A Good Saturday Night

You want to know my idea of a good saturday night?

1. Hot Chocolate/Instant Coffee. Combined. Oh yes I did.

2. Either the This American Life streaming archives or the Verge of the Fringe Podcast

Wonderful.

I mean, uh, SEXDRUGSALCOBOOZEPARTY WOO

Missing the Mark: The Embarassment of Robin Hood

First things first: I like Robin Hood. Let’s get this straight from the outset. As the archetypal English folk tale, it has everything a good story should have: outlaw bravery, pretty maidens and plenty of socially-just swashbuckle. The ballads of Robin Hood, whether or not they have any basis in fact, have delighted children and adults alike for centuries. From Errol Flynn to Kevin Costner, his celluloid adventures have enchanted generations of the modern age. Robin Hood is a story that ought to resound through the ages, from its 12th century origins to long into our future. And so it should, barring one small fact. Because for the last two months, the BBC has set out on a dedicated quest to ruin it for it for everybody.

Theoretically, Robin Hood should be impossible to get wrong. Most of the original folk tales contradict each other, but nobody cares, because the main story is too simple for such sniping. He robs from the rich, he gives to the poor. He lives in Sherwood Forest. He shoots arrows. And that’s the story.

Here’s a list of things he would probably not do, all of which can be found being blithely shoehorned into the new BBC series starring the dashingly insipid Jonas Armstrong as Robin Hood, outlaw sociologist.
 Assisting with a miners’ strike.
 Pulling off ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ style air-hanging kung-fu.
 Quoting the Koran.

In the old versions of the story, there is a minor subplot to explain why England is so fantastically screwed-up. King Richard is fighting the Crusades; hence King John; hence that nasty, twisted Sheriff. Before he begins his daring deeds, Robin Hood returns to England from the crusades, sees the mess it’s in, and generally sorts it out. Never mentioned again.

The BBC see it differently. Nearly every major plot in this mind-blowingly PC series is dominated by the Crusades. The Crusades are used, with a stunning lack of subtlety, as a wholesale parallel for the War on Terror. [Obligatory disclaimer: I’m a leftie, I hate racism, I hate American foreign policy as much as the programme’s producers and I’m all for every form of tolerance and integration. However…]

While I would happily welcome incisive political undertones in any series in which they would be appropriate, the BBC seems determined to insult its viewers intelligence at every turn. There is absolutely no attempt made to disguise their flagrant pandering to every lefty-media stereotype they can lay their clammy hands on.

The acting is shoddy; but I kept watching. The script is dire; but I kept watching. The plot has more holes in it than an archery board full of arrows; but I kept watching. At some point during the first, or maybe second episode, the Sheriff of Nottingham said the following line: “there are camps in the Holy Land where they can turn a man against his own country”, referring to the Che Guevara tactics of their Topshop Robin Hood. I snorted in derision. And I kept watching.

Here is the point at which I stopped watching. During the episode ‘Turk Flu’, which the BBC would have saved time by simply titling ‘HEY KIDS, DON’T BE ISLAMOPHOBIC’, a new Merry Man joined the clan. A little background information; ‘Djaq’ was an Arabic slave, educated in the medical use of healing herbs, kidnapped by the Western invaders to work for our corrupt, war-mongering government in a metal mine. Enough modern relevance for you yet? Wait. Sorry. Did I say merry man? Of course, ‘Djaq’ was in fact Sofia, a battle-hardened runaway woman fighting the good fight for freedom disguised by a masculine haircut. Point 1: she was visibly, obviously female for the entire length of the programme. Point 2: Why?!

Djaq/Sofia’s story is just one example of the political injustice which the independent BBC feels the need to rail against on Saturday evening family television. Personally, I felt insulted that there was a implicit comparison being made by the Sheriff and his cronies between Robin Hood and British-born tube bombers. However, despite packing in all the Iraq war references that 45 minutes a week will possibly hold, the BBC couldn’t change the fact that their hero was male. Not content to put up with this patriarchy, someone had a brainwave: give Maid Marian a cloak-wearing poor-feeding vigilante alter-ego called ‘The Nightwatchman’. That’s right, kids – in the 12th century, girls could kick butt too! I await with baited breath the day that a lipstick-wearing, sass-talking Maid Marian doll appears on the shelves of Woolworths alongside the Bratz and Karate Barbie. A selection of phrases at the pull of a string: ‘I couldn’t go to war, so I decided to go to war against poverty.’ ‘I will not be told what to do by any man.’ ‘Robin, I’ve changed my name to Bono.’ NB: This does not happen. But it’s not as if Robin Hood doesn’t do anachronisms.

