of Top Tens, we're looking over the alternative classic of the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. So, what do we mean by alternative? Well, alternative, for the purposes of these entries, means anything that is critically derided, overlooked by the public or just generally under-rated. Ultimately, though, it all comes down to how we argue it, so if you disagree, let us know!

FILMS - By The Writer

1. A Simple Plan (1998)
Sam Raimi may be best known for his Evil Dead and Spider-Man trilogies, but his finest film is this low-key drama from 1998. Starring Bill Paxton as a man who finds his senses of morality and loyalty challenged when he stumbles across thousands of dollars hidden in a downed aeroplane, A Simple Plan is a mini-masterpiece of a film that was nonetheless ignored upon release because its snowy landscapes and crime-oriented story were similar to the earlier Fargo. But while the Coens’ film was a blackly comic one that ultimately left you with a feeling of warmth, this is a dark exploration of the evil that men can do in the pursuit of money and power.

2. That Thing You Do (1995)
Tom Hanks is already one of America’s best-loved actors, but if this directorial debut is anything to go by he could well become one of its best-loved personalities behind the camera too. Telling the story of fictional 60s pop group The Wonders, That Thing You Do is a snappy tale of love and fame that’s sweet and nostalgic without being sentimental or cheesy. Liv Tyler and Tom Everett Scott give great performances, but its Hanks' zipping direction (and his surprising talent for writing a toe-tapping pop song) that makes this trip into nostalgic pop culture really fly.

3. Romeo + Juliet (1997)
From the plus sign of the title to the use of guns instead of swords, Baz Luhrmann's modern-day adaptation of William Shakespeare's timeless play was attacked on release for not paying enough respect to the much-loved original text. If anything though it's actually more in tune with the Bard’s work than Franco Zeffirelli’s more-lauded 1968 version. By communicating in the modern language of guns, pop music and the media, Luhrmann heightened the feelings of lust, revenge and violence that the play revolves around, and in doing so returned the passion to a timeless piece of work that had become twee through decades of rubbish school productions.

4. Alien 3 (1992)
Following on from Alien and Aliens is difficult enough already, but doing so with the interference of producers and a script made up of fragments from several earlier drafts just makes the creative process even trickier. Yet that was exactly what David Fincher had to put up with while making Alien 3 and, predictably enough, the results are messy. Still, there's enough here to show just how impressive a director Fincher would go on to be, from the dark religious subtext to the stunning set design and cinematography. The new, non-Fincher-endorsed, cut on the Alien Quadrilogy DVD set promised much but delivered little, meaning this is likely to be a flawed masterpiece that will remain under-appreciated for many more years to come.

5. Hard Eight (1996)
Here's another debut film wracked with production problems. Or rather, one big one. Paul Thomas Anderson's first feature, a low key story of a down on his luck gambler played by John C. Reilly, was originally going to be called Sidney, after the father figure Reilly's character finds in Vegas. Then the studio got involved and re-branded it the far less meaningful (and vaguely pornographic-sounding) Hard Eight. Controversy or no though, this is a sterling debut that features some wonderful performances from Samuel L Jackson and Gwyneth Paltrow and shows all Anderson's usual themes in their embryonic stages.

6. Meeting People Is Easy (1998)
Grant Gee's OK Computer era Radiohead rock documentary is remarkable for two reasons. First, the band are notoriously shy around the media and the idea of Thom Yorke and co allowing a camera crew to record the making of In Rainbows or any future albums is almost unthinkable. Secondly, and most importantly, it's not really a typical rock documentary. We see very little of the band performing, with Gee instead choosing to show how the worldwide success of OK Computer affected the band personally. Throw in some rare glimpses of the band working in the studio and snippets of still-unfinished songs (the biting Big Boots among them) and you have a fascinating insight into the defining band of the 90s.

7. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Joe Dante is one of the least appreciated directors of the 80s and 90s and Gremlins 2 is one of his least appreciated films. Sure it's not as good as the original and sure it just becomes a procession of gags about half-way through, but who cares? This is all about Gizmo acting cute and his gremlin siblings tearing stuff up, which they do very well indeed. Throw in endless film references, Tony Randall voicing the sophisticated Brain gremlin and a closing rendition of New York, New York that’s arguably the finest musical sequence ever committed to celluloid and you have an hour and a half of raucous Dante entertainment.

8. Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Like Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson is best known for his work in the fantasy and horror genres. And, just as Raimi did, he also directed a stunning drama in the mid-90s that proved him more than just a one-trick pony. Heavenly Creatures is based upon the Parker-Hulme murders of 1954 in which two young girls’ friendship grew to such an intense state that they plotted murder when their parents tried to separate them. It’s dreamily shot and sensitively written, making for a unique piece of filmmaking that bodes well for Jackson's return to drama: next year's adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones.

9. Pi (1998)
Darren Aronofsky attracted massive critical acclaim for his 2000 adaptation of Hubert Selby Jnr's novel Requiem for a Dream. But it's his self-written debut Pi that is arguably the better film. Shot in striking black and white, it’s the story of a maths whizz whose calculations land him in hot water with Wall Street and some Jewish zealots who believe he can bring them closer to their god. Sean Gullette gives a stunning turn, while Clint Mansell, in his first slice of soundtrack work, creates a haunting score. However, it's Aronofsky who shines the brightest here, making a big impact in his first attempt as so many others on this list did.

10. The Iron Giant (1999)
Brad Bird is once again wowing audiences at the moment with the amazing Ratatouille, so it’s as good a time as any to revisit this, his debut feature. Stunningly rendered in 2D animation at a time when everyone was busting their pixels for CGI, The Iron Giant is a faithful adaptation of Ted Hughes' short story The Iron Man that remains one of the best and most under-appreciated animated films of the decade.

ALBUMS - By The Editor

1. The Crocketts - We May Be Skinny And Wirey (1998)
I'm showing my age with my choices, which are all from within three years of 90s rock music (basically when I was first really getting into music and everything was the best thing ever). The Crocketts' debut album still stands out from pretty much anything else with its mixture of angry folky rock music and some beautiful and memorable guitar-playing on the slower tunes. Singer Davey is still around with The Crimea, but he's never quite lived up to the awesome potential of this album.

2. Baby Chaos - Love Your Self Abuse (1996)
One of the common themes of this list is that most of these bands aren't around anymore, with Scottish pop-rockers Baby Chaos having turned into the less infectiously-wonderful (but still pretty good) Deckard. Debut album Safe Sex, Designer Drugs And The Death Of Rock 'n' Roll was fantastic, but the follow-up was even better, particularly singles like Hello and Ignoramus. They were sometimes called Baby Wildhearts for their use of crunching guitars and soaring melodies, but that's no bad thing when it's done as well as this.

3. Joyrider - Be Special (1996)
They appeared from Northern Ireland at about the same time as Ash, and had just as many catchy pop rock tunes, like All Gone Away, Vegetable Animal Mineral and their cover of cheesy 80s hit Rush Hour, but for some reason Joyrider were left behind. Every track on here is great, from the fast ones like Fabulae to the slower ones like That Tired, but like so many fantastic bands, Joyrider missed the bus to superstardom and ended up getting the one to obscurity instead.

4. Silver Sun - Silver Sun (1997)
One of the few on here to be still going, Silver Sun did disappear for a while, but reemerged a couple of years ago and have released a couple of albums since then. Obviously none of them have done very well, but at least they are still around, because their Beach Boys-esque harmonies and incredibly catchy power pop songs are well worth hearing. Their debut album was a classic, with singles like Golden Skin, Julia, Far Out, Last Day and the icky sexual exploits of Lava. Quite how it wasn't the biggest album of all time, god only knows.

5. Brad - Interiors (1997)
Like many people no doubt, I first got into Brad through their guitarist Stone Gossard, of Pearl Jam, but the real appeal of them is vocalist Shawn Smith. They are a side project at best of course, with Smith also recording with Pigeonhed, Satchel and as a solo artist, but Interiors ranks up there with the best that any of them have recorded. Smith's soulful voice shines through on tracks like The Day Brings and some darker material like Funeral Song and Some Never Come Home, and Interiors is one of the best albums to come out of Seattle since grunge's heyday.

6. Bullyrag - Songs Of Praise (1998)
Quite probably the most un-Beatles like rock band to have ever emerged from Liverpool, Bullyrag were possibly also a bit too different to fit into any convenient box, which is why they were mostly ignored. Kerrang! tried calling them 'raggametalpunkfunk' for their mixture of all those genres, and even included singer Robbie Awork in their Top 100 Coolest Rock Stars list, but despite awesome ragga-rock tracks like Jump Up In A Fashion, Frantic and Learn To Live, they never really made it big.

7. Kerbdog - On The Turn (1998)
Having a lead singer with a name as cool as Cormac Battle and songs as heavy and memorable as Sally, JJ's Song, Severed, Pledge and On The Turn should have been enough to catapult these Irish lads into the kind of league that the likes of Foo Fighters and Silverchair occupied at the time, but for some reason they were pretty much ignored by the British rock press in favour of 'the next big thing'. They turned into the poppier (but still very good) Wilt, but still got ignored.

8. Groop Dogdrill - Half Nelson (1998)
Sometimes impulse purchases are the best ones and sometimes you can judge a book (or a single) by its cover. Finding their single Gracelands looking cool as hell in my local Omega Music for 50p, I decided to check it out and was rewarded. A real rock 'n' roll swagger, with oil-slicked hair and the constant threat of physical violence, Groop Dogdrill were the best thing to come out of Yorkshire, with lots of film references in tracks like Oily Rag.

9. Shelter - Mantra (1995)
Not many rock albums start off with some Krisna chanting, but not make rock bands were like Shelter. A New York 'krishnacore' band who mingled their spirituality with a straight edge ethos and hardcore rock music, Shelter were much more fun than that sounds, and Mantra was a very catchy album indeed. Not only were the songs great, but the message in all of them was too, which certainly helps convince your mum to put the tape on in the car despite the heavy guitars...

10. Veruca Salt - Eight Arms To Hold You (1997)
One of the all-time greatest music videos was Veruca Salt's Volcano Girls. Rock girls plus guitars plus bungee cords = awesomeness! What? They should be naked too? Tsk... Anyway, Veruca Salt were a great American alternative rock band with two great female singers Louise Post and Nina Gordon. Cracking rock songs, great pop songs and the knowledge that they were already starting to hate each other and ended up splitting up not so long after this. Post still carries on with the Veruca Salt name, but with the magic partnership with Gordon, there's not the same kind of thrill.

2007-10-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

THE BIG DEBATE: Downloads vs CDs

Welcome to our latest blog feature, The Big Debate. With Radiohead releasing their new album in digital form before a physical release, we approach the subject of downloads from the position of a fan who is resisting the digital world and one who has embraced it. Where do YOU stand?

THE WRITER: No Way, Computer

I, not to put too fine a point on it, am a geek. Some people see this as an insult, but I wear it as a badge of honour. I collect things, hoard them and proudly display them around my bedroom, living room, hell even my kitchen. Posters, DVDs, comic books, graphic novels, action figures, magazines... they’re all neatly organised and stored in their right place in my otherwise messy flat.

By and large, the same can't be said about my music collection. I've never really gotten into music in the same way I have my other passions and my pitifully small CD collection can be found in the corner of my living room dangling off the shelves, out of order and usually not even in the right case. My collector instincts, therefore, have not been particularly offended by the recent boom in downloading music. Until, that is, Radiohead decided hop on the bandwagon this week.

Now, I don't just like Radiohead, I love them. They, along with the Manic Street Preachers, helped mould me into the person I am today. Without them I wouldn't have read some of my favourite books, seen some of my favourite films or listened to some of my favourite albums. When one of their records is released, I build up the anticipation, read the reviews and scour the web for interviews (always difficult with Radiohead) before rushing out to buy it, always, of course, in its most collectible form: the road map edition of Hail to the Thief; the battered library book version of Amnesiac and both the regular and apocalyptic storybook incarnations of Kid A.

I was therefore looking forward to the release of new album In Rainbows. But then, upon a lazy visit to an entertainment website on Monday, I read these terrifying words: Radiohead are set to release their new album next week... on download only. The first part of that sentence felt like a dagger in my heart (how can I build up sufficient anticipation in a little over a week!? There‘ll be no reviews, no interviews, no nothing!!!) but the second part, well, that twisted the knife, pulled it out, poured salt in the wound and then repeated the move several times over.

The blow was softened somewhat by the news that while the album will be released via the great big cyber abyss that is the internet next week, a deluxe 'disc box' featuring CDs, vinyl and special artwork will emerge in December. Naturally I'll be forking out the £40 for that little baby (I'll never play the vinyl, but that's the price of being a collector...) but that doesn't make up for the fact that the early online release (along with the 'name your price' cost) is clearly a dry run and, if successful, it could encourage more bands to release their music online well ahead of its release in physical form.

Call me a luddite, but when I buy music, I don't want to do it over the web. I want to go into the record store, pay an actual human being for the album, go home and stick it in my CD player while thumbing carefully through the inlay, reading the lyrics and admiring the artwork. Then, when I'm done, I want to place it on (the neat part of) my shelf. There's a geeky thrill to this, a ritualistic enjoyment. Like smelling that great odour of a new book, or seeing the flecks of dust pass across the light of a projector in the cinema, it's a vital part of enjoying the art form.

Downloading simply doesn't have this. Where's the joy in accessing a website and coldly clicking on the album you want? Where's the joy in seeing a white bar slooooowly filling up with little green rectangles? Where's the joy in uploading the music to your MP3 player? Where, in other words, is the love? If this experiment proves a success all these little rituals, all this love and enjoyment will be as doomed as one of Thom Yorke's protagonists. And then, we'll be facing a world more drab and desolate than the one in my Kid A storybook.

THE EDITOR: OK Computer

Much like The Writer, I am a geek, but only really when it comes to music. My entire life can be shattered by a bad football result (well, for a few days anyway), but despite making a living from writing about the sport, I'm not obsessive about the stats or collecting memorabilia or anything like that. Up until about three years ago, collecting was definitely something I did a lot of when it came to music though, and my CD collection was enormous.

Not only was it enormous, but, entirely unlike The Writer's music collection (believe me, I've seen it), it was meticulously arranged, alphabetised by artist and then chronological within each artist. Not much gave me greater pleasure than seeing all the Beatles albums lined up on a shelf, running from Please Please Me to the Anthologies. So why is my CD collection now all but non-existent?

Simple, after initially rejecting the concept of digital music as being something that went against the whole point (the artwork, the thrill of holding it in your hands, etc, etc) of it all, I realised that music is music and having a little machine in your pocket that contains your entire collection (or at least most of it) is just indescribably wonderful, not to mention more convenient than lugging around about 20 CDs a day so that you've got a choice of what you want to listen to.

Do I miss having a massive cupboard-full of CDs to look at, stroke and feel superior about? Not at all, because I can still admire my music collection in iTunes, which nowadays has the cover art with the albums anyway. Buying music digitally is much quicker, more convenient and cheaper than going into HMV, even with their seemingly never-ending BIGGEST SALE EVER. If you want, you can select which tracks you want to have, though I'm too much of a geek to not want the whole album anyway.

But anyway, having crossed over to the dark side of no packaging and no cupboard full of stuff, what about this new Radiohead album. Even I think that it's a strange decision to launch it in this way, but no stranger than leaving messages in code on your website or a band as good as they are making an album as tedious as Hail To The Thief. So, I've ordered In Rainbows from their website as a download and decided to pay £0.00 for the privilege.

Apparently lots of people have been selecting their own price by paying a regular price for the download, which seems bizarre, but those people probably try to pay their family for their birthday presents. The discbox thing seems ludicrously overpriced for the album, plus another CD, two vinyl LPs plus some photos and a no doubt entirely pretentious and pointless book, so I don't feel that I'm missing out on anything by only getting the music.

If the music is good enough, then you don't need all the packaging or the 'experience' of buying it. I'm not sure if that makes me more or less of a music geek, but it's the way it is. Downloading is quicker, easier and cheaper, while using a quality music store like emusic opens up a whole world of amazing music that you simply wouldn't be able to find in HMV or even one of the disappearing indie shops out there. Like everything else, the music world is evolving and downloading is just a step forwards, like CDs were back in their day. I've chosen to take that step and I've never regretted it. On the contrary, it's one of the best I've ever made.

2007-09-25T12:51:00.001-07:00

Top Ten... Alternative 80s

Continuing our new (mini) series of Top Tens, we're looking over the alternative classic of the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. So, what do we mean by alternative? Well, alternative, for the purposes of these entries, means anything that is critically derided, overlooked by the public or just generally under-rated. Ultimately, though, it all comes down to how we argue it, so if you disagree, let us know!

FILMS - By The Writer

1. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Widely thought of as a weaker Scorsese effort (probably due to Judas’s curious New Yoik accent), The Last Temptation of Christ is, for my money at least, right up there with his finest works. Rather than Passion of the Christ-style unquestioning dogma, Scorsese made a deeply personal film (that’d explain the accents) which depicted Jesus not as a divine, untouchable deity, but an ordinary man tempted from his destiny by a normal life with Mary Magdelene. Naturally, the church complained, but this is urgent, heartfelt cinema, with a magnificent central performance from Willem Dafoe.

2. Supergirl (1984)
Supergirl scared me as a kid. Not the character herself, but the film in general. You may laugh, but how could it not scare kiddies? First, it’s got Faye Dunaway at her most insane as an evil witch who’s in cahoots with Peter Cook. Second, we see inside the Phantom Zone for the first and only time in a Super-film. And third, Supergirl bleeds. She bleeds actual, factual blood. Talk about no more heroes, I was flippin’ petrified. Gladly Helen Slater was on hand with her magical colour-changing hair and tiny Super-suit to ease the pain. It’s a shame the film flopped, because she has a natural charm which would have made her perfect for the numerous rom-coms which flooded our screens in the 90s.

