The Vaguest Ideas

Back-B-Log: Another Summer in Hell (1988)

2012-01-30T12:23:00.001Z

[Author's Note: This brief memoir from 1988 is posted here as it is related to my story of my ongoing unintentional persecution by Richard O'Brien, which includes part of my summer of 1983 spent in the GCC Walnut Mall 1 2 3]

ANOTHERSUMMER IN HELL – A User’s Guide

"I spenta lifetime in Philadelphia, one summer...."

-- W.C. Fields

How do I cope with Summer? How do I survive? I don't know... it seems that every summer calamities swarmaround me like flies on shit in the sun. My last decent summer was after I graduated from high-school. Since thenthe wisest thing to do is to pack off to hermitage at the first signs springboiling over: late suns, final exams, and sticky tanning oil.

Let's do a quick chronology:

1983 -- ended freshman year with 3incompletes nervous collapse due to myfreshman obsession rejecting me, my psychotic girlfriend accepting me, and myfather's most severe nosedive into Parkinsonism to date; lived in same housewith woman who rejected me, destroying the remains of our friendship; workedslave wages/hours in movie theater with broken air conditioning; somehowfinished incompletes and took Spanish credits to return to Penn in Fall

1984 -- tried living briefly withpsychotic girlfiend who forbade me to contact my friends; worked 10 days as anencyclopedia salesman, then sold leather goods from a stand in a mall

1985 -- spend most of the summer tryingto break up with psycho-bitch-monster instead of laboring on incompletes (5), afterattempting to push me off a roof she breaks into my room and steals all mywork, a restraining order is nearly issued, but her crank phone calls keep thereceiver from its cradle every night

1986 -- after not graduating with eightincompletes under my belt, I am depressed by the seeming lack of prospects andall around hope for my future, but at least I stay employed, I begin livinglike a monk, seeing human beings only at work and other formal occasions

1987 -- the woman I've been obsessedwith for ten years falls in love with one of my best friends, after I introducethem, he reciprocates, and my plans to move in with his brother and anotherfriend remain unchanged (big mistake) this was a Summer that kept going untilNovember. Along the way I manage to alienate or lose about half my friends,half my sleep and most of my sanity, but at least it's the first summer that Ihave an air-conditioner.

O.K., granted I made some mistakes, allof these Summers were spent in Philadelphia which was probably once one ofGod's early drafts for hell, abandoned because even the damned don't deservethis. The smell of rotting garbagewhich spreads thickly evenly throughout the humid atmosphere; in Summer, air inPhiladelphia isn't smooth, it's chunky. Almost the only reason to get an underpaying job is to avoid being bakedall day in the heat, but with an air-conditioned job your body will beassaulted by alternating freezing-burning temperatures which will probablyhave you enjoying the flu. Philadelphiain Summer is the explanation for why you will find people wading throughmedical waste at the Jersey shore -- it's an improvement.

This summer has been par for thecourse. I've been ill for months: weak,constant low grade fever, coughs, pains. On top of which I over-extended myself, working forty-hours, twelvehours of class a week (not counting outside studying and work), and moving myparents on weekends. This is not theway to do it. Here are some rules that everyone should follow during Summer(and I hope to -- next year – follow)

1. After May 1st, do not trust anyone:

Case in point -- I took in a friend ofa friend to sublet one of my housemate's rooms. I didn't need to, would have been no financial or spiritual onusto me if I hadn't, but I felt sorry for them (beware this is never a goodmotivation, whatever the time of year). Step by step, what seemed to be a quietsuburban Catholic girl has turned into a drugged out kleptomaniac who expectsme to clean up after her orgies (I stopped counting how many condom wrappersI've picked up off the couch). I'meating the rent and the utilities she hasn't paid (over $500).

2. Do not visit your parents without mood altering drugs.

My parents are in a highly agitatedstate this Summer, they just moved from their house of forty years into a tinyapartment. They are losing their minds,and when you stay with them, they share the experience. I've just spent a yearhunting down and caging the demons I released last summer: "I don't needno more neuroses!" If the drugsdon't help you cope with your Parents (valium, psilocybin and lithium arerecommended), you can always give them to your parents to allow them to copewith you.

3. If you have any possessions, sell them, nail them down, or put them instorage -- they are not safe.

Yes, everything you may cherish, andeven what you merely own and paid dearly for, will be threatened from allsides, by disturbed roommates, their spot-welding boyfriends, and evenrelatives (my sister stole a puppet from me). Spy on your realtor, they will attempt to evict you while you are out oftown (mine tried to rent my house without telling me). People who you haven't seen for years willattempt to set fire to your home.

Which brings us to last but not least:

4. Hide, or at least keep moving.

Sharks have survived and prosperedduring many a summer using this tactic. You need not be ruthless like the shark, just lay low, real low. If yougo abroad, go toa country where they haven't even heard of Americans yet so they haven'tstarted hating us. Don't go to the shore, you'll drown. If you stay inland, don't travel onfreeways, you'll be slain in multiple car pile ups. Don't ride the backroads, you'll be butchered by rednecks. Don't go into the air, you'll be astatistic. Stay out of the cities,you'll be killed by hordes of nomadic plague ridden yuppies: stay out of thecountry, animals wild from toxic wastes and PCP will eat you alive -- Face it, just stay away from SUMMER. It's cursed, that's all there is to it.

(English 135Advanced Expository Writing, Professor Cavallo, August 1, 1988, Assignment #6)

[Author's Note: To those of you disparaged directly or indirectly above, apologies. I appreciate we've all grown up now, and, at least those of you whom I'm still in touch with, we turned out O.K. Keep in mind this is the raw perspective of an undercooked youth.

Diana Cavallo's writing course was possibly the best I've taken, and I wish I'd taken her other writing courses as well. Anything wrong with my writing sure ain't her fault.

It should be noted that the following Summer I did not take my own advice completely, I travelled to Britain to interview for the job that changed my life, and haven't stopped moving since.]

My Annual Bafta Annoyance 2012: The Nominations

2012-01-17T17:00:00.000Z

The BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Nominations for the 2012 Awards are out today. I have been expressing dislike of the BAFTA rules which allow films to be nominated outside the year under consideration, often before their actual UK release. The crux of my problem with this is that it cheats the UKpublic audience of the enjoyment of making up their own minds about the nominations and awards before they are handed out.

In the past few years my argument has focussed on the untidy language of the exception in the rules which created some contradictory circumstances when nominated films released two days before the award ceremony itself (and in some cases afterwards) could not have fulfilled one other condition that the films must be screened for seven consecutive days to a paying UK audience. BAFTA have changed the exception and have removed this potential conflict with this simpler but more inclusive proviso:

If a film opens between 1 January and the Friday before the Awards in February then it may be eligible as long as it is screened to Academy voting members before a certain date.

To my mind it only serves to
a) allow in films likely to nominated for OSCARs that were released in the US but not the UK in the year in question, this is so that BAFTA can claim relevance in the OSCAR's race between the Golden Globes and the OSCARs.
b) pander to the distributors that can use the BAFTA's to boost films still currently or imminently on release.

Pretending relevance in the OSCAR's run up is absurd. For one thing the timing of voting is too close to the parallel longlist runoffs for nominations for one to directly influence the other. Also, look at just how few of the Hollywood based nominees actually turn up to the BAFTA's, you'll find they're mostly actors, who will normally be happy to have an excuse to pop to London, mecca of the stage. Some of the actors are doubled for presenter duties during the awards themselves which pays for their jolly whether they win a BAFTA mask themselves or not.

Film UK release Nominations

The Iron Lady 06/01/2012 4

Shame 13/01/2012 2

War Horse 13/01/2012 5

Coriolanus 20/01/2012 1

J. Edgar 20/01/2012 0

The Descendants 27/01/2012 3

Carnage 05/02/2012 0

A Dangerous Method 10/02/2012 0

Young Adult 10/02/2012 0

In my previous analysis of the longlist 20% of the nominations for are for films released in the UK in 2012, and 50% were for films on DVD release in the UK in the first quarter of 2012. This does shift slightly in the actual nominations have 15% of the nominations for films released in the UK in 2012. Significantly of the longlist movies under consideration, only five released in January 2012 have survived the cut, leaving one January and three due to be released in February on the heap (see 0 nominations above). This may only be a reflection of the viewing opportunities for the BAFTA voters, as in the past few years films released up to 2 days before the ceremony have been nominated.

Looking at the trends there is a preponderance of nominations in the latter half of the year. I appreciate that these trends exhibit a chicken/egg causality as the distributors control release dates and are allowed to put forward films for nomination, and that they in turn may be second guessing the voters long term memory loss and may stack more promising contenders. It says little for the perceived (by either distributors or voters) quality of anything released before July.

In the future we may look forward to simultaneous world wide multi format releases. This is argued by some as the best way to both combat piracy, and to give the audience the widest range of preferred viewing choices, whether they want to trek to their local multiplex or sit in the comfort of their home cinema. This should render the argument moot, assuming that BAFTA then have the good grace to adjust their eligibility back to the proper calendar year. If they still let late, on the heels of the ceremony, releases in through their current back door, then the collusion with the distributors which I've merely insinuated would be laid shamefully bare.

On the other hand once the pool of films becomes virtually the same as the OSCARs, how will the BAFTAs distinguish themselves? Their members represent the British Film industry, which despite its ongoing identity crises, contains a vital amount of talent, knowledge and skills used by Hollywood and the film industry of the world. Their awards should reflect both their British talent and the British audience.

For the time being, while the point is not yet moot, I will press on. The BAFTA's can only be improved for the time being if they stop trying to be a "me, too" in the run up to the OSCAR's. The nominations should reflect the UK release schedule, not the US. Perhaps a move back to the pre 2000 date of early April for the Awards is in order, it would allow the BAFTA's a more distinctive voice, not muddled between the HFPA and AMPAS. The members of BAFTA shouldn't need to be reminded that the B in BAFTA is for British.

My Annual Bafta Annoyance 2012: On Some Other Blog

2012-01-12T10:15:00.000Z

I am an irregular commenter on Mark Kermode's Kermode Uncut Blog, and I have been shoehorning in little bits of my rant against BAFTA's inclusion of Nominations for films not released in the UK at the time of Nomination, nor in the year under consideration.

Under his VLOG And The Nomination Isn't... Kermode bemoaned the Oscar's long list, particularly the exclusion of the amazing F1 documentary Senna. This gave me a scintilla of an excuse to bemoan the BAFTA's as on their way to similar destination....

13. At 18:36 25th Nov 2011, Brian - New Forest wrote:

Sadly the way the Oscar's play out is very much a product of the PR machinery of the studios/distributors. You might as well blame Senna's production company for not pushing hard enough, not sending enough screeners and Senna themed trinkets (I thought the Formula 1™ 2011 Game, F1 2011 Dead Men's Curves add on pack that lets you replay play every fatality in F1 history was stretching the boundaries of taste, but those academy voters all have grandkids who love that stuff).

The Oscar's have been a lost cause, well, forever. I have a bone to pick with the Bafta's as they are headed in the same direction. This has mostly been since the Bafta's changed their rules and ceremony dates, in a bid for relevance between the Golden Globes and the Oscars. The rules have been bent to allow films which were eligible for Oscars, but haven't had a proper release in the UK the year before (there's a proviso that allows films "released" in the UK between Jan 1st up to 2 days before the BAFTA ceremony, to be nominated). A "release" constitutes 7 days in a single commercial cinema to paying customers which hardly encompasses the UK market, and as release dates are set in mud, some nominations have been for films that have openned neither small nor wide until after the ceremony (nominated Vicky Christina Barcelona had its date bumped until two weeks after the ceremony). Consequently the BAFTA nominations list consists almost entirely of films just on or about to be on general release, or about to have their DVD releases in the UK market. The fact that this is all orchestrated to chime with the Globes to Oscars buzz robs the BAFTA's of any distinction beyond the urbane wit lent by Mr Fry.

I would challenge all BAFTA members including Dr. K to sort this out, the BAFTA nominations should consist of films that the UK viewing public have had a decent chance to see before the ceremony, not just the members who have to fit in "viewings" or see films for their consideration as they may not have been meant to be seen on the flat screen with the lights on in a cluttered front room awash with pets and disaffected kids. The nominations should be relevant to the artists and the audience (us), not the distributors and the hacks. So please remove the BAFTA's as a pit stop between the Golden Globes and the Oscars, because the longer they sit there the more likely the industry will make them like BOTH, and nobody with any sense wants that.

I even got a bit of support from a fellow poster:

15. At 18:44 25th Nov 2011, Scurra wrote:

@Brian: Yes, I have sometimes wondered whether it would be smart for Bafta to change tack entirely and have their award ceremony in September. Make the qualifying period July - June instead of the calendar year - after all, it's not as though the year of release matters that much. And it might influence the release dates a little too...

I replied:

35. At 02:21 28th Nov 2011, Brian - New Forest wrote:

@Scurra, I'm not that bothered about BAFTA using the calendar year, it's that they add provisos for films past that year to include films that were out in the States and most likely nominated for Oscars, but which weren't released in the UK in that year. However your suggestion might be a way to shake it up. They should pick 12 months and stick to it.

Sorry if my annual BAFTA annoyance is a bit off topic. [...]

Under Kermode's VLOG Looking Forward he asked us which films we are looking forward to in 2012, which gave me an opportunity to get in a slight dig:

27. At 17:40 30th Dec 2011, Brian - New Forest wrote:

Although I'm looking forward to Prometheus as well, I'd counter the list of good Ridley efforts cited above with:

Legend
GI Jane
Matchstick Men
Robin Hood

As the latter was pretty egregious, I'd withhold my expectations.

Also, to pedantically bang my drum to anyone who'd listen (or not as the case may be), I won't be at all surprised to see some of these upcoming films featured in the BAFTA's although they have not been released in this year. BAFTA has a proviso that exists solely so they may nominate films that have been nominated for Oscar's but which haven't been given a proper release to the UK viewing public. All it serves is to lamely suggest relevance for the BAFTA's between the Golden Globes and the Oscar's and a chance for distributors to push UK release dates of nominated films closer to the BAFTA ceremony, as films are eligible for nomination if their scheduled release is up to two days before the awards ceremony itself. (anyone interested in following the progress of my so far tractionless rant may google "my annual bafta annoyance").

Mindless pedantry aside, my heart's true anticipation can only be expressed by a red mop-faced drummer named Animal:

Muppets! MUPPETS! M U P P E T S!

(Given the claims of Fox News of political indoctrination, perhaps this is the real Film Socialisme. Unfortunately, that title had already been used.)

Under Kermode's VLOG Eleven From Eleven, he asks us to suggest which of his top 11 from 2011 he should jetison in favour of including the splendid Drive. While I earlier posted a comment that he should dump We Need To Talk About Kevin, which had left me cold (#15), after seeing comments posted complaining about the release date of The Artist in relation to the list, I wrote:

86. At 04:58 9th Jan 2012, Brian - New Forest wrote:

@22, 41, 45-- you've made me change my mind. Dr. K should leave out The Artist, not because it isn't the fine film that so many who have seen it claim it to be (and frankly though I've not seen it, the trailer had me enraptured, will need to suitably adjust expectations before I see it when it comes round our neck of the woods Feb 20th), but for the pedantic reason you cite, it is simply not a 2011 release for the ordinary UK punter.

This is one of the reasons that I try to have a go at the BAFTA's every year for having rules which allow films not released in the calendar year in question. Now I would never level charges of elitism at Dr. K, but BAFTA has graced 9 films to be released theatrically in 2012 with nominations on their longlist (out of 65 films). These are films which the BAFTA members have had a chance to see, but not the UK public (barring festival and "platform" release screenings). These 9 films rack up 56 nominations which is just over 20% of the 279 longlist nominations. 2 of them are released just 2 days before the 12th February Awards Ceremony. 50% of the nominations are for films which will be released on DVD in Q1 2012. Sadly this makes the BAFTA's look like a cynical marketing exercise poised irrelevantly betwixt the Globes and the Oscars. It will be interesting to see how these numbers change when the longlist gets whittled down.

As for the critics end of year lists, well, if it's their own personal list of the films that they have happened to see in that year, then fine, can't argue with that. But by that token why consider release dates at all? Due to caring for a litter of puppies causing cabin fever isolation and temporary exile from the cinema, I caught up on a number of titles I missed from previous years, and I can say that amongst my favourite films I saw in 2011 I'd include Gilliam's Tideland and Davies' Of Time and The City. However, I think there's a reasonable expectation that professional critics lists are meant for their audience, and perhaps should be geared accordingly, not based on their at times rarefied privilege (or pain) to exalt in the great films (as well as endure the endless dross) before the rest of us.

So, depending on which emphasis Dr. K would like to give his list, based on the films he had a chance to see or the films that we had a chance to see, then he could bump The Artist.

Or maybe I'm just being mindlessly pedantic. All in good company here then...

This got some agreement further down in 103 107 114 and 116 in so far as wanting to exclude The Artist from Kermode's top of 2011 list as it didn't have a proper 2011 release (it had a "platform" release in London on 30th Dec 2011). Given that sort of feeling about something as purely subjective as one critic's top list, it's not a huge jump to suggest that a similar criteria might be applied to a supposedly rigorously arrived at consensus such as the BAFTA's. Unfortunately, my own sense of pedantry prohibits me from adding The Artist's nominations to my BAFTA statistics as IMDB does give it the UK release date from December, although clearly it's a grey area I hadn't considered before.

What next? Well we have the final BAFTA nominations coming up, and I have to find a way to carefully word some letters / emails to BAFTA and most probably to Kermode and Mayo's Film Review, so that they get useful attention.

My Annual Bafta Annoyance 2012: Preamble and Longlist

2012-01-08T19:28:00.000Z

This year I am making a slightly more concerted effort to breathe life into my quibble with BAFTA's bent rule that allows films released after the standard year in question, but which were in the States and so eligible for OSCAR's. I hate this because I feel that the general public should have a chance to have seen all the films before the nominations, let alone the awards. They should remember that the B in BAFTA is for British and so should properly reflect the British film audience and release schedule.

In the past years the BAFTA's have cheated their own eligibility requirements, allowing films to be nominated that do not meet all their own criteria. Let's look at last year's requirements:

Eligibility

Films must be released theatrically in the UK, within the Academy awards year:
1 January to 31 December 2010. Films that open between 1 January and 11 February 2011 inclusive may be 'qualified' by Distributors by being screened to Academy Film Voting Members by Tuesday 21 December 2010.

To be eligible, a feature film must:
* be feature-length, i.e. with a running time exceeding 60 minutes;
* receive its first public exhibition or distribution in the UK as a theatrical release;
* be exhibited publicly to a paying audience within a commercial cinema in the UK for no fewer than seven consecutive days.

Films from all countries are eligible in all categories, with the exception of Outstanding British Film, Outstanding Debut, Short Film and Short Animation which are for British films only.

Almost every year BAFTA have nominated a film that opens on the last day of eligibility, usually two days before the awards. This means it cannot have satisfied the seven consecutive days proviso by the date of the ceremony. Although four films for the 2011 Awards opened after 2010, only one fell foul of this requirement:

2011 Latest Open Date 11th Feb, Awards 13th Feb.
True Grit (11 February 2011)

Previous years have seen these films so dishonourably nominated:

2010 Latest Open Date 19th Feb, Awards 21st Feb.
The Lovely Bones (19 February 2010).

2009 Latest Open Date 6th Feb, Awards 8th Feb.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (6 February 2009)
Doubt (6 February 2009)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (13th Feb 2009 released after the eligibility and the awards)

2008 Latest Open Date 8th Feb, Awards 10th Feb.
There Will be Blood (15th February 2008 released after the eligibility and the awards)

This year BAFTA have closed this problematic loophole, by making the eligibility even more flexible. From 2012 the rules now state:

In order for a film to be valid for consideration its first public exhibition must be in a cinema (rather than on television or online), and it must have a UK theatrical release in a public UK cinema for no fewer than seven consecutive days in the calendar year that corresponds to the upcoming awards. If a film opens between 1 January and the Friday before the Awards in February then it may be eligible as long as it is screened to Academy voting members before a certain date. A film must be feature length, i.e. with a running time exceeding 60 minutes. Films from all countries are eligible in all categories, with the exception of Outstanding British Film, Outstanding Debut, Short Film and Short Animation which are for British films only.

BAFTA: Film Awards Judging Process

This means that films that open up to two days before this year's ceremony only need to be screened to BAFTA's members before a given date and are let off virtually all of the eligibility requirements (apart from the feature length of over 60 minutes). To be honest, this is probably closer to what they intended with the previous version of the rules, and this change has unmuddied the waters that flowed from their previous language.

The Film BAFTA's were moved from April to February in 2001 to occupy the space between the Golden Globes and OSCAR's. This is when the rules were changed to allow in films with post-hoc release dates, mainly to give the BAFTA's a supposed relevance in the awards season, after all how could they claim relevance if they could fail to nominate a similar list of films to the Globes and OSCAR's if restricted to niggling things like the UK release dates. This of course does not make the BAFTA's any more relevant, it merely gives the BAFTA members a chance to second guess the OSCAR's. This leaves the BAFTA's as a cynical exercise for the distributors to get some free ad time on the allegedly non-promotional BBC, and to use award buzz to flog their films to the UK market.

This becomes extremely apparent when you analyse the longlist nominations. Of the 65 films garnering 279 longlist nominations 9 (13%) are released in 2012, two just two days before the awards themselves. Those 9 films have 56 longlist nominations, making up 20% of the longlist nominations. Of the films properly theatrically released in 2011 a whopping 50% of the longlist nominations are for films receiving their UK DVD release in Q1 2012, right around the February awards ceremony. This leaves only 30% of the longlist nominations for films released in the UK theatrically in 2011 and not premiering on UK DVD within the first quarter of 2012, of these only 17% are for films with both UK theatre and DVD releases firmly in 2011, the remainder with unconfirmed UK DVD release dates (as of January 8th 2012).

Now there is a slight confluence of chicken/egg poultry family planning here when we consider how the films are put forward, again according to BAFTA:

As long as a film passes the rules of eligibility then it may be entered for the film awards. A film may be qualified for consideration by the films[sic] distributor or producer, or by any Academy voting member. Once the film is submitted then a screen credits form will be required to be completed by the distributor or producer.

So this is very much in the hands of the distributors who determine the release dates as well as having major input into the awards process itself. When we look at a graph of the longlist nominations by film release month, we may find it hard to believe that any decent films have hit the screens before July.

BAFTA will point out that the longlist does not represent nominations until the members vote in the second round to whittle the up to 15 films in each category down to 5 proper nominations. Furthermore, longlists are not announced in these categories: Outstanding Debut by a Writer, Director or Producer, Short Film and Short Animation. So these figures are likely to change, but by how much is to be seen.

Film UK release Nominations
The Iron Lady 06/01/2012 14
Shame 13/01/2012 4
War Horse 13/01/2012 13
Coriolanus 20/01/2012 6
J. Edgar 20/01/2012 7
The Descendants 27/01/2012 7
Carnage 05/02/2012 2
A Dangerous Method 10/02/2012 1
Young Adult 10/02/2012 2

For the 2012 awards year I will attempt to get this point across through online forums, letters to BAFTA, and correspondence with the BBC's various film programmes Watch this space.

Puppy Film Festival 9: Of Time And The City

2011-12-08T15:32:00.003Z

This is the first half of an intended Terrence Davies double bill, with his Edith Wharton adaptation, House of Mirth. I have found this 2008 documentary so contemplative, so generous in the spaces it allows within itself to absorb the string of moments that Davies constructs carefully in his collage / essay, that I felt that I should allow it an external space of its own. So I'll be diving into Gillian Anderson tomorrow.

Ostensibly a reflection on Davies childhood home of Liverpool, it touches on both social and personal history. He charts his disaffection with Catholicism, his emergent homosexuality, his growing love of the perfect world of cinema. He takes sideswipes at rock'n'roll (including the local Merseybeat), municipal architecture ("the British genius for creating the dismal"), and deconsecrated churches repurposed as night clubs. He doesn't just kick at modernity, he puts the boot into the monarchy ("The Betty Windsor Show") and the empty pomp of the church. Apart from these bitchy forays, the majority of the tone is lyrical, elegiacal, but without the moribund tone from the graveside.

The film is composed mostly of meticulously put together archive footage with a lush soundtrack of classical and gentle late fifties pop. Terrence Davies provides narration in his own velvet voice combining poetry recital, personal memoir and literate quotes. Images of poverty over time as old slums are replaced with their contemporary tower block equivalent. New footage shows Liverpool as it is now, a place he barely recognizes, yet retains fragments of familiarity, not merely in hoary landmarks, but in the people he lets his camera linger over in the coda before his Odyssean, oddly triumphalist, firework strewn finale.

At times it seems to be a film of exile, he quotes Joyce and Psalm 137 (By the rivers of Babylon). I do not know whether Davies is in any kind of self-imposed physical exile from Liverpool, nor whether he has ambitions in this film, as Joyce allegedly did, that his home could one day be reconstructed from his words and images. Davies is at the very least, as are we all, an exile from the past. His memories here are intricate stamps in a passport to that unrecovered country.

Near the end, I began to feel a bit lost, unsure of what Davies is driving at, if anything, beyond a mere but deeply thoughtful paen to Liverpool gone, but at the same time, I felt compelled to start it again, almost immediately, from the beginning. If not to watch it more closely, but to spend more time in Terrence Davies' palace of memory, to wander it aimlessly like a beguiled tourist. Though billed as "a love song and a eulogy", it is much more, a gallery of memento mori, a cinematic monument, a place to inhabit in a dream detached from the place and time, the city in Terrence Davies' mind's eye.

Vague-a-ries: YouTube has been designed by idiotic monkeys.

2011-12-07T11:35:00.005Z

Today, preparing for a future project when this blog has some video content created by myself on YouTube, I tried to set up a channel. This was easy, to a point. I wanted to have a channel called:

VaguestIdeas

however I managed to make a small mistake and typed:

VaguestiDeas

and hit enter. I immediately realized my mistake, and thought that should be easy to correct. I was probably momentarily seized by Steve Jobs syndrome, that annoying impulse to lowercase "i" as an initial letter (maybe I should get checked out, it may be indicative of something worse, what? too soon?).

Scrabbling around the menus I couldn't find anything to let me rename, change or delete my channel name, which depending on where you look in YouTube is suddenly my YouTube username as well. Using the "help" feature gives you a list of questions asked on a forum style help, with answers relevance voted on by users. This is even more frustrating as it forces you to pour through irrelevance to try to glean an answer, this does not constitute help in my book. The "answers" seemed to point to the idea that there is nothing you can do except close your account entirely and set up a new account, which would require a unique email address, not the one you already used, and you couldn't have the channel name you already used because, although they store the case of your deleted account that never had anything posted against it, the check is not case sensitive, and that channel name, though never used, can never be used again, ever.

When I selected an option to allow me to directly post my own question, it tries to misdirect you to a page that has already asked questions similar to your "summary", but doesn't have a text box, forcing me to hope that clicking on a link marked "Continue" would actually bring me to where I had intended to go in the first place. Here's what I submitted as a question:

I have just set up a channel, but have done nothing with it. When I set it up I mistyped the capitalization -VaguestiDeas as opposed to the desired VaguestIdeas. I cannot believe that there is no way to edit/correct this. That you've developed a system that 1. allows such a momentary mistake as when your finger happens to hit the shift key to be etched in stone, 2. doesn't at least warn you that "hey you better be careful here, because we're not going to let you change this, ever"

This may seem a trifling request, I appreciate, in my case at least, I spelled the channel as I wanted it, so I couldn't delete and recreate the channel, as, although there is no data associated with it, your system will see it as "used" already.