It seems in most cases that salivating correctness in the political sense has been pursued at the cost of any semblance of accuracy when it comes to historical detail. In fact, if the producers of Robin Hood actually employed a historical consultant, he or she should be arrested for failure to report a crime. The characters speak completely modern English apart from the maddeningly clunky refusal to use any contractions. (‘Cause, that’s how they spoke in the olden times, innit.) All the clothes look like something you could buy in Burton. In the Sheriff’s institutionally bigoted court, in 12th century Nottingham, there is a highly-ranked nobleman who appears to ethnically originate from sub-Saharan Africa. There is absolutely no explanation.

Writing this, I almost feel like I owe a series of apologies. I don’t mean to insult any minorities – I feel that this programme has already done that enough. Political correctness is like a tightrope; anyone seen to criticise it risks falling off it themselves. But I am not a Mail reader, I am not an Islamophobe, and unlike this programme’s apparent target demographic, I am not an idiot. At the outset of this series, I felt that the programme chosen to fill Doctor Who’s slot was watchable trash. Everything was wrong, of course, but shutting off my brain it was almost entertaining. The zing of the arrows; the green of the (Hungarian) countryside; the delirious pantomime performance Keith Allen gives as the dastardly Sheriff. But after four more weeks of being beaten incessantly over the head with the blunt stick of right-on Galloway-esque propaganda, it had become unwatchably bad.

Yes, it’s entertainment. Yes, it’s not based on fact. Yes, I’m a petty, snobby, grammar-school student with nothing better to do with his time than pick holes in lowbrow family comedy. But for Christ’s sake, who put this on the air? There will, inevitably, be a second series. The critics mauled it, and the public love it. But for one of the world’s most respected broadcasting organisations, and one of the nation’s best-loved stories, this is just not good enough. Robin Hood is an absolute shambles. If you like paper-thin plotting, Orlando Bloom acting, and scripts a dog could have written in the dark, you’ll love this series. For everyone else, this is an arrow in the eye of the monarch of British television.

Richard O’Brien.

Richard Linklater Wants To Scan You Darkly

Ok, not really, but it makes a good title, no?

A Scanner Darkly then. Yes, That Movie About Drugs Where It's Live Action But Then Coloured In.
I finally saw it last week thanks to the ever wonderful Phoenix cinema in Leicester.

And it's been a week and I am still unsure as to how I felt about the movie. I mean it was definitely good, it remains intruiging (but not gripping) throughout and is frequently amusing (but never hilarious). I just don't think I really ENJOYED it very much.

Linklater is brilliant, let us not quibble here. His directing is great as always and you owe it to yourself to go and rent Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Robert Downey Junior is also wonderful and perfectly cast as a paranoid conspiracy-theoriest junkie.
Keanu... is in the film.

Oh that's harsh, I mean he's not terrible. Keanu is Keanu. Some films suit his "style" of "acting". Luckily, I think this is one of them. As our introspective main cha... Did I mention the plot? I best mention the plot hand't I? Man, I am SO out of the Reviewing game.

So Keanu is an undercover narcotics cop, no one he works with knows who he is and vica versa. Thanks to this, he is assigned to his civilan alter ego.

Not much then happens until about 20 minutes before the end. Then lots happens all of a sudden, including two plot twists: one clearly signposted from the start and one clearly signposted from a minute or so before it happens. But for the majority of the film, it's a little slow in terms of plot, but heavy on the dialoge and charachter development.

It's a damn shame Radiohead didn't end up doing the soundtrack, it would've benefited from some Kid A style weirdness instead of the standard orchestral score.

The rotoscoping (Coloured In Live Action, kids) is nice. I mean it looks great most of the time but is never really utilised to it's full potential. You really want somebody to have a bad trip breakdown halucinato-fest and it never happens. The animators never really get to flex their muscles.

I just don't know. It's not a fun movie. It's not a great movie. But it is a good movie and it's certainly interesting. Worth renting or catching at your local arthouse theatre. Not worth buying.

6.5/10 - More marajuana than cocaine. Or... or something. Drugs are bad, stay in school.

Who loves The Long Blondes?

We love The Long Blondes

Two more for the road

Larrikin Love – The Freedom Spark

Given the buzz surrounding Larrikin Love, you’d think they’d colonised Mars and, just to cap it off, beat up the Pope. In fact, they’re a relatively good indie band who’ve just released a relatively well-realised first album. In some ways, it’s a logical step up from the scrawny melodic genius glimpsed at in their demos. ‘Six Queens’ is a case in point – like Dirty Pretty Things moved on from The Libertines, Larrikin Love have made their sound harder, faster and tighter for their first full-length release. The debt Edward Larrikin and co owe to that band is clear, in the Albion-influenced lyrics, fey vocals and ragged guitar shuffles. One main difference is the occasional appearance of Irish folk elements, and at times something that might just be calypso. This musical magpieing works best on ‘Happy As Annie’, where an off-beat skank and jigging fiddles mask a dark lyrical core. In the crammed-in rhymes its easy to miss at first the rather unpleasant tale of rape in a field that leaves Edward ‘choked with fear’. For those familiar with the band there are only three new songs, all not among the best, but definitely growers. But whatever your level of prior knowledge, the uproarious joy in this riverdance-rock ought to be persuasion enough. All hail the new lords of the dance.

