Life On Mars
Thursday, January 25th 2007
Here's a trailer for the new series of Life On Mars. Fun for those of us who remember Camberwick Green...
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Gruff Rhys
Wednesday, November 8th 2006
Aww cute, a new video from the Super Furry Animals frontman. All very Fingerbobs, songs nice too.
Candylion
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Rutland Weekend Television
Tuesday, March 28th 2006
I was delighted over the weekend to get a hold of a copy of the two series and Christmas special of this mid-70's comedy series and in really excellent quality as well. RWT was Eric Idle's post-Python series that he made with former Bonzo Dog Band member Neil Innes (never released on DVD or video apparently due to legal problems - I'm guessing between Idle and Innes).
I've watched the first five episodes of the first series and it's very enjoyable. Recognisably made by one of the Python team it has the same air of silliness about it. It's a fine idea for a series, basically the premise being that you're watching a low budget television station (and since they had next to no budget for the series, it's very authentic). This allows Idle and his cast to create all manner of parodies of documentaries, quiz programmes, music programs, cookery programmes and so on. This is mixed in rather nicely with Neil Innes's songs. Having converted a work colleagues vinyl collection of Innes albums to CD I know most of these songs pretty well but it's nice to be able to put them in context with the sketches in which they featured.
It remains to be seen whether the second series can match the first and I'm looking forward to seeing the Christmas special featuring as it does a guest appearance by George Harrison dressed as a pirate. I've had a bootleg of his song from this episode for years, it starts as a normal version of My Sweet Lord before veering off into different lyrics 'Oh I'd like to be a pirate, a pirate's life for me...'. Again nice to put this into context, I always wondered where it came from. Also looking forward to seeing the first appearance of The Rutles and the sketch that inspired Lorne Michaels from Saturday Night Live to finance 'All You Need Is Cash'.
This series certainly deserves a proper release on DVD and it's a shame that one hasn't been forthcoming. It would be worthwhile if for no other reason than to highlight Neil Innes's work outside the Bonzos which, for too long, has been neglected.
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The musical taste of a three year old
Tuesday, March 28th 2006
Watching TOTP with a three year old is an enlightening experience. Boys with guitars get a big thumbs up, The Strokes were a hit on Sunday (and Placebo the week before were a hit as well although Brian Molko did ellicit the question 'Is that a girl?'). Girls singing get a thumbs down, they go on too long, apart from P!nk who inspires much jumping around and air guitar soloing.
Much of the rest was just boring though that may just have been eagerness to get away and play with the blue and green tractors.
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YouTube
Friday, February 10th 2006
Youtube is a great site. No doubt it's clogged with rubbish of people jumping around their bedrooms acting like idiots but there is also a wealth of fantastic stuff not least the music related stuff that people have uploaded. Sooooo many amazing clips.
I've been marvelling at Prince again recently. Pretty much a daily task. He was on Saturday Night Live last Saturday and just owned that stage with a version of a new song called 'Fury'. The song was pretty good but the performance just ruled and the backing vocalists with their synchronised dance routines looked really cool too. He's starting to look his age and he's not at the cutting edge as he once was but he's still too cool for school.
I'm not going to post that performance though, I'm going to post something else (if it works)and that's his performance on While My Guitar Gently Weeps at the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame a couple of years ago. It starts off with the same band as performed at Concert For George at the Royal Albert Hall - Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Dhani Harrison etc and it sounds great, then there's a grin from Dhani H and the man in the hat who'd been hiding at the side comes front of stage and just takes over. This is a man who can play guitar! Looks good in a hat too...
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Mercury Music Prize
Wednesday, September 7th 2005
So that was the Mercury Prize for another year and I don't think I remember the audience being so genuinely pleased for a winner before. Apart from maybe the Kaiser Chiefs who's grins looked a bit forced.
There were quite a few of the albums on the shortlist that I enjoyed this year so it was actually worthwhile watching live on BBC4. The Kaiser Chiefs kicked things off playing I Predict A Riot. A difficult thing to do opening this kind of event where you're playing to your peers and a bunch of industry suits. They're not exactly going to be up and pogoing are they? Still they made a decent fist of it. Their albums not bad though maybe a little one note over the piece. I feel a bit tired by the time it gets the end like I just want them to calm down a bit. Unlike them I didn't think they deserved to win and didn't think they would.