Most frustrating of all is that your help system directed me to questions about deleting my account, and suggested that was the only workaround, and that I'd have to use a unique email address, other than the one I already have. Help systems which return irrelevant or incomplete answers show both laziness and indifference on your part as a developer. You should develop a clear comprehensive reference explanation of how your accounts '/ usernames / and channels work, not rely solely on whatever partial answer pops into the head, of knowledgeable, but blinkered forum style responses.

In my case it is a cosmetic error, but one that any users would see against any videos I wanted to post. So I look stupid rather than Google/YouTube who should look stupid for sitting on a pile of money rather than having developers create the most basic functionality imaginable.

Now I'm pretty much pissed off at YouTube, a company that are clearly sitting back on the benefits of their one killer idea, and within the fold of GoogleEarth (not the software product from Google, but the new name they've given our planet, which apparently they own through one of their subsidiaries), they don't have to care. They may be burning all their money, or more likely just jerking off into wads of disposable 100's as they index all the porn on the internet.

Puppy Film Festival 7: Catfish

2011-12-06T01:38:00.000Z

Catfish is documentary about misrepresentation on Facebook which may be misrepresenting its own veracity, but is kinda engaging and touching all the same.

A New York 20 something professional photographer gets sent some interesting naive art based on his published photos, painted by an eight year old girl in Michigan, and he strikes up Facebook conversations with her mother and older sister leading to a long distance crush relationship with the older sister. The photographer's brother/flatmate is a filmaker and with another friend, they begin to document this socially networked virtual relationship.

It starts anecdotally, and, to the point, perhaps too anecdotally. The first thing you will wonder is why did they begin filming this? On the other hand if you've seen either Tarnation or Cloverfield, you've seen that the self obsessed youth of today in both reality and fiction are bound to strap a webcam onto their egos at the drop of a status line. You could spend the whole film trying to second guess what's going on, but to some extent that cannily fits in with the subject's dilemma as things begin to seem that they are not what they seem. What makes the film compelling despite its more ropey premises, is that many of us interact online as a matter of course now, and we are constantly faced with the question of who we are actually dealing with, how well do we know these people whose faces appear in 55 by 55 pixel boxes on our screens.

There are some mind bendingly stupid assumptions made by the protagonists. It's kind of like watching someone blogging Blair Witch as it's happening, only without the witch, the horror, and they have sat/nav so they don't get lost pointlessly in the woods. As we see them test the limits of the reality they've been presented with, we wonder what is motivating both the film makers, and the who-are-they-really? social group they've interacted with remotely.

Ultimately the film becomes a story about how and why we construct identity. The emotional weight of the payoff, an insight into the need for human connection, minimizes the issue as to whether any of this story is true, or if documentary is just the style it wears, like a choice of profile pic, or the font for a blog. It stands as an interesting, relevant and involving story either way.

Did I really watch it? Maybe I just Googled it and gleaned a dozen reviews, or saw parts of it grabbed on YouTube. I'll make you guess.

But if you think I'm not telling the truth, ask yourself, what's in it for him?

Puppy Film Festival 1 & 2 : The Lovely Bones / Tideland

2011-11-28T23:30:00.001Z

The Puppies are on their ninth day of life I'm more relaxed that they don't need constant supervision, but I won't be going out to the movies for at least six weeks. So now's the time to catch up on those films sitting on the PVR, LOVEFiLM DVD's sitting unwatched in their return envelopes next to the player, mocking the postal rental concept as only beneficial to people with too much time on their hands (not to mention the list of offerings that I could stream to my TV via my netbook). Ahem.

So I'm starting my Puppy Film Festival today with two films (life got in the way and bumped the end of the second to tomorrow). The Lovely Bones and Tideland. The Lovely Bones was much derided on its release with the tautological judgement that the novel was unfilmable. As a Peter Jackson fan, particularly of his non-Tolkien efforts, I've been intrigued to see how interesting a failure this might be. So I recorded it when broadcast, but was holding off on watching it until I could read the book. During the first 48 hours of serial puppy vigil (the two most fragile days of their lives) I spent time in the whelping room making my way through the book, which I enjoyed, but through the remove of nostalgia for the period and place it describes, suburban Philly area in the 1970's. It's moving take on the relationship between the living and the dead is no doubt the element that has made it a favorite for many, and an occupant of those Books You Should Read memes. For my part, I could see that it was touching, but until precisely 3/4 of the way through, I was untouched, and this has been a particularly hard year for many of my loved ones who've suffered close losses. Then the narrator described her dog in a way that made me burst into tears.

As the film began, I realised that I wasn't going to be able to objectively enjoy it, first through the nostalgia factor, when I was recently back in the States, a friend pointed out to me that the MacDade Mall had been used for the film. This was easy to believe, as it sits in an area where the economic disadvantage is so entrenched, that it hasn't substantially changed since the 1970's. Some location scout had an orgasm when they saw it. The last movie that I saw in its duplex cinema was Do The Right Thing. I instantly wondered which area high-school had been used, it was a building very much of the same era as Springfield Delco where I grew up.

Then, with the book fresh in my mind, my view was further hobbled by comparison. Even as the film progresses, I can pick out the differences, and while its easy to concede trimming for space, some of the choices work against the story. Removal of the obsessive suspicion that the father of the murdered girl feels for her killer, robs the story of the engine for his breakdown, his wife's alienation, and much that comes from it. In fact the book is very much about the relationships within the family, living and dead., and extended to friends and lovers, but the film unwisely focusses too much on the story of the murderer, whose banality in the book makes him an unexpectedly incidental character as things progress.

Upsides are to be had in the visual sense, particularly the evocation of Susie's In-Between afterlife much of which works, even some of the more artificial shots, all the more for their artifice, but sadly much of it looks more like New Zealand than the alternative suburban heaven described in the novel. Two major characters interested in miniatures, as Jackson himself has proved to be both literally and figuratively, lead to some of the best sequences, the dollhouse as the subject for both the investigator and the voyeur, and a tantrum destroying ships in bottles becomes a fleet cast onto rocks despite the looming gaze of the lighthouse. There's also a well handled litany of the victims. Whatever Jackson has achieved here, it goes for nought in service of a script which flattens the characters compressing them along with their narratives into cyphers.

Saoirse Ronan breathes some life in her dead teenager role, and Stanley Tucci is great despite the fact that his very canny character in the book has been rewritten as the stupidest serial killer ever (in the book he does not keep the remains for a year, and his notebook has a cryptic page referring to the cornfield structure which isn't discovered until after the page comes to light, NOT obvious news clippings and a photo of the victim that he had no way of getting and a lock of her hair and the design for a TShirt reading I Did It, OK bar the last one). The greatest crime is that Rachel Weisz is given nothing to do, her character's departure and return are given little motivation, where in the book its an arc of great depth that carries through infidelity and self actualization over years. Here they may as well put her on skates so they can wheel her off and wheel her on. A muddle on so many levels, built to disappoint both those who know the book and those who don't.

Tideland is the extended tale of a child and her childhood surviving the grimmest of circumstances; two junkie parents, then cast adrift in an isolated prairie becalmed house, Jeliza-Rose weaves a protective veil with her imagination, as a powerful shield for her spirit, as vivid as Ofelia's in Pan's Labyrinth.

I must admit that this is the second time I've seen Tideland, but really the first time I've watched it. The first time was during my strungout week from hell before I went to the States in September, I attended Improbable's Open Space Impro Forum, prepared, cooked bbq for 20 owners of our canine progeny and went on forest walk with same and pooches, volunteered at three festival events and attended three more, which included the small awards ceremony where I came runner up for the Festival's Best Film Critic of the Year, lurked behind a tree making triffid noises to scare filmgoers on their way to see a horror film, had to dash into Southampton between the bbq and a silent film screening to buy a book for a friend in the states that I wanted signed by the author (and perhaps made a prat of myself doing so), participated in a workshop to support the establishment of a New Forest Nature Improvement Area, rebuilt a PC and installed a Netbook for the first time and shopped and packed for the trip, not sleeping for 32+ hours before travel, and perhaps having less than 16 hours shut eye in total all week. While formatting a 2 terabyte hard drive was taking forever, I thought I'd watch Tideland so that I could send it back to LOVEFiLM and then suspend my account during my vacation.

Well, in a tired strung out state, I simply could not follow the train of thought of the little girl's internal conversation that makes up much of the film, I found it repetitive and a bit annoying particularly when new stranger-stranger characters appear to move the action forward, or, sideways would be more accurate. I dozed near the end. To watch Tideland and take in its dizzying rollercoaster, you have to have the same patience and attention span you would need to actively engage with and look after a young child. On my first attempt to view, I was unfit, and perhaps DVD protective services should have been alerted to my abuse.

On a proper viewing it is magnificent, a poetic mid-west gothic with sprinklings of Flannery O'Connor, To Kill A Mockingbird, Texas Chainsaw and Trainspotting. It's a film that's brave enough to show a child in constant mild to severe peril, but wise enough to know that her innocence will blithely carry her through.

It's certainly one of Gilliam's most confident films, and possibly his most complete. I often feel that there's an intentional untidyness in Gilliam. He bursts with so many ideas it seems churlish to insist that he carries them all through. Perhaps there's a few producers in his wake who simply wish he had fewer ideas, I appreciate his generosity of mind. Here he carries off everything he attempts and does just enough to see the story through. He wisely only visualizes some of Jeliza-Rose's imaginative turns, allowing the stark beauty of the prairie scenery and Jodelle Ferland's stunning performance (including the multiple personalities of her imaginary dollhead incarnated friends) to do the rest. The cast is rounded out by grotesques, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Tilly, Janet McTeer, and Brendan Fletcher, providing counterpoint to the relative sanity of Jeliza-Rose's protective delusions.

I do advise DVD viewers to skip the optional Gilliam intro (but by all means watch it after), it seems there only to steel the faint hearted, and, perhaps slightly patronizingly, invite the audience to remember the imagination and resilience of children. If you've read this I think you have all you need to dive straight in to the glorious Lewis Caroll inflected opening. It will make you wish that Gilliam had directed The Lovely Bones,..... and Watchmen, ... and Harry Potter I & II, .... and.....

Both of these films feature excellent scores, The Lovely Bones a rare cinematic excursion by Brian Eno, and Tideland by brothers Jeff and Mychael Danna who later collaborated again on Gilliam's Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. In Gilliam and screencowriter Tony Grisoni commentary track they give extensive credit to the source novel by Mitch Cullin. I have no worries that they haven't done justice to it, Cullin has stated that he'd like to rewrite parts to include some of the new ideas introduced in the film. There's a book, I'll be tracking down at some point, hopefully won't need to wait until the next litter of puppies to read it.

Ken Russell, R.I.P.

2011-11-28T10:43:00.011Z

Ken Russell died yesterday, Sunday 27th Of November, 2011. Very sad news and a great loss to film making. A uniquely British talent. Shouldn't be remembered solely for the wild abandon with which he could attack or display the outré, or his indulgence in gloriously over the top imagery; all his films display a spectacular cinematic sense, an artist's eye, and a composer's sense of emotion, tone, and tempo.

He lived locally, and I had hopes of some day meeting him, if only to thank him. A friend of mine told a story of Russell driving up to our local Fish and Chip shop in his vintage car, flamboyantly entering and attempting to order a fish not on the menu, and turning on his heel and walking out.

Here's a run-down of his works I've seen, and for the little that it's worth, my appreciation of them:

1967 Billion Dollar Brain
I should give this another chance. Last time I saw it, I felt that it had let the Harry Palmer series down with its satirical jabs, and sub-Avengers-cum-Strangelove tone. On the other hand it ain't the train wreck some have described it as.

1969 Women in Love
It's a film I find hard to take seriously more because I just don't appreciate D.H.Lawrence. It's OK. but the plot lurches at the end are hard to take straight faced. Of course if your idea of homoeroticism involves naked wrestling Oliver Reed, you have a stronger stomach than I.

1970 The Music Lovers
When I was really little, I preferred the Grieg biopic Song of Norway to this; what did I know when I was 7? Not anywhere near as good as Mahler.

1971 The Devils
This was the first Russell I saw theatrically. I think I saw it as part of my Uni's on campus film program, and the followed it on at least two more occasions at the local rep house, the Theater of the Living Arts. Despite its highly stylized look, its earthy unflinching portrayal of medieval grue, really made me smile. All history should be like this. Python summed it up a few years later in Grail with "How do you know he's a king?" "He hasn't got shit all over him."

And that's even before you get to the machinations of corrupt church and state, and the portrayal of religious hysteria (and the politically motivated fomenting thereof), routinely denounced by religious hysterics. Really his sharpest film, most human and misanthropic simultaneously.

1974 Mahler
The first Russell I ever saw, and I saw it on TV, I was erroneously informed that it was made for television, and I thought if someone could make something this cinematic for TV they must be a genius. Strangely I've a memory of a travelling shot through trees to music that I was hoping to someday pay homage to, and on rewatching it recently I couldn't find it. Imagery so fantastic it permeates your dreams. A great movie about creativity and brooding morbidity, no wonder I loved it as a teenager.

1975 Tommy
Great kitsch fun as a pop object, not much cop as a film, but that's down to the source material. Ken makes a great fist of it all the same. Anyone who could convince Ann Margaret to swim in Heinz Baked Beans is all right in my book.

1980 Altered States
One of my favorite films. It manages to convey both the notion that reality is a solipsistic creation of our primal brains, and that love, literally, is all we have to hold it together. Some mocked the whole apeman thing, but how are American Werewolves more credible than psychoactive drugs combined with flotation tanks unravelling an evolutionary regression? I cannot understand Paddy Chayefsky's quite vocal and credit withholding problem with the film. Having read his own, inferior, novelization of his screenplay, I cannot imagine how the film could be a better realization of his themes. A stunning achievement by Russell, and a landmark score by John Corigliano (one of the prizes of my dwindling LP collection).

1984 Crimes of Passion
Some of us used to think Kathleen Turner was sexy. Proof of that is that I remember the poster more than I do the film. There's some over the top stuff with Anthony Perkins and a killer dildo, I'd like to see him duel the twins from Dead Ringers with their gynecological instruments for mutant women. A weird thriller satire on sexuality. Everything that Russell does in this film was done with much less style humour and panache by Kubrick in Eyes Wide Shut.

1986 Gothic
All I remember at the time was that the idea of the film seemed a bit better than what we got, and that Natasha Richardson made a very comely Mary Shelley. One of those, wish they'd had a couple more rewrites, they might have made it work, or not, films.

1987 Aria (segment "Nessun dorma")
I have little memory of this film, apart from liking the Robert Altman segment set in a theatre.

1988 The Lair of the White Worm
Anyone for Tennis, or Fangs? camp fun it certainly was, and made light relief of the tone of Gothic. I'd like to send Amanda Donahoe to eat up all these friggin' glitterin' vampyri who brood and take themselves so seriously. Maybe after that I'd send Lady Sylvia Marsh, the character she portrayed.

1989 The Rainbow
Didn't get around to seeing this one until this year. And it makes a nice D.H.Lawrence bookend with Women... , although its brief excursion into saphic-eroticism is not a patch on the former's sweaty alcoholic man love. It is nearly scuppered by Sammi Davis's acting in the lead role which is canny in naivete, but a bit all over the place the rest of the time. And, I still don't really care for Lawrence, wish Russell had done more Stoker.

Well, OK. There are only three of Ken Russell's films that I absolutely love, and boy do I, but I cherish the artistry in all of them. Even the pointless tasteless excess of the Nazi bits (can you imagine if he had collaborated with Russ Meyer?). There's some I need to seek out to see for the first time, and a few that I should review for pleasure and to note how they strike me now. All in all, I will feel grateful for his work and poorer for his loss.

Smile of the day: Contagion: missed tag line opportunities

2011-10-04T13:25:00.004+01:00

Missed tag line opportunities:

Contagion: The Feel Symptomatic Movie of the Year
Contagion: Tell 2-6 people to go see it.
Contagion: Go sit in a public place with hundreds of strangers so we can tell you why you shouldn't sit in a public place with hundreds of strangers.
Contagion: If you dislike Gwyneth Paltrow, the most fun you've had since Se7en.
Contagion: OCD? --> DVD!
Contagion: Expect the unexpectorant!
Contagion: Ok, Al Gore could probably have done the same thing in Powerpoint.

And Coming Soon:
Real Steel: Rock'em Sock'em Robots -- The Movie!

My Life in the Movies: A Prologue

2011-10-02T23:45:00.000+01:00

My Life in the Movies is a strand I'd been meaning to start writing for some time now. Most of the entries will deal with some distinct experiences I've had watching movies: a mildly disturbing film half remembered from a kiddie matinee, weathering the protesters outside the first public showing of Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, how an older brother helped indoctrinate me into cinema going. and possibly, with a little research, a strange catalogue of the obtuse connections between my family and the movies. In some cases I may re-evaluate some films as a guest of a friend's overlooked films blog

However I will lead off this series: There Are Some Arguments You Don't Want to Win, a social and critical dilemma, should you try to change someone's mind about a film they love, but you hate.

New Forest Film Festival: Vehicle of Horrors - The Sequel!!!

2011-09-18T18:24:00.004+01:00

As it can now be revealed, the secret Vehicle of Horrors film was The Evil Dead II. We can now exclusively pitch the follow up:

Until next year....

New Forest Film Festival 2011: My Playlists

2011-09-18T18:05:00.015+01:00

As a way of psyching myself up for all the volunteering and screening for this year's New Forest Film Festival, I did several playlists themed around some of the screenings, as virtual foyer music, completely for my own enjoyment. I suppose early on, I did half fancy suggesting to the organizers that they consider playing out some of this stuff as part of the ambience for some of the screenings, but a few of them are actual musicians, have their own tastes, etc., and I quickly realized that if I went so far as suggesting this sort of thing, I'd mark myself out as an annoying weirdo. I may have found other ways to do just that, unfortunately. Time will tell, and if any of them cross the street when they see me coming, I'll bravely take the hint.

But, for those of you who just enjoy lists, you might like a look at what I put together.

Musicalia
Just Go to the Movies	Cast	A Day in Hollywood, A Night in The Ukraine
As Time Goes By (complete vocal)	Max Steiner	Casablanca- Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
They All Laughed	Fred Astaire	Fred Astaire Sings
Broadway Ballet	Gene Kelly	Singin' In The Rain
Manic Depressive Presents Lobby Number (Parts 1&2)	Danny Kaye	The Best Of Danny Kaye
If I Were a Bell	Holly Cole Trio	Blame It On My Youth
Pennies From Heaven	Arthur Tracy	Pennies From Heaven
Comedy Tonight	Stephen Sondheim	A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum [OBC]
Did You Ever See A Dream Walking	Bing Crosby	Pennies From Heaven
Make 'Em Laugh	Donald O'Connor	Singin' In The Rain-ST
Tchaikovsky And Other Russians	Danny Kaye	Entertainer Extraordinary
That's Entertainment	FAstaire NFabray JBuchanan IAdams	The Band Wagon
Too Darn Hot	Ann Miller	Kiss Me Kate Cole Porter
Doin' the Production Code	Cast	A Day in Hollywood, A Night in The Ukraine
Could I Leave You	Stephen Sondheim	Follies
I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair	Mitzi Gaynor	South Pacific - Original Film Soundtrack Rogers & Hammerstein
On the Street Where You Live	Holly Cole Trio	Blame It On My Youth
I Love a Film Cliche	Cast	A Day in Hollywood, A Night in The Ukraine

UKnowFerKids
Life Could Not Better Be	Danny Kaye	The Court Jester
Little Boy Blue	Holly Cole Trio	Temptation
I Don't Want To Grow Up	Petra Haden & Bill Frisell	Petra Haden & Bill Frisell
I Won't Grow Up	Rickie Lee Jones	Pop Pop
I Wan'na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)	Los Lobos	Stay Awake, Hal Wilner's Disney Tribute
If I Were King Of The Forest	Nathan Lane	The Wizard Of Oz In Concert: Dreams Come True
Stay Awake	Innocence Mission, The	Now The Day Is Over
Lili Hi Lili, Hi Lo	Leslie Caron	Lili
Super-Cali-Fragil-Istic-Expi-Ali-Docious	Supremes, The
Trust In Me	Siouxsie & the Banshees	Through The Looking Glass
The Merry Old Land Of Oz	Cast	Wizard Of Oz Harold Arlen & E.Y. Harburg
Stupidcarelessfictional-nonsensicalverboseness	Forbidden Broadway	Forbidden Hollywood
Selectie Mary Poppins	The Postelfonia's BmG 223	Eerste Bestelling (First Delivery)
Foreign Novelty Smash	The Credibility Gap	The Rhino Brothers Present The Worlds Worst Records Vol. 2
Siamese Cat Song	Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin	Up from the Dark
The Allosaurus Chorus	Evergreen Choir, The
Triplets	Fred Astaire w/NFabray JBuchanan	The Band Wagon Great MGM Stars
Mad Dogs And Englishmen	Danny Kaye	The Best Of Danny Kaye

Cinephile
Exit Music (For A Film)	Miranda Sex Garden	Anyone Can Play Radiohead
The Invisible Man	Elvis Costello &Attractions	Punch The Clock
I Love a Film Cliche	Cast	A Day in Hollywood, A Night in The Ukraine
Everyone's Gone to the Movies	Steely Dan	Citizen Steely Dan
If I Saw You In A Movie	Heather Nova	South
If You Were In My Movie	Suzanne Vega	Close Up-Love Songs
Movies Of Myself	Rufus Wainwright	Want One
Road Movie To Berlin	They Might Be Giants	Flood
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly	John Zorn	Filmworks 1986-1990
Kung Fu	Ash	1977
Lust In The Movies	Long Blondes, The	Someone To Drive You Home
Mysteries Of Love	Antony and the Johnsons	I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy
Calling You	Holly Cole Trio	Blame It On My Youth
When The Lights Go Out All Over Europe	Divine Comedy, The	Promenade
The Man With The Golden Gun	Emiliana Torrini	Crouie d'o l
Tomorrow Never Dies	Uwe Kröger	From Broadway to Hollywood
This Is Not America	Juliette Lewis	Hollywood, Mon Amour
B Movie	Elvis Costello &Attractions	Get Happy!!
Exit Music (for a film)	Brad Mehldau


Vehicle of Horror
Drive-In Movie	Commercial Recording Corporation	The Money Maker
Weird Nightmare	Elvis Costello & Bill Frisell	Deep Dead Blue - Live At Meltdown
Exquisite Dead Guy	They Might Be Giants	Factory Showroom
I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy	Antony and the Johnsons	I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy
Friend of the Devil	Lyle Lovett	Deadicated - A Tribute to Grateful Dead
Black Christmas	Trailer
My Wife and My Dead Wife	Robyn Hitchcock (& the Egyptians)	Catalog Sampler
Unsolved Child Murder	The Auteurs	Volume 17 (Disc 2)
Bela Lugosi's Dead (Bauhaus)	Nouvelle Vague	Bande A Part (UK Ltd. Edition)
Dinner With Leatherface	3D Invisibles	Jump Off the Screen
Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner	Warren Zevon	Excitable Boy
Tania	Camper Van Beethoven	Our Beloved Revolutionary Swee
6ix	Lemonheads, The	Car button cloth (all of these things sank)
Silent Night Bloody Night	Trailer
Beware of the Blob	Blob, The	The Golden Turkey Award Album-The Best Songs From The Worst Movies
The Thing That Only Eats Hippies	Dead Milkmen, The	Death Rides a Pale Cow
Silent Night Deadly Night II	Trailer
Human Fly (The Cramps)	Nouvelle Vague	Bande A Part (UK Ltd. Edition)
Death Cab For Cutie	Bonzo Dog Band	Gorilla
Down in the Ground Where the Deadmen Go	Pogues, the	Red Roses for Me
Robert E. Lee Broke His Musket on his Knee	2,000 Maniacs	The Golden Turkey Award Album- The Best Songs From The Worst Movies
The Legend of Guan Di	McCain Brothers, The	My name is Bruce ST
Where The Wild Roses Grow	Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds	Murder Ballads
The Homecoming Queen's Got A Gun	Julie Brown	Dr Demento 20th Anniversary Collection-Disc 2
Plan 9 from Outer Space	3D Invisibles	Jump Off the Screen

I hadn't done a list for the silent film screening, after all it had live musical accompaniment from the Dodge Brothers and film music genius Neil Brand (perhaps the 5th Dodge Brother). I presumed they'd play out recordings of their own stuff, or something similar. Mike Hammond of the Dodge Brothers (film historian at Southampton Uni, in his spare time), said in his intro that the film The Ghost That Never Returns was a perfect project for the Dodge Brothers as they shared the themes of Transportation and Homicide (now there's an album title, if I ever 'eard one). So, I've done this list in tribute, post facto. I may do a "Transportation" one, but every time I think of it, I never get past the excellent Laura Cantrell's EP Planes and Boats and Trains, featuring a great cover of the titular Bacharach song, along with other transportation themed tunes.

Homicide
A Sweet Little Bullet From a Pretty Blue Gun	Tom Waits	Blue Valentine
Murder	John Lee Hooker Miles Davis	The Hot Spot Soundtrack
But I Was Cool	Albert Collins	Don't Lose Your Cool
How Come My Dog Don't Bark (When You Come Round)	Dr. John	Goin' Back To New Orleans
Smoking Gun	Robert Cray	Strong Persuader
I'm The Man Who Murdered Love	XTC	Wasp Star (Apple Venus, Vol. 2)
Knoxville girl	Lemonheads, The	Car button cloth (all of these things sank)
Let Him Dangle	Elvis Costello	Spike
Gun	Siouxsie & the Banshees	Through The Looking Glass
Happiness Is A Warm Gun (Lennon)	Tori Amos	Strange Little Girls
Honey Gun	Nick Lowe	Party of One
Man With A Gun	Jerry Harrison	Something Wild
Murder, Tonight, In The Trailer Park	Cowboy Junkies	Black Eyed Man
Stagger Lee	Taj Mahal	Giant Step
Take Out Some Insurance On Me Baby	Jimmy Reed
Unworthy of Your Love	Stephen Sondheim	Assassins
Death And The Lady	John Renbourn	A Maid In Bedlam (John Renbourn Group)
St. Stephens Day Murders	Elvis Costello, Chieftains, the	The Bells of Dublin
I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You	Dr. John	Goin' Back To New Orleans

Back-B-Log: Catch-Up: The Social Network, Worst Films 2010 etc.

2011-09-17T09:41:00.004+01:00

I've gotten around to finishing the following articles, and, as I perversely prefer them to be posted to the dates when I more relevantly started writing them, this means they don't show up as the latest thing in the arbitrarily chronological feed.

30/09/10 Surfin' Multiplex: Fear, Loathing and Claustrophobia: The Town, The Hole, Buried, Devil
21/10/10 Review: The Social Network: Fight Club for Nerds
31/12/10 Recycled: My Worst Films of the Year 2010

Enjoy!

Also, note, due to my Advent Calendar in Song project in December 2010, going back chronologically may be a bit laborious, you may want to take advantage of the "labels" feature of the blog to see "Reviews" only, for example.