3. Short Circuit (1986)
John Luc-Godard once said all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. He was wrong. All you really need to make a movie is a girl and a robot, as Short Circuit proves. The mechano man in question is Johnny 5, a clanking mess of metal and googly eyes designed by Steve Guttenberg and a comedy Asian fellow as a weapon of war. Gladly, he becomes intelligent and chooses to flirt with kindly animal lover Ally Sheedy instead (well, who wouldn‘t?). Hijinks, power ballads and child-friendly discussions on the nature of existence ensue. Screw Godard and his French New Wave. This is where the action’s at.

4. The Right Stuff (1983)
Looking back now, it’s amazing that Phillip Kaufman’s epic space-race drama has been lost in the sands of time. With its ground-breaking visuals, star performances and focus on a vital moment of American history, it should be remembered as one of the all-time biggest Oscar winners. But Kaufman has rarely been the kind of filmmaker to play things straight and while The Right Stuff is a respectful chronicle of the historic Mercury missions of the 50s and 60s, it retains a satirical edge which means it’s much, much more than a simple history lesson.

5. Day of the Dead (1985)
Although generally considered the weakest of George Romero's Dead films, Day is still a worthy and unusual addition to the cannon. Lacking the fear factor of Night and satirical brilliance of Dawn, this third entry into what is soon to be a five film franchise (Diary of the Dead is currently doing the festival rounds) is a surprisingly low key affair, with brightly lit malls and secluded cabins replaced by an underground bunker storing a host of frustrated scientists and irritable military men. It all ends with the zombies once more winning. For most this would be a downbeat finale. However, for Romero, ever the nihilistic social commentator, it’s a happy ending, with our heroes finding peace from society’s destruction on a secluded tropical island.

6. The Howling (1981)
In different hands, The Howling would have been just another dumb horror film, made at a time when the genre was becoming overly gory and more concerned with shock tactics than genuine scares. In Joe Dante's hands, however, it proves one of the wittiest and smartest horrors of the decade, thanks also to the script by indie god John Sayles. Sadly though, the film has become overshadowed both by the success of 82’s similarly-themed American Werewolf in London and the endless list of sequels, the first of which was called: The Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch. Sigh...

7. Empire of the Sun (1987)
This adaptation of JG Ballard's 1984 novel was Steven Spielberg's second stab at 'serious' filmmaking and still stands as one of his most underrated works. Set during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in the Second World War, it follows young English aristocrat Jim (an astonishing Christian Bale making his screen debut), as he is separated from his parents and winds up in an internment camp. While Colour Purple felt like Spielberg going out of his way to impress critics, Sun is a more natural transition which focuses on his usual father-son themes and, in the scene in which an awestruck Jim gazes up at a fighter plane, hands him an image as vital to his cannon as Elliot passing across the face of the moon in E.T.

8. 1984 (1984)
It's a shame the Eurhythmics were asked to make the music for this adaptation of George Orwell's reality-TV-spawning novel, because their pretentious Vangelis-lite warblings make Michael Radford's otherwise impressive film sound like a cut-price version of Blade Runner. Still, there's a lot to enjoy here, from John Hurt's magnificently decrepit turn as Winston Smith to the non-showy, special-effects-free depictions of totalitarian Britain. The film was Richard Burton's last and his creepy performance as Party member O'Brian is a fitting tribute to his immense talents.

9. The Company of Wolves (1984)
Based on the work of magical-realist writer Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves was always going to be a difficult work to put on screen, but director Neil Jordan does a commendable job in this unique fantasy film. Taking inspiration from the Grimm fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood especially), The Company of Wolves is an intoxicating and inventive story of puberty and maturation that makes up for its lack of Freudian subtlety with some groundbreaking effects and winning performances.

10. Tron (1982)
Alas, it seems Tron will forever be remembered as the film nobody in The Simpsons had heard of. It’s a shame too, because while it may be pitifully light on story and look tragically dated now, Tron was genuinely ground-breaking in its time and had a sense of geeky fun that kids films rarely do today. It also features light-cycles, which is enough to get it on this list on its own.

ALBUMS - By The Editor

1. Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II (1983)
An album that didn't really do much business when it came out, Meat Puppets II achieved more fame a decade later when Curt and Cris Kirkwood joined Nirvana for their MTV Unplugged in New York performance and helped them perform Oh, Me, Plateau and Lake Of Fire. After the raging white noise of their debut, the Meat Puppets invented cowpunk music by introducing some country influences into their music, and MP II is a simply stunning record and one of the best alt.rock albums, not just from the 80s, but ever.

2. Faith No More - Introduce Yourself (1987)
Two years later, Faith No More were on top of the rock world with their awesome The Real Thing album, but Introduce Yourself is almost as good, despite having Chuck Mosely on vocals instead of Mike Patton. Mosely wasn't a good singer by any stretch of the imagination, and it's easy to see why they only became famous after he left. However, Introduce Yourself is a great album, with twisted pop hooks, heavy guitars and psychedelic songs. They were moving towards legendary status and would only achieve it after they'd chucked Chuck, but this is still very good.

3. Mano Negra - Patchanka (1988)
Parisien anarchists Mano Negra started with this incredible debut album and lead singer Manu Chao is still pretty much ploughing the same furrow now and sounding innovative. That's how unusual their blend of Euro-rock and punk and rockabilly and reggae and skiffle and hip-hop and country and flamenco and it goes on and on. Their list of influences ran into the thousands almost, though none were as prominent as The Clash. The best way of summing up the diversity and genius of this album would be their version of Rock Island Line, which shifts genre three or four times in the space of a few minutes. Madness, utter, brilliant, madness.

4. Mick Fleetwood - The Visitor (1981)
Mick Fleetwood? The massive drummer from Fleetwood Mac? The guy who, along with Sam Fox, made bad awards show hosting look like an art form? Yep. He's not exactly well known for his solo work, hardly surprising as he's one of only two people to have been in Fleetwood Mac throughout the band's lengthy and turbulent history. However, in 1981, he made a solo album in Ghana, using traditional African rhythms alongside Western rock with help from the likes of George Harrison and Mac bandleaders Peter Green and Lindsay Buckingham. And it's really, really good.

5. Lindsay Buckingham - Go Insane (1984)
Speaking of Buckingham, here's another Fleetwood Mac solo album. His second release and the last before he left the band a couple of years later, Go Insane had an album cover that looks like a prototype for John Turturro in Barton Fink, while the contents were classic Buckingham tunes, full of hefty production values and quirky, catchy songs. The best bit though is the experimental D.W. Suite, where he takes his Brian Wilson fetish to a whole new level while paying tribute (hence the name) to the recently deceased Dennis Wilson.

6. Scientist - Scientist Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires (1981)
An acolyte of dub legend King Tubby, Scientist specialised in epic but minimalist dub albums with fantastic song titles and themes, from Space Invaders to the World Cup to this evil curse of the vampires. The songs all have horror movie titles and some 'spooky' effects, but the music is essential dub reggae and reached a whole new audience when used as the K-Jah radio station in Grand Theft Auto III.

7. Neil Young - Trans (1982)
The early 80s were hardly Neil Young's finest years, with a load of sub-standard albums being churned out as he put music on the backburner while caring for his son, who had been born with cerebral palsy. However, he hadn't given up trying, and Trans is his most experimental and daring release, as well as his strangest. If you've ever wondered what Neil Young songs would sound like performed by The Buggles, then things like Transformer Man, Computer Thing and Computer Cowboy show you exactly that. Amazingly, it works really well, with some more traditional songs through in there too.

8. Soul Asylum - Hang Time (1988)
And finally, we have Soul Asylum, caught halfway between wanting to be The Replacements and being massive superstars for five minutes with Runaway Train in the early 90s. Hang time sharpened up their sound and brought elements of a more radio-friendly sheen to their sloppy country-punk music, but keep things rocking and never loses its alt.rock credentials. Every song is great and it's just a shame that they couldn't always have maintained the balance between their two sides as well as they did here.

9. REO Speedwagon - Hi Infidelity (1980)
REO Speedwagon may be one of those arena rock 80s power ballad bands who everyone loves to laugh at, but Hi Infidelity is a classic album of that rather maligned genre. With the awesome Keep On Loving You at its heart, it's more than just soppy radio hits, because there's some cracking pop rock on here too while the lyrics aren't even as bad as you might expect. We've seen it called 'arena rock's Blood On The Tracks', which is pushing it a bit, but it's the perfect example of why 'guilty pleasures' can be really good as well as really cheesy.

10. Meat Loaf - Blind Before I Stop (1986)
His last release before reuniting with Jim Steinman for Bat Out Of Hell II, this album is generally considered to be Meat Loaf's weakest, and it's true that the very 80s production is certainly different to his best OTT rock music. However, as a pop rock album, it's full of fun songs like Rock n Roll Hero, Rock n Roll Mercenaries (they're pretty much the same song really), Special Girl and the title track, while One More Kiss (Night Of The Soft Parade) is a very nice ballad.

2007-09-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT... SAUL BASS

If we were to ask you to name some of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest collaborators you’d be likely to mention people like James Stewart, Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. However, one person whose name may not slip off the tongue quite as freely as those luminaries is title designer Saul Bass.

Born in New York in 1920, Bass was a keen artist from an early age and found his first film work in Otto Preminger’s urban opera Carmen Jones. The Austrian director asked him to produce the titles for the 1956 film and, at a time when most title designs were mere processions for the cast’s names, Bass produced the iconic image of a single printed rose, wilting in the shadow of a roaring flame.

It proved a sensation, not only looking aesthetically-pleasing, but also clueing the audience into the film's theme of destructive passion. This is what Bass did best, and Preminger was immediately impressed, inviting him back to design the titles for more of his films.

For heroin addiction drama The Man With The Golden Arm, Bass created a staccato-style arm reaching obsessively into the centre of the frame; for romantic melodrama Bonjour Tristesse he produced a solemn, weeping eye and for the groundbreaking Anatomy of a Murder he made a cut-out of a dismantled body.

But Bass didn't just excel at dramas. Comedy capers Ocean’s 11 and It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World showcased his more playful side and so synonymous are the bold, colourful designs of these films with the 1960s that the titles of modern movies such as Paul Schrader's Auto Focus, Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can and Casino Royale have echoed them to evoke their retro milieu.

These complex mini-movie sequences also highlighted Bass’s desire to move into direction himself. But, despite winning an Oscar for his 1968 short Why Man Creates, his ambitions were quelled by the failure of little-seen 1974 killer ant movie Phase IV. Instead, his directorial legacy lives on in the shape of his work with Alfred Hitchcock.

For the auteur’s Vertigo, Bass was called upon to create a dream sequence as well as the titles. Homing in on the film’s themes of fear and obsession, Bass created a claustrophobic nightmare, using multi-coloured spirograph vortexes, black backgrounds and Bernard Hermann's haunting score to lure the audience into the central character's obsession and create an effect just as disorienting as Hitchcock's much-vaunted dolly zoom.

A thrilling sequence for North by Northwest followed, but it wasn’t until 1960 that Bass’s reputation was cemented with his work on Psycho, for which he received his first 'pictoral consultant' credit after storyboarding the infamous shower scene (rumours still abound that he directed it) and designing the minimalist cutting lines of the iconic title sequence.

With gritty realism taking hold of American cinema in the 1970s and the star reigning supreme in the 80s, Bass’s stylish sequences gradually fell out of fashion. He therefore spent his time designing logos for big corporations until he was invited to create the titles for Martin Scorsese‘s Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence and Casino, the latter using computer technology to capture the neon-lit dystopia of Las Vegas.

Bass died of non-Hodgkins related lymphoma in 1996. His final design was for documentary A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. It was fitting end for a man who had contributed so much to the subject at hand.

2007-09-04T10:31:00.001-07:00

Say What?!: Ridley's Right

Talking up his latest movie, American Gangster, at the Venice Film Festival last weekend, Sir Ridley Scott was surprisingly downbeat on the future of movies. The British director insisted that science-fiction, the genre in which he made his name with the likes of Alien and Blade Runner, has run its course and that modern Hollywood is "three per cent good, ninety-seven per cent stupid".

"I'm not criticising Hollywood because I work there, I partly live there," he explained. "But I'm saying this is the way it is, commerce is taking over art. Commerce has become the most important thing in the film industry. Hollywood is an industry, it's not an art form, therefore they have to address the bottom line.”

But Tinsel Town money-grubbing wasn‘t the only thing on Scott‘s mind. “People sit there watching a movie on a tiny screen," he grumbled of the increasing use of small-screen gadgetry to watch films on. "We try to do films which are in support of cinema, in a large room with good sound and a big picture. I'm sure we're on a losing wicket but we're fighting technology. Whilst it is wonderful in many aspects, it also has some big negative downsides."

Indeed, those downsides will be keenly felt for a director of Scott’s pedigree. From Blade Runner and Alien to The Duellists and Gladiator, Scott’s films are the work of a visual genius. He uses the full screen to tell the story, utilising its grandeur to highlight the freedom Thelma and Louise felt in the deserts of America or the isolating boredom the crew of the Nostromo suffered against Alien’s deathly silent starscapes.

But Scott isn’t the only one to see the fruits of his labour squashed by the onslaught of technology. Could you imagine how Stanley Kubrick would feel seeing The Shining‘s Overlook Hotel turned from an agoraphobic nightmare into a cozy motel. For that matter, what would Martin Scorsese think seeing the bruising boxing sequences of Raging Bull reduced to a bar room bust up, or Steven Spielberg witnessing the menacing underwater sequences in Jaws rendered no more threatening than a casual dip at the local leisure centre?

Of course, I can see the convenience of such gadgets and I‘m certainly not saying that a film can only be correctly viewed on a giant screen. But there’s a limit. Directors shoot their films with aspect ratios and resolutions in mind. Every frame, every angle, every cut is mulled over and thought through, crafted lovingly to give the viewer as good an experience as possible.

To take that craftsmanship and squeeze it onto a mobile phone screen is tantamount to reproducing the Mona Lisa on the back of a postage stamp or watching the RSC perform the abridged version of Macbeth. Sure it’s convenient, sure it’s shiny and new and exciting, but by watching films on these things you’re denying yourself the chance to see a great piece of art in the form it was meant to be seen in.

Of course, the people who want to do that should be allowed to, after all, they‘re not doing anything but ruining it for themselves. But there’s a wider risk here. If UMDs, PSPs and mobile phones continue to sell as quickly as they are now (and they‘re selling pretty fast), then we’ll have a generation of kids - of future filmmakers - who have grown up watching films without appreciating the unique visual sensation that only cinema can supply, and that can only be a damaging thing for the British - perhaps world - film industry.

In the end, Ridley’s right: Films should be enjoyed in a quiet, darkened room on as big a screen as possible, not on the back of a postage stamp on your way into work on a Monday morning.

2007-08-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

WATCHING, LISTENING TO AND READING

THE WRITER:

WATCHING: Breakfast at Tiffany's. The 1960s was full of bitter-sweet romantic-comedies and this effort from Pink Panther director Blake Edwards is the second best of the decade (after, of course, the peerless The Apartment). Obviously, you all know the story by now (and if you don't, what have you been doing with your life?), but familiarity does not breed contempt, mostly because of Audrey Hepburn's adorable performance as the iconic Holly Golightly. We'll gloss over Mickey Rooney's incredibly offensive Chinese neighbour Mr Yunioshi...

LISTENING TO: Bond songs. Okay, there are a few duffers (The Man With The Golden Gun, All Time High and License to Kill, mostly), but there's surprising quality to the 007 title songs. Monty Norman's theme is, of course, seminal, while the more modern numbers such as Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and You Know My Name are also toe-tapingling pleasing, mostly, it has to be said, because David Arnold is such a fan of John Barry. So, it's no surprise that the best songs belong to the man himself, with Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice and the peerless On Her Majesty's Secret Service still sounding as fresh and funky as they did back in the 60s.

READING: The Call of the Weird, Louis Theroux. Originally published in 2004, Theroux's first book doesn't tread any new ground - in fact, it's nothing more than a catch up with the people he met during his Weird Weekends series back in the late 90s. But so sensitive and unexploitative is Theroux in his reporting that it feels fresh and invigorating, and it speaks volumes for him as both a human and a professional that the majority of his subjects are happy to see him return.

THE EDITOR:

WATCHING: The last film I saw was Clerks II, which I didn't particularly have high hopes for (hence not bothering to see it at the cinema) but I was very pleasantly surprised. The vulgar humour and geeky dialogue of the first is all still there, but the theme of 'growing up' is much more urgent second time around because Dante and (to a lesser extent) Randal are now really getting to the point where merely getting by isn't what society expects of them and they know this. What makes it a more satisfying experience than the first film is that there is a heart and a soul to it and for the last 20 minutes or so (basically after the donkey-sex scene finishes) we care what happens to them and credit Smith for achieving that for the first time since Chasing Amy.

LISTENING TO: As usual it's a strange and eclectic bunch. New albums by The Go! Team and Alabama 3 are up there and both of those are pretty good. However, you can't beat the two great older albums I've been listening to, Live Rust by Neil Young & Crazy Horse and The Future by Leonard Cohen. Great songs, great lyrics, great performances and just great artists at work. Speaking of which, we'll have an interview with Terrorvision's Tony Wright soon and their albums have been on rotation too. Not quite the same, but good fun and lots of teenage memories nonetheless.

READING: To be honest I've not really had time to read much recently so I'm still on the Jung Chang book, which is still very good. Not much more to say really.

2007-08-22T23:50:00.001-07:00

Top Ten... Alternative 70s

Continuing our new (mini) series of Top Tens, we're looking over the alternative classic of the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. So, what do we mean by alternative? Well, alternative, for the purposes of these entries, means anything that is critically derided, overlooked by the public or just generally under-rated. Ultimately, though, it all comes down to how we argue it, so if you disagree, let us know!

FILMS - By The Writer

1. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
One of the few remakes to rival the original, Werner Herzog's haunting 1979 interpretation of Nosferatu ranks as one of the great director's classics. Herzog takes the vampire mythos back to Bram Stoker's 19th century, creating a haunting, almost otherworldly, atmosphere out of the gothic architecture of Germany and Transylvania. Regular star Klaus Kinski puts in one of his most magnetic performances and although Herzog made it simply to pay homage to the original (which he considers the finest German movie ever made), it stands on its own as a tribute to what a truly great director can create, even when working from someone else's film.

2. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
The 1970s saw the rise of American greats such as Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg, but it also witnessed the first films from Peter Wier. Now best known for his work in Hollywood (Truman Show, Master and Commander) the Australian director made his name with this small-scale tale of three Aussie schoolgirls who disappear on a field-trip to the titular beauty spot. The film is an adaptation of Joan Lindsay's novel of the same name which, for a long time, was considered to be based on a true story. Of course, it isn‘t, but watching the haunting realism of Weir's film, you'll believe it is.

3. Network (1976)
Although well-regarded by film critics, Network is surprisingly overlooked by the general public considering how prescient it is. Telling the story of a news anchorman who becomes a ratings sensation after threatening to kill himself live on air, the film investigates and condemns the soulless TV executives who’ll do anything and exploit anyone to get the gullible public to tune into their channel. You get the feeling Simon Cowell is not a fan…

4. The Conversation (1974)
Made between Godfathers 1 and 2, Francis Ford Coppola's taut, paranoid thriller stars Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who finds himself dragged into a deadly game of cat and mouse when he discovers a couple he is spying on may be about to be murdered. Sound familiar? It should, because The Conversation is basically Blow Up with sound instead of photos. But Coppola's direction, Hackman's tetchy performance and Walter Murch's revolutionary sound design make this film an overlooked and surprisingly original classic which perfectly reflects the post-Watergate paranoia of its time.

5. Logan's Run (1976)
Thanks to Star Wars, the 70s was packed with dodgy, cash-in sci-fi films. Logan's Run, however, is not one of them. Sure it's light and fluffy considering it depicts a dystopian society in which you're shot when you hit the age of thirty, but there's a sense of intelligent fun to it that so many sci-fis lacked at the time. Michael York makes for a cracking leading man, Jenny Agutter gets some entirely gratuitous nudity and the sets look superb, despite being very, very 70s.

6. The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
If you've only seen the fun but dumb remake of The Hills Have Eyes, rent this original. Though lacking the brutal terror of Last House on the Left and mainstream appeal of Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven's sophomore effort is probably his most accomplished film to date, merging, as it does, the social concerns many horror films at the time investigated with genuine white knuckle fear that the remake simply couldn't touch.

7. Suspiria (1977)
Italian director Dario Argento has always been one of world cinema's most edgy horror directors, but this brutal tale of a young woman who discovers the ballet academy she is studying at is actually run by witches pushes him so close to maverick madman territory you wonder how it ever got made. The answer, of course, is that it's bloody scary, with Argento generating a bizarre sense of creeping fear through his use of colour, score (Goblin's soundtrack is the best any horror film has ever boasted) and good old fashioned scares - the one at the window at the start is a doozy.

8. Barry Lyndon (1975)
I can't say I particularly love Barry Lyndon. It's the only Kubrick film I struggle to sit through and I’ve only seen the whole thing in stages, rather than in one long go. Most people agree, feeling the film is too stately and slow to really grip. However, if Clockwork Orange showcased Kubrick the social critic and 2001 was Kubrick as philosopher, this is Kubrick the artisan as the late, great director crafts some of the most gorgeously shot and beautifully lit period scenes ever committed to celluloid.

9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Like the titular monsters, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of those films that just won’t go away. Already remade in 1993 as Body Snatchers and set for another reboot this year under the name The Invasion (I eagerly await the next film, ‘Of The’), the first attempt to modernise Don Siegel’s 1955 B-Movie classic was helmed by Right Stuff director Phillip Kaufman. Being made in the late 70s, it reflects the paranoia and general mistrust of the time perfectly and handed a first big role to Jeff Goldblum. For that alone it deserves legendary status.

10. King Kong (1976)
Yes, of course, the 1976 remake of King Kong is terrible. Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange look hopelessly out of their depth, the attempt to update the classic story simply shows how silly the idea of a giant ape is and Kong himself, well, best leave poor Kong alone. But there's still something stupidly entertaining about the 76 remake. It’s like watching a primary school child’s interpretation of a great Shakespeare play and, although I know it‘s wrong, I just can’t help but be charmed by it every time I watch it.

ALBUMS - By The Editor

1. Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue (1977)
Dennis was the great enigma of the Beach Boys and of the Wilson brothers. The only one in the group who was actually a surfer, he only became their drummer because Mrs Wilson made Brian and Carl include him. Often more interested in the partying and girls than the music, he still went on to be one of the most talented songwriters in the group. Pacific Ocean Blue was his only solo album and lives up to all the promise of the songs he wrote for the band in the 70s. It sounds nothing like the Beach Boys and is all the better for it.

2. Gene Clark - No Other (1974)
David Crosby and Gram Parsons may be two better known former Byrds, but Gene Clark still produced one of the best albums of any of them. Unfortuately, when No Other was released in 1974, its baroque-pop stylings and rather pretentious-sounding lyrics were pretty much laughed at, and hardly anyone bought it. More than 30 years on, we can see that they were all missing out on not just one of the most underrated albums of the 70s, but also one of the best.

3. Lou Reed - Lou Reed (1972)
An example of an album that is not only underrated by the critics and fans, but also by the artist themselves. At a time when the Velvet Underground were starting to achieve some fame after they had split, there was plenty of interest in Lou Reed's solo career. He seemed to be a little unsure of himself at this stage and ended up re-recording some forgotten VU tracks and the end result was largely ignored by critics and fans, with Transformer arriving later in the year to proper launch Reed upon the world. However, his debut is still very enjoyable.

4. George Harrison - George Harrison (1979)
By the late 70s, Harrison's patchy solo career was already drifting into obscurity and this excellent self-titled release was 'just another George Harrison album', overshadowed by the impending return to the limelight of John Lennon and the commercial successes of Paul McCartney and Wings. However, with great tracks like Love Comes To Everyone, Blow Away, Faster and the beautiful Your Love Is Forever, this is a real underrated masterpiece from the former Beatle.

5. Steve Cropper - With A Little Help From My Friends (1971)
Steve Cropper was a member of Booker T And The MGs and played guitar on some of the greatest hits by Stax superstars like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave. In 1971 he finally got the chance for some solo action of his own, and despite the hints from the title that there might be some famous names providing vocals for him, it's his guitar that shines through in a load of excellent instrumental soul tracks.

6. Betty Davis - Betty Davis (1973)
She married Miles Davis and had alleged 'liaisons' with Jimi Hendrix, so it was no surprise that Betty Davis had a few tricks of her own when it came to music. Hard-edged funk was the name of the day on her solo release, with the lyrics focusing on sex and sleaze and just having a good time (all of which was a bit much even for her wild husband) and with a great rhythm section backing her up, it's a shame she didn't get the chance to really grow and live up to the promise of this album.

7. Kiss - Ace Frehley (1978)
In 1978, Kiss came up with the idea of expanding upon their individual characters by allowing each member to release a 'solo' album under the general Kiss brand. All on the same day. Of the four records, Ace Frehley provided the best, even though he didn't push the envelope quite as much as Gene Simmons or Peter Criss when it came to moving away from the kind of music Kiss were making at the time. He was always the coolest member of the band and songs like Rip It Out and Snow Blind just demonstrate why he should have been given more chances to shine by the two leaders of the group.

8. Frank Sinatra - Trilogy (1979)
Having released some of the best albums of the 50s and 60s, Sinatra hardly released anything at all in the 70s, spending most of his time performing instead. So when he returned with a three-record set called Past - Present - Future, eyebrows were raised. It provided him with one of his signature tunes, New York New York, and the Past and Present sections are very easy for fans to enjoy. What makes it interesting though is the Future, where he does sci-fi, singing songs by Gordon Jenkins all about space travel. It's madness, but it works. Not that you'll many people who agree.

9. Frank Zappa - Joe's Garage (1979)
Another lengthy album, Joe's Garage is one of the best examples of Zappa's mixture of cautionary tales of groupies and government censorship with his wacky toilet humour. At times it can go off the rails and the sheer length of it can be off-putting, but it's one of Zappa's best and most cohesive albums and the narration by the Big Brother-esque Central Scruntiniser is hilarious.

10. Bunny Wailer - Blackheart Man (1976)
Never as renowned as either of the other two original Wailers (Bob Marley and Peter Tosh), Bunny Livingstone was arguably just as talented and while his solo debut remains a critical rather than commercial triumph, he has at least gone on to become one of roots reggae's elder statesman purely by outliving the other two. Closing track This Train is one of the best songs of the genre ever and there's no weak tracks here.

2007-08-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

ENTERTAINMENT ESSENTIALS: ANTHONY WILSON

On the front cover of the 24 Hour Party People soundtrack album Ian Curtis is described as a GENIUS, Shaun Ryder is a POET and Tony Wilson is a TWAT. This pretty much sums up the appreciation of Wilson for his contribution to Manchester music, even from a film that pretty much tells his side of the story. Of course, a lot of this is a typically Mancunian lack of pretension or nostalgia, but it's always seemed a little unfair.

At last year's Manchester Vs Cancer gig, when he introduced New Order's storming Joy Division set, Wilson was roundly booed by a crowd who didn't really know why they were booing him other than that he was a TWAT. Even Bernard Sumner chastised them for it during the show. The great tragedy of it was that just over a year and a half later, it is cancer that today killed him.

While he wasn't a music genius and his business sense was questionable to say the least, Madchester quite probably wouldn't have happened without him, Joy Division/New Order might never have become famous, the Happy Mondays might never have got round to releasing anything at all and the Hacienda wouldn't have existed. What kind of musical heritage would this city have had?

And it wasn't just the music either, Wilson's day job was in the media and worked on local news shows like Granada Tonight as well as having a show on Radio Manchester. Whatever you think of him, he was a Manchester legend and while it's very sad to have to put this up so soon after our obit feature on Lee Hazlewood, Wilson was much more important to Manc music and hopefully one good thing to come from his death (apart from perhaps some soul-searching about cancer treatment - the NHS refused to pay for the drug he needed to beat the disease) will be that the city he loved will finally start to love him back.

2007-08-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT... LEE HAZLEWOOD

Some velvet mornin' when I'm straight
I'm gonna open up your gate
And maybe tell you 'bout Phaedra
And how she gave me life
And how she made it end
Some velvet mornin' when I'm straight

So begins one of the strangest pop songs of all time, Some Velvet Morning by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, one of the most amazing and completely surreal pop duos ever. Frank Sinatra's sweet-voiced little girl and a big ugly country singer with a DEEP voice and a quirky sense of humour made for a potent and unique combination and while Nancy was a big part of that success, it was mostly down to Lee, who sadly died at the weekend.

Hazlewood wrote Nancy's biggest hit - and girl power anthem - These Boots Are Made For Walkin' as well as writing, producing and singing with her on classic tracks like Summerwine, Sand and Ladybird. He also discovered and gave Duane Eddy and Gram Parsons their first big breaks, but what made him so special was his quirkiness and darker edges.

Famously, he instructed Sinatra to sing These Boots 'like a 14 year old who fucks truck drivers', while the sweet and innocent-sounding Sugartown was actually an ode to LSD. Fittingly, when he discovered that he was dying of cancer, Hazlewood was spurred into action and recorded one last album called Cake And Death after an Eddie Izzard joke. Idiosyncratic to the last, he even did a new version of Some Velvet Morning sung by his young granddaughter Phaedra.

It's a hit and miss collection, as are almost all of his albums, simply because Hazlewood has always been an artist who works to his own beat and makes music for himself. With Cake And Death he started into the abyss and still found something to laugh at and something to make you smile. There was no-one else like him in the music industry and there probably never will be again and that's why he will be sorely missed even if he was always too offbeat for the mainstream.

But ask Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley or Nick Cave who inspired them to get into music and they'll all say Lee Hazlewood...

2007-08-04T23:34:00.000-07:00

WATCHING, READING AND LISTENING TO

THE EDITOR:

WATCHING - The Da Vinci Code on DVD was the last thing I saw. Never read the book, but was slightly disappointed that the 'plot twists' were all sign-posted way off by Ron Howard. However, I'm fascinated by history, so I found the whole thing quite interesting even if it was trying to pass a load of speculation off as 'FACTS', so it was quite enjoyable really. Also recently seen The Break-Up (alright, but not very funny) and The Holiday (VERY sappy and had Jude Law in it, but otherwise ok). Bring on The Simpsons Movie on Sunday night!

READING - Back to Jung Chang's Wild Swans. After reading her Mao biography I've become very interested in China's 20th Century meltdown, so it's very moving to go back to Chang's tale of the same period of history as told through the lives of her grandmother, her mother and herself. At the moment, her mother is a young radical Communist in a country ready for revolution and a better future under men like Mao. Sadly, the reality won't exactly match up to the idealogy and this book is set to get a whole lot darker...

LISTENING TO - As usual a really wide range of music, but things that have been going down well recently include: REM's Life's Rich Pageant and Reckoning, both awesome early albums, though I also really enjoyed Around The Sun, so I'm not one of those tiresome people who don't like their modern music just because you can understand what Michael Stipe says nowadays; Death Cab For Cutie; the new Josh Rouse album; Al Bowlly, a great pre-war British singer probably best known now for a song used a couple of times in The Shining, called Midnight, The Stars And You. Lovely music.

THE WRITER:

WATCHING - The last thing I watched at the cinema was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is ok but overloaded with plot and simplistic political subtext (especially in the Dolores Umbridge character). On DVD, I last watched Zathura, which is Jumanja in space but highly enjoyable and directed with real zest by Jon Favreau. And on TV, I'm still struggling to get into Heroes. It's perfectly ok, but the plot relies too heavily on tenuous mystery instead of genuine character development, something not helped by the fact that most of them are intechangable hunks who do little else but muse on fate and destiny.

READING - Essential X-Men Volume 2. Now, this is what you want if you're looking for intelligent superhero stories. The Dark Phoenix saga, the Days of Future Past and the introduction of Kitty Pryde are all included in this collection of classic Chris Claremont and John Bryne X-stories from the 1980s. Obviously some things (Banshee's incredibly silly Irish accent for one) don't really stand up to the test of time, but anything that has evil goddesses, space fights and alternate futures ruled by the Sentinals is ok by me.

LISTENING TO - Raiders of the Lost Ark score. In celebration of the fact Indiana Jones 4 seems to be proceeding quite nicely (with added Karen Allen - hurrah), I've been listening to the score for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Obviously, the Raiders March is the best and most memorable piece, but the less well known cuts are also impressive, especially the romantic Marion's Theme and that great shift from elegant elegy to apocalyptic poundings that happens when the Nazis open the Ark and all hell (and face-melting special effects) break loose.

2007-07-24T12:56:00.001-07:00

Top Ten Simpsons episodes

1. Homer the Heretic
When Homer oversleeps and misses church one Sunday, he discovers the joys of butter-filled waffles and finding one penny coins hiding under the sofa in this excellent episode that displays the show at its satirical height. The issue here is religion and writer George Meyer manages to strike a perfect balance by highlighting its good side (through Marge’s genuinely despairing pleas) while all the time showing how frustrating it is ("I'm not a bad guy,” Homer tells God. “I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to Hell?"). That such issues could be raised in a prime-time animation underlines why The Simpsons was such an important show in the 90s.

2. Cape Feare
Nobody can do movie parodies quite like The Simpsons and this send-up of Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear remake is the best the show has produced. Having made a mockery of America's judicial system (“nobody who speaks German can be evil” says one lawmaker) Sideshow Bob makes his first concerted attempt to kill his mortal enemy Bart, forcing the family to relocate to a houseboat in the scenic and ironically-named Lake Terror. Mixing short and subtle gags (Homer proudly wearing a Witness Relocation Program t-shirt), with long, drawn-out sketches (one word: rakes), it’s relentlessly funny and contains a classic Chief Wiggum line (“Bake him away, toys”).

3. Homer: Bad Man
That Homer's inventive use of a bag of fizzy candy and can of cola is far from the best thing in this episode speaks volumes for its quality. A razor sharp satire on TV news, this season five classic finds our porcine hero accused of sexual harassment after he peeled a gummy Venus di Milo off the backside of a babysitter. Kent Brockman reports scurrilous rumours and hearsay as fact and newsmagazine Rock Bottom makes savage use of the editing machine to further condemn poor Homie. Thankfully, 'Rowdy Roddy Peeper' Groundskeeper Willie comes to the rescue, but alas the ordeal has had no effect whatsoever on Homer: "Listen to that music, Marge, he's evil!"

4. Last Exit to Springfield
Matt Groening has often said the audience loves a slow-thinker and this classic episode proves that theory. Lisa develops tooth problems at the same time Mr Burns decides to ditch the power plant's dental plan. Thankfully, Homer is on hand to act as union representative, but is quickly tempted to comply with Burns' plan after being bribed by a keg of beer. In the queue for a pint, Homer tries to put two and two together ('Lisa needs braces/DENTAL PLAN' go his insistent thoughts), but it's a good thirty seconds and a well-placed pencil in the ass-crack before the penny drops. Classic, relevant Simpsons satire with the bonus of having some classic Lenny and Carl moments. What more could we ask for?

5. Duffless
One of the most impressive things about The Simpsons and the reason why imitators like Family Guy and South Park have never quite matched its popularity, is the sense of love and morality that the series produces. ‘Homer vs Lisa and the Fifth Amendment’ and ‘Lisa Goes to Washington’ are both episodes with serious moral points, but the one issue that was rarely tackled in the early years is alcoholism - until this 1996 episode, that is. Having been reprimanded for driving while under the influence, Homer swears off the devil's juice for a month, losing weight and spending more time with his kids as a result. Once the month’s up, of course, he's tempted back to Moe's, but chooses a sunset bike ride with Marge instead. What other show could make alcoholism so moving?