M.I.A. was there but disappointingly didn't perform. I've never seen a performance of hers and I was curious to hear it though they did show clips from a couple of promos I'd never seen. The album is great though and this would have been my tip for the prize had I been putting money on.
The Magic Numbers came on and did what they do and did it well though the bass should have been higher in the mix for full enjoyment. It's a good fun album but there were better records on the shortlist (though not many). I'm glad they're there and it's never a chore to watch them on stage but I hope they stretch themselves on the followup as I fear a boredom factor setting in.
Bloc Party's Silent Alarm I only got recently and haven't given it a fair go though their performance tonight didn't grab me.
Coldplay took the piss on their video piece and had no chance of winning. They played the 'Fix You' video and time slowed to crawl as...
Hard-Fi passed me by as I was out of the room. I have the album unlistened but they've never struck me as being very interesting though I'll give them a fair listen when I get the time.
KT Tunstall I like, she seems pretty grounded and for a female singer songwriter appears to be doing something slightly different from either the baring flesh for success route or the anaemic Didoesque route. Quite impressive solo live performance as well using pedals to layer up backing vocals and a rhythm bed. There is the suspicion in my mind that she's heading in slightly too rootsy a direction for my taste though.
Maximo Park - always got the impression they were strictly second division. Surprised to find them here and made no impact on me.
Polar Bear made an impact though. Not least for the drummers hair which deserved an award on it's own. They were never going to win being the jazz entry but I'm curious to investigate further given their performance here (though I suspect I may love them in short doses rather than over a full album). The drummer is in Acoustic Ladyland who gave a brilliant performance on Later a couple of months ago. At first I thought that they had changed their name and this was the same band but apparently not. Nice addition of computer game effects as well played on a console joypad.
Seth Lakeman was the folk ambassador and recorded the album in his brother's kitchen for almost no money and more power to him for that. Not my cup of tea though.
The! Go! Team! Would have been good had they won but didn't think they would. Their performance of Huddle Formation here just left me breathless. Not sure they make much sense live if you haven't heard the record, there's just so much going on. They were the perfect way to end the live performances on the night though.
Finally to the winners, Antony and the Johnsons. I felt good they won though before hand I was hoping they wouldn't oddly. This album is an acquired taste and I'm not sure how Antony or the album will stand up to the amount of attention they are going to get now. For me this was a small private record, not a record to be shouted about from the rooftops. I could imagine a lot of people are going to buy this off the back of this prize and only listen to it once but it repays repeat listenings, firstly to get used to his unusual voice and then to appreciate the songs. It was annoying to hear one of the voting panel and the NME editor describing the album and Antony as 'weird' and 'strange' and having disturbing lyrical content. How about beautiful and confessional and emotional as more appropriate descriptions? Needless to say Mr NME didn't see Antony appearing on the cover of his magazine any time soon which tells you a lot about the way that paper has gone in recent times.
Antony seemed genuinely surprised by it all realising how arbitrary the whole process was - "it's kind of like a competition between an orange, a spaceship, a potted plant and a spoon". It's no doubt going to have a huge effect on his sales and indeed a trip to Amazon has just showed him as number 1 on the sales chart. Good luck to him.
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Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 3
Monday, September 5th 2005
Can Larry David do any wrong? It would appear not.
Just finished watching Season 3 of Curb Your Enthusiasm and, damn if it's not the best one yet (though I haven't seen season 4 yet). I don't know if the inclusion of a season long story arc made the difference but the laugh out loud to hiding behind my hands ratio was definitely in favour of the laughs. The hiding behind your hands problem made this a very much solo pursuit. I don't know anyone else who actually likes it and I would agree it's not always easy to watch, but it's worth the painful moments for the many many moments of comic gold.
A lot of the time I feel sorry for Larry and even sympathise with his position, most of the time he's just acting in a way that he thinks is right and proper, either that or circumstances just conspire against him through no fault of his own ('beloved aunt'). Other times of course he's just got questionable morals. Using the death of your mother as an excuse not only to avoid a series of appointements and dinner invitiations you don't want to keep but also a way to gain sympathy with your wife so she'll have sex with you is not a particularly defendable thing to do. Very funny though.
The series finale goes down as an all time classic and I can't think of any sitcom that has ever had this much swearing in it. You can so tell that this show is on cable.