New Forest Film Festival: Project Nim: Responsibility and Mind

2011-09-13T19:20:00.000+01:00

The New Forest Film Festival's screening of the excellent documentary Project Nim featured the added value of introduction and then post viewing Q&A with Mike Colbourne, senior keeper at Dorset's Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre, mediated by Film Festival Organizer Linda Ruth Williams. Professor of Film at Southampton University. The film's story of the chimp Nim, taught to sign and used for a spurious experiment to raise him as if he were human, in the context of an extended human family, becomes a vision of a hell paved with good intentions. An absorbing thoughtful film which further elevates the pedigree of director James Marsh (Man on Wire).

There are some slightly artificial illustrative "recreations" that fill gaps in the archive footage, but these do nothing to detract from the air of verisimilitude, whilst giving us the blessed relief of a slight remove from the frankly grim material, a tragedy of errors born of arrogance and self delusion as Nim's "me generation" keepers play an increasingly harmful game of pass the parcel with the hapless animal. Indeed, even the person who comes off best in the film, to the extent that many in the audience consider him the hero of the story, is irresponsible enough to share his recreational drugs with the chimp. Monkey see, monkey dude.

Primate advocates are always eager to stress the notion that the apes are our "closest relatives" in the animal kingdom. This is meant to elicit sympathy, but it also is an own goal because it supports the delusion that we can understand them on human terms. This is a mistake repeated many times throughout the film.

A would be saviour of Nim removes him from one appalling situation, but installs him in isolation, an ordeal for a social animal. A violent incident occurs when a person from much earlier in Nim's story visits and unwisely enters Nim's enclosure. Everyone assumes the attack is based on recognition and a concomitant emotional outburst. In the post film Q&A the primate keeper ascribes it to "frustration". What happens could as easily be a reaction to an intruder on Nim's solitary territory. The problem is we can't fathom Nim's motives, and every time those in his life presume to do so, as well as us, after the fact, he is done a great disservice.

It is not unusual for us to project our own way of thinking onto the actions of animals. We do this all the time, not just with animals, but as we interact with each other, this is called the Theory of Mind (a very good article about how this applies to how we treat our dogs can be found here: slate.com Do Dogs Think?). This is always bound to cause problems as we assume the needs and values of those whose minds we imagine. Nim's story is fraught with the presumptions of his keepers, particularly the notion that just by dressing him up and "raising" him as human, he'd automatically become more like us.

The other problem that Nim encounters is that many of his "benefactors" treat him as a pet. The guest keeper does use the discussion as a platform to highlight a petition to call for a government debate on primate keeping, strengthen the legislation on the control and monitoring of primates in pet ownership (Primates as Pets Petition). Their aim is not to ban ownership, which would drive the trade underground, but to better regulate and institute a proper regime of checks of owners and animal living conditions. In old regime, anyone could own wild animals as pets. The wild animal licensing laws stopped much pet ownership except strangely, smaller primates, which have the same problems of maltreatment. Most primates are social animals, removing them to a human context isolates them and psychologically impacts on them. The fundamental disconnect occurs when owners fail to understand all of the animal's requirements.

This problem is common to owners of standard pets. As a dog owner, and infrequent breeder, whose wife does assessments for a spaniel rescue, I'm used to vetting potential pet owners. This process may seem as intense as an adoption, but it is as important to determine whether they're prepared to take on the consequences of caring, keeping and training their animal throughout its life. When acting as a breeder, the conversation provides scrutiny in both directions. We wouldn't like to place puppies with people who aren't asking the right questions about the needs of their charges.

Many have well meaning but cavalier attitude towards pets, as toys, accessories, or as automatic companions with no inherent needs. For whatever love people may profess towards animals, however deeply felt, we're humans, and we just don't think things through. That cute puppy may be encouraged to jump up, sit on furniture or play tug of war with toys and leads, but when fully grown will suddenly be expected to desist from these behaviours; that sweet chimp approaching adulthood may casually kill other pets and chew half your face off and has the strength to easily maim or kill. That the trajectory of each lifecycle is known and predictable is either wilfully ignored, confounded by irresponsible ignorance or (in the case of photographers who defang chimps for a career in cute "family" photos) managed with intentional mutilation or euthanasia.

Back in the 1980s I had a friend who had looked forward to being a research scientist, had trained for it, and had his first job in a university medical research lab. In an adjacent lab studies were being done with primates, looking into the effect of collisions on the neck and spine. For these simulations chimps and orangutans were accelerated at walls and static objects at various angles and speeds. The injured apes were then diagnosed for how their musculature and vertebrae coped with these injuries. Just being in proximity to this extremity of ethical science made my friend rethink his choice of career. He spoke to me of the flawed grant system which encouraged studies to be proposed almost purely for the sake of generating grant money. Careers constructed around innovative methods of harm with the furthering of science an almost secondary consideration.

I myself am a queasy fencesitter about animal testing, particularly as a son of a Parkinson's sufferer. Mike Colbourne in his introduction was quite honest about diabetes and other conditions that he has that require treatments that most likely were tested on primates in the past, but he pointed out what he has seen of the sharp end, the ex-lab primates that have come to his care physically and mentally distraught. That testing could be used as a last resort only for arguably vital research when other methods are exhausted, is a door that may be left open.

We must remain mindful of our responsibility to the animals, whatever use we put them to. It is responsibility thought through, responsibility acted upon and responsibility seen through, not opposable thumbs, language, abstract thinking, nor other self congratulatory virtues that may truly elevate us amongst the animals, however closely related we may be.

The Last Picture Show as Reviewed By A Critic With an Axe To Grind Over This Gimmick of Black and White

2011-09-12T14:35:00.006+01:00

Based on Larry McMurtry's semi-autobiographical novel, and featuring a talented ensemble of both promising unknown newcomers and stalwart character actors, this movie should have been a calling card for up and comer, actor/film critic turned director Peter Bogdonovich. However, all are ill served by the incomprehensible decision to release the film in black and white. This move can only have been driven by "the business", some accountant has worked out that the film can be distributed for less by releasing it on less expensive black and white stock. The cynical studios have the young director, whose career has consisted of Drive-In fodder thus far, naively claiming that the choice was aesthetic, not financial.

Set in a mid-western town during the early 1950's, a time of the birth of rock and roll and lurid red cars with tailfins, it depicts the slow disintegration of a community which abandons its public spaces, pool halls and movie houses, to live in tract house suburbia and watch TV. This was an opportunity to show how much more real, and the style is otherwise very realistic, the lives of genuine people are in natural colour, instead the gimmick of black and white makes the film look like television.

For many years Hollywood has fought a war of attrition with TV, and the popular conceit was that by offering bigger wider screens, better sound, and vivid colour, audiences could be tempted back into theatres. This has not worked, so the suits probably thought, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". Although colour TV is now available, more people own black and white than colour, making it the clear preference. The film even has a an aspect ratio half way between Cinemascope and TV. Hollywood's scientific wizards have found a way to port the black and white of television back onto film.

Having presented his television series, Hitchcock famously experimented with this technology, retrofitting Psycho into monochrome to tone down the gore of the shower scene (Michael Powell showed Hitchcock's timidity by releasing Peeping Tom, as it was meant to be, in colour). But Bogdonovich is no Hitchcock.

Bogdonovich claims that his "decision" to use grayscale was commended by his pal, himself once a wunderkind, Orson Welles. The now has-been cigar and cheap chablis shill sleeping on Bogdonovich's couch, whose own exercise in nostalgia, The Magnificent Ambersons, was taken away from him, too late to re-shoot in colour. The studio, concerned that without the period colour, fans of Booth Tarkington's blockbuster best seller, expecting another Gone With the Wind, might react with anger, and indeed the film flopped. Welles has perversely flown the flag for black and white since, and has clearly manipulated his disciple into the same artistic blind alley.

Underneath the dross of this gimmick, there may be a half decent film struggling to get out. The sad failed romance of Sam the Lion, the tragic trajectory of idiot child Billy, Sonny's coming of age reflected in his variable friendship with Duane, his longing for Jacy and his affair with Ruth, should all congeal to some kind of poignancy. But frankly I didn't notice, my eyes were struggling the whole time to try to reintegrate the colour that had been forcibly drained from the images. It is this problem, chromosthesia, that causes headaches in viewers. I may have been able to recommend this movie, if only some cinemas were brave enough to show it in its colour print.

There is a solution to this problem, you can construct your own "colourizing" spectacles. Merely purchase two pairs of sunglasses with polarizing lenses, some wire, a motorized toy car, and some sticky backed plastic. Break one of the sunglasses leaving the lenses separate. Attach the bisected toy car by the axels to the extra lenses, suspending them in front of those of the unbroken sunglasses, using the small motor to rotate them. Other viewers may object to the sound of the motor, but you can cover this up by buying more popcorn and nachos and chewing loudly with an open mouth. Granted, this will not give you true colour, you will see swirls of colour akin to Corman's The Trip, but you can enjoy these to fuller effect if you also smuggle in a cassette player with a tape of Atom Heart Mother, hitting "play" when Cybill Shepherd joins "the club". Finally, place the sticky backed plastic over your mouth to suppress any loud squeals of delight.

Despite the slight dimness caused by the reduction, up to 20%, of what I think they call footchromas, Bogdonovich is sticking to his guns, pledging to shoot Paper Moon in "genuine" monochrome, and rumour has it that Mel Brooks may follow suit with Young Frankenstein. Whatever its good intentions may be, I hope that The Last Picture Show fails to find an audience, as its success would be a prophetic death knell to the industry, making it "the Last", indeed. There is some hope on the horizon as avant garde film-maker George Lucas, who is remaking his enigmatic student film in glorious washed out colour, is considering a look at a similar period as this film, hopefully he'll put the pink Cadillacs and the yellow neon back where it belongs on our nation's screens.

[Author's Note: This is another piece that I wrote as a potential entry for the New Forest Film Critic of the Year 2011 Competition, but which I decided was too fanciful for the competition. It's really more like science fiction, the review is set in a slightly alternate universe. My short listed entry (Review: The Brothers Bloom: The Sum of Its Parts), and its other unsubmitted sibling "Mamma Mia! as directed by Michael Haneke" may be read following the links.]

Fantasy Reviews: Mamma Mia! as directed by Michael Haneke

2011-09-11T20:00:00.000+01:00

In Mamma Mia! Michael Haneke gives us his grimmest unblinkingly bleak dissection of the human condition yet. Meryl Streep (Silkwood, Ironweed) performs her most blisteringly tragic role since Sophie's Choice, with which she creates a dramatic throughline, again playing a woman haunted by the decisions of her past, this time the mother of a character named Sophie.

Always the maverick, Haneke breaks new ground by having the characters shatter the realism of the mise en scène by expressing their thoughts suddenly in the songs of an obscure, darkly contemplative Scandinavian band, ABBA (whose name perversely describes a rhyming scheme their sinister lyrics never employ). The effect of these random bursts into song is his most shocking arresting device since the "rewind" scene from Funny Games (both the German and U.S., as well as the unreleased Japanese animé version). The inexplicable transitions into song, with often surreally sourceless musical accompaniment, form a polemic against American cinema's disempowerment of the spectator by providing more answers than questions, and upends the viewers expectations of a Haneke film by sidestepping his usual formal use of silence.

The plot concerns a young bride-to-be, Amanda Seyfried (Mean Girls) trying to discover her true parentage. Haneke is playing with issues of identity, squarely honing in on the post-feminist struggle of a woman against a culture that insists she define herself in terms of men, her unknown father and her soon to be husband. The ghosts in Streep's past are Pierce Brosnan (Nomads, The Long Good Friday), Colin Firth (Trauma) and Stellan Skarsgård (Breaking the Waves), playing multiple nationalities and members of male dominated professions, they are really just portraying facets of a single male archetype, domineering and global.

There are some missteps. Haneke draws us briefly away from the grueling emotional tension to deconstruct the fall from grace of capitalism ("Money, Money, Money"), and throws in some overwrought metaphors conflating the battle of the sexes and the horrors of war ("Fernando", "Waterloo"). Dominic Cooper (From Hell), Julie Walters (G.B.H.) and Christine Baranski (Reversal of Fortune, Cruel Intentions), who round out the cast are cruelly underused, perhaps intentionally, as meaningless ciphers. Whilst Haneke's motives are semiotically unfathomable, it is possible that we are being provoked to establish a Brechtian emotional distance from the characters. These flaws do not dim this staggering achievement.

In one masterstroke, with the song "SOS", Haneke is telling us that by driving to our multiplex, buying not just tickets, but family fun pack refreshments, with extra big gulp, yard of slushee, large popcorn and plastic tray of nachos with a compartment of scalding microwaved processed jalapeño cheese food, and by sitting in designated seats, perhaps encroaching on the personal space of the seat next to us by using the arm rest reservoir for our soda pop, whilst we balance the nachos between us, by participating in this earth resource draining consumerist charade, we are implicitly culpable for the grotesque spectacle of Pierce Brosnan's singing. We are complicit and responsible for every jarring flat semiquaver as it thuds against our ear drums, as Haneke makes clear to us by rigidly keeping the sound level from dipping and by not sparing us one moment of horror, cutting away or processing it through autotune. For if we are not there to hear it, he would not need to film it in the first place. Just as Haneke used the unflinching audio of the offscreen murder in Benny's Video to harrowing effect, he reminds us that in a cold uncaring universe, our own cries of SOS will go unheeded.

It is particularly telling how Haneke uses one of the most recognizable dirges, "Knowing Me, Knowing You", played instrumentally as the couple walk down the aisle. Pitting this denunciation of the delusion of understanding between clearly unknowable minds, against the societal conventions promoting this illusory union, creates a damning reevaluation of the institution of marriage. That Haneke deftly weaves this into a tableau of skin deep glamour and taffeta, makes the viewer's inescapable realization of the shallow futility of all human interaction at once poignant and searingly painful.

Given the "emo" cult of the music, this will no doubt make the film a draw for teenagers. Here, I feel, the BBFC have criminally rated this film a liberal PG, permissively ignoring the effect of such traumatic material, clearly inducing suicidal thoughts, in that impressionable age. For youth, having the hope of life ahead of them surgically removed, as this film does coldly and clinically, there may be no other way past the pain and misery that Mamma Mia! evokes. Parents, lest that be the last cry you hear from your wounded child, ban them from this film! Just tell them to say "No Thank You to the Music".

In the end, a nearly unwatchable, though masochistically compelling, pitiless excursion into brutal nihilism.

And the tunes are catchy.

[Author's Note: This is another piece that I wrote as a potential entry for the New Forest Film Critic of the Year 2011 Competition, but which I decided was too fanciful for the competition. Also, although I was able to knock my short listed entry (Review: The Brothers Bloom: The Sum of Its Parts) down from about 900 words to the competition limit 500, the verbose pseudo-intellectualese used in this piece denied much trimming from its first draft and even grew a bit as I finished it off for inclusion here. Not being as tight, I hope it doesn't overstay its welcome.]

Review: The Brothers Bloom: The Sum of Its Parts

2011-09-11T00:19:00.006+01:00

[Author's Note: This Review has been short listed in the Senior Category of the New Forest Film Festival's New Forest Film Critic of the Year 2011 Competition.]

I. Prologue

Rian Johnson's new movie The Brothers Bloom seems to be answering several obtuse questions:

1. If Wes Anderson did not exist, would it be necessary to invent him?
2. Why did they stop making those new-wave inflected, insouciant caper comedies from the 1960's?
3. Is Mark Ruffalo a great actor, but with zero charisma?
4. When will Rachel Weisz requite my love for her?
5. Can you like something with vague literary pretentions, without being literally vaguely pretentious?

II. The Tale

The Brothers Bloom are conmen - their cons so exquisite that they do not merely dupe the rubes, but provide their victim with a deeply thematic cathartic experience. Con as performance art. Younger brother, Bloom (Adrien Brody) feels trapped by brother Stephen's (Mark Ruffalo) machinations, but is convinced to do one last job, tricking a wealthy recluse Penelope (Rachel Weisz).

III. The Acting

Rachel Weisz starts stilted, sporting a withdrawn, self-conscious demeanor (was she playing Gwyneth Paltrow playing a Royal Tennenbaum?). When her character comes out of her shell, joyful exuberance develops. From then on Rachel can do no wrong. You just want to make her happy, smile that smile with her oh-so-bright eyes. She even made me forget about that other conmen movie she was in. Sigh.

I once thought Mark Ruffalo was stuck in that charisma vacuum which is the epitome of Matthew McConaughey. A stand out in Fincher's Zodiac, I've warmed to him; here he does a great job as the flamboyant svengali. Adrien Brody, stuck with the Pinocchio dilemma, yearning to be real, wisely plays the turmoil under his passivity overshadowed by his brother. Rincho Kikuchi appears as a delightfully Harpo-esque explosives expert.

IV. The Direction

I was impressed with Rian Johnson's debut, the high-school noir, Brick. A film which managed to make Lukas Haas seem menacing. It evoked noir through plot, characters and dialogue, but steered clear of pastiche.

This is a bigger challenge: A rococo concoction. juggling styles - John Irving prologue, comedy heist flicks, Mamet gamesmanship and Fellini exotica along with a breezy patina of misdirection. I found myself charmed and wowed by a series of sight gags, visual ticks, and bits of business, that liberally pepper the opening sequences. Luckily, the style calms down, leaving room for ruminations on storytelling, reflecting the conmen's ambition "to tell a story so well it becomes real".

V. The Verdict

In the wake of other literary affected films, The Brothers Bloom might be secondary post-modern, but for me it pulls off its heady mixture of stylized reality, genuine fakery and smoky mirrors. Sure, it does seem to end a few extra times, but always to payoff earlier foreshadowing in a satisfying manner. If you find this contrived, like the chapter headings in this review, you may want to avoid, but even those who are irked by Wes Anderson will like The Brothers Bloom.

OK, sure, it's a con, but for all that, some of us enjoy being taken in.

[Author's Note: I originally saw the film on 25/06/10 and wrote my first draft shortly after, it then gathered dust until I decided to finish it properly for the competition. At the same time I worked on two other reviews: "Mamma Mia! as directed by Michael Haneke", and "The Last Picture Show as Reviewed By A Critic With an Axe To Grind Over This Gimmick of Black and White". I decided that while these were fun bits of writing, they might be too fanciful for the competition. Competition limitations (500 word max) forced me to tighten up my writing with ruthless self sub editing, which, sadly, the rest of my output lacks, but also made me drop a section discussing the trend in films which self-consciously use literary devices. I hope to post an extended version of that here soon.]

My Annual Bafta Annoyance 2011

2011-01-18T16:49:00.003Z

Another year in my rant against the BAFTA's for cheating their own eligibility requirements in order to nominate films that haven't actually been released and usually are merely imminent around the time of the award ceremonies themselves. I hate this because I feel that the general public should have a chance to have seen all the films before the nominations.

I have no quibble with the films released in the UK in the calendar year being honoured, in this case 2010. However, a significant portion of those nominated have been released in 2011, and, as usual at least one even fails BAFTA's own requirements. This is an utterly craven pandering to the distributors.

Let's remind ourselves of this year's requirements:

Eligibility

Films must be released theatrically in the UK, within the Academy awards year:
1 January to 31 December 2010. Films that open between 1 January and 11 February 2011 inclusive may be 'qualified' by Distributors by being screened to Academy Film Voting Members by Tuesday 21 December 2010.

To be eligible, a feature film must:

be feature-length, i.e. with a running time exceeding 60 minutes;
receive its first public exhibition or distribution in the UK as a theatrical release;
be exhibited publicly to a paying audience within a commercial cinema in the UK for no fewer than seven consecutive days.

Films from all countries are eligible in all categories, with the exception of Outstanding British Film, Outstanding Debut, Short Film and Short Animation which are for British films only.

Four quite heavily nominated films are released in 2011, all after the nomination announcements. These are Black Swan (11 nominations, release Jan 21st), Biutiful (2 nominations, Jan 28th), The Fighter (3 nominations, Feb 4th) and True Grit (8 nominations, Feb 11th). The first three squeak in and meet the late eligibility requirements. True Grit is released on the last day of Eligibility period, but it fails the "publicly to a paying audience... for no fewer than seven consecutive days." as the award ceremony is two days later on the 13th.

Previous years have seen these films so dishonourably nominated:

2008 Latest Open Date 8th Feb, Awards 10th Feb.
There Will be Blood (15th Feb )

2009 Latest Open Date 6th Feb, Awards 8th Feb.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (6th Feb 2009)
Doubt (6th Feb 2009)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (13th Feb 2009 released after the eligibility and the awards)

2010 Latest Open Date 19th Feb, Awards 21st Feb.
The Lovely Bones (19 February 2010).

This may seem horribly pedantic, but my main point is that awards should be nominated and awarded from a level playing field, say a given 12 month period, not skewed to only films which have theatrical, or now possibly DVD releases that create synergy with the date of the Awards ceremony. I don't begrudge the films or their makers nominations, but this should reflect merit, not the machinations of film distributors. This also leaves the BAFTAs open to the accusation that they are an irrelevant stop-gap between the Golden Globes and the Oscars, as they bend their eligibility to include films that have earlier release dates in North America and are more suitably eligible for those awards.

This year I will make a much more solid attempt to get this rant some traction, watch this space...

Recycled: My Worst Films of the Year 2010

2010-12-31T13:17:00.006Z

[Author's Note: There are times I go on a bit when I comment on someone else's blog, but waste not, want not. This was original posted to the BBC's Kermode Uncut blog. Mark Kermode is one of the UK's top film critics, he has a weekly BBC Podcast with seasoned radio presenter Simon Mayo. Kermode is sometimes referred to as (academically) Dr. K. In his video blog, he refers to Let Me In: "The most utterly redundant remake of the year, I've already Let the Right One In, why would I let you in?"]

I loved Dr K's remark about having already Let The Right One In, but it perhaps presages the remake's possible sequels, Let Me In Too, and Look Who's Letting Me In Now.

While I ordinarily would simply thank Dr K for taking the bullets for the rest of us, even the dullest of cinematic spidey senses would have warned us off these. I did consider seeing the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, knowing it would be a car wreck, but with that compulsion that makes you glance at the accident on the other carriageway as you drive by. Luckily I was unable to fit in a viewing before feedback from Dr K and others quashed that masochistic urge (the "original" is my favorite horror film).

I also find it much easier to make a bottom five list than a top five. If I really enjoy and love a group of movies, I find ranking them pointless. A worst list is easier because gauging a level of hatred is more straightforward.

The Road - I know it was extremely well made, acted, directed, etc. (not to mention stupefyingly worthy). But I just couldn't get past how utterly stupid its unspecified disaster and its aftermath seemed to be. What could possibly destroy almost all nature whilst leaving man alive? Did it also destroy all the outlet stores which would have provided an unending supply of fresh clothes for the surviving population rather than forcing them to wear homeless chic? Did it involve monsters (there's a mysteriously dead forest with trees knocked over and a boat that has somehow been put on dry land)? How boring does a film have to be for me to spend my time thinking of such questions? Mad Max Beyond Thunderingly Dull.

The Other Guys - I've actually enjoyed some of Will Ferrell's movies but I completely understand if you don't, and I'm not ever going to argue the pretty weak points. The films where his schtick works for me are the one's where he plays an over the top, arrogant caricature, usually abetted by the great John C. Reilly. Here he plays a low status schlubb (it's more of Steve Carell character), and it just doesn't work, and nothing else does either. Dr. K was very generous about Mark Wahlberg's comic potential, and I agree it's there, but it's as much on display here as it was in I (heart) Huckabees (which is saying so little, an electron microscope might be handy).

44 Inch Chest - Great cast squandered in lifeless predictable exercise of east end gangster talky artiness, Revolver for the middle aged. Stagey is the key word as the performances might have been electrifying if performed live on a stage in a way that might have lifted the material, but instead dull dull dull dull dull, had me pining for Harold Pinter's turn in the film version of Mojo, and that's not a good thing.

Alice in Wonderland - Great casting and art direction, no script or direction, and a fundamental ignorance of the source material (hint: the title is a lie, and the poem about the gruesome creature is the Jabberwocky, not the Jabberwock creature itself). Helena Bonham Carter furthers her resume/CV in hair acting (I see that she wears a hat in The King's Speech, so I'm hopeful).

Robin Hood - I was going to give this a miss (the Trailer had me imagining Gerald Butler intoning This Is Sherwood!), but something Billy Bragg said in his interview with Dr K and Simon made me briefly think it might be interesting. It was that Bragg had had a conversation about Forest Rights with Crowe implying some of that had possibly been integrated into the film. As a New Forest resident where these ancient rights are still practiced (and enshrined in modern law from the 1870's), I was intrigued enough to ignore my misgivings. I'm not blaming anyone for my bad decision to follow this tenuous thread, I'm making this comment long enough without delineating what a mess the movie is. It is enough to hate this film for making the Kevin Costner version look good.

Due to the economy, I was unable to see more bad films, so I'd like to list a few most disappointing movies:

Made in Dagenham - Formulaic cliche ridden script given the best airing possible by fine cast. To describe it as this year's Full Monty or Brassed Off, skips over the fact that it is a paint-by-numbers conflation of the two. There's the third act lurch into melodrama provided by the up to then unnecessary subplot, and the 11th hour argument between the lead couple which serves for one of those transportation related chasing reconciliation moments that have me convinced that the British can only express love through mileage. Well intentioned, good message, fitfully enjoyable, but very creaky (I pitied Rosamund Pike who manages to make her rubbish patronizing slightly posh middle class women need liberating too speech touching). I've no problem with the language, but Wooley's argument about accuracy kind of falls apart when they've invented an ensemble of sassy composite characters. Sadly, like much of this sort of output of British film industry, I enjoyed it the way you supportively enjoy your child's turn in the school play, in the knowledge that it's all a nice effort but doesn't stand adult scrutiny. Oh, bless.

Green Zone - Formulaic conspiracy thriller, might have worked if its topicality sell by hadn't expired in 2004. Rory Bremner covered all the same material before and within a year after the invasion 2003. Very well executed, just obvious and tedious, Jason Isaac's 'tache notwithstanding (perhaps he could have a tonsored acting competition with Helena B-C).

Inception - if only I had steered clear of the hype, I might have been less bored. Pretty much an excuse for an elaborate overlong multilayered action set piece, convoluted is not the same as clever. Its notions of dream world are restricted to the fantasies of city planners and Bond villians, not a hint of Dreamscape or Imaginarium in sight. I might have been able to suspend my disbelief in its easily pick apartable premises had the wafer thin characters moved me to care in any way. And even giving its due for its ambition and how well executed it is, I hated the sophomoric cheesy pseudo philosophical are they really? final shot, which could only appeal to those who thought the Matrix was deep. In fact, while I don't mind others declaring it the best movie of the year, I'd nominate that last few seconds of Inception as the Worst Movie of the Year.

Advent Calendar in Song: Addendum: What Are You Doing New Year's Eve

2010-12-26T01:00:00.006Z

I wasn't sure whether to wrap this up on Christmas, where all the proper advent calendars end, or to overdo it and hit the 12 days of Christmas, right up to Epiphany, which happens to be the birthday of two of my brothers-in-law. Travel plans allowing, I will be at the New Forest Point-to-Point race today, one of the only surviving point to point races in the world. I've decided that I can't do the proper thing, but, for once, I'm not going to over do it.

I'm leaving this thread with Mary-Margaret O'Hara's cover of the Frank Loesser song, "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"

Mary-Margaret O'Hara is the younger sister of actress and comedienne (SCTV & Christopher Guest regular) Catherine O'Hara. As a singer/songwriter she released one incredible album, Miss America, in 1988. It is full of haunting tracks about emotional insecurity, and some actually sound as if they were written or performed during electroconvulsive therapy, there is something harrowing about the glimpses of rawness, and it is brave and unique in its elliptical and teasing song structures. Her high airy vocals convey a fragility, as if her identity was shredding in front of your ears. It was critically hailed, but she has not produced a full album since.