6. Mother Simpson
Grandpa Simpson may be a crotchety old man with a penchant for telling stories nobody wants to hear, but what about Grandma Simpson? In this bitter-sweet episode from season seven, Homer meets up with his long lost mother but eventually has to wave goodbye when Mr Burns seeks revenge for her nuclear power protests some thirty years earlier. The show is dedicated to a late animator, and the closing credits featuring a lonely Homer sat on the bonnet of his car watching the star-lit sky drift by are appropriately melancholic.

7. Treehouse of Horror V
The Treehouse of Horror episodes are often erratic, but they do contain some of the most spot-on movie parodies ever created. The King Kong, Tron and numerous Twilight Zone references are top notch, while the interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven remains very special indeed, especially as it came so early in the show‘s history. However, it's Treehouse of Horror V that takes the crown with three wildly inventive segments, the best of which, of course, is The Shining parody, in which virtually every frame contains a joke, reference or cunning aside. Stanley Kubrick was apparently a huge fan of the show and you get the feeling he would have approved of this episode.

8. A Fish Called Selma
And speaking of superb movie parodies, this is the episode that satirises Planet of the Apes via the awesome power of Falco's Rock Me Amadeus. One of those great episodes which doesn't centre on Homer, but still gives him the best lines ('ooooh, I love legitimate the-atre'), A Fish Called Selma finds everybody’s favourite B-movie legend Troy McClure marrying Marge's sister in a bid to quash rumours of his sordid sex life and resurrect his long-dead Hollywood star. Sad and funny in equal measure, its poignancy has only been added to since the tragic demise of voice artist Phil Hartman.

9. Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish
No film is referenced quite as frequently (or quite as well) on The Simpsons as Citizen Kane and this politically-charged episode is full of spot-on parodies of Orson Welles’ 1941 classic. Obviously, it’s Mr Burns who’s the stand-in Kane here as he runs for Governor against Mary Bailey. Homer supports his boss, but Marge is 'a Bailey-booster', making this typical of the kind of intelligent and grounded family drama the now too-wacky show has moved away from in recent years.

10. One Fish, Two Fish, Blow Fish, Blue Fish
Mr Sulu makes a cameo, Bart and Lisa sing Shaft, the five stages of grief appear, the title puns on an old Dr Suess book, Mr Burns gets a telling off and Larry King reads the bible on tape…That this episode has all that comedy genius and still finds time for a genuinely moving plot that sees Homer think he’s going to die after eating some bad blowfish, makes it one of the best episodes of the first few series and the perfect way to end this top ten rundown.

2007-07-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

WATCHING, READING AND LISTENING TO

THE WRITER:

WATCHING: Two rubbish 80s films in the shape of Robert Altman's Popeye and Police Academy 2. Yeah, not even the original, the second one! Of course, it's rubbish, but it still has the fella who can make the sound effects with his mouth and I could watch him in anything. Meanwhile, Popeye is surprisingly entertaining in an insane kinda way. Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall give impressively physical performances and Altman directs the whole thing with a madcap swagger that makes the film an entirely watchable flop.

LISTENING TO: Generation Terrorists, Manic Street Preachers. Having not listened to the Manics’ 1992 debut since I was about 17, I was surprised to hear that it still stands up - though only just. Little Baby Nothing is still cringe-inducing cheesy (if only they’d been given clearance for Kylie like they wanted!), while the Damn Dog cover and remix of Repeat add nothing. Still, with Motorcycle Emptiness, You Love Us and Condemned To Rock and Roll it can’t really fail.

READING: Warlord of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I do love a good bit of pulpy science-fiction and you can't get any better than Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars series. Written in 1918, this third entry displays massive imagination and attention to detail. Sadly, that doesn’t stretch to character development, with our hero John Carter displaying all the personality of a plank of wood. Still, who needs characterisation when you've got hot naked Martian chicks and love-struck space heroes running around in zero gravity with guns. This is what the English language was made for!

THE EDITOR:

WATCHING: Supergirl. Yes, it's as bad as you remember. Also watched new TV Dexter, about a serial killer who helps the police track down serial killers and, in his spare time, tortures and murders serial killers. It's like CSI directed by Rob Zombie and stars Michael C Hall (from Six Feet Under) and while it's not exactly great on the basis of the first episode, it's certainly unusual and much better than Brothers And Sisters, which also features one of the stars of SFU. Actually, if you combined the domestic stories of that with the gruesome dead people and black humour of Dexter, you'd probably have Six Feet Under...

LISTENING TO: The Incredible Moses Leroy/The Softlightes, a great band who make lovely quirky pop music. Also Japanese band Acid Mother's Temple And The Cosmic Inferno's album Starless And Bible Black Sabbath, which has the great title track, over half an hour of crunching mindlessly repetitive riffs. And it's even better than that sounds. On the flipside, there's a modern album by the Temptations which I enjoyed recently even though it's just mainstream soul music with none of the classic edge of the REAL Temptations of the 60s and 70s...

READING: I was reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang, which I'm enjoying very much, but then at the weekend I discovered Transformers: Ghosts Of Yesterday by Alan Dean Foster for £2.99 in a bookshop in Chester. It's the prequel novel to the new film, so as someone whose entire life revolved around Transformers for most of my childhood, I figured it might help me enjoy the film a bit more. So far it's pretty good, lots of familiar names (I still love Starscream) and best of all, I can imagine them looking like the original characters instead of the grey shapeless lumps that Michael Bay's team have produced. But, to be fair, the characterisations are pretty faithful and if the film is as good as the prequel novel, it should be ok.

2007-06-19T13:03:00.000-07:00

ENTERTAINMENT ESSENTIALS: Batman

For this week’s Entertainment Essentials, we’re taking you back to the summer of 1989. Jive Bunny's at number one, Seinfeld has made its debut on US TV and one word dominates the minds of filmgoers: Batman. One of the most successful films of the 1980s, Tim Burton’s delve into the world of the caped crusader brought the blockbuster bang up to date and remains hugely popular among twenty-somethings keen for a blast of sweet nostalgia. However, the rose-tinted glasses can be funny old things, and just as they’ve opened the door for Take That to make their horrifying return, so to have they worked their curious magic on Batman.

In the works for well over a decade, the film was originally scheduled for release in the late 70s/early 80s when it could take advantage of the overwhelming success of the first Superman flick. However, production problems kept the movie on hold and by the time it finally emerged in 1989, the fairy tale innocence of post-Vietnam blockbuster cinema (Superman, Star Wars et al), had hardened into the violent cynicism of Rambo and Die Hard.

Thankfully for producers, the comic book industry had kept up with the times. Titles such as The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller) and The Killing Joke (Alan Moore) had turned Batman from a campy caped crusader into a brooding detective looking for justice on the rain-drenched streets of Gotham. Mixing realism, emotion and sometimes horror, these books were wildly popular and their success inspired studio bosses to turn earlier scripts that had included Robin, The Penguin and Batgirl into something altogether more dark and adult.

Though bold and daring at the time, this decision can now be seen as the film's biggest problem. In trying to make a movie that had both darkness and mass-appeal, the filmmakers turned Batman 1989 into a mess of competing styles. Is it a gritty comic ripped straight from the work of Moore and Miller? Is it a dark, gothic fantasy with a brooding hero and deranged villain? Or is it a straight-up summer blockbuster with celebrity cameos and Prince soundtrack?

In truth, it’s all of the above, but what it most certainly is not is a Tim Burton film. Though the odd shot (the Batwing hauling away the Joker's ghastly parade balloons), idea (the Joker's teeth giggling post-death) or scene (The Joker's much parodied creation), are distinctly Burton-esque, the script, characters and themes are imported straight from Blockbuster 101 and you can almost see the maverick director wince as he limply shoots his way through Vikki Vale‘s love scenes with Bruce Wayne.

The one aspect of the film that does seem true to his style is Gotham itself. However, even this is misleading as the city was designed not by the director, but the late Anton Furst. One of the greatest production designers cinema has ever been blessed with, his career was short (he committed suicide in 1991) but brilliant, having also turned a disused British gasworks into Vietnam for Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Batman’s Gotham is his Gotham, not Burton’s, a fact that further adds to the film’s confused sense of authorship and is especially underlined when you compare it to superior sequel Batman Returns.

With Furst no longer around, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands designer Bo Welsh was enlisted to build the Dark Knight’s dark city and the differences are clear to see. Whereas Furst’s Gotham is one of menace and darkness, ripped from the pages of Miller and Moore; Welsh’s is one of whimsy and colour, ripped from his director‘s imagination. It’s Vincent. It’s Edward Scissorhands. It’s The Corpse Bride. It’s totally in tune with Burton who, for all his quirks and twists, is simply not dark enough to accommodate Furst’s masterfully macabre Gotham.

Indeed, looking back now, the city also seems too dark for producers, because rather than complimenting Furst’s murky aesthetics with an equally grim script, they keep the rest of the film light and almost fluffy. The love story between Wayne and Vale feels tokenistic; we never get any real sense of our hero’s pain over his parents’ death (a flaw only exacerbated by the brilliant Batman Begins) and Jack Nicholson’s Joker is so over-the-top he makes Cesar Romero look like Marlon Brando.

Batman 1989 will forever have its place in history for not only that ridiculous performance, but also its groundbreaking marketing campaign and sensational design. But it’s a film lacking cohesion, substance and a clear sense of authorship and, with The Joker set to return to our screens in next year’s The Dark Knight, perhaps it’s time to let Burton’s film sail off into the past where it belongs.

2007-06-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: A View To A Kill. For a long time, I've supported the theory that this is the worst of the official Bond films, but after watching it again, I've decided that it's a bit unfair. Sure, there's some bad moments, and Roger Moore was much, MUCH too old by this stage to be convincing in the role, but it's a lot more fun than the frankly dull Octopussy, so moves above it in my rankings. And it's got a good theme tune, though it's clear at this stage that 007 needed a massive overhaul, which he got with the excellent The Living Daylights.

LISTENING TO: As usual, a real mixture. Third Eye Blind's debut album brought back lots of happy memories and still sounds very fresh even ten years (or so) on. On a more recent tip there's Viva Voce Loves You, a small collection of great tracks from Viva Voce's albums, taking the cream of the crop and reminding us just how good they are. Hopefully enticing some new people in as well, and there'll be a full review at the weekend. What else? Oh yeah, My Morning Jacket rule, and I've just been introduced into frankly scary world of Dan Deacon by a work colleague...

READING: Lisey's Story by Stephen King. He doesn't bring out books at quite the pace he used to, but his 'retirement' hasn't exactly slowed King down much, this being his second book in as many years, with a couple more already scheduled for release. Lisey's Story is a twist on his frequent theme of tortured writers (ie, himself), with the tale focusing on the writer's widow Lisey, who is going through his possessions and uncovering a dark and mysterious world. Not read much so far, but it looks like a good mix of genuine pathos and love with the usual 'ordinary life is scarier than vampires' King fantasy/horror magic.

THE WRITER

WATCHING: How I Met Your Mother. Despite being tossed around the BBC schedules last year, this superb romantic sitcom from producers Craig Thomas and Carter Bays is well worth getting into on DVD. Following twenty-something singleton Ted as he attempts to find 'the one', it's understandably been compared to Friends. However, HIMYM is actually superior to its 90s counterpart thanks to its superb cast, sharp wit and ability to be genuinely touching without being cloying or insincere.

LISTENING TO: Bloc Party, Silent Alarm. Bloc Party are one of those frustrating bands who are oh-so-nearly perfect. Lyrically and musically, they excel themselves and can justifiably be regarded as the next Radiohead. However, I struggle with Kele Okereke's voice. While it's suitably intimate, it's also tough to take in over the course of a whole album. Stuck on an MP3 player, dispersed with other songs though it works well and Banquet, This Modern Love and Little Thoughts really are sensational tracks.

READING: Bruce Campbell, If Chins Could Kill. My trawl through the world of Sam Raimi continues with this autobiography of his 'muse' Bruce Campbell. A real B-movie legend, Campbell may never have hit it big in Hollywood (well, unless you count all his cameos in Raimi's films), but his self-deprecating humour and incredible physicality make him one of a kind and his book a ripping good read.

2007-06-07T11:12:00.001-07:00

THE WRITER

WATCHING: Barton Fink. A fascinating, intricate and ambitious film though it may be, Barton Fink, like many of the Coen Brothers’ films, is a little to arch for me to completely love. As far as I‘m concerned, Joel and Ethan are at their best when they venture out of Coen-world and into the real world a little (as in Blood Simple, Fargo and The Man Who Wasn’t There), something Fink never quite manages to do. New film No Country For Old Men, which is apparently a return to Blood Simple territory, looks to be far more my kinda Coen…

LISTENING TO: Travis, The Man Who. They may be deemed uncool and boring nowadays, but Travis are still one of the best bands of the 90s and The Man Who is their best album. The teenage alienation of As You Are, the intimacy of The Last Laugh of the Laughter (awful title, I am prepared to admit) and the melancholia of Why Does It Always Rain On Me? make the band’s sophomore effort a rich and textured piece of work that puts many of today’s bland, one-note bands to shame.

READING: Spider-Man Fairy Tales Issue 1. A rather curious, but really quite brilliant version of Little Red Riding Hood recast in a medieval-style Spider-Man universe. Spidey's still doing his stuff of course, but the focus here is very much on Mary Jane (Little Red Riding Hood herself), who must choose between being her own woman or being loyal and dutiful as her mother says she should be. C.B. Cebulski's writing is rich and layered with allegory, while the art from Ricardo Tercio is suitably atmospheric. A must-read if you want a break from the Civil War/Back in Black tripe that Marvel keep weighing poor Spidey down with.

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: Not seen a film for weeks now, so it's all TV here. Gradually catching up on the end of the current seasons of Lost and 24 (no thanks to Sky and Virgin Media). Also had the end of Desperate Housewives, which was a genuinely quite shocking ending to a pretty decent season with plenty of the darker moments and not too many of the girly moments. Oh, and there's Big Brother, but thankfully not too much of that so far.

LISTENING TO: The new Ash album, which I'll go into more detail about when I do a proper review in a few weeks, but it's definitely a 'grower'. Also been listening to Brother Bones & His Shadows, a weird CD of 'bones' music that includes the Harlem Globetrotters' theme tune. There's also The Left Banke getting a lot of 'rotation' at the moment, along with some classic 1970s Aerosmith. Can't beat it.

READING: Just back off holidays, so there's a lot of this. Finished The Dream Life Of Suhkanov, then started Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and read it in a couple of days. Then there was The Promise Of Happiness by Justin Cartwright, which was ok, but not great, same goes for Panic by Jeff Abbott, which was a great page-turner, if short on substance. And finally (in no particular order) is Red Dust by Ma Jian, a great true story about an artist in Communist China who gets sick of life in Beijing and heads off on the road across the vast expanses of his country.

2007-05-22T12:21:00.001-07:00

Top Ten... Alternative 60s

In the first of a new (mini) series of Top Tens, we're going to look over the alternative classic of the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. So, what do we mean by alternative? Well, alternative, for the purposes of these entries, means anything that is critically derided, overlooked by the public or just generally under-rated. Ultimately, though, it all comes down to how we argue it, so if you disagree, let us know!

FILMS - By The Writer

1. Repulsion (1965)
A chilling horror from Roman Polanski, Repulsion features Catherine Deneuve at her best as a glacial virgin fearful of sex. Obviously, being Catherine Deneuve, she attracts the attentions of several men and the strain eventually drives her mad. Sophisticated and genuinely terrifying, it’s all held together brilliantly by Polanksi, as he effortlessly creates a nauseating, claustrophobic atmosphere that hasn’t been bettered by any horror director since.

2. Barbarella (1968)
Jane Fonda may try to brush it under the carpet, but her turn in this saucy space romp is amongst the best female performances of the 60s. She plays the futuristic minx of the title, who cavorts through outer space doing…well, very little really except for wearing an array of skimpy outfits, talking vaguely hippyish nonsense about angels and love and being tricked into an orgasm machine by Duran Duran (the bad guy, not the band). The sixties in a nutshell then….

3. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
It’s Deneuve again, but this time she’s singing in Jacques Demy’s bittersweet musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The French actress plays Geneviève, a naïve young woman who shacks up with another man when the father of her unborn baby is shipped off to war. Typical kitchen sink stuff, you’d think. Not so, because Demy’s film is a Technicolor treat for the eyes and ears in which every line of dialogue is sung. It’s really quite magical stuff and builds to a climax that somehow manages to make an Esso garage look romantic.

4. Walk, Don’t Run (1966)
This quaint romantic comedy was Cary Grant’s final film and while it’s certainly not his best, it’s charming and funny stuff. The one-time Archibald Leach plays Sir William Rutland, an English businessman who attempts to set-up tightly wound tourist Christine Easton (Samantha Egger) with American athlete Steve Davis during the Tokyo Olympic games. Entirely predictable romantic entanglements ensue, but with Eggar looking gorgeous and Grant producing his usual irresistible charm, Walk, Don’t Run is a thoroughly enjoyable flight of fancy which is far from the disappointing final Grant film that many believe it to be.

5. Cat Ballou (1965)
It’s Jane Fonda again, but this time she’s on earth in this bizarre comedy western from 1965. She plays the titular aspiring schoolteacher who is forced to hire a gunfighter (Lee Marvin) to avenge her murdered father. However, rather than being a sharpshooter, he’s a lazy drunk and his ineptitude forces Cat to become an outlaw herself. Fonda is typically brilliant, but it’s Marvin who steals the show as he slopes around like your favourite drunk uncle at Christmas. An under seen and surprisingly modern gem.

6. Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Jason and the Argonauts is already widely regarded as a hugely important piece of filmmaking, but mostly for Ray Harryhausen’s stunning skeleton army. Of course, like everything the stop-motion master creates, the boney boys are deeply impressive, but there’s an awful lot to love elsewhere in Jason’s fight for the Golden Fleece, not least the appearance of Medusa who is played by Nancy Kovac but voiced by Pussy Galore. A real childhood classic.

7. Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill (1965)
The jury’s still out on Russ Meyer. Brutal misogynist whose films often featured women who were subjected to terrifyingly violent ordeals, or misunderstood feminist whose films often featured strong, sexually voracious women who refused to submit to mens’ violent whims? By common consensus, Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill just about falls into the latter category as it features an all-girl biker trio who run riot through the deserts of America. Quentin Tarantino would be nothing without it.

8. Barefoot in the Park (1967)
Without wishing to sound obsessed, this is Jane Fonda’s third entry on this list - hey, she was GREAT back in the 60s. But no matter how impressive the charming Ms Fonda is in this sparkling romantic comedy, it’s writer Neil Simon who excels with a typically witty tale of two newlyweds who struggle to settle into their dilapidated new apartment. A sharp, but still romantic, classic from one of cinema‘s best writers.

9. The Haunting (1963)
The sixties marked a watershed for modern horror with the likes of Psycho, Peeping Tom and Night of the Living Dead all pushing back boundaries. Sadly, their fame has overshadowed some of the more traditional fright-flicks of the period, and The Haunting is just one of the casualties. Directed by Robert Wise, it follows four people who get holed up in a haunted house. Pretty standard stuff you might think. But The Haunting’s brilliance is all in its direction, with Wise using light, shadow and suggestion to build a fiercely oppressive atmosphere that is just as scary as the ones Hitchcock, Powell and Romero created in the aforementioned taboo-busters.

10. Dr No (1962)
Dr No is hardly under-rated, but it is often overlooked in favour of the more obvious Bond classics of the 60s like Goldfinger, From Russia With Love and You Only Live Twice. It’s a shame too, because in this first entry into the mega-franchise, Connery mixes charm and danger perfectly and, unlike most other Bonds, actually has chemistry with his leading lady. Add into that exotic locations, an enigmatic villain and real intrigue and you have not only a great, overlooked Bond film, but also a great, overlooked spy film.

ALBUMS - By The Editor

1. The Ronettes - Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica (1964)
Phil Spector (whatever his personal 'issues') is the greatest pop music producer of all time, but he's best known for singles rather than albums. This means that this ludicrously-titled LP has been long-since forgotten and unavailable, even though it features pretty much all of The Ronettes' best songs, like Be My Baby, So Young, Baby I Love You, You Baby, Walkin' In The Rain, etc, etc. Pure pop perfection, so why is it so overlooked?

2. Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood - Nancy And Lee (1968)
There's never been a more surreal and fantastic partnership than Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood. The beautiful daughter of a music icon working with a fairly dowdy and quirky songwriter with a voice deeper than the Grand Canyon. Somehow though, they have incredible chemistry, with their voices blending perfectly on playful tracks like Lady Bird and I've Been Down So Long, and reaching incredible and weird new heights on the classic Some Velvet Morning.

3. The Zombies - Odyssey And Oracle (1968)
Pet Sounds and Sgt Pepper's are always the ones that get mentioned when you talk about the great adventurous pop albums of the late 60s, and The Zombies tend to get forgotten. It didn't help that they broke up when they finished it (intending it as one last, lasting statement, which it was), having been on a downward spiral commercially. It was most ignored at the time, but has become recognised as one of the great psychedelic albums and no collection is complete without it.

4. Laura Nyro - Eli And The Thirteenth Confession (1968)
Another album that would feature highly in most serious music fan's Top 60s Albums lists, but is hardly well known, Eli And The Thirteenth Confession has three hit singles on it, but unfortunately for Nyro, it was other artists who had the success with her songs. She never really became famous, even though this is an incredible collection of songs that take in jazz, pop, soul and folk.

5. The Beach Boys - Friends (1968)
The Beach Boys are hardly great underappreciated underdogs of the 1960s, but their albums after Brian Wilson's Smile meltdown don't always get the respect and acclaim they deserve. They were already an irrelevance by this stage, having been overtaken by bands like The Doors and the likes of Jimi Hendrix, but Friends is a really mellow and spiritual record that showcases the talents of the rest of the band as well as giving Wilson the chance to make simple but beautiful music.

6. Tammi Terrell - Irresistible (1968)
Yes, I've noticed that all of these albums seem to have come out in one year... Tammi Terrell is best known for her gorgeous duets with Marvin Gaye (still the benchmark for pop duets), but her only solo album shows that she was arguably Motown's most talented female vocalists (with a better voice than Diana Ross or Martha Reeves) and it's full of great soul music. Tragically, she died at the age of 24, so was never able to build herself the kind of solo career she had the potential for, but this is a lasting tribute to her talents.

7. The Left Banke - Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina (1967)
The most obscure release in this list, The Left Banke are best known for one of the title tracks of their debut album, Walk Away Renee, which became a massive hit for The Four Tops. Not that they were a soul band, far from it, having been one of the best baroque pop groups in America in the late 60s. They didn't last very long and have been largely forgotten, but if you can find it, this is an album well worth listening to.

8. Vince Guaraldi - A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1964)
The soundtrack to a documentary about Peanuts (which was never actually released, but led to the start of the TV specials), jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi helped set the tone for Charlie Brown's animated adventures with a classy and fun score that includes the famous Linus And Lucy theme that became the signature tune of Peanuts. Probably the most enjoyable and accessible instrumental jazz record of all time, no matter how much any of the purists might sneer at its simple melodies.

9. Stevie Wonder - Down To Earth (1966)
Compared to what he produced in the early 70s, it's easy to see why Down To Earth is such an overlooked Stevie Wonder album. It doesn't even have any of the hits that he had in the late 60s, but it's an important step in his development, with his voice moving from 'Little Stevie' to the warm and rich one we all know and love. It soars on this album, even when just running through the predictable cover versions that Motown made him include, and despite not being a classic, it's one of his most enjoyable records.

10. The International Submarine Band - Safe At Home (1968)
Everyone knows and loves Gram Parsons' solo albums and his work with The Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers, but his first band's album tends to get forgotten. It starts with one of his best songs, Blue Eyes, and also has Luxury Liner, another classic. The rest is padded out with covers of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, etc, but The International Submarine Band help Parsons start to take off here and it's a great album on its own merits.

2007-05-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-05-08T12:05:00.001-07:00

READING, WATCHING AND LISTENING TO

THE WRITER

LISTENING TO: Send Away The Tigers, Manic Street Preachers: Arcade Fire and Radiohead aside, the Manics are the only band whose music gets me really excited anymore, so it's a relief to be able to say that new album Send Away The Tigers is easily their most complete effort since the criminally overlooked This Is My Truth. The title track is a brilliant opener and obvious choice for a single, while Autumn Song and the snarling Imperial Bodybags display the band at their most melancholic and angry respectively. Obviously the flaws are still there, with Nicky dropping a lyrical clanger every now and then (“send away the tigers, because they’re creeping up and dangerous”) and one or two of James' solos feeling a little indulgent, but overall it's a superb return from one of the country's best bands. Now, if only they could tell me what the artwork is all about…

WATCHING: Army of Darkness. The last thing I saw at the cinema was the slightly disappointing Spider-Man 3. Great middle hour full of brilliant Sam Raimi stuff, rubbish last act full of idiotic action forced in by the studio. So, in a bid to remind myself of just how great Raimi is, I'm watching the Evil Dead trilogy, starting, because I'm a back to front kind of guy, with threequel Army of Darkness. Bruce Campbell? In medieval times? With a chainsaw? Hail to the king, baby!

READING: Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil. This four-part comic from graphic novelist Jeff Smith focuses on Billy Batson and his alter ego Captain Marvel. It’s as brilliantly cute as you’d expect from the guy behind Bone and with DC presenting it in premium format without those irritating adverts for products you can only get in America, it’s well worth getting into. Better be quick though, last week saw the release of part three and everything's set for a thrilling conclusion.

THE EDITOR

READING - The Dream Life Of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin. Set in the dying days of Communist Russia, Grushin's first novel tells the tale of Anatoly Sukhanov, a successful art critic with a very comfortable life who starts to have visions of his childhood and realises that he abandoned all of his ideals and dreams and has become someone he never intended to be. The writing's very evocative and the story hooks you in quite quickly even without anything really happening. It's a familiar tale of a mid-life crisis, but the setting is intruiging and it's just a very enjoyable book.

WATCHING - Last film at the cinema was the impressive Bridge To Terabithia, which deals with grief in a very mature and moving way for a Disney film. Last film on TV was Heirloom, a Chinese horror film full of the usual foreboding cliches of scary children and ghostly visions, but with a decent plot about family loyalties and revenge that at least keeps you watching until the end. Aside from films, both 24 and Lost have been really very good recently...

LISTENING TO - Quite a lot of music recently that would be called 'guilty pleasures', not that I care much for that classification. Sure, the likes of Journey, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner aren't exactly cool and never really were, but there's nothing guilty about liking a certain kind of music or a certain band. It's much worse to listen to something just because everyone else tells you that it's amazing rather than enjoying something in spite of criticial derision. Conversely, I'm also loving Asobi Seksu, Tara Fuki and Azam Ali...

2007-05-03T23:23:00.001-07:00

I have a confession to make: I'm a bit of a comic book geek. Yes, I know it’s un-cool, but there‘s just something about the big, bold world of superheroes that I can‘t help but love. On the other hand, though, I despise those peskily persistent reality TV shows that have cluttered up Saturday nights for what seems an eternity now. So, when I was handed Who Wants To Be A Superhero, the Sci-Fi Channel’s venture into the realm of reality, I was confronted with an inner dilemma Peter Parker himself would be proud of.

Thankfully, this six part show has about as much in common with reality as one of The Joker's maniacal schemes - and it‘s all the better for it. Debuting this weekend, it’s a wildly pantomimic flight of fancy which focuses on eleven random nobodies who have to live as self-created comic book characters in a bid to impress superheroic overlord Stan Lee. Whoever proves him/herself worthy of Lee’s praise will then be immortalised in both a Sci-Fi Channel original movie and Dark Horse comic book.

Unsurprisingly, such rewards attract a vast and colourful array of contestants, some of whom are more sincere than others. The mini-skirted Creature, gold-clad Lemuria and muscle-bound Iron Enforcer all seem to be budding actors cynically looking for a break, while the gladiatorial Ty'Veculus, with his entirely pointless apostrophe, is simply an irritation. Salvation comes in the shape of Cell Phone Girl, Feedback and the magnificently camp Major Victory, though, who bring a real sense of fun to their creations.

Sadly, some of this childish glee is hampered by the overwhelming American melodrama and the harshness of some of the tasks the contestants must perform in order to prove their superhero qualities (does anybody really need to see women attacked by two vicious, albeit highly trained, dogs?). Still, the group tackle them with such joy that it’s impossible not to be won over, making Who Wants To Be A Superhero simple, trashy entertainment which is perfect for the long, hot Bank Holiday Weekend.

Who Wants To Be A Superhero is showing throughout the Bank Holiday weekend on the Sci-Fi Channel.

2007-05-01T13:45:00.001-07:00

Top Ten: Spider-Man stories

1. Amazing Spider-Man 121: The Night Gwen Stacy Died (June 1973)
One of the most influential comic books ever written, Amazing Spider-Man 121 finds our hero’s then-girlfriend Gwen Stacy kidnapped by the Green Goblin and hurled off the top of Brooklyn Bridge. You may remember a similar idea with Mary Jane Watson formed the end of Spider-Man 1, but there’s no happy ending here as Spidey shoots down his web in an attempt to halt Gwen’s decent, only for the jolting stop to snap her neck. Brutal, but brilliant.

2. Spider-Man: Blue (July 2002 - April 2003)
In true comic book fashion though, Gwen hasn't really stayed dead, with the writers preferring to clone her and have her bear the Green Goblin's children (!!!). Such revisions and re-interpretations have irritated fans, but some work, as is the case with Spider-Man: Blue. Told across six issues, this mini-series is written by Lost producer Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Tim Sale (who has created some of the art for Heroes), and retells the story of how Peter and Gwen first fell in love.

3. Spider-Man Annual 21 (1987)
After several break-ups and a couple of rejections, Peter finally persuaded Mary Jane to settle down and tie the knot in this memorable edition of the Amazing Spider-Man annual. Blending charming sentiment with a pleasing amount of good old-fashioned action, writer David Michelinie produced a story that tapped perfectly into the bittersweet brilliance of Stan Lee’s greatest creation.

4. Amazing Spider-Man 97: In The Grip Of The Goblin (June 1971)
At its peak in the 1960s and 70s, Spider-Man was a soap opera which focused on the tangled love lives of Peter, Gwen, Harry Osborn and Mary Jane, and this issue is a great example of that approach at its very best. Preferring to flirt with Peter, MJ dumps Harry, leading him into a downward spiral of self-loathing and drug abuse that is only worsened by the re-appearance of the Green Goblin. Classic stuff from Stan Lee, which has undoubtedly inspired Sam Raimi’s romanticised approach to the films.

5. Amazing Spider-Man 143: And The Wind Cries Cyclone (April 1975)
Despite boasting that it featured ‘possibly the most bizarre super-villain in the annals of Spider-dom’, this issue is best remembered for marking a turning point in the relationship between Peter and Mary Jane. Pete is shipped off to Paris to help out Daily Bugle editor J Jonah Jameson and on his exit from the airport shares a steamy kiss with MJ, thus cementing a relationship that had been simmering since the death of Gwen.

6. Amazing Spider-Man 50: Spider-Man No More (July 1967)
The basis for Spider-Man 2, this iconic issue sees Peter finally down his spandex and quit as the webbed wonder. As well as being one of the seminal moments in Spider-Man’s history, it also displays writer/illustrator team Stan Lee and John Romita at the height of their power as they effortlessly depict Peter’s growing frustration and eventual return to his superhero responsibilities in just twenty small pages.

7. Amazing Spider-Man 90: And Death Shall Come (November 1970)
Those Stacys never had much luck and in Amazing Spider-Man 90 it was Gwen’s father who bit the dust to sink Peter even further into his already-immense guilt complex. While Spidey and Doctor Octopus battle it out on the rooftops above, Police Captain George Stacy protects those below until tragedy strikes and rubble falls...

8. Amazing Spider-Man 480: Nuff Said (May 2002)
As anyone who suffered through the protracted torture of the recent Civil War story will know, Marvel love their gimmicks. Problem is, they’re usually all rubbish. Thankfully, they do sometimes get it right and this entirely dialogue-free issue, in which the then-separated Mary Jane and Peter muse on their troubled relationship, is a great example.

9. Kraven’s Last Hunt (September - November 1987)
Falling in line with the rest of the 1980s comic book industry, Spidey went dark in this title-spanning mini-series from writer JM DeMatteis. Russian jungle man Kraven the Hunter was always one of Spider-Man’s more ridiculous foes, but here he is given a noble demise as he moves in for one last battle against his webbed adversary.

10. Amazing Fantasy 15 (August 1962)
Here’s where it all began, not in Amazing Spider-Man, but the final issue of an anthology series called Amazing Fantasy. Our friendly neighbourhood wallcrawler graced the cover and eleven pages inside, paving the way for Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko to weave their teenaged tale of power and responsibility. Comic books would never be the same again…

2007-04-24T10:17:00.001-07:00

ENTERTAINMENT ESSENTIALS - Pet Sounds

It seems strange to have an Entertainment Essentials inspired by an Adam Sandler movie, but this one does owe a small debt to 50 First Dates. After all, if an album can survive one of its best moments being caterwauled by both Sandler and Drew Barrymore, then it really must be something special. And make no mistake, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys IS truly special in a way that no other album I can think of is.

Sure, it's an obvious choice for this kind of praise, as one of those records that always gets in Top 100 lists compiled by Baby Boomers at magazines like Rolling Stone and Uncut, and it is one of those 'Sacred Cows' that hip young critics love to sneer at, but none of that matters. Pet Sounds has more heart, more beauty, more melodies and more balls than any other album in history.

Firstly, a bit of background. The Beach Boys were the biggest band in America by 1966, with only those English ragamuffins The Beatles bigger than them. Their success was built on their image as Californian surfer-dudes responsible for some of the best pop music ever written. However, resident genius Brian Wilson was dissatisfied with the limitations of being 'that surf band', not least because only his brother Dennis actually surfed outside of promotional photographs.

Having suffered a nervous breakdown on tour, he returned home while his band-mates continued to perform live without him, leaving Wilson alone to work on a whole new direction. Along with lyricist Tony Asher, he came up with some heart-breakingly wonderful songs and using a bunch of legendary studio musicians (mostly Phil Spector veterans) he went about recording the album without his band, whose only real contribution was the vocals (apart from some meddling from infernal 'front-man' Mike Love).

From the yearning Wouldn't It Be Nice (the song from 50 First Dates) to the sighing Caroline No, Pet Sounds was literally jam-packed with great pop ballads that had the power in their lyrics alone to touch anyone with a soul. The vocals were as amazing as all the other Beach Boys records, with Wilson and his brother Carl on particularly fine form (with the latter coming of age on the jaw-dropping God Only Knows). However, it's the music and the production that keep you coming back to it.

No other album would stand up to the kind of analysis and deconstruction that you can give Pet Sounds by listening to the Sessions box-set or the 5.1 Surround Sound version available on DVD (which is literally mind-blowing). None of the technological advances of the last 40 years have come close to outdoing what Wilson achieved with his personal brand of obsessive genius and while he burnt out trying to go one better with Smile a couple of years later, Pet Sounds would surely have still been his masterpiece anyway.

Certainly none of the deserved accolades that followed the belated release of the newly-recorded Smile a few years ago managed to overshadow what Wilson had achieved at his peak. It's a genuine tragedy that the Beach Boys weren't able to build on this and perhaps go on to become more important as artists than the Beatles, but with Pet Sounds they had at least recorded something that will surely be treasured as a musical milestone forever. Like Paul McCartney once said: "I figure no one is educated musically 'til they've heard that album."