Bob Dylan – Modern Times

At the end of the day, who am I to review Bob Dylan? Unlike the greenhorns making up the rest of this section, ‘Modern Times’ marks the 32nd studio album the old crank has released. Think about that for a moment – thirty-two! At 65, he’s also now the oldest person to go straight in at number one of the American charts. And he must be doing something right. Here, it’s a well-worn combination of rollicking roots music, the deft lyricism that sets him above mere musical acclaim, and the age-torn voice that has divided critics for more than forty years. He croaks, snarls, grumbles and mumbles, and sometimes slips into what could kindly be described as a death-rattle. It roughs up the swing ballads and fires up the roaring heart of his blues numbers. In the 30 years since 1966, he’s crashed a bike, split from his wife, found God, sucked in the 80s, and somehow come out of it all with a rough-neck road-dog dignity that’s truly outstanding. ‘Modern Times’ is not ‘Bringing It All Back Home’. It’s not ‘Blood On The Tracks’ either. But it’s the raw distillation of all the living Bob Dylan has done over 65 years and 32 studio albums. Now come on – what have you done with your life?

Re: Sam's Town

It's not very good. At all.

Horrible stuck-in-the-80s Springsteen-goes-synth cliched-lyrics-a-go-go rubbish.

Balanced music journalism: It's what's for breakfast.

A Brucie Bonus

The Killers – Sam’s Town

On the opener and title-track of their new album, synths ebb and flow over the subdued prowl of the verses before Brandon Flowers weighs in with an electrifying hook that makes it clear The Killers are no one-disc wonder. Much has been made of their newfound obsession with Americana, and that influence can be found in the gleaming Springsteenian swayalong of ‘When You Were Young’, and indeed throughout the album. The lyrics are littered with references to highways, hurricanes, wild rivers and people named ‘Grandma Dixie’. But it’s all filtered through their irresistible disco switchboard; although this time the synths feel more organic, the rhythms less processed, and (thankfully for some) there’s nothing to compare with the club-slut kitsch of ‘Somebody Told Me’. But the songs are still just as memorable. There’s the robotic love buzz of ‘For Reasons Unknown’, which sees Flowers emoting ‘my lips, they don’t kiss the way they used to anymore’ over washes of keyboard and guitar. Later on, the pendulous thrust of ‘Uncle Johnny’’s riff saves it from the disgrace of its rhymes, and ‘My List’ practically turns your speakers into two giant waving lighters. ‘Bones’ shifts from twinkly stadium rock to lean cymbal-splashing poetry, until the unexpected, gleeful ambush of some kind of circus brass band. And back again. Sadly it’s not a cover of the Dry Ocean classic – but if you got yourself in a hot fuss over their debut, Sam’s Town has rooms for everyone.