I saw her perform, headlining a special Canada Day concert, 1st July 1992 at the Hammersmith Apollo. One of the unknown support acts, Barenaked Ladies stole the show. The other support acts weren't memorable but were straight ahead rock. The audience didn't really seem ready for Mary Margaret's post Patty Smith soul bearing and downbeat sound. They responded with indifference or rudeness, and I felt quite bad for her, as a fan of her work, I just wanted those who didn't like it to piss off, and leave us for a more intimate gig. Instead I think she just cut short her set, which cast a pall over the evening.

Here's a video of a live gig of her covering Somewhere Over the Rainbow, by turns beautiful and funny:

In 1991 her only other major release, Christmas EP came out. It consisted of only 4 tracks, covers of Blue Christmas, Silent Night, and What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?, and one original: Christmas Evermore. I could only find it on a cassette in a cardboard sleeve with all four tracks on both sides. If I do this again next year, her cover of Blue Christmas is sure to be on that list, because it's one of the best versions. In the mean time, you can plan your resolutions....

Advent Calendar in Song: Sidebar: On Some Other Channels and What We've Learned

2010-12-25T16:11:00.024Z

Other Song Collectors, Things We Learned, and What I Forgot to Mention

Whilst researching some of the songs on my list (yes, I actually have a list, I'm not making this up as I go), I've stumbled across some others past and present who've done similar projects. It has been interesting to look at overlap in choices from complete strangers, selecting from the same universe of recorded pop culture.

I did find some other supposed advent calendars, The Guardian UK has one under music, but it pretty much has nothing to do with seasonal tunes, just an excuse for a string of music articles. Others from record labels along the same lines.

If you've enjoyed what I've done you may want to check these out.

In no particular order:

Steve Carey's 2008 25 Songs of Christmas

John Gushue's My Musical Advent Calendar for 2009

Steve's 25 Days of Christmas Music 2001-2009

I've also picked up some facts whilst writing this thread over the last four weeks. What we've learned:

Brave Combo were David Byrne's wedding band.
Thurl Ravenscroft was the voice of Tony the Tiger for over 50 years.
Chuck Jones and Theodore Geissel worked together on WWII Army educational cartoons called Private Snafu years before they reteamed on The Grinch...
George Harrison made a Christmas single Ding Dong Ding Dong
Tom Waits birthday is December the 7th.
Charlie Grima of Wizzard is alive and well and is teaching percussion to visually impaired children and students, and his acting career has seen him alongside Robert DeNiro and Jerry Lewis (although not at the same time, that would have been King of Comedy).
Ozzy Osbourne guested in the Bob Rivers video for his repurposed version of Iron Man: I am Santa Claus.
Even Paul McCartney is openly embarrassed about Wonderful Christmas.
According to the Bobs, we light the eight Hannukah candles to commemorate the suffering of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Robert Earl Keen's trailer trash saga Merry Christmas from the Family was such a hit he wrote both a book and a sequel song.
Advent doesn't necessarily start on December 1st, it starts on the fourth Sunday before December 25th, which could be the Sunday from November 27th to December 3rd.
The I Wanna Jagwa sketch was not by Stan Freberg as I mistakenly thought, but Eddie Lawrence a stand up slightly better known for his Old Philosopher character.
Pia Zadora and her husband bought and demolished the old Hollywood landmark Pickfair, the house of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, despite their promise to restore it.
College age students in the 1960's paid half the fare for standby plane tickets that FBI Agents did.
Thundercats look particularly loving whilst having group sex with droids.
Frank Zappa and Paul Henreid's love child looks like Leon Redbone.
The answer to the musical question, What do you get a Wookie for Christmas, When He Already Has a Comb? -- a Brazilian.
The moustachioed singing ghost bust in the Disneyland Haunted House ride is not based on Walt Disney, but similarly tonsored singer and voice artist Thurl Ravenscroft.

Things I should have mentioned:

The Cardigans did the best cover of Iron Man.

Last year, Billy Bragg and 'er out of Florence and the Machine did this cover of Fairytale of New York:

I like it, but I'm a bit disappointed that Florence didn't give it the kind of brawling welly she put into A Kiss in a Fist, she mumble/sings insults at Billy. Billy is too nice a bloke, Shane woulda had her for breakfast.

The Dandy Warhols and Will Ferrell John C Reilly covered The Little Drummer Boy, the latter doing an almost beat for beat reenactment of the Bowie Bing sketch (stay with it, it gets better).

Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy with Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly from Will Ferrell

Perhaps we could use this as incontrovertible proof that Will Ferrell is only funny in the presence of John C Reilly. Filmmakers take note.

Advent Calendar in Song: Christmas Wrapping

2010-12-25T01:00:00.017Z

The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping

Like all the best presents, this is a whole lot of things wrapped up in one, it's a novelty song, it's a Christmas song, it's a pop song tinged with occasional rock bass and the pre-hip-hop white rap that justifies the cute pun title. But the reason I give it pride of place is that it tells a story, quirky, humorous, in two converging time lines, and lightly romantic.

More important than the supposed birth of the saviour of mankind, or the consumerist event that briefly falsely bolsters the economy, or an excuse for over indulgent family dining and gifting, since 2005 this day has celebrated the continuing regeneration of our favorite Gallifreyan. In honor of today's Dr Who Christmas special, the first under the steward and penman-ship of Steven Moffat and the doctorship of Matt Smith, a link to the best, apart from the original Radiophonic theme, Dr Who song I've ever heard:

Chameleon Circuit - An Awful Lot of Running

For good measure, an another Dr Who song, with a toy like plinky plonk sound and twee vocal, it has the sound of a school nativity play I'd like to see, and a video which answers the question what would a supermarket trolley be like if it was possessed by the spirit of a dalek?

Dalek Chorus - Jesus Licks

Not to the put the cat amongst the pigeons, or partridges, but a non-musical offering, which should be the 1st of 12. Well, it is, but I'm not going to follow it up personally. This is the late great Peter Cook's A Life in Pieces, which sadly was only shown once, it is a series of 12 5 minute interviews with one of Cook's greatest creations Arthur Streeb-Greebling, each featuring a different well known gift for each of the days of Christmas. The interviewer is Ludovic Kennedy who was a proper serious interviewer / broadcaster. You should be able to find the rest on YouTube properly, but here's number one, A Partridge In A Pear Tree.

Finally, a last fun song, which I only stumbled across whilst researching this thread, just about all I can offer for Christmas, is my heritage anyway....

Advent Calendar in Song: Christians and the Pagans

2010-12-24T01:00:00.007Z

Dar Williams is a great storyteller. Many of her songs sparkle with wit, insight and humanity. The miniature passion play of alienation and loneliness in Mortal City, the heartbreaking failing relationship of February, and the hippie stoner farce of The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-Ed are prime examples of her talent.

Christians and The Pagans appears on Williams' album Mortal City, but it also earned itself an appearance as an EP subsequently released for the holidays. The song is a great vignette of familial tolerance and tension. A family is brought together by the holidays religious, seasonal and ancient. A mother must cope with her niece's affirmation of being a witch. The son innocently winds up the adults with questions about comparative religion. The niece expresses her joyful practice of wicca and her wonder in all things. Christine O'Donnell was clearly not at this party.

I find the line about pumpkin pie both funny and strangely touching, perhaps as it gives a hopeful note of progress and tolerance. The sentiments of the uncle reflecting on his familial bond, strikes the right balance, and is all the more affecting for it. This is a sweet, humorous reflection on the season optimistically creating common ground for our clashing multi-cultures.

So, on the eve of the holiday that we'll all enjoy despite our different faiths (or principled abstentions from faith), be mindful of the families, biological, extended, and chosen that bring us all together.

Advent Calendar in Song: A Charlie Brown Christmas

2010-12-23T01:00:00.010Z

I started out this Advent Calendar in Song with the Linus and Lucy dance from A Charlie Brown Christmas, yesterday I held the battle of the Christmas Cartoons, and of course this one is the best there ever has been or will be. It lightheartedly discusses the commercialized holiday, and seasonal alienation. Its unprecedented use of a jazz score, real children actors and no laugh track actually freaked out the TV execs who thought it was a disaster that would die gracefully after its first viewing. Instead it was greeted by acclaim, awards, and the annual devotion of its viewers.

The Vincent Guaraldi Jazz soundtrack was a triumphant landmark. It deftly conveys the joys of skating and Snoopy dancing, whilst also delineating the existential gloom that surrounds Charlie Brown as he trudges determined through the snow on his way to his next defeat. The special only has one original non instrumental song, Christmas Time Is Here: its cheerful lyrics and somber music, the antithesis of a Smith's song.

As a cultural Jew and a religious atheist (I occasionally indulge in poetic notions of the spiritual agnostic), the dogma, puritanism, and historical atrocities of Christianity have always been off putting. Oddly many of my closest friends have either dabbled with, or fully answered religious callings, two went to seminary, another considered a monastic order. My Best Man for my wedding is a Methodist Minister. Maybe they're the reason I don't hedge my bets, they might have some pull if I turn out to be wrong (of course, if they're wrong, they're no worse for it). Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ and The Linus Speech are the only things that have come close to helping me understand Christianity, and why anyone would buy into it, when they could otherwise just choose to be a good person.

Sadly, this, and the cartoons I wrote about yesterday, have never been inducted into the UK's repertoire of Christmas viewing, which for animation relies mostly on Raymond Brigg's surreal and slightly psychedelic The Snowman, with its soundtrack via castrati. Charlie Brown is a marker on my Christmas cultural landscape that I sorely miss.

Here's former Windham Hill pianist George Winston's take on the Vince Guaraldi.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good grief!

Advent Calendar in Song: Battle of the Cartoons

2010-12-22T01:00:00.025Z

The Grinch vs Rudolph vs Year Without a Santa Claus

Today we're waging a war with the ammunition of sentimentality and cuteness, the annual battle for our hearts and minds to decide which vision of the festive season chimes closely with our own. These are the cartoons first foisted upon the Baby Boomers in the 1960's and '70's, and which inexorably have had staying power in the holiday viewing rotation, partially due to the hand me down nostalgia of that most self-referential of generations. Your preferences between these jungian archetypes will say as much about you as any Rorschach inkblot (especially if your inkblot is the one that attacks Daffy in Duck Amuck).

How The Grinch Stole Christmas has the incredible collaboration between the dean of forced rhymery of all time(ery), Dr Seuss, and one of the geniuses from the Looney Tunes stable, Chuck Jones. The voice talent is a double act of narration from Boris Karloff and songs from Thurl Ravenscroft. They adapt the Dr Seuss book with a rube goldbergesque slapstick straight out of any Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote tale.

First we should give some time to the unsung (or at least uncredited) singer of the Grinch, Thurl Ravenscroft. Ravenscroft's voice is so deeply ingrained in cartoon DNA, he was the voice of Tony the Tiger for over fifty years and he is even to be heard (and seen) on rides in Disneyland (particularly the Haunted House).

You're a mean one Mr Grinch - Thurl Ravenscroft

I'll draw your attention back to the lovely WFMU, who dedicated a day to Thurl as part of their most recent 365 days project: 365 Days #184 - Thurl Ravenscroft Festival. It's a bit sad that he was mistakenly left out of the credits leaving some to think that the song was sung by the estimable narrator, Boris Karloff. The song itself is a complete grotesque joy of Grinch baiting invective, and a perfect preparation for spending holiday with relatives who will get on your nerves. Thurl only gets this song and its frequent reprises, the only other song is the bizarre Whoville Christmas Carol that consists of gibberish and some bland sobriquets around the title Welcome Christmas, it's like a training video for Walmart Greeters.

The Grinch is for people who identify with sourpusses and are content with the simplest of plots. Grinch hates Christmas, plans to steal Christmas, has road to Whoville/Damascus moment, gives Christmas back. Christmas in Whoville is nearly devoid of religion and stealing it involves co-opting their overindulgent feasting, decorating and gifts. I'm pleased by the non-denominational approach, but there are irksome metaphysical questions left unanswered, are these the same Who's that Horton heard? Does that apply the same physical restrictions of scale to the Grinch? The citizens of Whoville are capable of storing their vast civilization in a small space, do they possess Gallifreyan or Kryptonian technology?

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer has a huge head start in the music arena, it's built around the hit Johnny Marks song, and is filled with other great seasonal favorites written by him. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree even gets a sneak peek as incidental music in one scene. Burl Ives puts in his bit as a narrating snowman, whose persona is clearly modelled on him, this serves as an excuse for him to croon Silver and Gold and A Holly Jolly Christmas.

A Holly Jolly Christmas

Sadly, a favorite bit that I think I remember, wasn't even actually in the show. While Rudolph's stop motion Santa was probably one of the first of his kind, he had a close relative in the seasonal Norelco ad, in which a Santa rode a triple bladed electric razor head through a wintry landscape. I don't know if they ever even sponsored Rudolph, but somehow, and this is not a trick of my memory now, at the time I thought it was the same Santa.

Norelco Santa

Where the Grinch is a sociopath, Rudolph is merely intensely neurotic. Due to the poor quality of Santa's breeding program, this is what happens when you restrict your stock to eight, Rudolph has his unfortunate mutation, which his father, Donner, tries to hide. Rudolph is left with feelings of inadequacy, and so he leaves home, an outcast. His journey has him encounter kindred spirits including an elf who only wants to be a dentist.

We're a Couple of Misfits

Their journey brings them to the Island of Misfit Toys, whose origins are never properly explained, did Santa have a Dr Moreau moment? The Misfit toys are deeply conflicted, here they sing about Christmas being the Most Wonderful Day of the Year, when clearly it is the day they feel most unfulfilled and persecuted.

The Most Wonderful Day of the Year

Of course Santa saves the day by patronizing Rudolph mercilessly to restore his self respect (after all, what did Santa do on foggy nights before Donner's condom burst? or is there a long lost outtake on the Island of Misfit Toys where Rudolph and Hermey find the graves of the previous Rudolphs?).

I'm never really sure if the moral of this one is that you should accept yourself because your flaws are what make you special, or that people never really love you for yourself but for the one thing you do freakishly well.

The Year Without a Santa Claus is often conflated in my mind with Santa Claus is Comin' To Town (so much so I bought the DVD of the latter thinking I was getting the former). They're both from the stop motion stable of Rankin/Bass, and have some voices in common. ... Comin' To Town is the one with the Burgermeister Meisterburger and The Year Without... is the one with the Snow and Heat Misers. Although I have friends who adore both of these, I've already mentioned the only things I find memorable about either. That said, the two Miser songs are so bloody catchy I have actually sat through the rest of the rubbish just to get to those bits. Snow Miser's voice is provided by Dick Shawn the standup who played the addled psychedelic rocker Lorenzo St. DuBois in The Producers. Heat Miser is Broadway stalwart George S. Irving, who reprised the role (along with Mickey Rooney as Claus) 34 years later in A Miser Brothers' Christmas, a sequel focussing on the two catchy brothers. I don't know whether they get as good a song, or merely repeat the originals, but they say you can have too much of a good thing. Too much!

Snow Miser / Heat Miser

I don't even vaguely remember the plot, but it's one of those quest formats, and one of the innumerable tedious hoops that the characters jump through includes resolving the sibling rivalry between the Snow and Heat Miser brothers, which clearly rests in their inability to develop separate theme tunes.

If you prefer this one, you hate your brother, or you are a catatonic couch potato easily swayed by an earworm of a jingle.

Of course the winner could only be: A Charlie Brown Christmas (OK, I cheated, we'll see him tomorrow!) Grinch has the best song, Rudolph is the best musical, and The Year without a Santa Claus is, um, a little bit better than that other one.

Advent Calendar in Song: A Winter's Solstice

2010-12-21T01:00:00.005Z

OK, I know that over the years New Age has earned a reputation as sonic hippie sludge. One of my friends refers to it as one word to rhyme with "sewage" - "newage". But there was a time before we all got sick of Enya, before there were people who could not resist reinterpreting anything decent on a Fairlight, and albums full of synthetic pan pipes with fake American indian wolf and dreamcatcher motifs on their covers, were just a syncrestic nightmare which would even make Mike Oldfield into an insomniac.

This is a great mellow, but finely crafted well curated album from the Windham Hill label, who used these seasonal samplers as an effective way of shilling their roster of artists. They were originally a folk label that became increasingly associated with New Age until they were bought out in the mid '90's. This album is genuine chill-out, before chill-out became a predictable genre unto itself of overproduced stillness and low beats per minute. It is nicely low key for a season of long nights huddling for warmth.

Now I'm going to do the uncharacteristic thing, and shut up, I'll let a few of the tracks that I've linked to speak for themselves, but there's not a dud on the whole album.

Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring - David Qualey

William Ackerman and Joan Jeanrenaud - New England Morning

Liz Story -- Greensleeves:

A Winter's Solstice Vol. I (1985)

01 Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring - David Qualey
02 Engravings II - Ira Stein & Russel Walder
03 New England Morning - William Ackerman
04 High Plains (Christmas On The High-Line) - Philip Aaberg
05 Nollaig - Billy Oskay & Micheal O Domhnaill
06 Greensleeves - Liz Story
07 Bach Bourée (From The French Suite) - Darol Anger & Mike Marshall
08 Northumbrian Lullabye - Malcolm Dalglish
09 Petite Aubade - Shadowfax
10 A Tale Of Two Cities - Mark Isham

Advent Calendar in Song: Brave Combo It's Christmas, Man

2010-12-20T01:00:00.011Z

It was probably in the mid eighties that I first heard of anyone trying to have a bit of fun with polka.

Polka to me, was a totally foreign concept, it was tacky in the way that Lawrence Welk was, and it spoke to me of the whitest of white men with their strange sausages, warm beer and lederhosen. Oh it sounds like fun when they're rolling out the barrel, but any moment they'll stop singing adelweiss and start a chorus of tomorrow belongs to me. Okay it is originally from a Czech word referring to Poles, but the Warsaw Ghetto and Theresienstadt were a sop to some of the natives that took part of the sting out of German occupation. I'm not suggesting that polka brought up any deep seated feelings of Semitic persecution for me (all my feelings of Semitic persecution are very shallow), but it was just alien, like foods you already have a vague premonition will be distasteful, like Keilbasa or pierogies. It's the kind of situation that may lead you to be pleasantly surprised, or with a confirmation of disgust accompanied with self loathing for disobeying your own instincts.

In the mid eighties I was more directly aware of punk as an aesthetic, mostly in the way it crashed landed into pop culture in artefacts like Liquid Sky and Repo Man. I helped organize a Repo Man themed party for my house at Uni (we got into a bit of trouble, the campus police had to ask us to stop playing the soundtrack of the movie out into the street with our very large speakers). A friend of a friend was seriously into punk and hardcore and provided me with records which helped make some of the best obscure mixtapes I'd ever done. This introduced me to a range of acts beyond those on the Repo Man soundtrack. I particularly warmed to the groups that fused punk and hillbilly bluesrock into psychobilly including Gun Club and The Cramps. It was probably about then that I heard of Polkacide, whose music I've still not yet heard, but the idea of fusing the exuberance of punk and polka was tantalizing.

Though not from punk roots, Brave Combo are more squarely from the Texas music scene, their use of polka seemed similarly invigorated. I became gradually aware of them as they issued polka flavored covers of Purple Haze (Hendrix) and People Are Strange (Doors). So when I saw their 1992 album It's Christmas, Man, I pre-empted Santa and gifted myself on the spot. Here they put a variety of dance rhythms, including cumbia, cha-cha, samba and the much maligned polka that they champion, against holiday standards. They're kind of like David Byrne, without the po faced artiness, and a bigger sense of fun (self editor's note: after penning that remark research pointed up that they played Byrne's wedding, and some made cameos in Byrne's film True Stories, I had no idea).

It's Christmas, Man - Brave Combo
1 Must Be Santa POLKA
2 0, Christmas Tree SAMBA
3 It's Christmas CHA CHA
4 Corrido Navideño RANCHERA
5 The Christmas Song (Chestnuts) SKA
6 Christmas In July
7 Please Come Home For Christmas
8 Hanukkah, Hanukkah HORA
9 Frosty the Snowman
10 The Little Drummer Boy GUAGUANCO
11 Santa's Polka POLKA
12 Feliz Navidad CUMBIA
13 Ave Maria
14 Buon Natale WALTZ
15 Jingle Bells

Must Be Santa

When Bob Dylan covered Must Be Santa for his 2009 Christmas In The Heart album, he took his arrangement straight off of Brave Combo. Another famous fan, Matt Groening invited them to guest in a Simpson's episode. So hat's off to Brave Combo, one of the bands that have dared to make polka, well, almost cool. Look at the video, not a lederhosen in sight.

O Christmas Tree

Advent Calendar in Song: Roches We Three Kings

2010-12-19T01:00:00.008Z

The Roches, a trio folk singing sisters, came to fame mostly through their stripped down three voice a capella arrangement of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. It was a party piece that drew people into listening to their albums with their more typical jokey folk songs with self-effacing lyrics, whether about relationships with married men, American naivete about the Troubles in Ireland, job dissatisfaction, layered with their quirky vocals and effervescent harmonies.

It was tempting to make this article a battle against the many other singer/songwriters who've plonked out Christmas albums, Shawn Colvin, Jewel, and James Taylor to name a few, at least those who've done a decent job of it. What puts this over the others is that it is strictly straight ahead, mostly traditional Carols, with a few popular seasonal standards thrown in. They do have their own brand of fun with many of the tracks and if the two original tracks they throw in (Christmas Passing Through and Star of Wonder) aren't particularly remarkable given their usual standard of songwriting, at least they don't drag the collection down.

Their take on the title song puts a mellow swing into We Three Kings.

	The Roches - We Three Kings .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Track Listing
1 Break Forth O Beauteous Heavenly Light
2 For Unto Us A Child Is Born
3 Angels We Have Heard On High
4 Deck The Halls
5 Christmas Passing Through
6 Sleigh Ride
7 Away In A Manger
8 Here We Come A Caroling
9 The Little Drummer Boy
10 The Holly and the Ivy
11 Frosty The Snowman
12 Do You Hear What I Hear?
13 We Three Kings
14 Star of Wonder
15 Winter Wonderland
16 Joy To The World
17 O Little Town of Bethlehem
18 Good King Wenceslas
19 Jingle Bells
20 The First Noel
21 God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
22 It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
23 O Come All Ye Faithful
24 Silver Bells

Here We Come A-Caroling, Star of Wonder, Jingle Bells, and the five in the medley video below, get a pure a capella reading. The rest get a good variety of arrangements over tasteful range of restrained synth keyboards, or guitar and piano.

Joy to the World / God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen / First Nowell / Angels We Have Heard on High / Adeste Fideles

There's a bit of Brooklyn overlaid onto their Frosty the Snowman, and an intentional New Yoyk to Winter Wonderland. But the best in this vein is their take on Deck the Halls, is great fun, particularly the brashness they inject into the otherwise easily anodyne Fala Lalas.

This album works well both on its own or tossed into your massive Xmas shuffle. Their distinctive style makes a nice contrast against anything else you may throw at it. An essential holiday album, it's been brought back from out of print.

And to hear The Roches at their pared back best, from their second album:

The Hallelujah Chorus

Advent Calendar in Song: Chieftains The Bells of Dublin

2010-12-18T01:00:00.014Z

The Chieftains are an institution of Irish Folk Music. The approach of Paddy Moloney, arranger and player elevates it to the level of the classical music of Ireland, with an emphasis on virtuoso musicianship. This produces a clean sound, which sadly has led to much poor imitation on movie soundtracks, whipping out a similar but generic celtic sound, even when the film is about the English or the Mexicans or Aliens. At times their approach may seem too measured, but their energy compensates for the occasional lack of spontaneity.

Another way they get back the rougher feeling is when they collaborate with others. After doing an entire album, Irish Heartbeat, with Van Morrison, roughly half their output has been guest musician themed albums, the first of these is 1991's The Bells of Dublin a Christmas themed album. The subsequent collaborations include: Another Country (1992 American Country), The Long Black Veil (1995 Rock) Fire in the Kitchen (1998 Canadian Folk) Tears of Stone (1999 Women Singer Songwriters) Water From the Well (2000 Irish folk) Down the Old Plank Road: The Nashville Sessions (2002 Nashville Country) San Patricio (2010 Ry Cooder)

The Chieftains - The Bells of Dublin
1 The Bells of Dublin/Christmas Eve (with the bell-ringers of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin) (Paddy Moloney)
2 Past Three O'Clock (with The Renaissance Singers)
3 St. Stephen's Day Murders (with Elvis Costello) (P. Moloney, E. Costello)
4 Il Est Né/Ca Berger (with Kate and Anna McGarrigle)
5 Don Oiche Ud I mBeithil (with Burgess Meredith)
6 I Saw Three Ships A Sailing (with Marianne Faithfull)
7 A Breton Carol (with Nolwen Monjarret)
8 Carols Medley: O the Holly She Bears a Berry/God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/The Boar's Head"
9 The Wexford Carol (with Nanci Griffith)
10 The Rebel Jesus (with Jackson Browne) (J. Browne)
11 Skyline Jig (P. Moloney)
12 O Holy Night (with Rickie Lee Jones)
13 Medley: 'The Wren! The Wren!'/The Dingle Set - Dance/The Wren in the Furze/A Dance Duet - Reels/Brafferton Village/Walsh's Hornpipe/The Farewell ("Wren in the Furze by Kevin Conneff)
14 Medley: Once in Royal David's City/Ding Dong Merrily on High/O Come All Ye Faithful (with The Renaissance Singers)

Sadly, I couldn't find any links to my favorite song on the album, the St Stephen Day Murders, a collaboration with Declan Patrick MacManus, better known under his slightly less Irish moniker, Elvis Costello. I also couldn't find alt country singer songwriter Nanci Griffith's reading of The Wexford Carol. However my favorite carol on the album is Rickie Lee Jones on O Holy Night, which she lifts magnificently from the beginning (many interpretations start out small then belt the end).

O Holy Night - Rickie Lee Jones

Marianne Faithfull doing I Saw Three Ships A Sailing is the only weak track on the album, through no fault except perhaps not the best match of material to the singer, the tune being a bit sing song for Marianne's cabaret voice. Kate and Anne McGarrigle show their colours as folk stalwarts with a pair of French carols, producing their close harmony over the lilting Chieftains. Then again, I'm just impressed when anyone sings in French. I can barely speak the language.

Il Est Né/Ca Berger - Kate and Anna McGarrigle

While I think it's not a patch on the Costello, Jackson Browne covering his own song, Rebel Jesus, issues a superior version with the accompaniment of the Chieftains.

Rebel Jesus - Jackson Browne

To play you out, I've linked to the traditional carol O the Holly She Bears a Berry, and the instrumental that opens the album with the titular sounds of the church bells of Dublin in full peal.

O the Holly She Bears a Berry

The Bells of Dublin/Christmas Eve

Advent Calendar in Song: Leon Redbone Christmas Island

2010-12-17T01:00:00.012Z

Our album week continues with an entry that's so smooth and mellow, it's difficult to say much about it. Leon Redbone is an artist I first found out about from a movie, the great Richard Dreyfus 60's throwback detective stuck in the 70's flick The Big Fix. Although a departure from his usual retro selections, a repertoire heavy on Jimmie Rodgers, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton and Irving Berlin, Leon Redbone recorded the contemporary song "I Wanna Be Seduced" for the soundtrack. Dreyfus also sang the song on a Saturday Night Live appearance. It's a humorous corker, and I spent a while tracking down the recording. I was sorely disappointed that when The Big Fix finally got shown on telly, they'd let the music rights drop and some really crap filler music was used in the pivotal scene it had occupied. I don't know if this has been rectified as the film hasn't been released on DVD.