2007-04-17T13:10:00.001-07:00

TOP TEN TEAR-JERKERS

The Editor

1. The Closing Montage Of Six Feet Under
As a TV show that dealt with death and heartbreak on a weekly basis, there was only ever one way for Six Feet Under to bow out. A closing montage set to Sia's breathtaking Breathe Me intersperses clips of Claire Fisher driving to a new life with flash-forwards showing the characters we've all grown to love growing up, getting married, getting old and dying. That might sound depressing, but like the whole show that proceeded it, the ending was beautifully-judged and absolutely heartbreaking.

2. Johnny Cash's Hurt Video
A music video of an old man whose creative peak was almost 50 years earlier isn't the kind of thing that normally gets much attention, but Johnny Cash was never one to be told what to do. His cover of the Nine Inch Nails song had already massively surpassed the original, but the decision to film the video in his house, surrounded by the fading memories of his life was inspired. The clincher is when Cash's wife June appears on the stairs behind him, not long before both passed away. Almost fittingly, the house recently burned down before Bee Gee Barry Gibb could move in...

3. Grandad's Funeral In Only Fools And Horses
What made Only Fools And Horses one of the greatest sitcoms of all time was the way John Sullivan managed to work in the kind of pathos and emotion that you wouldn't find in most other sitcoms. He could make you laugh very easily, but he could also make you cry and the best example of this was Grandad's Funeral in Series Four. Filmed just days after the real funeral of actor Lennard Pearce, the raw emotions of David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst are clearly very real, but Sullivan's writing is also excellent, using the very sad situation to cut right to the heart of Del Boy, making him so much more than just the flash market trader cliche.

4. The End Of Blackadder Goes Forth
Another sitcom! Unlike Only Fools... Blackadder was never big on pathos, but that only made it more remarkable that Ben Elton and Richard Curtis chose to end on such a sombre note. The whole last episode was full of grim humour as the men in the WWI trenches prepared to make The Big Push. The cruel way that the characters are given a last minute sniff of a reprieve before being sent to their deaths in a moving finale is very British and very well done. You wouldn't get that in Friends.

5. Hotel Rwanda
Tears of rage and shame as much as grief, Hotel Rwanda is a brutal and moving film throughout, but the most affecting scene is when the staff and local 'residents' of the besieged hotel see UN troops seemingly coming to their rescue, only to discover that the soldiers are only there to help get the foreign journalists, photographers and guests to safety, leaving the Rwandans completely at the mercy of the machete-wielding killers. The guilt of those being saved and those doing the saving as well as the sheer desperation of those being forsaken make this scene almost unbearable.

6. Stand By Me
As if a film named after Ben E. King's beautiful song wasn't enough, Stephen King's nostalgic tale of childhood has plenty of moments to make you tear up, not least the more touching scenes between the friends. However, it's River Phoenix's performance as the doomed Chris Chambers that really stands out, not least when he breaks down and reveals just how much he wants to escape the destiny that his no-good family seem to have for him. With the knowledge of the fate of the awaited that talented young actor, it's all the more upsetting.

7. Midnight Cowboy
One of the best films of all time, Midnight Cowboy has two great performances from John Voight and Dustin Hoffman, a legendary soundtrack, plenty of atmosphere and bucketfuls of pathos. It's also got a really tragic ending that, like so many already in this list, is all about false hope and cruel reality. With Ratso Rizzo finally getting the trip of a lifetime to Florida, no-one could possibly not cry at the tragic moment when Joe Buck tells him that they're there and realises that Ratso isn't there at all.

8. Norma's Death In The Royle Family
The final special of The Royle Family started off as a fairly normal episode, with plenty of trademark humour from Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash, but halfway through, the jokes just stop as the tears start to flow for the dying Norma. The performances are all fantastic, the script is spot-on and there's not a dry eye in the house. Literally.

9. A.I.
Not one of Steven Spielberg's more lauded films, A.I. confused and irritated movie-goers and critics alike, and there's no doubt it has its flaws, mostly coming from the strange mish-mash of Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick. One of the more criticised aspects is the slightly surreal ending with the robots/aliens and the return of little Haley Joel Osment's long-dead mum. It was accused of being a hopelessly schmaltzy ending, but anyone with a mum can relate to the emotions involved and when you get past the cynicism, it's really very sad.

10. Dumbo
Another 'mum' moment, the scene where Dumbo's mother is unfairly chained up and locked away by the circus staff and struggles to comfort her son is a real choker. The death of Bambi's mum is the more famous moment, but the wrench of seeing mother and child so cruelly separated is arguably more affecting, particularly when they managed to connect and Dumbo is rocked to sleep by his mother's trunk.

The Writer

1. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
People often accuse Steven Spielberg of manipulation and over-sentimentality, with E.T frequently cited as a prime example. But what those critics fail to notice is that the film is more than cheap theatrics; it's a melancholic tale of a boy growing up and having to face up to the fact that life isn't always perfect. The 'Come...Stay' scene is simply magnificent, but it's the moment when Spielberg cuts from Elliot and E.T to Dee Wallace Stone as Elliot's mother which really gets me, as she kneels powerlessly watching her son endure the terrible pain of losing a friend. Perfect.

2. Radiohead’s Street Spirit
The greatest album closer ever written, Street Sprit is Radiohead at their bittersweet best. Yeah, that’s right, I said bittersweet. The ‘depressing’ aspect of Britain’s Best Band is well documented, but fails to grasp their more optimistic side which is heard in Thom Yorke’s closing cry of ‘immerse your soul in love’. Not miserable, but tearjerking in its idealistic beauty.

3. The Apartment
Tears can be jerked from happy occasions rather than just sad ones, as the final scenes of Billy Wilder’s masterpiece The Apartment prove. The film finds Jack Lemmon’s business drone Bud Baxter renting out his apartment to his superiors so they can enjoy affairs without their wives knowing. Sadly one of the flings is with the apple of Baxter’s eye, Shirley McClaine’s Fran. All hope seems lost for Buddy boy until Fran hears that he’s stood up to his bosses and refused them access to the flat. As she runs down the road to his apartment, Adolph Deutsch’s music swells and the boy finally gets the girl. If only real life were as good.

4. Will Eisner’s Sewers
Found in his short story anthology New York: The Big City, this one-page, four-panel strip is graphic novel maestro Will Eisner at his very best. We focus on a New York sewer grate as the rain washes away traffic notices, adverts, lottery tickets and, tragically, a letter from a bride-to-be to her ex-boyfriend explaining she will be married in a week. A masterfully told short about the insignificance of human relationships in modern cities, this proves why Eisner is so well-loved in the comic book industry.

5. The Death of Bill Hicks
Sure, Bill Hicks' style was confrontational, but what made his stand up - and untimely death at the age of 32 - so affecting is that he was ultimately a humanitarian who was simply aghast that people couldn’t just, you know, get along with each other. Read the ‘Love All The People’ collection for some stinging observations on George Bush Snr, Iraq Part 1 and the corruption of capitalism and then shed a tear as you realise that the idiots in power didn’t actually listen.

6. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
No, no, it’s not in here for its emotional content (don’t be so silly), but for the crushing realisation that George Lucas didn’t have a clue what he was doing with the prequels all along. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that it dawns on you. Is it the part when you notice that General Grievous serves no real purpose at all? Or the bit where Lucas circles his camera around Anakin and the newly unveiled Emperor in a last gasp bit to be dramatic. Or maybe it’s the moment when we’re told (by a computer generated robot no less) that Padme has ‘lost the will to live’, despite the fact she’s just given birth (to twins!!!) and believes ‘there’s still some good in Anakin’. Probably a bit of all three to be honest.

7. Requiem for a Dream
Good god this is a depressing film. A (very) cautionary tale about the perils of drug-taking, Darren Aronofsky’s sophomore effort is so gut-wrenching because our protagonists are not druggie bastards, but normal people sucked into a downward spiral by the pursuit of their dreams. Particularly haunting is Ellen Burstyn, whose pitch-perfect performance as a woman who gets hooked on diet pills so she can fit into her best dress for a TV appearance was overlooked by the Academy in favour of Julia Roberts’ turn in Erin flippin’ Brockovich. Now THAT’S depressing.

8. The final Calvin and Hobbes strip
Tearjerking more for its poignancy than out-and-out sadness, the final strip of Bill Watterson’s wryly witty comic Calvin and Hobbes is the perfect way for the bratty boy and his beloved stuffed tiger to bow out. The mischievous pair stand in a snow-covered meadow with their trusty sledge in tow. ‘It’s a magical world, Hobbes ol’ buddy,” says Calvin as the duo ride into immortal childhood, “let’s go exploring.”

9.Post season 4 Happy Days
It’s always tragic when a great TV show comes to an end, but it’s even worse when a formerly great one plods along for endless seasons long after its sell by date. Case in point: Happy Days. In the first few seasons, the show was untouchable: crisp writing, memorable characters and rose-tinted nostalgia all blended to make the perfect sitcom. The warning sign came at the end of season four when The Fonz was inexplicably baptised, and it continued its irrevocable slide from then on in: jumping the shark, writing out Richie and eventually burning down the original Arnold’s. The show in its final few seasons was more cheap, tacky and soulless than a Gwen Stefani song.

10. Writing Top Ten tearjerkers lists
Great, now I’m depressed!

2007-04-15T00:03:00.000-07:00

WATCHING, LISTENING TO, READING...

The Editor

WATCHING: The slushy, but undeniably moving TV movie Tuesdays With Morrie (based on Mitch Albom's book), based on a true story of how he spent time with an inspirational former tutor of his, who was dying of Lou Gehrig's Disease and wanted to teach him one final lesson - about life. As cheesy as that sounds, and despite the fact that it's 'presented' by Oprah, it really is a cut above any other TV movie and certainly gives the audience plenty to ponder about how they live their own lives and what's really important to them. The emotional stakes are raised even higher with the knowledge that Jack Lemmon, who gives a typically great performance as Morrie, was starring in his last film, dying two years later.

LISTENING TO: Most recently, Jean-Michel Jarre's great new album Tea and Teo (i can't be bothered putting in the accents, sorry), Amy Winehouse's cover of Valerie for Mark Ronson's Version album, plus the UK reissues of Tina Dico's first two albums. Oh, and Blondie's wonderful self-titled debut.

READING: Drama City by George P. Pelecanos. While he'll probably never top his D.C. Quartet of novels for their amazing characterisation and cultural backdrops, Pelecanos is still one of the finest American crime novellists, and has a style of writing that is so easy to read and even easier to get hooked into. I've only read about five pages so far, but the story's taking shape very nicely, even if it does seems to bear a striking resemblance to Elmore Leonard's Out Of Sight...

The Writer

WATCHING: The final, brilliant episode of Life on Mars. A superbly written piece of drama which managed to address all the pressing questions without stifling the characters (Lost writers, take note). A first act red herring worked a treat, while the ending was surprisingly (and pleasingly) ambiguous - as well as being fairly bittersweet. Ultimately, it's been the best thing on TV this year, along with the return of Doctor Who and the latest Louis Theroux documentary.

LISTENING TO: The radio. Haven't listened to any new music aside from the dross Radio 1 pumps out for a few weeks now, so I‘ve really got nothing to report. The only purchase I’d consider making at the moment is Underworld and John Murphy's score for Danny Boyle's Sunshine - or it would be if it had a release date. Come on, sort it out!

READING: I'm continuing to plough through A Man on The Moon (what? It's a big book and I'm a slow reader!) Still good stuff, brilliantly written and researched by Andrew Chaikin. Science is fun, kids. Check it out.

2007-04-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT…Mary Harron

As South Park’s toe-tapping ditty ‘Blame Canada’ proves, America’s northern neighbours are all-too-often given the raw end of the deal. Mocked by their flashier counterparts and mostly ignored by other nations, their effect on Western culture is actually fairly immense. They may be considered Americans now, but actors like Dan Ackroyd, Keanu Reeves and William Shatner were all born north of the border along with influential directors like James Cameron and David Cronenberg, who have both contributed to American culture, while at the same time commenting on it.

This week’s There’s Something About… also falls into that category. Mary Harron may not be particularly well known and has only made three films across her relatively short career, but she is a bold, brave and intelligent director, whose movies have all taken a fascinating and relevant peek into the troubled and turbulent times of late 20th Century America.

Her debut came in 1996 in the shape of I Shot Andy Warhol. A stylish biopic of militant feminist, SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto writer and Andy Warhol assailant Valerie Solanis, the film neatly compares two of the most significant cultural movements of the late twentieth century and the two figures who embodied them.

On the one hand, we have Solanis (played with gritty charm by Lili Taylor), the deeply intelligent radical who attempted anything to put her message of female superiority across. On the other, there’s Warhol (a captivating Jarrad Harris), the gifted but somewhat callous artist, who often seems as superficial as the bitchy hangers-on who surround his infamous Factory workshop.

With his ‘famous for five minutes’ prediction and soup can paintings, Warhol, of course, was the one who ultimately found long-lasting success, but Harron’s film attempts to redress the balance. Far from being the crackpot mentalist her later actions and subsequent incarceration would suggest, Harron shows Solanis was a pioneer of the feminist movement, one who, with a little more planning and support, could have been as well known as Emmeline Pankhurst or Germaine Greer.

By finding the humanity behind such a controversial and misunderstood figure, you’d expect Harron to be pigeonholed as a feminist filmmaker. However, with her second effort she defied stereotypes and took on Bret Easton Ellis’ supposedly misogynistic novel American Psycho, in which businessman Patrick Bateman goes on a murderous rampage through 1980s New York. (NB: for the purposes of this article, we’re accepting that the murders actually happened. Like the book, the film keeps the truth ambiguous.)

Together with co-writer Guinevere Turner, Harron toned down much of the extreme violence of the novel, meaning that some of Ellis’ finer moral points about the media’s reporting of serial killers are lost. What remains though is a cutting and sharply funny satire of yuppie America which is only now starting to gain the kind of respect it deserved upon release in 2000.

An emasculated little boy, desperately seeking power and void of any personality of his own, Bateman is portrayed as the ultimate 80s man, lost in a sea of faceless drones and reduced to murderous rampages in a bid etch out some kind of identity for himself.

Sadly for poor old Paddy, it doesn’t work. He may be the one killing and maiming innocents, but society is just as degenerate and refuses to believe or even acknowledge the killings. When he confesses to his lawyer, it’s laughed off as a joke and when he claims to be into ‘murders and executions’, his words are misunderstood and heard as ‘mergers and acquisitions’.

Most disturbing is the brilliantly captured moment when he returns to the scene of one of his crimes. Rather than finding a carved-up body and blood-spattered walls, he is presented with a freshly decorated, clean apartment complete an estate agent who ushers him out hurriedly so she can make the sale. It’s blackly comic brilliance, loaded with menace, and the fact that it works so well is mostly down to lead Christian Bale, whose casting Harron had to fight tooth and nail for.

While the studio wanted a Leonardo Di Caprio who was still hot off the success of Romeo and Juliet and Titanic, Harron demanded Bale, even quitting the project when it looked like the studio would win out. Thankfully, she got her way and the decision to cast the then relatively unknown actor works a treat as his turn is a masterpiece of macabre pantomime in which he keeps the character undeniably unhinged, but frighteningly real.

Six years later, Harron followed up this stroke of genius with another bold move: hiring Gretchen Mol to play the eponymous heroine of The Notorious Bettie Page. Telling the story of the 50s pin-up girl/bondage queen/latter day kitsch icon during her modelling year only, the film is a nostalgic trip through a long-dead America which posits Page not as an exploited victim or even feminist pioneer (as many have claimed), but a somewhat naïve innocent, who grasps and is comfortable with the idea of nudity, but perhaps doesn’t understand how the pictures that were taken of her would be used.

Mol, who fell off the radar somewhat after Vanity Fair hailed her as the next big thing in 1998, brings suitable mystery to the character, grounding the occasionally too-lightweight script in a necessary sense of realism and nailing Bettie‘s cute facial expressions and girl next door charm. Wonderful support is found in the shape of the returning Harris and Taylor, but what ultimately makes the film fly is Harron and her sublime use of colour.

For Bettie’s time in the sexually-repressed New York during her bondage shoots, Harron uses dusty black and white. Realistic but claustrophobic, it is contrasted sharply with the explosion of glorious Technicolor which is used to denote the freedom Page felt on the beaches of Miami during her lighter pin-up sessions for photographer Bunny Yeager. It’s such a simple, almost obvious, idea, but it tells you so much more about Page visually than could be put across through words.

Sadly, the film was overlooked upon release last August, thanks mainly to Harron’s refusal to provide pat answers to Page’s mysterious life (she is currently a recluse). But the model is used here mostly as a cipher to investigate wider issues of sexuality, repression and civil liberties and with Janet Jackson’s nip-slip a few years ago still influencing what can and cannot be shown on US TV, such subtext ensures that the film, like all of Harron's work, is a revealing and all-too-relevant window into today’s America.

2007-04-03T14:13:00.001-07:00

TOP TEN ANIMATED FILMS...

THE WRITER'S LIST

1. Bambi
It may be infamous for its haunting death scene, but Bambi is at the top of this list mostly for its animation. Long before CGI sauntered in and gave everything a somewhat unnatural sheen, director David Hand and his team of animators created a stunning, hand-drawn, look at cutesy animals that hasn‘t been bettered since. The opening, in which the camera pans across a beautifully hand-painted forest, is a gorgeous example of Disney at its very best.

2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Yes, it may only be part-animated, but Robert Zemeckis’ zany trip through Toon Town is a triumph of technical achievement, which is also steeped in cartoon history. Betty Boo has a melancholic appearance in a club, while Bugs Bunny is seen parachuting with Mickey Mouse in one of the film’s most memorable sequences. The corking, film noir-informed plot, only adds to its brilliance.

3. Toy Story
Pixar are the company that really began the current boom in computer generated animation and, despite some fine efforts from other studios, they are the only ones to repeatedly produce brilliance. Picking the best of the bunch then is difficult, but while the likes of Monster‘s Inc, Cars and The Incredibles are all superb, it‘s this first effort (and, to a slightly lesser extent, its sequel) that still shines the brightest. John Lasseter’s ‘toys come to life’ tale is simple but brilliant and touches upon the big themes of friendship and mortality in a way most modern animations can only dream about.

