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One day a young pregnant girl presents in extremis to a London hospital. After she dies during the delivery, Anna (Naomi Watts), a naive, half-Russian local midwife, is left holding an orphaned baby and the mother’s diary and so begins her quest to find out more. Inadvertently, she bites off far more than she can chew, stumbling blindly into the HQ of one of London’s most notorious Russian crime syndicates. Here she encounters Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen, trading Elvish for Russian with much success), a sinister looking driver/undertaker/ambitious criminal and the plot thickens, with many of the usual Cronenberg twists and turns.
In a similar vein to Stephen Frear’s Dirty Pretty Things, Cronenberg’s film offers a dark and uncompromising glimpse into London’s seedy underworld. It might not make for comfortable viewing, but this is certainly one of the year’s stronger thrillers. (8)
If my last.fm profile is to be trusted, I’ve played Disclaimer’s Generic Shoulder Blade Tattoo eight times in the past 4 months. Only four other songs have received more love in the same period and I must say this has come as a big surprise to me, chiefly because reacquainting myself with Disclaimer’s work hasn’t been a conscious objective. The track’s parent album The Airbag’s Lipstick Kiss came out in 2004 to mixed reviews (although I think a lot of critics misunderstood or failed to spend enough time with the album) and I’ve spent most of 2007 devouring new music and re-visiting the post-punk period. So it doesn’t quite fit.
Anyway, some background information about the artist is clearly required. Disclaimer is the nom de plume of Chris Willie Williams, who currently resides in Maine. I initially came into contact with Chris through No Ripcord (he used to write film reviews, and did one really great feature on the 2003 Oscars) but I’ve never actually met him and haven’t been in contact with him for several years. So I’m not biased, if that’s what you were thinking.
Airbag is the second Disclaimer album- I’m still waiting eagerly for a third – and it’s a passionately raw break-up record in a style not too dissimilar to an angrier early Of Montreal. Williams’ lyrics are the star attraction (although there are some impressive musical experiments sprinkled throughout – check out that vocoder on Fixing A Hole) and they are never better than on the standout tracks You Ruined Everything and Generic Shoulder Blade Tattoo (the one I can’t stop playing, it seems). On the former, an urgent power-chord driven rant towards his ex, Williams delivers the classic line “the contrast burns, being fêted, fellated, and then filleted”. If ever a single line deserved a greater audience…
He sounds less obviously pissed off on Generic Shoulder Blade Tattoo, the album’s sparse finger-picked centrepiece. More contemplative than raging, this seems to encapsulate the moment when the narrator realised he could move on (but that it wouldn’t necessarily be easy). And “I fell for you like an old man falling for a credit card scam” is one hell of an opening line.
I never reviewed my promo copy of The Airbag’s Lipstick Kiss back in 2004. I can’t remember why but the fact that three years on I’m still coming back to this rough, home-recorded gem of an album tells me I made a mistake.
* Please visit Disclaimer’s MySpace page, where you can preview and download four songs from Airbag.
Well here’s one I didn’t think I’d be writing about. I’m normally immune to Pixar’s small, furry digital creations – and I skipped their last two major offerings The Incredibles and Cars altogether – but in Ratatouille I’m afraid they have struck upon an unlikely source of gold. The story focuses on Remy, a gastronomy-obsessed rat who longs to escape his mundane existence as, well, a normal rat. After becoming separated from his family – a favoured device of the animated film – Remy finds himself in the restaurant of his idol and before you know it he’s got his grubby little paws in the soup.
Striking up an improbable partnership with kitchen assistant Linguini, Remy realises his dream of being a top chef but soon realises that this not come without its dilemmas. Linguini, too, has his own story arc, and the additional supporting characters have more depth than in the majority of modern animations. The strongest – and funniest – of these has to be the miserly food critic, Anton Ego, voiced superbly by a rejuvenated Peter O’Toole. I could pick more, too, and this is a testament to Ratatouille’s superiority over, say, Finding Nemo – I challenge anyone over the age of sixteen to remember anyone other than Nemo from that movie.
The story is certainly predictable – cut away the culinary theme and Ratatouille essentially follows the same coming of age story arc as countless other animated (and non-animated) tales – but its writers clearly understand this and, smartly, they’ve included enough lines of sharp dialogue and plenty of adult-level references to distract the more mature viewer from thinking about this too much. And it obviously works; I laughed lots and walked out of the screening without so much as a grumble or a complaint. And I dislike rats nearly as much as I dislike Disney. (8)
It’s been nearly two weeks since I saw Control and since walking out of that sombre, Sunday afternoon screening I’ve read Deborah Curtis’ book Touching From A Distance (a source for much of the film’s narrative), a handful of reviews, and listened to Unknown Pleasures a number of times. So I guess it left an impression.
I hadn’t read much about Anton Corbijn’s picture prior to seeing it; I guess knowing the story I didn’t feel I needed to. For some reason I expected a sensational retelling of the Joy Division story, something to add further fuel to the myth. Control
achieves the complete opposite, though, completing demystifying its subject, portraying Curtis as a talented young man, struggling to come terms with adult responsibilities, newly-diagnosed epilepsy and fame.