Often in a white linen suit and sporting a slimline goatee and black shades, Redbone looks like the love child of Frank Zappa and Paul Henreid. His music is so laid back, you might be tempted to look for the drip in his arm, it's like ragtime collided with Portishead. There's something a bit Burl Ives about his vocal delivery, or is it just the choice of songs? It's no mistake that his first album has a cover featuring Michigan J. Frog, the Looney Tunes/Michael Maltese/Chuck Jones creation that sang old time tunes in grand vaudeville style. I was psyched when I discovered he'd recorded a Christmas album.

Christmas Island - Leon Redbone
1 White Christmas
2 Winter Wonderland
3 Frosty the Snowman
4 Blue Christmas
5 (There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays
6 Toyland
7 Christmas Island
8 That Old Christmas Moon
9 I'll Be Home for Christmas
10 Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
11 Christmas Ball Blues

The hey day of tin pan alley that Leon Redbone has so ably interpreted produced so much of our secular Christmas music that this fits his act to a tee. There's not a duff track on the list. All you need to go with it is something green to drink, a mint julep, perhaps, and your walking stick, as you stroll down the forgotten Main Street, so cool under its dusting of snow.

Advent Calendar in Song: Diner Soundtrack

2010-12-16T01:05:00.006Z

Why? you may ask, have I selected for one of my advent goodies, the soundtrack to Barry Levinson's 1982 feature film debut, Diner.

A few years ago, I was doing a huge mixtape for Christmas for some of my friends, and I included cuts from that soundtrack. One of them asked the same question. That's because, to me, Diner is a Christmas movie.

OK. Part of the action takes place during the Christmas season. A group of young buddies getting together over the Christmas break in the run up to one of them getting married. Probably the only Christmassy thing that you'll remember is the scene in which Kevin Bacon's sarcastic smartass gets drunk and takes over for a baby Jesus stolen from a Church nativity display. Much of the rest of the picture, they hang out at the Diner and discuss life's imponderables, such as whose music is better for making out, Mathis or Sinatra?

My friends were just at the end of High School, after graduation we used Diner as a template for how we could continue to bond, even as our lives drifted apart. Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks were those times when, once family duties were dispensed with, we could get together and search for a Diner that served a good roast beef sandwich with fries smothered in gravy. So, part of what Christmas means to a secular guy like me, is a time that affords the chance to catch up with old friends.

There's only two Christmas songs featured on the Diner film soundtrack, both Chuck Berry, "Run, Run, Rudolph" and the cover "Merry Christmas, Baby" (Chess Records, color of the label: Chartreuse). "Merry Christmas, Baby" was originally recorded by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers with Charles Brown providing the vocals.

Merry Christmas Baby, you really did treat me nice,
Bought me a hi-fi for Christmas, now I'm living in paradise.

	Chuck Berry - Merry Christmas Baby .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Neither of these songs were issued on the soundtrack album. However, the album is one of the best oldies film soundtracks ever done, a mix including Jerry Lee Lewis, Bobby Darin, Carl Perkins, Jimmy Reed, Clarence 'Frogman' Henry, Fats Domino, Lowell Fulson, Eddie Cochran and Elvis Presley. OK, there's some tacky schmaltz like the Theme to A Summer Place, and Fascination, but that's part of the late 50's vibe. Whenever I hear a song in a period film that I heard here first, I feel like they took it from Diner, as opposed to, say, reality.

Diner Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
1 Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On - Jerry Lee Lewis
2 A Teenager In Love - Dion & The Belmonts
3 A Thousand Miles Away - Heartbeats
4 Somethin' Else - Eddie Cochran
5 I Wonder Why - Dion & The Belmonts
6 Honey Don't - Carl Perkins
7 Mr Blue - Fleetwoods
8 Reconsider Baby - Lowell Fulson
9 Ain't Got No Home - Clarence Henry
10 Come Go With Me - Del Vikings
11 Beyond The Sea - Bobby Darin
12 A Summer Place - Max Steiner
13 Fascination - Jane Morgan
14 Where Or When - Dick Haymes
15 It's All In The Game - Tommy Edwards
16 Whole Lot Of Loving - Fats Domino
17 Take Out Some Insurance - Jimmy Reed
18 Dream Lover - Bobby Darin
19 Don't Be Cruel - Elvis Presley
20 Goodbye Baby - Jack Scott

Music from a more innocent time, or at least idealized as such, reminding me of an idealized youth and friendships. So, to me, the whole soundtrack of Diner is a great Christmas album.

Advent Calendar in Song: Motown vs. Spector

2010-12-15T01:00:00.012Z

A Christmas Gift from Phil Spector vs. A Motown Christmas

Today we're hitting some soul pop tunes, and another album battle, the wall of sound vs the might of Berry Gordon's motor city empire.

A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector (originally ... from Phillies Records)
1 White Christmas - Darlene Love
2 Frosty The Snowman - The Ronettes
3 The Bells Of St Mary - Bob B Soxx & The Blue Jeans
4 Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - The Crystals
5 Sleigh Ride - The Ronettes
6 (It's A) Marshmallow World - Darlene Love
7 I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - The Ronettes
8 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - The Crystals
9 Winter Wonderland - Darlene Love
10 Parade Of The Wooden Soldiers - The Crystals
11 Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - Darlene Love
12 Here Comes Santa Claus - Bob B Soxx & The Blue Jeans
13 Silent Night - Phil Spector & Artists

This is a whole piece of work. Spector brings together Darlene Love, The Ronettes, The Crystals and Bob B Soxx and the Blue Jeans, fantastic session players such as Jack Nietzsche (also arrangements), Leon Russell, Barney Kessel, Tommy Tedesco and even Sonny Bono, and a consistent production aesthetic, which spins out a near perfect seasonal collection. It's hard to say which is the best Ronettes track on here, Frosty, Sleigh Ride or Mommy? Similarly the Darlene Love tracks are of fantastic quality, I bet you can't even think of another version of Marshmallow World although it's from 1949 and had been a hit for that crooner we saw earlier with that Bowie fellow, and later from that tipsy guy from the Rat Pack.

(It's a) Marshmallow World - Darlene Love

The Crystals rendering of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, with its upward inflected declaration of the title before the verse, became the template for future versions including the big hit for Bruce Springsteen. It's hard to believe this album actually failed on its initial release, until you consider that it was released the day of the JFK Assassination (I wonder if there is a conspiracy theory that has tied the Clarkson shooting to Marilyn and John?). Apparently Brian Wilson rates it as the best holiday album ever made, and that fellow knows about records.

A Motown Christmas
1973 Original Double LP
Side 1
1 Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town - The Jackson 5
2 What Christmas Means to Me - Stevie Wonder
3 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - The Temptations
4 My Favorite Things - The Supremes
5 Deck the Halls/Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella - Smokey Robinson
6 I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - The Jackson 5
Side 2
1 Ave Maria - Stevie Wonder
2 Silent Night - The Temptations
3 Little Christmas Tree - Michael Jackson
4 God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen - Smokey Robinson
5 The Christmas Song - The Jackson 5
6 Joy to the World - The Supremes
Side 3
1 The Little Drummer Boy - The Temptations
2 Silver Bells - The Supremes
3 Someday at Christmas - Stevie Wonder
4 Frosty the Snowman - The Jackson 5
5 Jingle Bells - Smokey Robinson
6 My Christmas Tree - The Temptations
Side 4
1 White Christmas - The Supremes
2 One Little Christmas Tree - Stevie Wonder
3 Give Love on Christmas Day - The Jackson 5
4 It's Christmas Time - Smokey Robinson
5 Children's Christmas Song - The Supremes
6 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - The Jackson 5

Part of the problem with this compilation of Motown Christmas music is that it is just that, a compilation. It comprises much of the Christmas output of the Motown label from the 1960's and 1970's, and has their iconic stars, but suffers from a kitchen sink rather than selective approach. Cramming 24 of these tracks together issues diminishing returns as the result is uneven. Almost all the tracks can be heard more sensibly on their own individual Christmas albums: Jackson 5 (The Jackson 5 Christmas Album - 1970), Stevie Wonder (Someday at Christmas - 1967), The Supremes (Merry Christmas - 1965) and The Temptations (The Temptations Christmas Card - 1970). Although The Miracles released Christmas with The Miracles in 1963, the only overlap of their work here is Jingle Bells. Even the best of the Jackson's tracks included here, Santa Claus is Comin' To Town has distinct echoes of The Crystals version.

Although a Marvin Gaye track is included on the CD re-release, other contemporaneous Motown artists are unrepresented including, The Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, The Velvelettes, Jr. Walker & the All Stars, and Gladys Knight & the Pips. It's sad to imagine that it would have been easy enough to get any of them to do a single each to add to this record.

Many of the tracks have not dated well. You would think that the Supremes doing My Favorite Things would be a no brainer, but it's smothered in production. Even removing the constant layer of shakin' sleigh bells would instantly improve it. The Diana Ross vocal is great, you almost want to strip it out on it's own and leave the syruppy strings behind. She suffers even more when frog marched through Joy to the World which is made so up tempo that they may as well have done it to speed guitar instead of fustily fuguing strings with poorly interpolated Handel Allelujah's in-between verses. The only track The Supremes really get away with is Silver Bells, which, although attacked by now contextual, though unnecessary sleigh bells has the lightness of touch their other tracks here lack.

My pick out of this mish mash is The Temptations cover of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Finally, it should be noted that Motown have continually issued other Christmas compilation albums, some including or excluding these tracks, but they've never done anything definitive, unless you count the 35 track "Ultimate Motown Christmas Collection" which updates the canon to include, ahem Boyz II Men. Of course, if you're just being all inclusive, you'll never be definitive.

Winner: Phil Spector. I know it's small compensation for 19 to life. The Spector album is a quintessential, purpose built artefact of its time. I doubt there's a contemporary holiday movie that doesn't raid it for its soundtrack. It stands with the best non-seasonal work of its artists, which is something you certainly can't claim of the Motown songs.

Sleigh Ride - The Ronettes

Advent Calendar in Song: Battle of Xmas Jazz

2010-12-14T01:00:00.004Z

Verve vs. Blue Note

It's another of our battle days, and also the first day of a week of album entries. In the mid '90's when I bought these two, I did have a surprisingly hard time finding decent compilations, only a third album (which I now forget) even came under consideration. Now that there's probably more money in the back catalogue stuff that actually appeals to people who still pay for their music, you can't avoid
them. There are a plethora of Jazz Christmas albums, but I'm just considering two that I actually own, rather than trying to rate the merits of every compilation out there.

Have Yourself A Jazzy Little Christmas / Verve
1 Child Is Born, A - Oscar Peterson
2 Christmas Medley / Carol Of The Bells / Melodies For The Day / O Sanctissimo - The Swingle Singers
3 Jingle Bells - Jimmy Smith
4 The Secret of Christmas - Ella Fitzgerald
5 We Free Kings - Rahsaan Roland Kirk
6 Christmas Eve - Billy Eckstine
7 I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm - Billie Holiday
8 Ole Santa - Dinah Washington
9 Santa Claus Is Coming to Town - Bill Evans
10 White Christmas - Ella Fitzgerald
11 O Little Town of Bethlehem - Sister Rosetta Tharpe
12 Christmas Song, The - Mel Torme
13 God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Jimmy Smith
14 Silent Night - Dinah Washington
15 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Ella Fitzgerald

This is a really solid collection, you could try to accuse it of playing safe, mostly mining the great vocalists in the Verve catalogue. Don't forget they have all the Ella Fitzgerald songbooks and then some. The quality trumps any quibbles about these perfectly executed standards. Some zest is added in the choice of instrumentals, even if the most contemporary cut is the 1961 Rashaan Roland Kirk's bop inflected We Free Kings. The impeccable roster shines through.

We Free Kings - Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Verve Records : Have Yourself A Jazzy Little Christmas

Yule Struttin' A Blue Note Christmas
1 Vauncing Chimes - Bobby Watson/Horizon
2 Silent Night - Stanley Jordan
3 The Christmas Song - Lou Rawls
4 I'll Be Home For Christmas / Sleigh Ride - Eliane Elias
5 Winter Wonderland - Chet Baker
6 A Merrier Christmas - Benny Green
7 A Merrier Christmas - Dianne Reeves
8 O Tannenbaum - John Hart
9 Jingle Bells - Count Basie
10 Chipmunk Christmas - John Scofield
11 God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Joey Calderazzo
12 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Dexter Gordon
13 Silent Night - Benny Green
14 Little Drummer Boy - Rick Margitza

On paper this collection from the great jazz label Blue Note seems a bit underwhelming. There's a bit of lazy curation in having two versions of the same song twice, one pair played consecutively in the track order and that's two covers of the relatively obscure Thelonious Monk song A Merrier Christmas. Material and artist match up is uneven, Stanley Jordan's frenetic and distinctive guitar picking style doesn't really do anything for Silent Night (I'd like to hear what he'd do with Carol of the Bells), but you do get Benny Green's version later on. The vocals aren't all the same calibre, nothing against the fine Lou Rawls, but his version of The Christmas Song is a superior lounge singer take rather than a classic moment of Jazz. It is harder to argue with the line up of the likes of Chet Baker, Count Basie, Benny Green and Dexter Gordon, and their contributions are worth the price of admission, particularly Gordon's reading of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Here's one of the album's more surprising successes, an instrumental, without its original novelty pitch shifted vocals, proves to be a hidden gem of Christmas standards:

Chipmunk Christmas - John Scofield

Winner: Verve! I've been a bit hard on the Blue Note album, and it certainly doesn't stand as well on its own as the Verve, but its contents have enough quality and unusual interest to be a fine addition to your random mix of seasonal tunes. The Verve you can easily listen through without the shuffle. Here's two of the vocal tracks, thoughtfully wrapped up in one YouTube offering:

White Christmas - Ella Fitzgerald and Silent Night - Dinah Washington

Advent Calendar in Song: 12 Days to Christmas

2010-12-13T01:00:00.004Z

And now, a musical interlude:

My parents lived through the golden age of the Broadway musical. They saw the original casts of the Rodgers and Hammerstein, Kander and Ebb, Bock and Harnick, and Sondheim of course. Their collection of LP's could pretty much be divided in half between classical music, and broadway musicals. In retrospect they didn't seem to own any of the obvious crooners of their generation, such as Sinatra or Tony Bennett, perhaps they had their fill of that on radio or in live performance. Apart from Opera, which Mom tortured me with on the weekend afternoon radio broadcasts from the Met, I enjoyed all her music. With my much older siblings I got a good dose of the sixties, and so I've had a strong foundation for varied and eclectic musical taste.

While my siblings also got the benefit of seeing a few of the classics, like The King and I. By the time I rolled around good new musicals were thinner on the ground, and only massively successful ones would tour outside of New York. I got to see You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown as a touring company. There was a summer stock revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Playhouse in the Park, with Artie Johnson in the Zero Mostel role, the best thing was that it was in the round, and each of three aisles in the theater were used for the three houses in the story, I sat on the aisle for the House of Marcus Lycus the pander and white slaver. We saw a few out of town flops that didn't make it far past Philadelphia, a vehicle for the post Cabaret Joel Grey, Goodtime Charley, was an unlikely musical based on the story of Joan of Arc from the point of view of the Dauphin, or the other historical flop 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a 1776 style romp on the history of the White House. The one time my parents took me with them to New York, my first original cast was the brilliant Cy Coleman/ Comden & Green musical On The Twentieth Century with Madeline Kahn, John Cullum, Imogene Coca, and Kevin Kline.

Still, I absorbed the scores of the Original Broadway Cast albums of the shows I'd never seen, or maybe saw the movie on TV. I once helped my team win a high school trivia contest because I knew that the obscure Jackie Gleason vehicle Take Me Along was a musical version of Eugene O'Neil's Ah Wilderness! So I know more about American musical theater than most other straight guys. Break out the show tunes, and I'm instantly camp.

There is so much that the musical and Christmas share, the flamboyance, decorative glamour and sentimentality. So a musical with Christmas somewhere in it is a double whammy. I'm not talking Holiday Inn, White Christmas or Meet Me In St Louis, we're strictly stage today. In 1978 our PBS station showed She Loves Me, a Bock / Harnick musical from 1963 filmed in 1978 for the BBC with a British cast. Based on a Hungarian play that has been the basis for several films including The Shop Around the Corner, In The Good Old Summertime, and, erm, You've Got Mail, it's a romantic comedy about co-workers who fall in love through an anonymous correspondence whilst harbouring initial enmity for each other at work. Of course I loved it, and the second time the PBS station showed it, I recorded the sound by feebly placing my panasonic cassette recorded with the longest play by dubious quality 120 minute tape in it a few inches away from my black and white telly. For years I listened to that recording nearly to destruction.

Outside of a couple more showings on PBS it wasn't shown again and was never released on any video format. This is a shame because it's a very enjoyable production. You can see on YouTube, bless 'em someone's dodgy vhs off air recording, which doesn't have the best sync, but beggars can't be choosers if it's otherwise lost. I'm not sure it's best enjoyed in full via YouTube, but I recommend it if you are keen on musicals. And yes, it is Peter Sallis, the voice of Wallace, as the comic sidekick to the male protagonist.

Here's the song that makes it a particular Christmas treat:

Advent Calendar in Song: Children Go Where I Send Thee

2010-12-12T01:09:00.003Z

Natalie Merchant was the lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs, and has had a reasonable career as a solo artist. She is a fantastic vocalist, and surprisingly electrifying when seen live. This is a gem rescued from one of those Christmas pop compilations that started regularly cropping up in the marketplace post Band Aid. What this usually means are covers performed by various artists often with music largely in the public domain (to cut down on royalty costs) the for benefit of a charity.

Of course the upside of these albums is that they promote and fund a charity. The downside is that the quality control, particularly in pairing of artist with material, can be hugely variable. For every good track like this one you get a Puff Daddy, Snoop Dog take on Santa Baby, or Whitney Houston eviscerating with too much soul diva for its own good Do You Hear What I Hear. They are not as consistent, as say, the Hal Wilner produced covers albums on the themes of Disney, Weill, or Nina Rota, Stay Awake, Lost in the Stars and Amacord Nina Rota, which have very few dud tracks between them.

Children Go Where I Send Thee covered by Natalie Merchant is taken from a series of albums made to benefit the Special Olympics, A Very Special Christmas, and is on the third iteration released in 1997.

Since this one was sublime, I'll just include the ridiculous (there's an equal time law, apparently). From the same charity album a track by No Doubt, a cover of their sometime touring mates, The Vandals' Christmas song Oi! To the World:

Oi! To the World - No Doubt

Advent Calendar in Song: Christmas in Capetown

2010-12-11T01:00:00.013Z

This track from Randy Newman's 1983 album Trouble in Paradise may be dated in the same way that the Specials AKA's Free Nelson Mandela is (which when I hear it now sounds like an advert for a product that comes with a free Nelson Mandela, or maybe its a buy one get one). Its probing of racial prejudice seems more throwaway than his much better earlier track in this vein Rednecks, but he gets to drop the N bomb again, ironically again, anyway. It does undermine the Christmas song in general even if the satire is untimely, and I enjoy it as much in that vein as when I first heard it.

Given this, it's tempting to plump instead for his successful sideswipe at religion, God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind), covered notably by Etta James. She interprets the lord's deep and loving sarcasm as a blistering soulful put-down.

God's Song - Etta James / Randy Newman

Man, I have to add this one to my Xmas playlist! But for some funky Christmas, we can't beat James Brown:

Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto - James Brown

Advent Calendar in Song: Ballad of The Carpenter

2010-12-10T01:00:00.004Z

The American (Political) Folk Factor, Part 2

Phil Ochs was a paradigm of the 1960's protest folk singer. Even as Dylan broadened his appeal, Ochs stuck to his guns, consistently taking aim at injustice and hypocrisy at all levels. There are also some deeply poetic and personal songs, so it's not all banner waving and barricades. His suicide in the mid '70's, put down to his bipolar depression, or the great comedown of post '60's, was particularly sad as we really could have used his intelligence, humour and fervour in the Reagan years to today.

Ballad of the Carpenter is a Ewan MacColl song, which I first heard as covered by Phil Ochs. Ewan MacColl was a singer songerwriter and playwright. He was also a committed socialist, and his song frames the Christ story as if he was a union agitator.

Strangely the only version of this track that I could find on the web, for your delectation, is from a webcast made by the late Tuli Kupferberg a poet and publisher of the beat generation and co founder of the hippie band The Fugs. In the video, he introduces the track which is played off the Phil Ochs LP and instructs the camera man to film a satirical mocked up wanted poster of Christ charged with sedition.

I'm also including this link to a non-seasonal Phil Ochs offering, so you can hear his wit at its most piercing and intense in his honesty. While many of his protest songs were about the usual targets, the racist south, the Vietnam war and Nixon, no one was free from his barbs, as you'll hear.

	Phil Ochs - Love Me, I'm A Liberal .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

I'm going to wrap up this instalment with another non-seasonal track, to bring my political folk story full circle, and also to annunciate how the political folk of both America and Britain have had an interesting co-dependence of fellow travelling troubadours. As I noted a few days ago the partial resurrection of Woody Guthrie by british agit-popster Billy Bragg, here's his song A New England as covered by Ewan MacColl's daughter Kirsty. Resexing and altering the lyric she makes it more of a pop ballad of rejection than the Bragg's original of disaffected politically indifferent youth, but both, classics.

A New England - Kirsty MacColl / Billy Bragg

Advent Calendar in Song: The King

2010-12-09T01:00:00.009Z

The British Folk Factor

Long before I had any notion that I'd live in the UK, I had become an anglophile. I lapped up British programs and films on PBS and Doctor Who, Kenny Everett, Captain Scarlet, UFO and Space 1999 in syndication. While I was probably aware that a lot of rock groups were British, I didn't really have any ideas of British music until I got to University.

Sophia Kelly, a friend I met freshman year, introduced me to the folkier albums of Jethro Tull, Songs from the Wood and Heavy Horses. Tull had become stadium rockers in the '70's on the back of Aqualung, and I was a bit sniffy about them as the overwhelming amount of airplay the title track received put me off despite that crazy flute bit. Songs from the Wood is a much more upbeat album of the countryside compared to the urban squalor of Aqualung. The title track just cheers me up whenever I hear it. Perhaps it indulges a bit much in cod Englishe Ye Olde Folkiness of the kind that fuels American Renaissance fairs (sorry, fayres), complete with druids, blood sacrifice and woodland sex, but it does it with so much good humour and good will, and a few lyrical winks to the listener that it carries it off with electrified medieval verve.

Songs from the Wood led me by progression to key proponents of English Folk Rock, Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, and I bought an album from each the same day, respectively Liege and Lief and Please to See The King, and both remain my favorite albums of their groups. The King is essentially the title song of Please to See The King and refers to a Boxing Day ceremony in some parts of Britain where a ritually hunted and dressed wren lies in state in a box which is brought door to door where each neighbour may pay a penny for the honour of seeing the King. As a custom it relates to both the mumming tradition and British visiting holiday rituals (which more or less give a pretext for members of a community to spend time with each other). A few albums later Steeleye Span scored a minor Xmas hit with Gaudete, but The King is better, and its in proper English as well. I think it works as a carol devoid of the christmassy flummery, but with a spirit of brotherhood and holiday renewal.

The King - Steeleye Span

I was pleasantly surprised years later to find Tull's Ring Out, Solstice Bells had been issued as a single in the UK in a bid for that curious Xmas Chart position, and had done well enough that it earned a place on a UK Crimbo Compilation The Best Christmas Album In The World...Ever! The strange video I found for is below seems to animate peasants that are more Breughel than Britons.

Ring Out, Solstice Bells - Jethro Tull

Now that I live in the English Countryside, and it's not what it was cracked up to be. I can say that apart from the beauty of the land, the encroachment of modern conurbations and global media culture has driven the folksongs into underground irrelevance. But from this hibernation, in the deepening but comforting gloom of winter, you can pop one of these folk albums on, and briefly sit by an imagined fireside and the warmth of the past.

A Maid in Bedlam - John Renbourn Group

Advent Calendar in Song: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday

2010-12-08T01:03:00.005Z

Battle of the UK Christmas Singles

This is a phenomenon I hadn't really anticipated when I expatriated myself from North America. The British take a few things fairly seriously, the pop charts, and Christmas. Put them both together and you get the Christmas Single. The Christmas Single isn't unique to the UK, of course US artists put them out, Springsteen's off tempo Santa Claus is Coming To Town comes to mind. But only in the UK do artists and record companies regularly release Christmas singles in a bid to have the number one song in the pop charts at Christmas, creating a ludicrous derby in the charts every December. Over the last few years, the single charts being increasingly irrelevant, the industry has mostly foisted drek from the barely talented winners of reality TV shows like X Factor and Britain's Got Talent (although you wouldn't know it from this lot). This pissed people off so much, that a campaign to defeat the X Factor single last year, led to a download only 1992 single Killing in the Name of by Rage Against the Machine taking the number one spot.

It's not always a Christmas song that wins, but that doesn't stop hopeful attempts. Artists you might not expect such as the Pogues, Jethro Tull, Bowie, The Darkness, Squeeze, Kate Bush, Greg Lake, Sting, Jona Lewie, Queen, Wham! et. al. have put out singles for the UK Christmas market. The biggest UK Christmas Single whore is Cliff Richard, the British Frankie Avalon that did "The Young Ones" the song the classic alternative sit-com referenced heavily in name and title tune; he put out two christmas no. 1's Mistletoe and Wine and Saviours' Day and a handful of number two and lower efforts, all the equivalent of pumping muzak through a particularly shit filled manger.

Wizzard I wish it could be Christmas Everyday vs Slade Merry Christmas

It's not that strange that I lump these two songs together in my mind. Both are nice upbeat little rockers. They did vie for the Xmas number one in 1973, with Slade the victor. Both acts are on the rockier side of British glam rock, Wizzard was formed by a post ELO Roy Wood with some Brummie session musicians, Slade has the charisma of their mutton chopped frontman Noddy Holder. Neither are particularly known Stateside, although Slade hit, Come on Feel The Noise was given a successful but inferior cover in the US by Quiet Riot. Wizzard probably show more musicianship and throw a kids choir at the thing, but Slade have more of that raucous energy, they're fun. They'll probably hurl a deadly mix of cider, beer and mulled wine at the base of your tree, but Roy Wood looks set to scare all the kiddies away.

I wish it could be Christmas Everyday - Wizzard

Merry Christmas - Slade

Winner: Wizzard. I'm going to cheat slightly here and mark Wizzard down as the winner, but not because they're better, I think they're much of a muchness. I've given it to Wizzard because I've met Charlie Grima. He's the afro haired drummer in the foreground of the video. In the early '90's he was adding jobbing actor to his CV and he was doing some improvising with London Theatresports. I nearly ended up performing with him at one of their shows, when their weekly show was still at the Hen and Chicken's before they moved to the Tristan Bates Theatre in the West End. I didn't know Charlie, or even know of him, although someone tried to explain he'd played on this Xmas single I'd never heard of, but he seemed like a nice guy, so Wizzard win this one.