4. The Iron Giant
One of the last great hurrahs of traditional animation, Brad Bird’s adaptation of Ted Hughes’ short story retains all the original’s subtext, but infuses it with a modern sensibility so it still applies to today’s youth. The fact that it’s pretty much all hand drawn (with only a few computer-powered embellishments here and there) simply adds to its poignancy and shows 2-D animation still has a place in our CG-drenched world.

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas
Even to this day, the baffled TV networks seem confused as to when it’s best to schedule NBX: Halloween or Christmas. Of course, the festive period is always a good time to watch this tale of Jack Skellington’s commandeering of December 25th, but Tim Burton’s magical story and some stunning animation from stop-motion master Henry Selick mean that it’s universal enough to be enjoyed at any time of the year.

6. Grave of the Fireflies
This heartbreaking tale of two children trying to survive in wartime Japan is certainly not for sensitive kids. Dark, complex and incredibly upsetting at times, it does away with the magical escapism often associated with Studio Ghibli films, in favour downbeat realism and an ending which is by far the most tragic the animated medium has ever produced.

7. Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers
It may only be a short, but The Wrong Trousers is brimming with wit and ideas. From villainous penguin Feathers McGraw disguising himself as a chicken via the cunning use of a rubber glove, to the thrilling train set chase which brings our disunited heroes back together, Nick Park’s film boasts an imagination and sense of love missing from the cookie-cutter world of modern animation.

8. Kiki’s Delivery Service
Many would opt for Spirited Away from Hayao Miyazaki’s impressive oeuvre, but I’m going for this intimate tale of a young witch. The Japanese maestro can do epics such as Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle like no-one else, but the smaller, more low key stories are when he really shines and this one is the pick of the bunch, with our young heroine coming of age in a sweet, simple story that also stars a talking cat. What more do you need?

9. Finding Nemo
Pixar’s fifth effort marks the point at which CG animation really matured. Along with human skin, water had always been the most difficult thing to reproduce with pixels, but directors Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich make it look easy with some lush deep sea visuals in this tale of a fishy father looking for his lost son. Throw in some great set-pieces, vegetarian sharks and, in Ellen DeGeneres’ forgetful Dory, one of the best characters Pixar have ever created and you have a real classic.

10. South Park: The Movie
As someone who was never really into the TV series, I was pleasantly surprised by the South Park movie. Sharply satirical, it also has some surprisingly toe-tapping musical numbers, including the barnstorming Blame Canada. Trey Parker and Matt Stone came nowhere near matching it with their funny but rather hollow Team America: World Police.

THE EDITOR'S LIST

1. Spirited Away
The film that introduced me (as it did for many others I assume) to the world of Studio Ghibli, Spirited Away is still the one I keep coming back to despite the amazing other works of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. With an amazing story, delightful score and some sumptuous visuals (most memorably the train seemingly gliding across the water) Spirited Away is the most complete of all the Ghibli films.

2. Transformers: The Movie
A real nostalgia choice here, but I seriously cannot imagine too many other kids' cartoon movies having the sheer drama, excitement and emotional impact of Transformers. With the biggest battle imaginable at the start, plus the shock death of Optimus Prime, plus the voice talents of people like Orson Welles (seriously), Leonard Nimoy, Scatman Crothers and Eric Idle, it's got everything. It's got The Touch...

3. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs
The original Disney movie and still the classic by which all others are judged, and really by which all animated films are judged. It's very old-fashioned and of its time, but the songs are great, the story is timeless and the animation is excellent. Considering it was known as "Disney's Folly" while in production, it's pretty obvious who had the last laugh.

4. Fantasia
Ground-breaking in so many ways, Fantasia not only eschewed a traditional storyline, but it also introduced stereophonic sound and to this day is probably the first real classical music that children are exposed to. It has had its critics, not least Pauline Kael and some classical purists, but there's just nothing like it out there and you really can't imagine modern day Disney (or any other major studio) doing anything this adventurous can you?

5. South Park: The Movie
South Park was funny before the movie came out, but it was still a fairly basic comedy that relied on offensive humour without really making a point of it. The Movie however, was a instant triumph, using its license to swear like never before, making for a hilarious film that also had a strong anti-censorship message. Buoyed by its success, Trey Parker and Matt Stone went on to really thrive with the vastly-improved TV series, even if its popularity over here was hit by some bizarre scheduling...

6. Pinocchio
Classic early Disney, Pinocchio is one of the darkest of their films, but also one of the most magical and enduring. When You Wish Upon A Star is the all-time best Disney song, perfectly summing up the innocent appeal of it, even now that its such a cynical gigantic behemoth of a company. The mixture of light and dark is perfectly judged and it's almost impossible not to enjoy.

7. Laputa Castle In The Sky
Not as famous as some of the other Miyazaki movies, Laputa is nevertheless one of the best. It starts off as a fairly routine adventure story with action and chase scenes, but like most Ghibli films there is an ecological and pacifist message behind it all that becomes clear as it reaches its climax. The visuals are stunning and Joe Hisaishi's score is typically lovely.

8. Belleville Rendezvous
It came out at a time when Spirited Away had revitalised animation at the cinemas, and Belleville did a lot better because of it. Some of the anti-American jibes are a bit much, but Sylvain Chomet's fairly surreal tale is still very entertaining and at times affecting even though the overall tone is fairly satirical and bizarre. Endlessly creative and entertaining, it's a modern classic.

9. Dumbo
The most emotional of all the Disney films. Bambi might have the death of his mother, but when Dumbo is separated from his mum at the circus, it takes a heart of stone not be upset by it. A tale of the plucky underdog and hopeless outsider, this flying elephant is the most appealing of all of Disney's heroes. With the legendary 'drunk' scene counting amongst the most surreal of all of the House of Mouse's musical numbers, Dumbo really does fly.

10. The Flight Of The Dragons
Another personal choice, this Rankin and Bass movie from the early 80s was never particularly acclaimed or particularly famous, but is one that seems to have touched those who have managed to see it, as it has an impressive 7.7/10 rating on IMDB. The late John Ritter stars as a writer who goes back in time to an era when dragons fly and the worlds of science and magic are coming into conflict. It's never been on DVD, so you'll struggle to find it, but it's well worth searching for the VHS...

2007-03-29T12:39:00.001-07:00

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT... THE WiLDHEARTS

Your first time is always special and my first gig was The Wildhearts at Warrington Parr Hall on April 14th 1996, and it's still one of the best that I've ever been to, even though it nearly destroyed my dad's eardrums and I could hardly walk when I came out because I'd been kneeling down in the seating area around near the top of the stage. If I hadn't declared my undying love to Ginger, Danny, Jef and Ritch before that gig, then I certainly had by the time they finished the encore of Don't Worry 'Bout Me.

If there was any justice in the world, which there of course isn't, The Wildhearts would be the biggest rock band around, because they're certainly amongst the best these British isles have ever produced, right up there with Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. At times it looked like they might be able to make it big, but part of being "rock 'n' roll" is having that self-destructive streak and The Wildhearts certainly have that, having split up as many times as most of us have had breakfasts.

Ginger IS The Wildhearts, having started the band in 1989, and he's the only constant in an ever-shifting line-up. Their first EP came out in 1992, called Mondo Akimbo A-Go-Go and 15 years on it still sounds fresh and exciting, not least the classic Turning American, which still features in their gigs to this day. However good their first two EPs were, their debut album Earth vs The Wildhearts took things another level with a collection of stunning tracks that mixed heavy metal riffs with power pop melodies.

The high point of the album was My Baby Is A Headfuck, which featured Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson in one of his last recordings before he died soon afterwards. With great singles like Greetings From Shitsville, Suckerpunch and the hyperactive Caffeine Bomb (the song that helped me discover them), the album simply didn't have a weak track and will hopefully one day be recognised as one of the greatest British rock debuts of all time.

But Ginger had only just started to show off his talents, with fan-club-only follow-up Fishing For Luckies one of the most experimental and exciting rock albums released in the 90s. From folky sing-a-long Geordie In Wonderland to 12 minute sci-fi epic Sky Babies, it was easy to see why record label EastWest baulked at the idea of trying to sell it commercially, but their cowardice was their failing and the start of the disintegration of their relationship with the band.

Second album proper p.h.u.q. (say it however you like) saw guitarist CJ sacked and the band have a few more minor hits with I Wanna Go Where The People Go and Just In Lust. In 1996 they re-released Fishing For Luckies with some new tracks, including Sick Of Drugs, which got into top twenty, and with a relatively settled line-up, things seemed to be going well. Of course, it all went wrong, and they split before releasing Endless Nameless, a massively-underrated raging beast of distortion and feedback that sounded like career suicide.

They came back in 2001 with the Earth vs The Wildhearts line-up, and your Editor went to see them at Dudley JBs, only to witness yet another implosion as heroin addict bassist Danny scuffled with CJ and Ginger on stage after struggling his way through the first half of the show. However, in true Wildhearts style they battled on (not literally) with the bassist from the support band standing in, and when Danny returned they released The Wildhearts Must Be Destroyed in 2003.

It was a fairly lightweight return though, lacking the punch or insane genius of their classic material, and probably was their first slightly disappointing release. Fairly predictably, they split up again in 2005, despite having had a radio success with a cover of the Cheers theme tune (a b-side like so many of their classics - 29 x The Pain, Show A Little Emotion, Dangerlust, And The Bullshit Goes On, Shut Your Fucking Mouth And Use Your Fucking Brain, etc), and it looked like their time was finally up. They'd lived fast, died young (many times over) and left a beautiful corpse. But then it rose from the dead again late last year, with a line-up of Ginger, Scott Sorry (on bass), CJ and Ritch Battersby returning on drums.

They've got a new self-titled album out in April and Ginger has promised a return to their classic sound: "The melodies are still there, the big choruses are still there, but the mammoth guitar riffs are back and heavier than ever," he said, which promises much. They might never recapture the glory days of the mid-90s, but they will always be one of the most interesting and exciting rock bands around, and their live shows are legendary. They'll be playing the Academy in early May, so why not check them out? Who knows, they might change your life. They changed mine...

(PS, also well worth checking out is Ginger's excellent recent solo album Yoni...)

THE EDITOR

2007-03-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

Entertainment Essentials: The Right Stuff

Space, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, is big. Really, really big. So big, in fact, that Hollywood has struggled to capture its vastness on the silver screen. Space operas like Star Wars and existential odysseys such as Solaris and 2001 aside, the infinite realms of the universe and our tentative steps into them have rarely been investigated by anything other than TV documentaries. It’s a shame too because when space and NASA’s role in decoding its mysteries are translated onto the big screen the results are usually terrific, with Apollo 13, Contact and especially The Right Stuff leading the way.

Based on Tom Wolfe’s same-titled non-fiction novel, Phillip Kaufamn’s film turns the US-Soviet space race into a grand, three hour epic which effortlessly blends tragedy and comedy to form a slyly satirical look at a crucial moment in American history. Ostensibly, the focus is on the Mercury 7, the septuplet of test pilots who became the first Americans in space. However, Kaufman finds intriguing dramatic weight in contrasting the fates of Sam Shepherd’s rough and ready Chuck Yeager, the 50s’ greatest test pilot who never became a part of the project, and prim and proper John Glen, who became the first American to orbit the earth.

While Glen and his six colleagues are put under intense media spotlight, subjected to rigorous and absurd tests (most of them neatly parodied in The Simpsons’ Deep Space Homer episode) and exhibited by NASA and the government as bastions of American excellence, Yeager gets on with his work alone. There are no trumpet fares or ticker tape parades as he risks his life by breaking the sound barrier several times over.

However, while he laments the fact Yeager’s influence has been buried by the sands of time, Kaufman’s smart enough to realise that the astronauts never encouraged such attention themselves and were simply washed up on a tidal wave of national euphoria at a time when US citizens desperately needed a distraction from the escalating Cold War.

Crucially, the writer/director also shows the tremendous danger of their missions, ensuring the film never descends into the kind of chest-beating patriotism that the title may suggest. When Gus Grissom, for example, is not treated to the same heroic welcome as the others after a botched landing, Kaufman finds sympathy, as he does with the wives of both the astronauts and Yeager, who powerlessly watch as their husbands ride into the unknown inside rocket-powered tin cans, be they spaceships or planes.

Indeed, rather than hailing American jingoism, the film makes a point of subverting it, ironically bathing a Russian scientist in a mephistopholian haze and portraying two NASA recruitment agents (played by Harry Shearer and Jeff Goldblum) as bumbling buffoons. The Right Stuff isn’t a nationality, Kaufman suggests, and it certainly isn’t in physical prowess. It’s in the ability to stare destiny in the face and it should certainly be in your DVD collection.

2007-03-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

With Casino Royale out on DVD this week, our two bloggers have come up with their own personal Top Ten Bond Films lists and it has already stirred up plenty of debate and controversy, so see what you think and add your own...

THE EDITOR

1. You Only Live Twice
By this stage, Sean Connery WAS Bond (the poster even said as much), and Roald Dahl's fantastic script gave him the best lines of any Bond film (including the innuendo-ridden line 'don't get soap in my eye' which Connery seems to get great delight in saying whilst being bathed by Japanese ladies). Donald Pleasance's Blofeld set the standard by which all villains are measured, and John Barry's soundtrack is simply stunning. The perfect Bond film.

2. Goldfinger
This was the film that established 007 as a global phenomenon and it's easy to see why, with so many iconic scenes and lines. How they got away with having a character called Pussy Galore remains a mystery, but pretty much everything about Goldfinger is classic, with Connery wearing Bond like a second skin and exuding charm and danger like no-one that has followed him.

3. Live And Let Die
After the fiasco with George Lazenby and Connery's slightly off-beat return in Diamonds Are Forever, the franchise needed to come back strongly with its third 007, and Roger Moore got off to a flying start with this voodoo-riddled classic. He even manages to keep that pesky eyebrow in check, and with George Martin and Paul McCartney coming up with a timeless theme song, Bong was back on track.

4. The Living Daylights
Reaction to this was muted at first, with the Bond series in trouble after Moore had gone on at least a couple of films too long, with View To A Kill being the weakest in the whole series. Timothy Dalton's portrayal was a sea change for the character, dispensing with Moore's sardonic humour and being, well, a bit grumpy. However, it works really well and a much more grounded Cold War plotline meant that this was a welcome shift in direction for Bond.

5. License To Kill
Followed by an even more dramatic shift. License To Kill is sometimes criticised for being '007 Does Die Hard' and it's a fair cop, because it's the most obvious attempt by EON to appeal to an American audience, with almost the entire film set in America and featuring a rather un-British story about drugs and vengence. It's also much more violent, ushering Bond into the modern era, and while it still gets a mixed press, it's done very well and Dalton's final performance certainly stands up.

6. Casino Royale
Daniel Craig was under so much pressure to perform here that the initial reaction was almost hysterical relief that it was so good when expectations had been lowered by so much negative press. Rather over-long and at times ponderous, Casino Royale is still a massive improvement over some of the silliness of the later Brosnan films (though they were all ok), bringing it back down to earth, though hammering the final nail into the coffin of any kind of continuity in the series...

7. From Russia With Love
A big step forward from the iconic but flawed Dr No, From Russia With Love was where Bond got his wings. With a genuinely menacing baddie in Red Grant and the sexiest Bond girl in Tatiana Romanova, this is an excellent spy film as well as a great Bond film. John Barry's score is classy, and while it gets lost a bit during the scenes in Turkey and the gypsy camp, it's easy to see why so many would put this at number one.

8. The Spy Who Loved Me
Very much along the same lines as You Only Live Twice in terms of plot, The Spy Who Loved Me is one of the most ridiculous Bond films, but also one of the most enjoyable. It introduces one of the most iconic villains, Jaws, as well as one of the most popular cars, the Lotus Esprit that goes underwater. Maybe it was a step in the wrong direction, leading to the even sillier Moonraker, but it's still a lot of fun.

9. The World Is Not Enough
Probably a controversial choice just ahead of Dr No, this film has been rather unfairly dismissed in the grand scheme of Brosnan Bonds. A return to form after the slightly iffy Tomorrow Never Dies (a media baron? come on...) and much more grounded than Die Another Day, it has a great villain in Robert Carlyle and a great vampy villain girl in Sophie Marceau, as well as Judi Dench's first really good performance as M. And a really underrated theme tune to boot.

10. The Man With The Golden Gun
Lulu's campy theme tune tends to be used as a brush to tar this whole film, with Sheriff J W Pepper's second appearance rather grating, but it's still an excellent Bond film. It's got Christopher Lee as the bad guy for crying out loud. And he's got a third nipple! And The Man With The Golden Gun also has that spiral jump car stunt. What more do you need?

THE WRITER

1. From Russia With Love
Goldfinger has the iconic set-pieces, but From Russia With Love can boast a raw edge which its sequel lacks. Connery’s on top form, bringing charm to the casual brutality he displayed in Dr No, and for the first time we’re introduced to the pussy-loving (ahem) Blofeld.

2. Goldfinger.
Magnificently mad, the third outing for 007 really should collapse under the weight of its own silliness. That it’s gone on to become the template for all future entries is testament not only to Connery’s charm but also director Guy Hamilton’s deft, Boy‘s Own sense of fun.

3. Casino Royale
Perhaps it’s a little premature to put a film which was only released five months ago this high, but Casino Royale really is that good. Eva Green was born to play a Bond girl and Daniel Craig brought a dark but compassionate edge to the character which had not been seen since Timothy Dalton. Speaking of which…

4. Licence to Kill
If Casino Royale’s success proves anything it’s that Dalton was ahead of his time. The Hot Fuzz star may only have two films to his name, but with Licence to Kill, he was given a depth entirely absent from the Moore era. The only problem is that the best line of the entire series (“he disagreed with something that ate him”), goes to the villain.