It would take too long to explain the complicated setup but basically they have hired a chef with Tourette's to work in the restaraunt that Larry has invested in. They find this out too late to sack him and in any case they think he is a holocaust survivor because he has a number tatooed on his left forearm. Of course the kitchen is open plan out to the dining area meaning the whole place hears when the chef has an outburst of swearing. Larry in a show of solidarity (he had seen some high school kids earlier who had shaved their heads in support of a classmate going through chemotherapy and hoped that some day he would be able to make such a gesture) shouts out some curses and the other investors, his wife and eventually the whole restaurant join in - believe me no-one holds back. The look of satisfaction on Larry's face at the good deed he has done is a picture. Only he could get such satisfaction from a restaurant full of people swearing. And the holocaust survivor? It turned out the number on his arm was written in pen - it was his lottery numbers.
LD and indeed the whole cast, we salute you.
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Ray
Friday, August 5th 2005
Watched this last night in an attempt to get some value for money on my DVD rentals this month. For all it's Oscar nominations and great reviews it's really not *that* great.
Jamie Foxx is an amazing mimic, you'd be hard pressed to fault his Ray Charles impression, but the film just wasn't emotionally engaging. Stuff happened, then some more stuff then it finished. There was no dramatic arc to hold onto, you didn't really care what happened. Mostly this is the fault of the script or I suppose the constraints of the biopic genre. It would be churlish to blame Foxx for this, though I'm not sure he's totally free from fault, it can't be easy to emotionally engage with an audience when you are playing a blind man and can't use your eyes. Just shows how important the eyes are when communicating. Still, the music is great, Charles wrote and performed many wonderful songs and was a ground breaker in his mixing of styles - country, gospel, R&B so if it exposes his music to more people then all well and good.
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Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
Monday, July 11th 2005
Finally got around to seeing this film and you know it wasn't bad. Less clunky dialogue than the previous chapters certainly. Maybe it was only good when judged against how dodgy the previous two were but it was nice that everything wrapped up tidily and dovetailed into what happens in episode IV. It would have been easy to have felt cheated by this, this was perhaps the most difficult film for Lucas to get right. To a certain extent it wrote itself but the pressure must have been on to get everyone's motivations right and to properly explain what happens in A New Hope without it feeling forced. Christiansen still can't act although he is better in this than the previous chapter and generally I bought into what was the final catalyst that pushed him to the dark side. It all seemed rather easy though - there was no real soul searching on his part, he gave himself over to Palpatine far too easily. I realise that the groundwork for this has been laid by Palpatine for a long time but still, it could have been dragged out a bit more.
The effects in this one I liked, lots of really cool design stuff with a nice retro futuristic feel. I didn't find the SFX as intrusive this time round either. Nice sound effects too, I liked that all the droids screamed and groaned as they died which sounds horrific but was actually quite comical. R2D2 has quite a bit to do but disappointingly C3PO is hardly in it and gets his memory wiped at the end which of course is necessary for Ep.IV but didn't seem to make much sense, why not wipe R2D2 also in that case? The whole Vader getting burned and chopped to bits was very well done and his subsequent rebuilding complete with cool inside shot of the helmet was excellent. His reaction when he heard of Padme's fate was less good, the character doesn't work in that suit when he tries to act human, it just looks silly although it was interesting to see him have a human reaction, presumably the last he would have until he rescues Luke from the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi (though I suppose we never see him off duty - who knows what he gets up to when he's on his own?)
All round good stuff and I look forward to seeing it again when the DVD comes out.
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Garden State
Monday, June 13th 2005
Quite a downbeat film really which was maybe not what I was expecting. A bunch of fucked up people going nowhere, locked into their small town stasis and all numbed by drugs in some way. All very sad but the feeling was of it not being as deep as it liked to think it was and the ending was a little predictable and pat. I didn't feel the surge in my chest that I think they were aiming for with the final moments. Still, I quite enjoyed it and it was certainly never boring, the running time flying by. Who knew the guy from Scrubs was capable of writing and directing that?
Funnily enough reminded me a bit of another Natalie Portman film 'Beautiful Girls' although this was really no where near as good as that. That was another low key film about someone returning to the town they grew up in and meeting the people they grew up with (amongst much else). Like the nice moments in Garden State regarding The Shins 'New Slang', 'Beautiful Girls' features a great musical moment although in that film it's Neil Diamond's 'Sweet Caroline'!
You can add to this list 'Singles', another film that springs to mind at this point. It's an early Cameron Crowe film set in grunge era Seattle and for some reason gives me the same warm glow inside that I get from Beautiful Girls. They're not fresh in my mind enough at this point to allow any further analysis beyond saying check them out.
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