Bonus: Lennon vs McCartney

Look, I'm not one of those people who bashes Paul McCartney for not having John Lennon's sardonic wit, or for surviving longer to have such a varied post-Beatles output that includes both gems and embarrassments, or for his naff collaboration with Michael Jackson (which I feel he made up for with his Costello co writes). But I'm going to make an exception here, Wonderful Christmas is just awful, it's really like he's not even trying. Granted, there are elements in the Lennon / Ono Happy Xmas (War is Over) that have it teetering on the edge of po faced sermonizing. If you watch the second of the videos made for the song, below, with it's wall to wall world poverty, refugees and suffering, you may find yourself longing for the plastic saccharine of Wonderful Christmas.

Happy Xmas (War Is Over) John and Yoko and The Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir (1971)

Link to more disturbing version of the video for the War is Over Campaign.

Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney

Winner: Do you really have to ask? I was surprised to find out that George Harrison's solo career produced a Christmas single Ding Dong Ding Dong. But, though I like Harrison, the fact that I'd not heard of it, ever, does suggest it's very scary. So, I'm letting the research drop there.

Advent Calendar in Song: Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis

2010-12-07T01:00:00.013Z

Tom Waits vs Magnapop vs Neko Case

Tom Waits
It's another unevenly matched battle today. Can anybody top Tom Waits? Probably not. From his 1978 album, Blue Valentine, which opens with the seemingly unlikely but stunningly brilliant cover of Somewhere from West Side Story; hearing him intone in his gravel gargling voice, "There's a place for Uzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...." can alter many of your preconceptions about the relationship between a singer and a song, the result being beautiful despite the alarm bells that sound in your head. This track is a typical early Tom, a prose poem Rex Harrisoned over an ambling bluesy piano melody, a typical down and out from his bowery to diner landscape, the gritty lies down with the sentimental.

Magnapop
I quite liked this version when I first heard it, of course having a female vocal does match the gender of the in song narrator, but it hasn't had the staying power of other covers. I can't find a link to it anywhere. I have it off of the 1995 tribute album Step Right Up: The Songs of Tom Waits, a patchy collection which is worth having on the merits of its last two tracks alone: Ruby's Arms by Frente! and I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You by 10,000 Maniacs both tender and beautiful. The title track gets an interesting airing by Violent Femmes.

As one if its lyrics mentions Christmas time, here's Ruby's Arms covered by Frente!

Neko Case
This is probably why the Magnapop cover now seems so unremarkable. Neko Case owns this track so well here. She has a souful twang that seems to prove some kind of unified field theorem between country, gospel and r n b. This lends our hooker heroine some moxie. It's almost as if her voice is that radio trying to ethereally tune in Little Anthony and the Imperials.

Winner: Tom Waits of course, although I love the Neko. It's his birthday. The spooky thing is that when I laid out my list for this Advent Calendar in Song, this entry landed randomly on this date. What are the chances of that? (I'd start with 1/28, but I'm sure it's more complicated than that, something like 28 factorial over 365 factorial multiplied by something else. My math friends should supply me with an accurate calculation -- show your work people.)

Advent Calendar in Song: O Come All You Grateful Deadheads

2010-12-06T01:00:00.027Z

BBC 6 Music and Repurposed Music

I first heard this track a number of years ago Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone Christmas Show on BBC 6 Music. BBC 6 Music is a digital broadcast and internet only BBC station that was under threat this year when a review suggested closing it although its entire annual operating costs were less than the salaries of two of the beeb's top paid television presenters. Luckily the threat of closure led to a call to arms which more than doubled the listenership to over a 1.194 million, and we all received an early Christmas present when the decision was taken to keep the station running. The station has a format largely inherited from the ashes of BBC's GLR (Greater London Radio), which unlike most local radio stations featured a combination of classic rock and up and coming indie and cool interviews instead of inane chat with cranks and shut-ins, the beeb torched it in 2000.

The music format on 6 Music is mostly consistent, but it does also include some weekly speciality shows. Craig Charles (of Red Dwarf) hosts The Funk and Soul Show. Muso journo Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone bills itself as "From the weird to the obscure, via the neglected." and an episode could include roots German electronica, John Cage, Soft Machine, Buffy Sainte Marie or new sights on the advant garde horizon. Its not surprising that a Christmas ep included John Cale's take on A Child's Christmas in Wales, William Shatner's Xmas In the 909, Judee Sill's Jesus Was a Crossmaker, and a song from Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers. It also included this delirious reinvention of a yuletide tune.

Another thing about this track that I like is that it is repurposed music. You can find that in its simplest form in song parodies, the works of Allen Sherman or Weird Al Yankovic are obvious examples. On previous days of my musical advent tour, I've selected VerHannukah, and Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland, that side step parody to give a straightforward history in the former, and a barking mad tribute in the latter. Bob Rivers the rock DJ from the Pacific Northwest responsible for the above tribute to Garcia worship, also produced this gem in the mould of Black Sabbath:

I am Santa Claus -- Bob Rivers to the melody of Iron Man (complete with Ozzy cameo).

A reboot of Haydn to prehistory can be found in The Allosaurus Chorus by The Greenwood Choir. This is another one I heard from the WFMU Greasy Kid's Stuff show. Some bright spark posted the lyrics online, so sing along!
Allosaurus Chorus lyrics.

To hear it in full click on the Real Media link below:

Allosaurus Chorus on GKS Dec. 24 2005

If you don't have a Real Media player then you can hear this brief excerpt:
Allosaurus Chorus excerpt.

Another great track from that GKS Christmas celebration is Martin Mull's Santafly, which hijacks the blaxploitation soundtrack genre rather than a specific song. He reinterprets Santa's modus operandi ghetto style the way Arlo Guthrie made St. Nick radical for The Pause of Mr Claus.

Hear an excerpt here:

	1 12 martin mull-santafly .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

To hear Santafly in full, click here.

Or hear in full on the Real Media link below:

Santafly by Martin Mull on GKS Dec. 24 2005

The ultimate repurpose of music to redefine Santa can be found in satirical a capella group The Bob's track, Santa's Got A Brand New Bag.

To hear the entire GKS episode that includes both Santafly and the Allosaurus Chorus. You'll find it on the Real Media link below:

Greasy Kids Stuff Archive 2005 Dec. 24: Greasy Christmas GKS Holiday Special
Playlist

Advent Calendar in Song: Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland

2010-12-05T01:00:00.019Z

Novelty: Gen X Edition

Compilation albums have blossomed into a major part of the music industry. They're like mixtapes for people without taste or the time effort and talent to create their own. Once either the lazy collection of this season's hits, or the ghetto for strange novelty records sold on late night TV, they now have a variety of guises: the charity album, the thematic covers album (covers of an artist, or even a tribute album to an album), and of course, the holiday album.

Despite whatever cred they may get from low record sales or being on indie labels that were originally cutting edge but have since been acquired by the dwindling number of megamonolithic corporations, indie and GenX bands like a pay day as much as the next artist formerly known as profitable. This gives bands contributing to the holiday album comp a clear remit, either record their take on a standard Christmas carol or pop tune, or break new ground with something seasonal of their own. The former creates a mixed bag, uptempo songs dragged down into shoegazing slowness, or somber carols given raucous speed guitar inconsequential throwaways like those punk medleys of AM radio hits. The latter usually gives us what is in essence a novelty song, a Christmas song that would otherwise not exist on its own merits, and will likely never be played or covered again and will die when this compilation goes out of print. A few may catch the imagination of the fans of the band, or may even be a new classic.

Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland by Grandaddy simultaneously pokes fun at and performs tribute to the titular uber sound engineer musician producer. Part of the charm of this one is just how ludicrous it becomes as it crash lands in the middle of the standard Winter Wonderland, not even trying to shoehorn the more absurd lyrics into a musical line, the words just keep going over the cliff when the music has already turned the corner, and of course there's the obvious nod to fellow synth prog rocker Greg Lake's I Believe In Father Christmas.

I probably first heard it on BBC6 Music (a station I'll discuss more tomorrow), it was released on a charity album curated by a British commercial alt rock station Xfm, It's a Cool Cool Christmas. (also includes The Dandy Warhols on The Little Drummer Boy).

Fountains of Wayne -- I Want an Alien For Christmas This Year, is just a breezy fun track, which although it probably won't have much staying power, is cheerful indie-pop.

I should probably also mention the excellent efforts by Scottish band Belle and Sebastian, who performed an excellent BBC Peel Session for Xmas 2002, which is available "somewhere", their version of O Come O Come Emmanuel is also on the XFM comp mentioned above. Sufjan Stevens, a suspiciously prolific stylistic chameleon, perhaps known for his supposed 50 States project (only two albums so far), released 5 quite long EPs of Christmas music which have been boxed as Christmas Songs. I would probably get into his music more, if I knew how to pronounce his name. My favorite of the originals on these is the wonderfully titled Get Behind Me, Santa!

I first came across the song Merry Christmas from the Family in a cover by Jill Sobule recorded for the 1995 compilation You Sleigh Me! (also includes Tori Amos on The Little Drummer Boy).

Merry Christmas from the Family

Jill Sobule | Myspace Music Videos

The original is by Robert Earl Keen, a star of the alt country scene and a contemporary of Lyle Lovett. It was a minor hit for him, and is so requested at his live shows he has a rule that he now only performs it from Labor Day to New Year's. It also spawned a book and a sequel song. It is an affectionate not patronizing look at its family of trailer grotesques, not as OTT as a musical episode of My Name is Earl would be.

As I also included her for the (c)hanukkah entry, with Jesus Was A Dreidel Spinner, to give you an idea of how great Sobule's own non-seasonal material is, here's one of my favorites, Bitter:

Advent Calendar in Song: The Pause of Mr. Claus

2010-12-04T01:00:00.003Z

The American (Political) Folk Factor

I hated summer camp. But remembering now, I was first introduced to a number of influences and cool stuff by people I met there. Amongst these was Monty Python, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, Don McClean, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, and Arlo Guthrie. The only Arlo Guthrie song I might have heard up until then would have been "City of New Orleans" which received loads of airplay, but here I listened avidly to his long and rambling monologues which accompanied songs that were almost incidental, particularly Alice's Restaurant and one of several versions of the Pickle Song. They were very funny.

I first came across The Pause of Mr. Claus at Jocelyn Fowler's house. Jocelyn was a classmate in high-school in the gifted program and a fellow member of the Scott's Hi-Q team. Scott's Hi-Q was a high school level version of the College Bowl / University Challenge format, played by schools in the region of the Scott Paper plant, which sponsored the competition. It was an acceptable outlet for my trivia and geek skills.

I'd cast Jocelyn in a couple of risqué roles in some of my abortive attempts to become the Eisenstein of Springfield by filming plays. It is a measure of my sub-Aspergian disconnect that I didn't register that this might be either offensive or suggestive, and she took it with good humor, perhaps expecting that none of them would come off anyway. Truth was I was sexually blinkered by the unrequited crush on the girl that went away and blighted my adolescence, and so it didn't occur to me that my motives toward anyone else would come into question, although, given that that particular passion play was entirely in my head.... I pretty much lacked any empathy that would grant me those kind of social skills. Hence, I expect now, that Jocelyn is on the long list of women I have inadvertently creeped out. (Sorry.)

Anyway, it was probably after a Scott's Hi-Q practice, which did the rounds of players homes, that I spotted the album Arlo on the shelf amongst the LP's. I probably needled them into playing it whilst we were waiting for parental transport to arrive. I wanted some of my friends who hadn't heard Arlo's subversive humor to get a taste or I wanted to look cool. The Pause of Mr. Claus came on and became an instant favorite. If you only have his greatest hits album, it's an essential track that is missing from that collection, so get Arlo as well.

Born at the tail end of the baby boom, with much older siblings, this was also music and stories that kept me connected to the Woodstock generation. Both my brothers went to Woodstock. They volunteered for the campaigns of the Kennedy's and protested Vietnam. My eldest brother was allegedly part of his college's Students for a Democratic Society, and he and other writers on the literary magazine formed a short lived performance poetry band unfortunately called The Stone. He and his friends met Allen Ginsberg and were invited for a weekend on his farm. My other brother hitch-hiked to Guatemala and back. So Arlo Guthrie's folktales of the modern counter culture meant much to me as a child of the Watergate generation. The Pause of Mr. Claus is mostly about the FBI and the authoritarian aspect of our government that it represents when it engages in tailing people for political rather than criminal reasons. (you really shouldn't but to just hear the song and skip the monologue go to 5:43)

Arlo's legendary father, Woody Guthrie, one of the greats of American song writing, died with many of his lyrics unrecorded. With the blessing of his estate, some of these were set to music by a project helmed by Britain's Billy Bragg with the American group Wilco. Here's a track that at a slight stretch could make a carol for our committed lefty carollers to add to their canon.

Christ For President by Woody Guthrie as sung by Billy Bragg and Wilco

Straying farther down the path, I can't help but feel like listening to my favorite Billy Bragg tune, Waiting for The Great Leap Forward. A song which starts out anecdotally and plays out anthemically, perhaps in its tale of optimism failed it asks us to keep our idealism. That to me should make it fit with the season of good will.

Advent Calendar in Song: Hooray for Santy Claus!

2010-12-03T01:00:00.017Z

Novelty: the Kitsch Factor

Kitsch isn't just bad taste, it's the ironic appreciation of really bad taste which has been created with earnestness. This is why attempts to intentionally make kitsch always fall short of the mark, they lack the conviction of someone who truly believes they are making something of quality. Much of the paraphernalia of the Christmas holiday is based around a glamour that is prone to go over the top to reach the summits of kitsch. The heady mix of gaudy baubles, decoration, modern advertising and megawatt lighting displays, crossed with a muddled mix of religious and secular motifs is such a combustive recipe. Given that it's all ostensibly about the birth of a child in asia minor, one has to wonder what spruce trees, finnish livestock, and frickin' elves have to do with any of it.

The bravado of any version of the Santa story, has to be sold hard, without guile or irony. With the key element of earnestness, this often sends it hurtling in the direction of kitsch. Given that Santa, with his airborne reindeer, has a magical quality, which, to invert Arthur C. Clarke's dictum, is indistinguishable from pure science fiction. Particularly in the golden age of the space race, a Santa that is more Buzz in a rocket sled, than Woody wrangling reindeer across the sky, would be apt. This off-kilter conflation has given us a few examples of Christmas kitsch.

Hooray for Santa Claus, the theme from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians:

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a film I first heard of from John Waters, the cinematic emperor of bad taste. I don't remember whether he was praising the film on its own merits (although Google has turned up a recent interview where he names it the only Christmas film that he enjoys, or can even stand), or whether he was championing Pia Zadora who very briefly was a queen of trash movies, and who makes her cinematic debut as one of the Martian children.

As an adult Pia would marry well, Meshulam Riklis credited as one of the inventors of junk bonds and leveraged buyouts, owned significant shares in the American distributor of Dubonnet. Pia swiftly became the "Dubonnet Girl" spokesmodel. Hubby then financed a string of films, two of which won her "Razzies" for worst actress two years running, the first of these also won her a Golden Globe "Best Female Newcomer" beating Kathleen Turner and Elizabeth McGovern. She was kind of cute and adorable; her acting, charisma, and presence were good enough to make her eminently watchable, but her acting, poor choice of roles and scripts were bad enough to make her ridiculous. John Waters enhanced her aura by giving her a cameo as a beatnik in Hairspray. I would still have a soft spot for her today, if she and her on and off again husband hadn't bought Pickfair with promises that they'd restore it, instead demolishing it and subdividing the property.

Even though all this adds retroactively to the kitsch value of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Pia is just a child actress here, and you'd have no idea it was her if it wasn't pointed out. She went on to be Tevye's youngest daughter in Fiddler for a couple of years on Broadway. Her kitsch quotient here is nothing compared to it being just a film churned out for the no quality threshold necessary Saturday kiddie matinee market.

Saturday kiddie matinees were a cheap day care facility in the 1950's and '60's. They had a literally captive audience, and admission was paid for by parents who didn't have to stay and watch the cinematic drek. The production values are so low they at times would be envious of early Doctor Who standards. SCCTM is typical but adds the low concept that children on Mars want Santa Claus because they've been watching too much Earth TV, cue a pre-Nightmare Before Christmas Santa kidnap plot.

Check out the trailer and watch out for the incongruous giant clarinet:

If you're a glutton for punishment, or just have too much time on your hands this link will let you watch the whole shebang on YouTube. Someone with too much time on their hands has done a ten minute edit for those of you with less too much time on your hands. Here's a really short clip that should be sufficient for the rest of us. SCCTM is regularly voted amongst the worst films of all time and has been parodied in an ep of MST3K, and again by one of its successors Cinema Titanic.

Apparently this wasn't St Nick's only foray to the Red Planet, as we find from this unrelated single from 1956. This features Barry Gordon a 6-year-old novelty song whore (this being his second foray), supported by Art Mooney And His Orchestra, Zoomah, The Santa Claus From Mars perhaps presaged the later atrocity of SCCTM.

Luckily I don't have the time or energy to tell you about the kiddie matinee career of K Gordon Murray (Mark Jordan Legan describes this in horrifying detail in this Slate V Video). This entrepreneur made a business buying and redubbing dubious Mexican movies for the American kiddie matinee market, in the spirit of this piece I will send you in the direction of Santa Claus Conquers The Devil (1959) (sadly retitled Santa Claus). Santa doesn't get as far as Mars this time but lives in a castle in space a thousand miles above the north pole, and has a workshop with captive children of all races do his bidding. So at least there's a message of international harmony.

From the 50's and 60's space age lets leap forward to the post moonlanding 70's. Here are two really gaudy Star Wars Christmas songs, and they're not even from the spectacularly monumentally bad Star Wars Holiday Special. They're from the unrelated Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album produced by Meco Monardo who had previously recorded Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk, and has songs written by Maury Yeston who went on to write Nine and the reworked version of Grand Hotel, and is the first professional recording of the vocal artist currently known as Jon Bon Jovi. The only links to the Star Wars franchise, apart from the obvious use of characters, are the narrations by Anthony Daniels and sound wizard Ben Burtt who apart from being the ultimate foley for the Star Wars universe has been responsible for the voice of R2D2. This actual recording is one of those rarities in Star Wars merchandise, as though the first pressing sold out, the company went under due to unrelated legal problems (if only Lucasfilms had, before Jedi).

Again, if it weren't for WFMU, this pair of songs might have escaped my attention, the first I'd only heard as a cover by performance and recording artist Ben Diwan, until this article had me find the original on YouTube. So now, I've finally heard the undistinctive lead vocal of Jon Bon Jovi, seriously you'd never guess if no one told you (just like young Pia). I think it really calls for him to go back and cover it Bon Jovi stylee, which would ramp up the absurdity to suitably intergalactic levels. Maybe he should duet with Pia, and do Hurray for Santa Claus on the flip side.

It's probably a bit late to question the taste of the person who made the video to accompany the song with its depiction of inappropriate child robot relations, and R2D2 getting spitroasted by Thundercats. R2D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas is a bit of a train wreck, but it's a masterpiece next to the musical question they never should have asked, What Do You Get a Wookie for Christmas (when he already has a comb)?

I'm really sorry to have put you through all that, as my punishment I'm going to go watch Princess Leia sing the Life Day song, and shoot myself. Preferably not in that order.

Advent Calendar in Song: VerHanukkah

2010-12-02T01:00:00.011Z

Time to wish you all a happy Hanukkah, or chappy Chanukkah, 2010!

After yesterday's Tom Lehrer track, it would have been tempting to use his I'm Spending Hanukkah in Santa Monica, but I've picked something you're less likely to have heard. VerHanukkah by Kisswhistle, is a track that I stumbled across whilst parsing archived Xmas radio shows from WFMU.

Back in 2000, John Peel declared a debut album by DJ, singer/songwriter, Laura Cantrell "my favourite record of the last ten years and possibly my life". Cantrell, when not singing, or following a career in investment banking, DJ'ed a show celebrating vintage country and old time music called Radio Thrift Shop on WFMU. I've enjoyed her music, and find her radio show is excellent and educational to the likes of me, a suburban cynic who pretentiously wrote off country music due to my exposure to HeeHaw. Her radio show also introduced me to the world of the "freeform" radio station WFMU.

The WFMU website is a treasure trove of unusual and weird audio. Trolling through the archived shows on the station's web site I found a wealth of obscure and interesting tracks. Their Beware the Blog also regularly posts mp3s of arcane material salvaged from barely ever in print discs most likely found at garage sales, including their monumental 2007 365 days project which saw tidbits such as japanese surf music and a production of Hair, Celebrity canned one sided interviews and PSA announcements, self produced albums by high school marching bands, singing oncologists, musical evangelists, and lounge singers, out of print LP's recorded in TRUE STEREO or HI-FIDELITY of little known stand ups or forgotten celebrities taking a crack at singing. There was even a day devoted to the music of Thurl Ravenscroft, who we'll be hearing from later this month.

Amongst the eclectic variety of shows in the WFMU archive was a show called Greasy Kids Stuff, a weekly show featuring bizarre novelty records for kids which ran for about 11 years ending in 2006. Looking at just their Christmas shows, I decided to raid all of WFMU's archived Christmas themed shows for my own holiday mix of mp3's and I wasted a week downloading and parsing out the goodies.

This is where I found VerHanukkah, a holiday song with lyrics written over an existing song, which is getting two great songs for the price of one. First, as it's probably a song best known to fans of Elvis Costello, and little known to everyone else, let's deal with the source song, Veronica. It is a one of the better products of the playful collaboration between Mr. MacManus and Mr. McCartney, and certainly one of the most upbeat tunes you'll ever hear about Alzheimers. The line at the end of the bridge, "She spoke his name out loud again." always makes me tear up inexplicably.

Now for Verhannukah by Kisswhistle. It pretty much speaks for itself. You'll find it at 0:55:44 on the Real Media link below:

Greasy Kids Stuff Archive 2000 Dec. 23: Merry Grease-mas! GKS Holiday Special
Playlist

On the same broadcast at at 1:05:04 you'll find Schlepp the Halls With Loaves of Hallah by The Three Weissman. This is another great two for one, and just the title and author alone are worth the price of admission. Even better when heard, it's Deck the Halls as arranged by klezmers if the lyrics were written by Mel Brooks (the vocal reminds me of the 2000 Year Old Man). OK it doesn't have the Edward Learian charm of Walt Kelly's Deck the Halls with Boston Charlie, but I don't know if that's ever been recorded (now there's a cover challenge gauntlet thrown).

Another prime Hannukah track, and one that partially covers my childhood ambivalence about being Jewish at Christmastime, is Jesus Was a Dreidel Spinner by Jill Sobule. Sobule is another great singer songwriter, and I recommend the rest of her work as well (I'll be mentioning another seasonal track of hers later on).

Finally, a link to the Lehrer track on YouTube. Who wouldn't want to spend Hannukah in Santa Monica by the sea?

Advent Calendar in Song: Battle of The Little Drummer Boy

2010-12-01T01:00:00.000Z

Bowie vs Bing vs Polyphonic Spree

Wednesday's are battle days on my twisted advent calendar, today it's The Little Drummer Boy as covered by David Bowie and Bing Crosby from a dusty old TV special against the boisterous choral might of the Polyphonic Spree. First, I should say The Little Drummer Boy is really not one of my favorite seasonal songs, its story of a poor boy feeling ashamed that he has no gift to bring to a baby he hasn't met, perhaps due to some peer pressure from the overly flash wise men, seems somehow, just wrong. I mean, I don't think that little baby Jesus is demanding tribute, I thought the whole point should be that he's shown up to do away with all that kind of crap. So, it's not little baby Jesus fault, which is why I blame the toadying indulgent wise men. If all the little drummer boy can offer Jesus is his Buddy Rich impersonation, what about his poorer next door neighbor, who can't even afford a drum, what's he supposed to do, invent beatboxing for the son of God?

OK, getting away with my problems with the content of the song. These are two pretty interesting readings of it. First, the Crosby/Bowie collaboration has a lot going against it. Just watch the cringemaking set up, the hokey earnestness with which Bing does the trendy vicar bit about how marvellous the modern music is, and Bowie trying to push that he's just a middle class parent of a 6 year old son, and not a case study in recreational drugs and sexual ambivalence. Then there's the move to make the song more hip and contemporary by having Bowie sing that "Peace On Earth" bit over Bing doing his Rump-Pa-Pa-Pums like his mellow version of scat. Despite the fact that it should floor you with how bad it is, it kind of works. It's become a classic, even if the meeting of the generations is manufactured, both David and Bing seem to be so good natured about it, and put enough into the song, that it rises above the lazy exercise in cross promotion that the TV and Record Company execs dreamed up in their saccharine sugar plum dreams.

I like Polyphonic Spree, and I hope to get to see them live some time, they look fun. They've tried to redefine choral for indie rock music and pop, before that lot from Glee grabbed hold of it and drained any sense of the power of the human voice joined in unison with warmth and natural variations of timbre and pitch instead of sounding like lab produced clones of all Cher's records post Sonny. Polyphonic Spree sing with enthusiasm that is entirely lacking from that group of geriatric adolescents hooked on autotune. Unfortunately the YouTube clip lacks some of the audio quality of the recorded version, but I think it carries the atmosphere of their performance rather well.

Some of their non season recordings for comparison:

	The Polyphonic Spree - Soldier Girl .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

	The Polyphonic Spree - Lithium .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

	Polyphonic Spree - Section 9 .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Well, for my part, I think Polyphonic Spree wins hands down, but I'll admit that the Bowie-Bing (!Buddah-Boom?) is probably more enduring, at least until Bowie does his hokey TV Special and duets this track with Justin Timberlake (maybe they'll make a movie together).

Advent Calendar in Song: A Christmas Carol

2010-11-30T01:00:00.009Z

One of the obsessive past times of my childhood was maintaining a collection of comedy records, this consisted of a mix of stand-up records and comedy songs. I mastered, to my naive ear, an impersonation of Jimmy Durante, I'd proudly sing "It's My Nose's Birthday, Not Mine", which I felt my proboscis helped sell despite the failings of my vocal delivery. Later I learned Allen Sherman's Harvey and Sheila, an acronym filled tale of upwardly mobile love set to Hava Nagila. I'd perform a party piece at some of my parents dos before being sent to bed, which really meant sitting on the stairs trying to listen to the conversations and attempting to fathom the adult world.

I first hear Tom Lehrer round a campfire, a counsellor singing The Irish Ballad, the beautifully gruesome send up of folk murder ballads (can you imagine what Nick Cave could do with this?), and The Hunting Song. When that summer was over I immediately got hold of the 3 Tom Lehrer albums that were in print, the first studio version, and the second and third live versions (I didn't find out later until the fantastic Rhino box set release that Lehrer had recorded and released the first two albums twice, studio and live). I greedily listened to his sardonic and satirical ditties, and added another pointless skill to my resumé, by memorizing his setting of the names of the chemical elements to the tune of Modern Major General.

Tom Lehrer's A Christmas Carol, as I first heard it, was from the live version of his second set of songs, An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer. He has fun skewering commercialized Christmas whilst segueing into pastiche of some actual carols.

Stan Freberg's sketch Green Chri$tma$ drives home the commercialization message with a bit of a sledge hammer, but is so rife with puns and references, and his high standard production value, we do well to forgive any overkill. Freberg was a voice actor in cartoons, later a radio and TV comedian and a subversive ad man (I'm surprised he hasn't been worked into Mad Men in some direct or indirect fashion). He doesn't pull many punches.

Before I discovered Tom Lehrer, Allen Sherman had been my musical comedy god, he'd re-purpose hit songs into comedic routines by writing new lyrics. The Twelve Gifts Of Christmas is admittedly not his best, and has dated the worst (imagine trying to explain that a small japanese transistor radio with one faulty earpiece was the Ipod Shuffle of its time) but it's the only seasonal one, and I've a soft spot for the man unfairly remembered for just Hello Muddah Hello Faddah.