5. You Only Live Twice
Roald Dahl scripts, Connery stars and Blofeld hollows out a volcano in the final truly great Bond since Dalton donned the tux. Escapist, but still grounded with Connery’s earthy edge, it’s only scuppered slightly by some dubious political incorrectness.

6. Goldeneye
With Communism long since consigned to the history book, James Bond had to quickly find his feet in the 1990s and did so with the energetic Goldeneye. Easily Pierce Brosnan’s best film, it benefits from two cracking set-pieces (the opening bungee jump and the St Petersberg tank chase) and has fun in recasting M as a woman. Shame the other Brosnan Bonds never hit the same heights.

7. The Spy Who Loved Me.
This is where myself and The Editor differ greatly. He likes the Moore era, I loathe it, so that’s why he makes his first appearance at number 7. The Spy Who Loved Me is easily the best of the Moore era thanks mostly to the first appearance of Jaws and the best Bond girl yet in the shapely form of Barbara Bach’s Anya Amasova. Agent Triple X indeed.

8. Live and Let Die.
The second and last Moore film to appear on this list, Live and Let Die actually contains the reason I dislike most of his entries into the series. In the film’s opening, he seduces a woman in typical fashion, using a magnetic watch to unzip her dress. It’s meant to be Bond at his most suave, but thanks to Moore’s false charm it comes off more lecherous than debonair as he utters the dire words: “sheer magnetism, darling.” Despite this, and an obvious Bond goes Blaxploitation plot, the film’s enjoyable nonsense which culminates in the stupidest villain death ever. Damn those compressed-air bullets.

9. Dr No
It’s a pity that Bond’s first big screen adventure is largely overlooked these days, because it’s a cracking little spy story with plenty of mystery and intrigue. It’s also the only one that feels like an actual film, rather than a BOND FILM, with Connery and Ursula Andress sharing what so few other Bond couplings do: chemistry.

10. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Yes, it’s camp. Yes, George Lazenby is more wooden than a table leg. And yes, it’s got some terrible continuity errors. But OHMSS is a glorious anomaly in the Bond franchise with a neat sting in the tale. Shame it was ruined by the opening of For Your Eyes Only. Damn you Roger Moore.

2007-03-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The Lazenby Bond film. Initially considered a flop, it's gone on to be claimed as one of the best, but doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Lazenby clearly isn't an actor, and the plot meanders along until the last half hour, with the scenes in Blofeld's mountain hideaway more like a bad Carry On film than anything else. The ending is still impressive, but how much worse would OHMSS have been if it had ended as originally intended, after the wedding and before the murder (which would have been at the start of Diamonds Are Forever if Lazenby had still been Bond)? It's not a disaster, but if Connery had stayed on, it could have been so much better...

LISTENING TO: Mano Negra's debut album Patchanka. The French mongrel punks led by Manu Chao may have taken their lead from The Clash, but they throw in everything else they could possibly have thrown in, with styles from all kinds of genres and countries. Best example is the cover of Leadbelly's Rock Island Line that takes in Beastie Boy hip-hop, rockabilly and Alvin and The Chipmunks. Chao would go on to even better things in his solo career, but Patchanka is a classic album that sounds as fresh and adventurous as anything out there.

READING: For One More Day by Mitch Albom. Another sentimental tale from the writer of Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Albom's books are the equivalent of Frank Capra films. If you're overly cynical or cold, you'll sneer at this story about a suicidal former baseball player who tries to kill himself and fails, ending up at his childhood home where his mother is waiting to look after him. His dead mother. So far so good...

THE WRITER

WATCHING: Walking with Monsters. A frankly frightening TV series which may be a good few years old now but can still boast a spider the size of a human head pitting its wits against a giant millipede the length of a car. What more does a boy need? At the cinema I last watched The Illusionist, a love story with no chemistry between leads Ed Norton and Jessica Biel which looks, feels and sounds like a dreadful period-set ITV1 drama premiere. Very dull.

LISTENING TO: Arcade Fire's Neon Bible. What can I say about Arcade Fire's immense follow-up to Funeral that hasn't already been said? Both lyrically and musically it's a more expansive piece of work than its predecessor and songs like Ocean of Noise and No Cars Go will be remembered as modern classics as stunning as Street Spirit and Paranoid Android. A rare masterpiece in a music scene drowning in drivel.

READING: Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. It's a shame that this corking little title is marketed as a comic book for teenage girls, because it's actually one of the best Spider-Man books around at the moment. That probably says more about the dreadful state core line Amazing Spider-Man currently finds itself in, but Sean McKeever's writing exhibits a knack for teen dialogue rarely seen beyond Joss Whedon's work and Takeshi Miyazawa has a Manga-inspired and charming art style. A must-read if you're sick of all this Civil War crap.

2007-03-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

TOP TEN: MOVIE SEQUELS

1. The Godfather Part 2
Although lacking the titanic presence of Marlon Brando and some of its predecessor's more iconic sequences, Godfather Part II is a more subtle, rounded and, dare I say it, intelligent film than Part 1 and more than deserving of its place in the record books as the first of only two sequels to win Best Picture (brownie points for those who can tell us the second).

2. Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
After the unusually dark and violent Temple of Doom, Steven Spielberg returned to the action/adventure template of Raiders of the Lost Ark and threw in a dash of knockabout comedy in the shape of Sean Connery as Indy’s dad. The result is just a Karen Allen away from beating Raiders.

3. Empire Strikes Back
Empire only at three? You better believe it, because while not entirely destructive, it’s very difficult indeed to reconcile the whiny, poorly developed Anakin we see at the end of Episode III with the brutish, Han Solo-torturing bastard we see here. Still one of the touchstone of pop culture, it’d probably be higher were it not for Jar Jar and co.

4. Dawn of the Dead
A rare example of a sequel which not only betters the original, but changes the formula altogether. While Night of the Living Dead is creepily dark, Dawn is gaudily bright, with Romero replacing the urgency of his genre-defining classic with the bored apathy of this film’s protagonists to form a superb comment on consumer culture as well a crackingly gory midnight movie.

5. Spider-Man 2
If the first Spider-Man film was a respectful introduction to the characters which rarely allowed Sam Raimi to break free, its sequel finds the director in full, hyper-kinetic mood hurling the camera from pillar to post and filming some superb set-pieces to boot (the train chase is a doozy). Throw in some nice character development and the best use of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head since Butch and Sundance and you have a superb set-up for this summer’s Spider-Man 3.

6. Aliens
James Cameron’s finest film by some distance, Aliens is the only time the director has convincingly matched up emotional content with his great talent for action. It helps that he already had great groundwork in the shape of Alien (still the better of the two), but here Cameron evolves the character of Ripley whilst also creating a few memorable ones of his own. Titanic would have improved immeasurably had Hudson been roaming about on board.

7. Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Another example of a film which, while not bettering its predecessor, evolves its mythos. While Gremlins was a wonderfully sadistic inversion of films like It’s A Wonderful Life, The New Batch features Joe Dante making a live action Chuck Jones cartoon, complete with cameos from Daffy and Bugs and a third act New York, New York sing-along. Not sure how a film as barmy as this ever got made, but we’re glad it did.

8. Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn
One of the few examples of a horror-comedy which manages to balance out its competing genres well, Sam Raimi’s manic follow-up to The Evil Dead features Bruce Campbell at his hyperactive best, some truly ridiculous camerawork and a newly-severed possessed hand being trapped in a bucket weighed down by a copy of A Farewell to Arms. Who needs sophistication, eh?

9. Back to the Future Part II
Unfairly criticised for being overly complicated, the second film in Robert Zemeckis’ time-travel trilogy is only slightly inferior to the first thanks to another winning turn from Michael J Fox and enough paradoxes to give even Stephen Hawking a headache. Oh and it‘s got hover boards as well. Lots of hover boards.

10. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Notorious sexploitation guru Russ Meyer wrote this follow up to Valley of the Dolls with critic Roger Ebert and the result is a uproarious satire of 60s celebrity. Worth seeing for it’s violently manic finale alone.

2007-03-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

The point of this blog isn't to whore it out to promote stuff, but hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. There's an awesome rock tour later this year that calls at the MEN Arena on November 18th, and we want to review it and hopefully give away tickets to you guys, so indulge us in a little PR stuff...

Rock fans are in for a unique treat this November when shock rock guru Alice Cooper teams up with legendary British rock’n’roll hellraisers Motorhead & loud leather lovin’ Joan Jett and the Blackhearts for a value-packed 10-date UK tour which promises a relentless, ear-splintering, deliciously dirty rock’n’roll experience. Each legendary artist is a leader in their rock genre.

We love Alice Cooper here at Entertainment Manchester, so that's a given, but the chance to see Motorhead as well is simply too good to miss, and Joan Jett's bound to be fun too, so make sure you get your tickets soon. Or you could wait for our competition of course... if not, see you there!

2007-03-11T06:49:00.000-07:00

Here's our latest Watching, Listening To and Reading, feel free to add your own...

The Writer:

WATCHING: That Thing You Do. Tom Hanks' 1996 directorial debut focuses on fictional 1960s pop group The Wonders (or The Oneders depending on which era of the band you're concentrating on). It's a pity Hanks has yet to follow it up because it's a light and enjoyable slice of Americana which proves he’s as good behind the camera as he is in front of it.

LISTENING TO: The Collateral soundtrack. An eclectic mix of chill-out tunes, edgy dance numbers and James Newton Howard's murky, urban underworld score, it's the perfect audio accompaniment to one of Michael Mann's best films of recent years.

READING: Essential Sensational Spider-Man Vol 3. While never quite hitting the heights of the classic Stan Lee/John Romita run on Amazing Spider-Man in the late 60s, these black and white reprints of the 1970s Sensational Spider-Man still have the same kind of drama, tragedy and romance that makes the wall crawling wonder so popular. Current Spidey writers, take heed...

The Editor:

WATCHING: Last film I watched was Chocolat. It was ok. I'd like to go to the cinema more often, but there's so little out that's actually worth the effort these days. Last one was Hot Fuzz, which was about as good as Chocolat, but disappointing because I'd hoped for much more. Also recently watched the failed American pilots for Red Dwarf on YouTube, which were certainly interesting, just not funny. At all.

LISTENING TO: Moby's Animal Rights. Before he took over the world of TV advertising with Play, he bemused his techno fanbase by making this rock album (interspersed with some lovely ambient melodies) and it's generally regarded as his weakest effort. Maybe it's because I saw him blow Soundgarden off the stage as a support act at the Apollo, touring this album, but I love it.

READING: Having finished War And Peace (!) last week I'm now onto The Good Life by Jay McInerney, which is a sequel to his classic Brightness Falls, with the central characters from that, Corrine and Russell Calloway still together and still living in New York. The Good Life sees how their lives are torn apart by 9/11, and while in the wrong hands it could be a schmaltzy mess, McInerney keeps it all with an edge that making for an engrossing read.

2007-02-28T12:54:00.000-08:00

We here at Entertainment Manchester are not dictators. We don't want this site to become a one way street where we tell you what we're watching, reading and listening to. We want a bit of communication, a dialogue between you and us rather than a droning monologue. So, every now and then we'll encourage you to tell us what you're up to and what you think of it. To get the ball rolling, here's what we're doing.

The Writer:

WATCHING: Marie Antoinette on DVD. Still under-rated and misunderstood, Sofia Coppola's third feature is about as intoxicating as films come. Sure, it's bad history, but Coppola's mastery over colour and light and a turn from Kirsten Dunst that should have been recognised by the Academy ensure that Antoinette is still one of the best and most overlooked films of 2006.

LISTENING TO: I'd love to be able to say I'm currently listening to one of those ultra-hip bands that everyone else seems to love like The Kooks, The View, The Gossip or any one of the number of bands whose names begin with the word 'the’. But I'm not. Sorry. Instead, I'm dipping in and out of Jon Brion's superb score for the equally lovely Punch Drunk Love.

READING: A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin. A superb, detailed but thoroughly entertaining account of America's Apollo moon missions throughout the 60s and 70s. Wanna know what astronauts do when they need a whizz in outer space as well as all the scientific info on how they get up there in the first place? This is the book for you.

The Editor:

WATCHING: 24, just about. Being a Virgin Media customer, I lost half of 24 on Sunday when they switched it off (a 'technical error'. hmm...) and it looks like Sky One will be gone from there from midnight on Wednesday, so it looks like I'll have to either get it recorded every week by someone else or switch to Sky. Dammit Chloe, Jack Bauer wouldn't stand for this shit. Filmwise, the last thing I saw was Thunderball, not a fantastic Bond film, but a pretty decent one nonetheless.

LISTENING TO: 30 Seconds To Mars' new album and Charlotte Hatherley's new album. The former is Jared Leto's surprisingly impressive band who mix a bit of predictable emo/screamo angst with some slightly classier goth-pop inspired by The Cure. Leto himself is a good actor, so certainly convinces with his emotional trauma more than most pretty boy singers, even if it all gets a bit dull about halfway through. Hatherley meanwhile is the former Ash guitarist who has taken a massive leap forward stylistically with her second solo album. It'll be reviewed in full this weekend...

READING: I've been reading War and Peace for about 10 months now, which is embarrassing for someone who usually reads so much. It's an amazing book and I'm really enjoying it, but it's so very long. I'm on holiday next week (so forgive a slower than usual updating of the site!) so my aim is to finish it and start a new Jay McInerney book that I've been waiting for read for ages...

What are you watching, listening to or reading? Let us know!

2007-02-26T05:06:00.001-08:00

So he's finally done it. Martin Scorsese has won the Oscar he's been denied on five previous occasions for The Departed. The film itself scooped a further three awards (Best Editing, Adapted Screenplay and Picture), but the emphasis was most definitely on Scorsese.

He was handed the award by friends and filmmaking peers Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, given a standing ovation from the Kodak Theatre audience and even received a giant bear-hug from the back stage (and oddly bald) Jack Nicholson.

The Departed may not be Scorsese's best work, but it typifies what makes him such a vital, energetic film-maker and his speech and post-ceremony interviews spoke of a man brimming with intelligence, wit and, perhaps most pointedly, ambition to not rest on his laurels but continue his unique brand of stark but entertaining filmmaking.

The film's four gongs were the closest we got to a clear, out and out winner in a ceremony marked mostly for its diversity and, it has to be said, predictability, despite this blog’s own rubbish forecast. Helen Mirren was always going to claim Best Actress and the same can be said for Forest Whitaker for Last King of Scotland and Jennifer Hudson for her Beyonce-beating turn in Dreamgirls.

Perhaps the only big surprise came for Pan's Labyrinth which was told that it looks good (winning Best Cinematography, Art Direction and Make-Up) but not quite good enough to be Best Foreign Language Film which went to German picture The Lives of Others.

Indeed, the ceremony produced neither the British nor Latin invasion that many had expected, with Mirren being the only big Brit winner and Alejandro Inarriatu Gonzalaz (Babel) and Penelope Cruz (Volver) losing out for the Hispanic community. At least their nominations prove that the Academy now knows there is life outside of the English-speaking world and, perhaps, in a few years time films like Pan's Labyrinth will be in for Best Picture, rather than just Best Foreign Film.

So, the only outstanding message from this year's ceremony is that Hollywood has now gone completely green with the dancing, ecologically-aware penguins of Happy Feet winning Best Animated Feature and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth being voted Best Song (weirdly beating three from Dreamgirls) and Best Documentary. Gladly for him, the Academy doesn’t do recounts...

2007-02-23T14:47:00.000-08:00

Hello and welcome to the first of Entertainment Manchester's all-new spangly blog which will be updated whenever something tickles our fancy. As Uncle Ben once told a young Peter Parker: "with great power, comes great responsibility", so this blog won't descend into the same irresponsible, lazy slagging matches that a certain non-Brit Award winning pop star has been known to indulge in. Instead, we strive to supply intelligent, informed and interesting opinions, enlivened with a sprinkling of controversy which we hope will be enough to spark a debate amongst you, our loyal readers.

First up, with the Oscars coming this weekend, we're going to address the potential winners and losers of the star spangled night, most notably Martin Scorsese. A five times Best Director loser, this year seems destined to give the bushy-browed auteur his moment in the spotlight for Boston-set mob thriller The Departed. It's a decision which would be greeted with cheers from critics and movie fans alike and probably earn Scorsese a well-deserved standing ovation from the Kodak Theatre audience. But there's still something nagging us about the prospect of Marty winning.

We’re big fans of The Departed, as we are of most Scorsese films. Everything from Jack Nicholson's delightfully OTT performance to Scorsese's cheeky sight gag in the very last scene made for a cracking thriller which, in our humble opinion, surpassed the original, rather full-of-itself, Infernal Affairs. But therein lies the crux of the matter. While this may be Scorsese returning to the glossy mob heights of Goodfellas, it's still a remake, one which will go down as a lesser Scorsese effort in years to come along with Casino and fellow remake Cape Fear.

That such wonderful films can be considered lesser Scorsese efforts proves just what a great innovator he is. He filmed Raging Bull in black and white, when such a thing was unfashionable. While Travis Bickle was on the phone in Taxi Driver, he moved the camera away from our protagonist and onto an empty corridor, highlighting Bickle's alienation in a fresh, invigorating way. And when he took on the bible in the stunning Last Temptation of Christ, he did so in an un-patronising manner, which bowed not to commercial or church pressure, but only to his own, deeply held religious beliefs.

That a man so innovative and so vital to modern cinema and its evolution could win for a remake is a crying shame, but one that we're certainly not going to deny him. Scorsese has earned this with every raw frame, every bloodied punch and every dark drum beat of his work. It's just a shame the Academy couldn't realise it earlier...

Quick update for Oscar predictions...

BEST FILM

Letters From Iwo Jima

BEST DIRECTOR

Martin Scorsese - The Departed

BEST ACTOR

Forest Whitaker - Last King Of Scotland

BEST ACTRESS

Helen Mirren - The Queen

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Eddie Murphy - Dreamgirls

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Jennifer Hudson - Dreamgirls

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Pan's Labyrinth

BEST ANIMATED FILM

Cars

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Children of Men

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Babel