For understandable reasons, while Deborah Curtis interviewed most of the key players for her book, she did not interview Ian’s Belgian mistress Annik Honoré. This leaves a tangible gap in the storyline. By contacting Honoré, and taking into account her version of events, Control manages to plug some of this gap. This must have been an incredibly difficult task, requiring both sensitivity and single-mindedness. There’s no pressure to pick sides as viewer, and this is one of Control’s key successes.
Aside from condensing some of the facts and, it has to be said, portraying the medical profession as a particularly uninterested and unsympathetic bunch, Control is a great film, brilliantly acted and beautifully shot in black and white. Arguably the finest music film of the decade. (9)
If you’ve seen a Wes Anderson film (or any other film that kind of wants to be a Wes Anderson film) then Rocket Science is unlikely to surprise you. First of all, the content is way too familiar. It’s got the obligatory dysfunctional family (see every Anderson film, Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, even Little Miss Sunshine), a cast of quirky supporting characters, and it’s set in a high school. Add in an unlikely hero (the stuttering geek, Hal Hefner, played superbly by Reece Thompson) and a wacky soundtrack and this could be Rushmore. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as much fun.
The fact that Jeffrey Blitz won a directing award at Sundance for this formulaic piece makes me wonder if the panellists up there are issued with marking schemes upon arrival. It’s not that it’s terrible – there are a few sharp lines of dialogue and admittedly some laughs to be had – but ultimately Rocket Science just isn’t as good as it thinks it is. Save your money and go and see Anderson’s new one instead. (5)
Ok, I’ve had a chance to listen to this now and I really like it. Looking at some early reviews and talking to friends it seems I’m not alone. I’m currently preparing a rather large feature for No Ripcord (a compilation of numerous mini-reviews) so I’m a bit ‘rainbowed out’ at the moment but, seeing as I promised, here are a few brief words on my favourites so far:
1) 15 Step: What a great start. Deliciously crisp chopped-up beats, a glacial, sliding guitar riff and a superb Yorke vocal make this the most refreshingly different of In Rainbows‘ 10 tracks.
2) Bodysnatchers: This will please those who like their Radiohead with a healthy dose of guitar action. There are some classic Jonny Greenwood moments towards the end and Yorke is again on fire.
7) Reckoner: Top class drumming (as ever) from Phil Selway and a stunning Thom Yorke falsetto make this the most emotionally charged 5 minutes here. This is simply beautiful music.
10) Videotape: The low-key finale, a sparse piano ballad with more depth than the entire Coldplay catalogue.
…Is now available for download (which can of course be a free download, if you’re a miserable, non-appreciative type) through Radiohead.com. This, of course, is highly exciting stuff.
Upon confirming that it was definitely Wednesday, I jumped out of bed this morning with all the enthusiasm of a kid at Christmas. I had already decided to pay £2 (+ 45p card fee) on account of the file quality (160kbs) and the fact that I will almost definitely be buying this album on CD. I tapped in my card details and downloaded the .zip file over breakfast, extracted the mp3s whilst brushing my teeth, and then frantically ripped them onto iTunes and synced them onto my iPod for the journey into work. I was of course running ten minutes late by this point but I figured I’d gone way past the point of no return.
My commute is unfortunately only twenty minutes (and there was no traffic this morning) so I’ve only had the chance to listen to half of the album but what I have heard sounds pretty impressive. I was expecting another brave leap forward from the band but none of the tracks I’ve heard so far would sound particularly out of place on Hail to the Thief or even Thom Yorke’s solo record. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. I’ll post more considered thoughts when I’ve had some time to digest the whole record.
Sal: Paradise? For E. coli perhaps…
October 28, 2007 in Comment | Leave a comment
I just had the pleasure of visiting the Cape Verde Islands (see map below). Nice place. Hot. Tranquil. I had grand plans for rest and relaxation but I’m afraid I was forced to put these to one side by some particularly suspicious seafood. In the end I had to settle for lounging in the sun, with one eye on my book and the other on the nearest toilet facility.
Reading fiction remains something of a luxury for me. Work is always fairly busy and then there’s No Ripcord, e-mail correspondence, and my consuming passions of music, film and football. Plus I read very slowly. So while I enjoy a good book as much as the next man, I don’t really get through as many as I’d like. So finishing three on my seven day holiday was pretty impressive by my standards.
The first one – which I’d been labouring over for a few months – was A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus. It tells the story of a particularly acrimonious divorce set to a New York 9/11 backdrop. I was really enjoying this until the final third, when the wheels started to fall off Kalfus’ story and patriotism and the quest for an unlikely hopeful ending took over. If you absolutely have to read a 9/11 novel I’d recommend Jonathan Safran Foer’s far superior Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Next up was David Peace’s The Damned Utd, a fictional account – albeit it one supported by hours of research – of Brian Clough’s 44 day tenure as Leeds United manager. I’m not a Leeds fan, I’m too young to have seen most of the players of this era and I’m no Clough expert, but this book really brings back to life one of the most eccentric figures in modern football. I tore through its 350 pages and left it with a desire to learn more about the man and of this wonderful era in British football, which I think means Peace accomplished his mission.
The final book I read was Deborah Curtis’ Touching From A Distance, which I’ve already discussed to a degree in my review of the film Control. It was also enjoyable, and just as demystifying a tale of Ian Curtis’ life as the film itself.
Oh, and I’m feeling much better now, thanks. Although I fear I’ll never be able to look at mussels with quite the same affection again.