I'll leave you for today with this sketch from Eddie Lawrence, a character comedian and actor. I'm not sure whether I heard it first on Dr Demento (a weekly radio show featuring novelty records, filled a bit much with the grating cackle of the zany presenter, but very supportive for good and ill of the struggling novelty and comedy market, so to blame for Weird Al Yankovich), or the local radio with its all too wacky zoo morning format. It's silly, but it made me laugh as a kid.

Advent Calendar In Song: Fairytale of New York

2010-11-29T01:00:00.013Z

And as I said yesterday, this is the track that has inspired me to this, my most pointless feat of bloggery to date, I've committed myself to a daily output from here until Xmas. (I do not maintain this blog with any regularity or purpose, on the basis that it is mostly an unsmelled fart in the vacuum of the internet, read mostly by spam-bots and tumbleweeds, and a few friends who may see it through the feed to Facebook notes).

Fairytale of New York is the Pogues beautiful seasonal collaboration with the late and thoroughly lamented great Kirsty MacColl. This is a song which has its cake and devours it too. It sends up the sentimentality of all Christmas pop tunes, but it also has entered the canon of those tunes, and with its Oirish accordion and swelling strings pulls us into the cynical but hopeful dream of Shane and Kirsty's alcohol tinged haze.

"You Scumbag, You Maggot,
You cheap lousy faggot,
Merry Christmas your arse,
I pray god it's our last!"

With a line like that, I am proud to live in a country where this not only gets mainstream radio airplay, unedited, it was number two in the Christmas single charts the year it was released (it hit number 1 in Ireland). No doubt this will probably never be the case in my homeland (thanks to the "freakin'" FCC). This should send me straight off for my citizenship application if it weren't for the fact that I would be quizzed on football, the benefits system and probably the latest X Factor contestants.

When I first thought to write this last year, I was partially gazumped by the blog of a much funnier and more read acquaintance who complained that every year he hears Fairytale of New York at the beginning of the Christmas season, and loves it all over again, but learns to hate it by the time the holiday rolls around. He was wrong of course (he does describe himself as a cunt). One of the strengths of this subversive little gem is that it has burrowed its way into the standards, and you'll find it on most contemporary UK Christmas compilation albums right next to Slade, Wizzard, Cliff Richard and that really crap track by Chris Rea (the Christmas one).

Beyond subverting the Christmas song, and the love song, ultimately Fairytale of New York flips the dreams of immigrants, imagining a better life, where the saintly Irish boys of the NYPD choir sing of Galway Bay, when the only bodies of water they've ever seen are the Hudson and the shores of Coney Island Beach slathered in the sludge brought north from New Jersey by the Gulf Stream. This is the spirit of Christmas: to idealize the human condition, to pretend that we will reach the best of our dreams, in the hope that we can.

Advent Calendar in Song: An Introduction

2010-11-28T01:00:00.006Z

Last year, on a drive back from Doncaster, I was so struck by hearing one of the best Christmas songs "Fairytale of New York" on the radio, that I decided not just to share my thoughts on this seasonal gem, but to sporadically, if not daily, hold forth on some other tunes from the flow and ebb of yuletide. But, I didn't quite get my ass in gear to do this last year, but it turns out that's a good thing.

You might ask why a Jewish guy, or in my case more ish than Jew, being predominantly atheist and lover of slow cooked pork roasts, is doing compiling a list of Christmas music? (Go on, ask, I'm waiting....)

I love cover songs, and the canon of Christmas songs, both religious and secular, has been done by so many artists so many different ways, you'd think they were all "Hey, Jude".
I'm celebrating my Jewish heritage. No, I don't mean in a "Christ was a Jew" kinda way. (I never understood Jews for Jesus, they may as well be Buddhists for Zoroaster, or Hindus for Odin, or Seventh Day Adventists for Leprechauns.) I'm thinking of the huge contribution of Jewish songsmiths to the genre of Christmas songs in popular music. Irving Berlin practically invented the genre. It would have been White Chanukkah, but Bing couldn't cope with the "ch" sound. I may not be religious, but I'm proud that my grandfather was a klezmer.
Nostalgia, I may live in the UK, where no one does Christmas better than they do, but they don't show A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph, or the Chuck Jones Grinch. I need some of that Vince Guaraldi and Thurl Ravenscroft, to put me in the right mood.
The best Christmas music, either sells the sense of cheer and community really really well, or subverts the over the top schmaltz of Christmas. A win/win for both my softer and cynical sides.

I have this love/hate relationship with the whole Christmas thing. Growing up surrounded by Christians, I often felt that Christmas was being shoved down my throat. To some extent it was a season of alienation. On the other hand, my sentimentalist streak is a sucker for the Capra-esque feel good, Clarence has got his wings, Cor blimey, if it isn't Mr Scrooge with the largest goose for the Cratchits, God Bless us Everyone. I am Grinch 2.0.

So, while I have little feelings for Christmas as a holiday, per se; to me it is my wife's family's annual self-martyrdom competition, and a new Dr Who special. The Spirit of Christmas (tm) or more accurately the Jungian archetype behind the absurdly over manufactured notion of the Christmas as a season of giving, brotherhood and overindulgence, strikes a hugely soothing chord in my heart chakra (existential fulfilment). I have a nearly complete ignorance of Christianity, so I wouldn't be surprised if Christmas had something to do with Jimmy Stewart seeing what Oz would have been like if Rudolph had been allowed to play reindeer games.

Finally, I would have been late starting this last year, until moments ago, I thought Advent started on Dec 1st as most chocolate Advent calendars do, but the internet informs me that this year it starts today. So, feel free to comment on my ignorance, or let me know your own obscure Christmas tunes.

While I'll probably dip back to this one, I'll leave you with a bit of Linus and Lucy, and yes, this is where I learned all my smooth dance moves.

All Quiet on the Western Front: The War on Mime Terror Continues

2010-10-30T11:03:00.004+01:00

A Hertfordshire woman was set free this evening, having been taken hostage by the political wing of the LIMF(London International Mime Festival). She had been imprisoned for 60 days in an imaginary box. Police have said she was rendered speechless with what they're calling "Marceau Syndrome". She was unable to comment.

A crack team of Police Interpretative Dancers stormed the terrorists' heavily fortified Covent Garden pitch. After walking against a stiff, but non-existent wind, the team were nearly foiled with abashed pathos when the mime leader offered them his heart. After retaliating with gestures suggesting Cupid firing a bow and arrow, Police Marksman and Lighting Designer Lieutenant "Gaffer" Miller commented, "A mime is a terrible thing to waste."

In a related story, the Surreal IRA have made their demands known for homerule by leprechauns, all statues of James Joyce to be made of cheese, and singing fish canonized bucket october dentist.

[a riff on a thread by CG]

Review: The Social Network: Fight Club for Nerds

2010-10-21T18:07:00.017+01:00

I've just seen The Social Network, and I'm left with a dilemma, how do I report my experience on Facebook?

I could "Like" it, I did, but going to a fan page on Facebook presents further problems, which do I choose to like? Doing a search on Facebook for The Social Network, yields 213 results and the absurd straight faced question "Did you mean:joe socialnetwork ? Just looking at the top thirty returns, at least half of these reference the movie about the creation of the Facebook site, variously as Page, Film, Technology and Telecommunications Service, and Local Business, each using artwork from the movie, or the poster of the movie as the profile pic, each liked by between One person and 198,024. Strangely, as I page through the results the number jumps abruptly from 213 to 331, has my mere interest caused a tremor in the force, it's not like this is the first week that the film has been on release.

Even if I did choose which of the myriad Facebook pages allegedly fronting for the movie scripted by Aaron Sorkin (of corridor walkin', improbably clever banterin' West Wing and Studio 60... fame), all I'd be doing would be putting my name and Facebook ID on a list with thousands upon thousands of people I don't know, and depending on my privacy settings letting the author of said page access parts of my personal profile. It's not like the page is by director David Fincher, who might see my name appear on the list, causing him to wonder if I've forgiven him for every other film of his being crap (see below). Adding my name to a list of fanboys I don't know, I may as well be back on MySpace.

The real coup of this film is that it manages to make two inherently dry things, the development of a website, and litigation over credit and ownership of that intellectual property, into a compelling and watchable story. This is down to the triple threat of Sorkin's wordier than thou script, Fincher's unfussy direction, and Jesse Eisenberg (yeh, the NOT Michael Cera), Andrew Garfield, and Armie Hammer's spot on acting.

Geeks, don't get too excited that this will make programming any cooler (isn't money, if you hit on the right thing, enough?). There is one key scene where coding is brought to life, by illustrating a problem solving session, creating a routine that navigates their Uni's network for id pictures of female students. It's a humdinger for sure, but don't think you're getting any more to replace your hankering after the dubious, technically dodgy charms of Hackers (or Wargames, or, -shudder- The Net...). Apart from this scene, Fincher withholds flourishes, wisely leaving the densely written dialogue and the uniformly superb acting to do the heavy lifting.

I did feel that many of the reviews I'd heard or read had stretched the comparison to Rashomon to molecular carbon fibre thinness. This is nothing against the film. Are critics a) so impoverished in their vocabulary as to have no other way to describe multiple viewpoints, and/or b) so pretentious that the merest hint of the same causes them to name drop Kurosawa's classic (no one goes for the somewhat bizarre 1964 Western remake "The Outrage", starring Paul Newman, Claire Bloom, Edward G. Robinson, and... William Shatner)? What we do experience in The Social Network is a constantly shifting viewpoint. Very few scenes are replayed, and those only partially, the viewpoints shift mainly to those being deposed, and the self serving differences in the memory plays aren't pointedly (or ham-ily) exaggerated, as they might be in faux-Rashomon style (now who's pretentious, bitches!?). The "God" point of view which plays most of the time, looks condescendingly over the proceedings. However well people come off in their own versions, and even there some don't do themselves any favours, they are even more screwed, cynical and manipulative under the all seeing narrative eye.

There has been much comment that no one comes off as "likeable". Raging Bull and There Will Be Blood didn't inspire me to hang out with their main characters. Maybe, in a context where everyone polishes their persona, be it turd or diamond, we could fall into the trap of believing this is relevant to the architects of that virtual social club-house. If anyone comes off well here, it's Eduardo Saverin, who is probably the only character with a visible emotional arc as he suffers the highs and lows of success and betrayal in the face of Mark Zuckerberg's stubborn, blinkered and monolithic drive.

Of course, you could trust someone else's review of The Social Network. The better ones might share common ground with this one, but only mine is right. The Social Network is a fascinating, emotionally cold tale of ego driven genius. And who, after all, can resist a tell-all, even if it doesn't tell all.

Sidebar: The Alternating Fincher Theory

Finally it supports my theory that every other David Fincher film is Rubbish/Genius:

Alien 3 (1992) I hated this on first viewing, warmed to it over the years, and if it can be regarded as pants, not entirely DF's fault. Certainly the slightly more successful of the deeply flawed second half of the "Quadrology".

Se7en (1995) Great, even if Gwyneth gets boxed in. Its only downsides being that it led the way for future trends in intentionally poor lighting in thrillers and perversely moralistic torture porn.

The Game (1997) Pretentious rubbish. Paranoid fantasy as invigorating life journey. This is Eat Pray Love for yuppie men.

Fight Club (1999) Genius, Helena B-C does her best hair acting ever, can you even remember a movie Ed Norton has done since?

Panic Room (2002) Not complete rubbish, but nothing superlative. Never whelming, so no chance of under. Jodie in the box not nearly as good as Gwyneth.

Zodiac (2007) Genius. Creepy, gripping, and tragic. The one for which DF deserves subsequent plaudits.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) Not just rubbish, an unjustifiable waste of time, tedious, aimless, pointless. If Sam Mendes hadn't made Revolutionary Road, I'd be hard pressed to name a film I hated more in the last few years.

The Social Network (2010) Like.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo .... or The Girl in the Superfluous English Language Remake... I think we may be on target.

I do hope he breaks the pattern. Does anyone agree with the phenomenon, or is it merely manufactured by my fickle tastes? And even if my theory is right, surely it is worth living in a universe that contains The Game, Panic Room and even Ben Button, if we can also have Se7en, Fight Club, and Zodiac. Maybe we should hope he continues, at least we'll know which ones to see.

(Note: Sidebar partially recycled from comment I made on the Kermode Uncut blog. Further Note: Since originally written I've seen a fairly impressive looking trailer for ... Dragon Tattoo, so the spell may be broken....)

Review: Made in Dagenham: Stitch up Made in BritComLand

2010-10-10T07:47:00.008+01:00

Made in Dagenham is the based on a true story story of the 1968 strike at Ford's Dagenham plant of 187 (sewing) Machinists, women stitching together car upholstery and trim, who demanded pay equal to their male counterparts. In classic BritCom tradition, the film-makers have thrown a sterling cast of British actors together. Unfortunately, the actors should have gone on strike to demand a better script. The result is not a complete lemon, but a vehicle that only lurches out of third gear on a few occasions.

The script does have moments of well observed humour, pithy and bawdy dialogue, and punchily framed rhetoric, but its schematic plot contrivances are welded on with all the grace of a dodgy cut and shunt (back end from Brassed Off, front from Calendar Girls). It veers into melodramatic subplot about a WWII vet, which clunkily serves as a) inspiration for a rousing speech, b) the basis of a false rift between main character and a secondary protagonist. In true BritCom tradition a third act argument leads to a partner getting on a mode of transport to chase after the other to issue an apology (do Brits only show a depth of feeling based on mileage?)

Sally Hawkins shines in the everywoman role of worker turned firebrand spokesperson, Rita O'Grady (or more like Basil Exposition's distant cousin, Vera O'Composite). Other action figures include the Slapper (Andrea Riseborough), the Glamour Girl (Jaime Winstone) and the Mature One (Geraldine James), all of whom are wheeled on and off to present their plot points. Rosamund Pike, as Middle Class Woman, delivers the golden turd of a message speech about the historical context and the implications to women of all classes with such aplomb that I felt my heart in my chest, but I felt dirty and used for responding to such a thuddingly shoehorned piece. Likewise, some other set pieces work extremely well, the way Hawkins face simmers with frustration and inchoate rage when she is rendered speechless by Andrew Lincoln's witheringly condescending schoolteacher (whose indiscriminate caning policy is at question). This should lead to some subsequent confrontation, but only, as it transpires, serves as an awkward cute meet between O'Composite and Middle Class Woman.

Trade Union corruption and hypocrisy and US/UK trade relations are touched upon in potentially interesting ways, but their sins are simplified reductively into two baddie characters, making the rest immaculate. The end titles even have a sop about Ford now being a model employer (see The Town's really sincere apologia to Charlestown above). The context of rife trade union disputes throughout Britain is alluded to only in exposition and news clips. There is also a queasy moment which suggests that the idea for equal pay came, not from the women, but from Bob Hoskins cheeky chappy shop steward.

The great cast does manage to breathe life into their unfleshed out characters, but are wasted when given so little to do. Opportunities may now be more equal, but this film is mostly missed ones. If the script had explored both the characters and the issues in even a scintilla more depth, then this might be a classic British film. Instead it is just another well meaning model rolling off the BritCom production line.

Sidebar 1: My wife lost patience viewing this quite early on. Her knowledge of history serving as a spoiler, she knew what it was heading for, and just wanted them "to get on with it."

Sidebar 2: Much has been made of producer Stephen Woolley's protestations that the film has received a BBFC 15 certificate due to its "authentic" language. However, by creating composite characters (as either there was no really central historic person that led the strike, or those that had did not suit the dramatic purposes of the filmmakers), they've taken a step away from authenticity. Of course, without the dramatic contrivances the script grafts onto the story you are left with the pretty slim plot, "women go on strike, after a while some of their demands are met". It does leave you with the conundrum of spotting which contrivances were based on so true you couldn't write it, and which are just plot pollyfilla from the scriptwriter as workshy brickie.

Surfin' Multiplex: Fear, Loathing and Claustrophobia: The Town, The Hole, Buried, Devil

2010-09-30T09:27:00.015+01:00

The Town

For a film that starts with title cards full of quotes about how the main location, the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, has produced more bank robbers than any other place in the world, and subsequently makes these antiheroes the main protagonists, it seems a bit insincere when it delivers a dedication in the end titles to all the nice, normal, god-fearing non-criminal folk of Charlestown. The film would do more credit to those residents if it actually contained fully fleshed out characters, a non-hackneyed story, and some evenness of tone.

This film is a strictly by the numbers crime thriller, ostensibly about loyalty amongst the criminal fraternity. Ben Affleck meets his new girlfriend Rebecca Hall, whilst checking her out as a possible witness to determine whether to intimidate or permanently silence her -- meet-not-so-cute. He becomes torn between protecting her, getting out of the life, and his extended criminal family including best buddy Jeremy Renner. The cast is great but has the script's one dimensional characters to work with (where is 3D when you really need it?), and, still worse, they don't seem to exist in the same film. Pete Postlethwaite, sadly in one of his final final roles, obliterates all before him as the hard as Sexy Beast Ben Kingsley and In Bruges Ralph Fiennes combined crime boss, Renner is the suspicious and aggrieved friend who saved Affleck's life and did time for him, Hall is a nervous cipher. Individually their performances with meagre material are fine, but the tone lurches drastically when each is trotted out onto the screen alongside the gormless Affleck. In the end it goes all Michael Mann with an extended show down sequence, but this doesn't save the film from its predictability and uninteresting characters.

Ben Affleck's debut behind the camera, the excellent Gone Baby Gone, may have given me over the odds expectations of The Town, where he acts and directs, neither to his best. This is a step back for him, and maybe he should step back behind the camera. In life where it's difficult to know where your loyalty and talents lie, sometimes you need to choose one side or the other.

The Hole (3D)

Ah, it's nice to have Joe Dante back, if only to have an update on the current health of Dick Miller. This is pretty run of the mill, not one of Dante's best, but thoroughly OK, and more intelligent than a lot of other kiddie fodder out there. There are a few derivative tropes, such as fear of a clown doll, straight out of Poltergeist. Of course, that doesn't matter to the kids who haven't seen Dante the first time round, this would make a good starter point for them (Gremlins, Explorers and Small Soldiers could be next, but leave The Howling to when the BBFC suggests).

The nature of the big bad is a bit uneven as it is different for each of the characters, some of it gets very dark and disturbing indeed. The traumatic culpability of one of the characters is papered over a little too quickly in the resolution. It has the feeling that we've been here before, Dante certainly has, and has done better. I hope the film performs well enough to give him that opportunity again.

Buried

Sadly, I didn't connect with the tension in Buried because I started looking too much at the impressive technical challenge it represented (setting the action within the confines of a buried box), I ended up watching it for how it was made rather than watching it. This was a shame, it was clearly well written, acted (apart from the somewhat ludicrous terrorist shouty guy), and directed. The jet black comedy moments worked really well for me, perhaps I need to see it again in a more claustrophobic setting than a multiplex. Perhaps in a Japanese capsule hotel, on an Ipad (I'm open to sponsorship, should anyone want to fund a review of that experience).

Ryan Reynolds does very well for himself as the victim of a buried alive kidnap scenario, showing acting chops beyond his reputation as a Chevy Chase for today's generation (dab hand at comedy bad career choices appearing in extremely variable material). Reynolds might need to fire his agent, unless this film indicates he has. Both he and director Rodrigo Cortés are ones to watch in future.

Devil

While not directed by M. Night Shamalayan, this film is produced by and its marketing makes no secret that his grubby, gotta-have-a-twist, mitts are all over it. Like almost all M. Night Shyamalan material, boilerplate weird fiction of the "Hitchcock presents" or Rod Serling mould. As usual, the chief problem is that these stories would work better, be tighter and probably be more enjoyable, if they were developed for TV format in say an hour time slot (43 minutes without commercials and credits). The opening titles announce this as the 1st instalment of the "Night Chronicles", so perhaps Shyamalan should literally follow his inspiration back to the small screen. I'm just not sure how he'll look in the fat suit, intoning the words "Good Evening...."

Devil, like many stories of demonic intervention, makes the mistake of having a voiceover that constantly reminds you that the devil's about, and nasty things happen to those that get in his way. This removes much of the guess work about what will happen to anyone stupid enough to try to fix anything, especially when they insist on going off on their own to do it. It also suggests early on that one of the five passengers in the elevator is the great horned one, so even the stupidest guess has a minimum of 20% success. A notion is floated that the passengers all have some past misdeeds that deserve punishment, but this is neither used as an opportunity to properly flesh out their characters, or to raise a metaphor for the sins and secrets of all mankind.

Finally, both Devil and Buried make extensive use of blackout, which in the olden days was a cinematic taboo, the projectionist might think the bulb had gone. But now that we don't have proper projectionists any longer....

Life Irritates Art: Inception Deception

2010-07-23T01:32:00.011+01:00

Herewith the obligatory: SPOILER WARNING
This article discusses the logical fallacies and inconsistencies in the otherwise entertaining movie Inception. It contains spoilers that whilst not revealing key plot details, will definitely detract from your enjoyment of the film if you have yet to see it. As such, I'm intentionally putting in some space to make you scroll down to the rest, so you can't blame me...

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Oh, you made it. Look, I'm not trying to be a kill-joy here. The movie is great to look at, is fitfully entertaining, and hopefully will allow other allegedly cerebral films to be made. But it's not as clever as it wants us to think it is. So here's a few things (based on my single viewing of the film) I think they got wrong:

Time Dilation 1. Compound nonsense.

We're told that time in dreams passes more quickly, the brain processes dreams faster than a waking state. I think this is a reasonable conceit. However, they then go on to say that this effect is compounded for each level of dreaming within the dream, so that where a dream might be a day for an hour in the waking world, a dream within a dream might be a week, and a level further down a year, etc.

This is total rubbish. The reason for this is simple, the "you" in the dream doesn't have its own brain, it has your brain. A dream within a dream is not being dreamt by the dream brain, but the original brain, which can only go as fast as it can go, so no faster than the original dream. I'm sure Roger Penrose could explain it more accurately, scientifically and cogently. Perhaps the geek analogy would be that you couldn't run an operating system in a virtual machine any faster than it would as native on a given machine.

This scenario is still true even if, as in the movie, different brains are joined together doing the dreaming. Unless one brain is capable of 10x the speed of another, and yet another at say 100x. Processor chips may have come on in leaps and bounds in the last two decades, 200,000 years development of homo sapiens has only given us the brains we have; short of genetic engineering or electronic augmentation, we're not due for upgrades anytime soon.

Time Dilation 2. Inconsistent

OK, even if we were to accept, under the "if you say so" rule, the time dilation level on level as they posit it, their application of their own logic is dreadfully inconsistent. When the van tumbles over in the level 1 dream, the corridor in the level 2 dream revolves at more or less the same rate. Contrast this with the van falling off the bridge, taking forever to fall in relation to level 2 where Arthur must adjust for the "weightlessness" effect caused by the van in free fall, he has time to manipulate the rest of the crew into a lift so that he can create thrust to cancel out the seeming lack of gravity. By the difference in time at this point, we can see that the revolving corridor should have turned at a very leisurely pace, more like the gimbled room that Astaire taps around in Royal Wedding, than the shuttle in 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Inner Ear, Aint that a kick in the head

We have explained to us that the "kick" needed to prematurely wake a dreamer relies on the inner ear's sense of balance, equilibrium, and position. Because of this, when the van rolls over in dream level 1, the corridor rotates in dream level 2, when the van falls off the bridge, everyone is sent into weightless freefall in level 2. Why doesn't this affect level 3, or the "limbo" level? There is a level 2 explosion that seems to set off an avalanche in level 3, but otherwise the impact of the levels is absent.

What if the plane hit turbulence? They don't seem to account for that, or if they do it's further muddied by the notion that the sedative that the chemist comes up with may eliminate the inner ear problem. However, if that is the case, how is anybody experiencing free fall, the tumbling change in the direction of gravity, or any other positional sensations in other dream levels in the first place? Sure, you're allowed to make up the rules as you please, but they should apply them consistently.

Limbo

If "limbo" isn't populated by subconscious projections, how is Mal there? If Mal is there, then anyone with the dreaming/architecture skills trapped in Limbo, could imagine anything they want and while away the time productively so their brains don't turn to mush. Then again , Saito has his army of dream thugs, his tastefully modernized Samurai palace, and he's a newbie. So why is the "limbo" city unpopulated, and why doesn't Ariadne have any projection baggage?

Idea Theft

There is something really slim about the initial idea in the first place. Do any of us have special information that is boiled down enough to be an idea worth stealing in dream form in the first place. Let's say we have secret plans. For them to be stolen from a dream, we'd have to have eidetic memory to have memorized them precisely, and the thief must have similarly photographic memory. On top of this, your dream would have to access that memory in a waking form, as much in dream is symbolic. The dream thief might end up with, say, an eternally weeping sculpture of the Virgin Mary, but no way to translate that image back into the schematics of the nuclear submarine.

That leaves us with much more basic ideas to steal. Passwords. However, if you have the tech to do all that dream manipulation, surely you have easier ways to just hack the passwords in the first place.

The convenient notion that if you build a safe or a bank vault, the dreamer automatically puts their secrets in it, is a bit daft because not everyone would think those were the safest places. Think of those who don't trust the banks. I'm sure there's a few people now who wish they'd kept their equity in the mattress instead of in sub-primes. Also, if you build a safe in someone else's subconscious you should know the combination to it, or is that simply too easy.

Imagination Deficit

Finally, a niggling note, not actually an inconsistency problem of the film per se, but why are the dreams so mundane? They seem to be the dreams of someone who is either an urban planner, or has just endured serial viewing of all the James Bond films (without some of the Roger Moore's there's little humour on show here). OK they play around with physics a little bit, Paris goes all bendy, a specialist "forger" can impersonate another.

Where are the World of Warcraft Avatars? The people who turn into snakes or talk backward? The melting watches? Why does everybody look like themselves (exception noted)? In my dreams, I'm taller, younger, better endowed, and have my hair back. Where's Freddy Kruger and the Lady in the Radiator, and even the Darth Vader that turns into Luke when he's decapitated? Where's my fucking Imaginarium, Dr. Parnassus?

I appreciate that the "architects" in the film have to build a "maze" for the purposes of a heist or an inception, and that may mean that things need to be more "real" for it to come off. It is a bit of a disappointment that these dreams seem to be so much about interior design. Even when in the godlike dimension of limbo Dom and Mal rebuild their favorite houses, they set them in the middle of an urban reflecting pool, surely some of them had gardens or lawns. No wonder they wouldn't want to be trapped in limbo indefinitely, it's completely boring, there aren't even any multiplexes.

Sorry, if by "planting" all these ideas in your heads, I've destroyed your enjoyment of Inception. It's being touted as a thinking person's thriller. So, you should have thought of all this on your own, without my sorry-ass help.

Review: Inception: High Conception, Low Expectation, Not Too Clever By Half

2010-07-22T20:00:00.004+01:00

Inception, is a film you may have heard a lot about by now. Well, sort of. One of the things you have most heard about is the embargo on juicy details that preview screening film critics were put under not to reveal. You will have heard that Christopher Nolan, the director of the twisty reverse chronologically viewed alleged short term memory loss suffering thriller Memento and the brooding to the point of nihilism Batman revival The Dark Knight. You will be told that Nolan likes to create as much as possible in camera rather than CGI as it gives actors something real to react against, otherwise, ostensibly, they might have to, erm... act. You've probably heard that the film is about thieves who have a way of infiltrating dreams to steal ideas, the film's tagline is "Your mind is the scene of the crime". You will have heard things like "a thinking man's blockbuster", "thoughtful popcorn movie".

At one point a character points out to another character that they should know they are in a dream, because they don't know how they got there, having just been seen somewhere else. We don't know how they got there either, because it was a simple cut between the scenes which we take for granted. In this obvious way Nolan links the logic of dreams with the time/space compression that is part of the language of films. However, this gets us back to the problem that afflicts all movies that are built in solipsistic universes, once you open the possibility that anything we are watching could be a dream, well then where does it end, and how many times are they going to pull the "they're awake! or are they?!!" moment. If everything or anything is happening in a dream with few consequences in the real world, how does any of it matter. "Why should we care?"

The answer to why we should care, rests entirely on the charisma and character of DiCaprio's Dom Cobb, an expert dream thief who is on the run from his past and in manipulated into doing the supposedly impossible "inception" job (planting, rather than stealing an idea, haven't they heard of advertising?). If he does the job, he will finally be able to go home. Unfortunately Cobb is the only character with any depth, only Page's Ariadne, the newbie exposition character comes close, but that's mostly because she's been given the ball (or is it her chess piece totem?) of being the link to the audience. The section where she learns the ropes is great fun as it gives us the supposed rules of dreamland, and many of the funky and spectacular effects.

The rest of film divides itself between the frenetic action in pulling the subconscious con-job, and Cobb's need to deal with his own past and the potentially dangerous baggage it brings to the dream world. All the swirling and convoluted action around what he is doing really doesn't feel like it matters. The action is very flash and entertaining, and engrossing, in the way that a classic heist picture is engrossing as we watch the pieces fall into place, but as it's just a dream, I felt fairly unconcerned about the perceived perils. Cobb's emotional revelations and redemption though fairly predictable, provide interesting enough counterpoint to the drawn out action, and only occasionally deadens the pace of the proceedings.

The film is overall visually stunning, and thoroughly entertaining. I was a bit disappointed because I was expecting it to be twistier than it is, constantly looking for the "or are they?" moment, which was a waste of time, distracted me from what turns out to be much more straightforward, though cleverly put together caper film. I was also disappointed that the dreamland was so mundane, although this is perhaps to keep the action grounded enough to give it some impact on the audience. If, for instance, everyone suddenly turned into jars on a condiments shelf in Harrod's Food Hall, it would be hard to care about the outcome of that fistfight, or whether the subconscious assassins would spread the protagonists over their burgers.

It is slightly unfortunate that the hype of the film planted the idea that this was an allegedly cerebral film, while it is more thoughtful than the average actioner, it is not as clever as it's been sold. (I have torn apart some of the more glaring inconsistencies in the spoiler filled: Life Irritates Art: Inception Deception) I would have enjoyed it much more had I avoided the hype altogether, and paradoxically, all the "we can't talk about the details" guff, only helped serve to make me think it was safe to hear what they could talk about. So avoid the hype, lower your expectations and you should have a great time with Inception.

Surfin' Multiplex: Glass 2/3rds Full: Toy Story 3D & Twilight: Eclipse

2010-07-20T20:35:00.016+01:00

Summer 'tis the season of blockbusters,
and all through the multiplexes, few pictures they show.
With limited choice,
poor moviegoers have nowhere else to go.
4 pictures on 20 screens,
the distributors invidious,
supporting multiple formats
even more insidious.
The distributors' terms
strictly for the birds.
Studios pumping out sequels,
this month, two thirds.
Alternative cinema
the money won't pull.
The glass may be 3D,
but it's only half full.

Toy Story 3 (IMAX 3D)

The least surprising thing about Toy Story 3, is that Pixar have done it again. This is as much down to their usual painstaking attention to detail, as to them taking their time between instalments to come up with a story and script that justifies another big screen outing for Woody and Buzz. Here the predicament comes from toy owner Andy, having grown up and now preparing to go to college, what will the fate of his loyal toys now be: the attic, or donated to day-care?

All the familiar tropes are here, fear of loss, obsolescence and abandonment, given enough of a remix not to feel stale, but only just. Once again, they comically milk the collective cultural consciousness, through vintage product placement, to perfection. Barbie gets to meet Ken, the cuddliest of toys turn out to be less than cuddly, and perilous obstacles are navigated to a heart warming conclusion. It's full of invention and the kind of storytelling where no detail is insignificant. There was a moment that I felt deeply manipulated whilst tearing up, but then the payoff (which I twigged about 5 seconds before the rest of the audience) had me laughing like a train. (without giving anything away here, a moment of WTF! quickly become, "well, of course.")

As much as I enjoyed TS3D, I really hope they stop here. I could see the plot of the next one being that the toys have to make sure that Andy procreates so they have his offspring to play with. See matchmaking, courtship, and interference with a contraception regimen making that untenable scenario ("What will we do?" "They're anatomically correct!" "I'm gonna have nightmares about this"). Hopefully, instead, they'll leave us with the nice sense of closure they've so lovingly crafted.

[A short side bar on the 3D, which I saw in IMAX projection. It is probably the best 3D ever achieved. It is smooth and continuous in its vistas, there are few moments when you see a "gap" between a layer of foreground and background, by this I mean the jump that shows you that only a certain number of flat planes are being employed as in old or cheap or retrofitted 3D. However, this means you don't notice the 3D so much, which makes it sadly superfluous, despite it being a crowning achievement of the form.

To add to this there are cinematic moments, when there is a shift of focus in the depth of field, what this means, is that certain things, closer or farther are in better focus, whilst the rest goes soft or fuzzy. The focus may shift within the same shot, and it is an editorial or directorial device to direct the audiences attention. This is antithetical to the whole notion of 3D naturalism. Those of us with 20/20 vision, or not looking through binoculars or a viewfinder, do not perceive reality in an out of focus haze for objects near or far. Of course our eyes do employ focus, but our brains put it together as one in-focus picture.]

The Twilight Saga 3: Eclipse

Another slice of more of the same, unusually not such a bad thing. I'm lucky this week, lightning striking twice as it were. The 3rd Twilight movie is just fine, if you liked the first two. Though not wowed by the series, I've found them basic, if not compelling entertainment. It starts where the last one left off, and this has the great advantage that all the setting up has been done in the other two films, leaving them to get on with just moving the story forward in this one, so a lot less moping and telling us about the way vampires work in the Twilight universe.

The plot, such as it is, is wafer thin and could be boiled down to a sentence or two, but it moves along efficiently enough. The emotional triangle developed in the first two films gets ping ponged around whilst everyone else gets on with building to a confrontation with various bad vampires. There is a bit of the characteristic strutting around of the werewolves (Team Jacob, ripped torsos shirtless '80s Calvin Klein ads) trying to out-pretty the vampires (Team Edward, Ziggy era glamsters wearing standard issue high fashion fetish goth), and one scene feels like it could go all Brokeback on us, if it weren't for the presence of the fetching, though inert Bella).

It alternates thuddingly schematically between little bits of action or plot and scenes in which characters offer useful advice, or suddenly feel the need to fill in their own backstory in a way that illustrates part of Bella's dilemma, teaching her valuable lessons along the way. It's like one of those afterschool specials, "So you're a troubled teen thinking of pressuring your undead boyfriend into turning you into a vampire."

I found the main character, Bella, a lot easier to warm to here, as she is much more active in determining her own fate than she has been up to now, and it is her actualization that is the real core of the story here. She does get stuck with an unholy turd of a speech at the end in which she defines the uniqueness of her universally shared adolescent angst by saying she never felt "normal". If she'd said that in the first two films, I would have just wanted to slap her, or waterboard her, or whatever works with teenagers these days, and doesn't leave any marks, but now I forgive her. Bella and her shiny vampire friends have entertained me well this time, and I may be able to leave that bag full of oranges at home when I see the next chapter. You may look back at the end and feel that not much has happened save defeating some of the villains and making a couple of decisions, they don't end up a million miles from where they started. I guess that should make the next one even zippier.

Review: White Material: White Noise

2010-07-19T14:59:00.003+01:00

I went to see this on the strengths of Isabelle Hupert, a fine and at times arresting actress, and the director Claire Denis, whose debut feature Chocolat* also takes place under the shadow of French Colonialism. (*no, not the Joanne Harris somewhat saccharine magical realist novel filmed with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, but an excellent coming of age story which also meditates on race and colonial power).

The film starts with sundry threads, short on explanation, long on images, in an unspecified African country a white woman ignores instructions from a retreating French army to flee her coffee plantation, a wounded rebel soldier looks for shelter, a young white man is locked into an active coffee roasting building by soldiers, child soldiers find a gold plated cigarette lighter, the same white woman tries to get a bus back to her home to her son. By describing this, I've just given you more exposition than you get in the first half hour of the film. Some of the images are haunting, and as the timeline is initially unclear and purposely disordered, they hang over the story as it languorously unfolds. The washed out cinematography and the brooding string soundtrack by Tindersticks, contribute to an atmosphere of oppressive heat and alienation.

This is not an easy film. It is opaque. It is hard to derive the characters motivations, and their relationships are disjointed and steeped in a barely revealed history. Trying to identify with or even fathom the main characters is like trying to tune in a signal on an old AM radio amid louder white noise. The story has the inevitable air of greek tragedy, but paced as a slow burn leading to attendant madness.

Hupert's performance carries us through this, although most of it is sieved through a stoneyfaced determination; with the only crumb of motivation for her possible quixotic efforts to stay and complete the coffee harvest, is that she has "no where else to go". Denis direction is unfussy and keeps the story entirely unsentimental, and it is all the more affecting for it. The pace does occasionally go from a crawl to a halt, but the driving threads of tragedy and Hupert's struggle move it forward.

The perfect downbeat movie for a day of heat and stagnation, but not a first choice if you just want to sit in a theatre for the aircon to escape the heat with some more cheerful escapism on the screen.

Broken News: Police Still on Hunt For Now Deceased Moat

2010-07-10T08:59:00.004+01:00

By committing suicide, Raoul Moat, has escaped his own body, and now is a fugitive in the spirit world. "He has evaded us again", one frustrated police source admitted.

As Rothbury is pretty indistinguishable from Hell, he may not actually cross over to the other side, and could be threatening to haunt the police and other civilian targets. Former England footballer, Paul Gascoigne saw his friend Raoul hovering over a Kebab shop. Other members of the public have come forward with conflicting, simultaneous sightings. "His new spirit form is making our job that much harder," another police source averred, with a depressed introspective tone, and a sigh.

Using a team of crack mediums, Police are conducting a careful grid search of the Rothbury and Cragside areas. "This is just the sort of thing which shows why the Police Service should keep all of it's funding," yet another police source said flippantly, whilst constantly glancing at his watch.

As the search continues, outside consultants may be called in, including the Ghost Whisperer, Randall and Hopkirk, and the Ghostbusters.

Review: The Killer Inside Me: Under Your Skin

2010-06-23T19:01:00.005+01:00

It's only fitting that a film adaptation of Jim Thompson's pulpy noir The Killer Inside Me has stirred up an entirely lurid debate about film violence. Yes, there are two very grim scenes of violence. Yes, they happen to be violence against women. Yes, these women are shown enjoying mildly masochistic rough sex at other points in the film. But, the alleged motives for the violence do not arise from the sex, but from the sociopathic manipulations of the main character. The violence itself is not sexualized. Whilst it may not seem to be the most mitigating way of defending the treatment of these scenes in the film, there is probably less than four minutes of actual onscreen violence, when it is shown, it is short and shocking, not dwelled on, it is handled tastefully, but not in a glamorous, artful way (I know, you heard sadomasochist and your mind went all Helmut Newton). And really about 95% of the film is non-violent, mundane, action and talking, mostly legal, it would probably be Pleasantville, if it weren't for the murders, beatings and spankings with sex.

Oh by the way folks, the title is "The Killer Inside Me", not "The Fluffy Bunny Brigade Brainwash Children To Kill and Desensitize Your Grandma to Violence". Just so we're on the same page here.

The good news is that this is a good film, and it very quickly draws you in and makes you forget the tinnitus like media whinging and hand wringing. Casey Affleck plays Lou Ford, a Deputy Sheriff in a town in West Texas. Ostensibly he develops a plan to avenge the murder of his foster brother and doesn't let anyone stand in his way, or even vaguely near his way. Affleck plays with a cool intensity, while showing the character's frightening moral detachment, he doesn't just wheel on the cliché detached psychopath. Whatever his murky motives are, he seems driven by them.

While most of the film and occasional voice over narration are very much from Lou's point of view, Michael Winterbottom's direction keeps us at a distance. We don't identify with, or even root for Affleck in his crimes. There are quite a few things we aren't shown, enough to question the reliability of the narrator. We are kept intrigued to see how it will go, what might he do next to avoid justice. While it is briefly harrowing during the attacks, tension is sustained not by the constant threat of more of the same, but by the dramatic tightrope walk through the twisted maze of Lou's plan.

The violent acts he commits are not done with relish, and are hard to watch. I was glad that I found the violence repugnant. I'll say it -- I enjoyed the fact that I found it horrible. Not in a sadomasochistic, hit me again please way, but in a thank god I'm not so inured to violence that I can't be sickened by it way. I actually found the less violent of the onscreen killings harder to watch, and the queasiest moment I had was devoid of violence during bland visuals with Affleck's voice over when I was sucker punched by just how dark his character was thinking.

The supporting cast is excellent and includes Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Ned Beatty, Elias Koteas and Tom Bower. Bill Pullman puts in a somewhat hammy, but thoroughly enjoyable cameo that gives us some light relief before the inevitably downbeat denouement.

As far as the violence debate is concerned, it pales by comparison to today's bevy of indefensible torture porn horrors, or the meat-grinder of testosterone heavy action movies. It is certainly less violent than previous sparkers of similar "nasty" debate, Henry: Portrait of Serial Killer, or Man Bites Dog (the former justifiably had pointedly horrible violence, the latter pointlessly gratuitous except for a single sick joke). It's closer to tone to either A History of Violence (but it's not secretly gleeful in the acts, and it is less a meditation on violence as on the moral vacuum as the source), or No Country For Old Men (whose arbitrarily psychotic killer could quite happily flip coins with the anti-hero of this piece). Well, in any case, now that we have our moral compasses out, I've given you a few reference points, you've got your bearings, you can seek out or avoid this fine film, detouring round the offputting furore.

Back-B-Log: 1990: Cannes - Dread And Victory (V Retreat and Victory)

2010-02-10T16:18:00.005Z

[From the 2nd and final issue of the Tuesday Express/American Voyeur Paris/Cannes Issue! 1990]

V
Sunday, May 20th: Retreat

I wake first and, after a shower to remove the crud of another Mediterranean swelter night, I head off to the bakery to find goodies. Back in the apartment we manage leftovers breakfast and coffee. I step out on the balcony, complete with its trellis with fake plants and large plastic crustaceans (a wall which would have been at home in any Seafood Shanty restaurant). I survey Cannes below me, an overblown dream; harsh, Sunday morning sunlight glancing of beige yellow and white condominiums. After cleaning up breakfast, I head out, arranging to meet Angela and Barrett at lunchtime.

I laze my way through the streets, I can hardly be bothered. I've peaked and the festival is winding down around me. I try to go into the Carlton to visit their booths, but suddenly there is security, and they won't let people in - there was no security before, and by now everybody except the judges and the competitors have left town. I go to the American pavilion, looking for Int. Her. Trib., I scrounge the last one for the crossword. I look over the last of the promo materials, on one table I see a postcard announcing 'Nazi Zombies - we have the title, we have the story' and a contact for interested investors. I go by the Palais, but I don't bother getting a daycard. I've decided to change my plans and leave as soon as possible. I meet up with Angela and Barrett to say goodbye, they're on their way to lunch with the Navy guys. Barrett says she'll contact me when she got back to London, I never heard.

Trained to Juan Les Pins, changed flight. Haggled with the hotelier as I'm checking out late. I don't pay the extra, but the French hotels get their own back when I arrive in Nice too late to retrieve my deposit for the hotel there. Grab lunch at Freetime (the dubious bernaise burger). I make the airport with so much time to spare, I change my flight again. Nothing to do but browse the airport shops, I see the commemorative festival watch, ridiculous (film canister face, movie clapboard hands), but handsome, I buy it, my last strange souvenir.

Boarding the plane I argue with the guard who insists on putting my loaded camera through the x-ray machine, I want a handcheck in the end he tears it from my hands and throws it onto the conveyor belt. I relent, the French thug cops. (a photojournalist friend of a friend has an unpublishable photo he took of a French cop shooting and killing an unarmed suspect falsely accused of shoplifting)

I sit next to an elderly couple from Boston on the plane, they spend time in Nice every year, they don't know anything about this 'festival thing.' I turn to the last daily festival issue of Variety. The back cover has a still from Basketcase II, a picture of the gloopy monster grinning, large caption underneath 'GOODBYE'.

Epilogue: Victory
Safely ensconced in my apartment far from the madness, after an exhausting day back at work, I tune in the very end of the presentation ceremonies. I see 'Wild at Heart' Win the Palme D'Or - now I know how it feels to see your team win the World Series....

[Addendum:
Never saw Barrett again. While when I wrote this I implied that I hadn't heard from her, I vaguely recall finding out, too late to matter, that she had left a message for me at my work in London, which I didn't receive until I returned from Paris.

My beloved Cannes watch stopped working after about five years, and even after the drastic replacement of its workings it still is only correct twice a day. Attempts to find other copies on Ebay have been fruitless.

The Fourth Reich strangely has disappeared from IMDB, although this article (The Cinema of Manie van Rensburg) esteems it one of the director's best films. This may be an oversight by IMDB, but perhaps it is an issue of data confusion as there is a new film by the same title coming soon to our screens which is not about South African National Socialists, but is about.....
Nazi Zombies! (The 4th Reich at IMDB, not to be confused with the 2009 Norwegian skiing Nazi Zombie flick Død snø). Even great ideas take a long time in the movie business.]

Back-B-Log: 1990: Cannes - Dread And Victory (IV Wild Thing)

2010-02-09T14:16:00.005Z

[From the 2nd and final issue of the Tuesday Express/American Voyeur Paris/Cannes Issue! 1990]
IV
Saturday, May 19th: Wild Thing
I'm not about to give up. The press screening for 'Wild At Heart' is at 8:30 this morning. There's no way that everyone is going to be there after all the late night action. The sun is strong, it gives everything a rigid edge, I'm toned and energized as I stride from the train station. There were only two trains that could have gotten me here on time, and I ran for the second. I'm in by 7:40. There's no one in front of the Palais yet.

The Film Societe offices are closed, and I weigh the wisdom of giving up on the Lynch and sticking with this more assured way of at least getting into something. In one of the windows a dozen monitors are set up as an advertisement for European Cable, each tuned to a different channel, some of which are giving Festival coverage. I learn of the deaths of both Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. (I flash on the day at College a few years back, when I thought I had heard a rumour that Henson had died of a virus - deja vu?).

I return to the steps of the Palais. A crowd has started to form. With some bravado I join the crowd in line and wait. After listening to the conversations going on around me, I start to chat up a few of the Americans. One of them, Joan Cohen, develops some film festival for, of all places, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She works for the Broward County film commission, whose offices are in LA. She's sort of a fortiesish slim overtanned Jewish maiden aunt, with what anti-feminists look on as a hobby-career. I mention that my parents live down there half the year; on hearing she's looking for indie productions, I go so far as to tell her about "Ramblin' Gal". I stop short of trying to sell it to her, but I promise her the information on how to contact the Person's. She tells me that you get the tickets to the official screenings at the Unifrance desk in the Grand Palais, but I don't have the credentials for it. It also turns out that she has an extra ticket to this morning's screening.

She starts ransacking her handbag for it. I try not to show my nervousness. An American couple have joined in the conversation, one of them thinks she misplaced her ticket, can she have the extra one. Joan says its been promised to me, and she's not sure she can find it. Almost at once, both women find their missing tickets. Wheww!

Joan hands me the ticket. Selection officielle. I experience an ungodly rush of endorphins. I remain calm, keeping the party to myself. This is it!

I am horribly and unbearably impatient. When are they going to let us in? They wouldn't start the film precisely on time without letting everyone in? How inefficient the French are, that would be just like them. I'm so tense I don't even look for famous people.

We're going in. WOW! Apparently the tickets designate whether you're on the floor or in the balcony. I'm in the balcony, more prestigious, but less to my taste, who's complaining. I find a seat, they are filling up at an amazing rate. I scan the audience. I have that half-awake mid-morning lustful-hope, it would be the crowning achievement if some ravishing Lynch fan were to sit by me, and there are plenty here, but, Ok, so I get some strange looking Europeans, fine, I'll be able to watch the film better. OHMIGODIMHERE WOW!

Wild At Heart. The film washes over me. Lynch's over-the-top strangeness, violence and sex, with sprinklings of incoherent allusions to Elvis and Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed immensely, but I'd really have to see it again to tell you whether I liked it (the more I think about it, the more I like it). And this is a REAL audience, a congregation of the church of mine own, they applaud before it starts, they stop talking and only make mostly group responses (I was one of the few people guffawing at the Wizard of Oz stuff), and they cheered and applauded enthusiastically at the end. No celebs showed up, they are to go to the screening this evening, but that doesn't matter, we're here for the MOVIE.

Afterwards, although in a contented, sated daze, my instinct manuevers me as quickly as possible past the security, to get my Day card, and straight down to the Unifrance line. I can't actually get tickets here, but maybe I can talk someone into giving me one of theirs, it worked once already. And magically, again, I'm standing next to two American women, thirtysomething New Yorkers, one manages one of the major art house cinemas, is basically here to shop for films, and the other just finished an MA at NYU film school, is trying to flog her school project to distributors, and get money to produce her next. They both seem glad to talk to someone who is here because they love film, they seem tired of the industry, show-the-"product" people. One of them has a few extra tickets to the screening of Cyrano De Bergerac which starts momentarily (a bunch of her friends desperate to get a break from the festival drove to Monte Carlo, and aren't making it back). I weigh the opportunities, take the ticket, stay here and hope to get something better, when we make it to the beginning of the line, I also hear that there's going to be a 'Wild At Heart' Press Conference in about an hour.

The way the ticket system works is that you apply for a certain number of tickets for each of the screenings ahead of time. Depending on your status in the pecking order, Industry, Market, or Press, you may or not get what you want. All the REALLY important people are just given theirs outright.

I opt for Cyrano. I probably couldn't BS my way into the press conference, there's nothing much else that I want to specifically see. So why not, by the time I get out, it'll be just about time to get in touch with Barrett who's been trying to introduce me to some PR girl all week because we're both film buffs (sure, I'll bite).

Cyrano was excellent, one of Depardieu's best, and a real surprise given that I'd seen him in mostly inarticulate roles previously. The adaptation captures both the literary zeal of the character as well as injecting some enjoyable swashbuckling. I later find out that Anthony Burgess did the verse translation for the subtitles.

I wander around the Palais again, picking up souvenirs like a tourist. Things are definitely winding down, only half the booths seem open. I contemplate asking for or stealing film posters, one for 'Comic-Book Confidential' with examples of various cartoonists, and one for some dutch film the poster was done by one of their better graphic artists. Moral and practical reasons prevail... how would I transport them? I buy the T-shirt with this year's Festival Poster on it. I buy the official program (an outrageous 120 francs). I buy a pin.

Meeting Barrett at the boat, she finally introduces Angela, the American PR film-buff she wants to fob me off on romantically. O.K. by me, Angela is very cute: petite, sleek short dark hair, and a Lynch fan to boot (I'd never met a woman who not only liked, but loved Blue Velvet), but unfortunately, Barrett has failed in her well meaning research again, Angela is meeting her BOYFRIEND down in Italy in a few days. On top of this Barrett has arranged to meet up with some Navy guys on leave, who she takes a perhaps sisterly interest in being a Navy brat herself.

There are four Navy guys, two pairs of buddies from different ships, they seem alright. They are good old boys, but without the clichéd patina that exudes from many of the military I've met. They all seem to be chasing Barrett in a surprisingly mellow, laid back fashion (considering that they've been at sea for three months). We troop about the harbour, passing Karreem Abdul Jabbar, the second and last famous person I saw that week. Angela is going to the big gala screening of Wild At Heart that night, I balk at asking her to get me in (what would I wear, do I want to see it twice in the same day?). She does offer to get me into one of the films her company is promoting. We all split up 'til later.

American Pavilion - I'm trying to leave Joan Cohen a message to get her hooked up with Carl Person - returning her favour. I barely recognize her as she comes to the desk while I'm writing it. She thanks me and goes on her way. I look for materials and food to scrounge, then I go to L'Ambassades to the screening that Angela gets me into.

The film is called 'The 4th Reich' it is pretty much at TV movie level, but it is interesting because it tells about the foiled Nazi coup attempt during WWII in South Africa, which adds to my pitiably small store of historical knowledge of South Africa.

Finally grabbing my first meal of the day (Quick, again), I chat up a trio of Scandinavians, who oddly hold English as the common language between them. I then meet up again with Barrett and the navy guys. We go to an open air bar attached to a condo where the Screen International people are hanging out, they disdain the American Navy personnel, and while I had been interested in getting to know a bit more about the film journo scene, their pretentious black garbed artsyfartsiness goes a long way to putting me off. We sit there for quite a while as its getting dark drinking our beers and rum and cokes.

I'm waiting for Angela to show up again, having fixated mildly, and wanting to discuss the Lynch with her, she's the only person I've talked to since I got here who seems interested in movies the same way I am. Even to most of those who are interested in the films themselves, its just commerce. The journo's are modishly blase, they don't mention the films, just the stories, or the pictures they're doing, they don't talk about the content, they talk about the work. Gossip here is all money related, who's backing whom. The film reviews in the dailies here seem as much interested in appraising a movie's marketability as itself. No one talks about what films they've seen, they drop which parties they've been to what execs they've met. I've seen no celebrities here because they aren't really here, they are just part of the product... producers and their money are the real matin-fuckin-ay idols.

Angela appears modestly dressed to the nines, just being at the gala showing of Wild at Heart, I'm somewhat awed, she has been to the promised land.

The evening degenerates from here. We walk down one end of the Croissette to find a bar near the Carlton where we're supposed to be meeting yet another navy guy. It becomes like a long march after that we troop all the way over to the other side of town, wandering up into the old port, a hilly area, with great Saturdaynightlife. Along the way we lose Barrett and one of the guys, we spend too much time looking for them and finally sit down to eat at a pizza place by the docks, the fugitives show up while we're just on our drinks, and tear us away from the restaurant. After much more walking and drinking, Angela and I peel off for dinner at a place called Cannibal Pizza.

The rest of the staff of her company have left town, she is alone in the apartment they've rented. I beg a place to crash because its too late to catch a train back to Juan Les Pins. She takes me in. I fight the urge to make a pass at her which I don't think would be a welcomed response to her generosity (she's mentioned her boyfriend just once too often). Exhausted and fed I collapse happily onto the bed, thinking irrelevant thoughts of a pretty film buff in the next bedroom. Frustration and contentment merge in a quiet pleasant buzz as I fall asleep.

[to be continued in V Retreat and Victory...]

Film	UK release	Nominations
The Iron Lady	06/01/2012	4
Shame	13/01/2012	2
War Horse	13/01/2012	5
Coriolanus	20/01/2012	1
J. Edgar	20/01/2012	0
The Descendants	27/01/2012	3
Carnage	05/02/2012	0
A Dangerous Method	10/02/2012	0
Young Adult	10/02/2012	0