Getting lonely

You haven’t heard of The Mountain Goats. This is a bona fide certainty. If you have, and you didn’t hear about them from me, you just made my list of heroes. But for the rest, consider this an introduction.
Everyone has their own little personal music obsession, and The Mountain Goats are mine. I started with one song, then one album, then three albums. Then all of them. Every album, single, and EP. Most of these aren’t available to buy in the UK. For most of the 1990s, they weren’t even available on CD. All I can say by way of explanation is ‘God bless the Internet’.
The Mountain Goats are essentially John Darnielle, and John Darnielle is The Mountain Goats. An ex-psychiatric nurse and associate of meth addicts, he grew up in Southern California and sometimes in the early 1990s decided to set a few songs down on tape. The primary recording device was a department-store boombox. In the years since the band’s inception, they have recorded over 400, and all but the most recent 50 or so have been recorded on the boombox, and most of these released by one-man-and-his-dog indie record labels on good old fashioned cassette tape. The clarity of the recording in these cases is literally dependent on how close to the microphone Darnielle is standing. His voice often struggles to break through layers of tinny tape fuzz. And if you weren’t put off enough already, there’s the question of his voice. High and nasal, it holds desperately on to notes it barely has the breath to produce, and bleats in your ears like a sheep being kicked as he plays jarring chords on an acoustic guitar that nearly always sounds like its strings are about to break.
But I love it. And why? Because I don’t see these as faults. In every strained, stirring syllable, every frenzied, claw-fingered chord, there is an honesty, an integrity, a passion so desperately lacking in so much of modern music. John Darnielle is a human being, not an industry robot, and he does not play by any rule that Sony ever wrote. No promotion, no money, and not even a studio to record in until the last four years or so. But somehow he has built up a solid internet fanbase, and 27,000 people quietly came to one recent London show. Sadly, I wasn’t one of them, but I wish I was; I would love to stand in a crowded room, sweat dripping from my brow, singing every lyric back to the stage at the top of my hoarse little lungs.
This, more than anything, is what inspired people so much about his music. Darnielle has been called ‘the best non-hip-hop lyricist writing in America today’. To my mind that would make him simply ‘the best lyricist writing in America today’ – but that’s another story. His poetic flair, imagery and often jaw-dropping rhyme often feel like, in his own words, ‘the last best thing I got going’. While always spirited, his backdrop of acoustic indie-folk is almost inconsequential. That’s right, folk. And I don’t really even listen to folk. The only other folk singer in my regular listening is none other than Bob Dylan, and to my mind the comparison speaks for itself. Darnielle is a Dylan for modern times; the best reference point I can find for his literate lyrical urgency. And they said he couldn’t sing, either.
His 2005 studio release, ‘The Sunset Tree’, is one of my favourite albums ever written. Nearly every song contains a phrase scored indelibly in my mind. ‘This Year’ is a rousing sing-a-long of escape from your problems, through love, alcohol, or whatever comes to hand. It moves from deadbeat romance – “I played video games in a drunken haze, I was seventeen years young; hurt my knuckles punching the machines, the taste of scotch rich on my tongue” – to the dark threat of domestic violence: “I downshifted as I pulled into the driveway. The motor screaming out stuck in second gear.
The scene ends badly as you might imagine, in a cavalcade of anger and fear.”
The perpetrator, Darnielle’s step-father, rears his ugly head again on ‘Lion’s Teeth’, an unflinching confrontation powered by simmering strings and a martial drumbeat. They brawl in his car as the words spill uncontrollably from Darnielle’s lips: “Nobody in this house wants to own up to the truth. I crawl in shotgun, and reach into his mouth, and grab hold of one long, sharp tooth and hold on, for dear life.”
Then there’s the nervous, gasoline-fuelled death-dance of ‘Dilaudid’, the violent transcendence of ‘Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod’ and the sheer, giddy joy in the eye of the tornado that whirls through ‘Dance Music’.
Despite all my raving, most of you probably still won’t like it, and if you did, you probably can’t buy it in the shops. What you can buy is the next album, ‘Get Lonely’, which is something of a departure. On first listen, I felt let down. No fast songs, no manic strumming, and Darnielle’s voice a soft whisper neutered by its polish. Or so I thought for a few more listens. But in a dark room, over headphones, staring at the ceiling, the sad strings and gentle, unostentatious turns of phrase speak volumes. The lyrics aren’t as dense; but they are as strong, given time and space. So if you see it, it isn’t my most highly recommended – but it’s a start, if only for the lines:
“I will get lonely, and gasp for air, and send your name up from my lips, like a signal flare.”
This pointillistic heartbreak, made starker by its juxtaposition with desperate observations about the weather and the state of the concrete, sits like a stone in the centre of all twelve songs. I listened to my favourite, flawed singer with only the dark for company, and I got lonely. Will you?

What did you just do and what are you going to do now?

I just saw a film, now I'm going to review it. See? The system really works.

Children of Men is a near future sci-fi thriller in which Clive Owen attempts to save a pregnant mother in a world where no children have been born for 18 years. Much violence ensues.

And I mean, much. Loud bangs and shocks apleanty. Not for the highly strung.

To cut to the chase: It's quite good. I'd probably recommend renting it on DVD and perhaps even seeing it at the Cinema if you want to see something at the moment. One might call it "harrowing" and "thouight provoking" but I think I'll stick to "quite good". Clive Owen does a good job of looking reluctantly-heroic.

The directing is competant throughout, the plot twists are genuinely unexpected (well, some of them) and there's a rather brilliant almost-first-person sequence where the blood spattered camera chases Owen through a war torn city in the midst of a gun battle.

7/10 - It's near future not-quite-the-end-of-the-world-o-riffic!

Other films I saw this weekend: The Weather Man. In which Nicolas Cage is a fortysomething local TV weatherman. It's a rather bleak little drama/comedy and I liked it quite alot. Not very laugh-out-loud hilarious but amusing and entertaining. Worth renting, certainly. Nicely weird electronica score too. If.. you care about such things.

8/10 - It's funny-but-also-sad-but-good-o-riffic!

Next week: Almost certainly A Scanner Darkly and quite possibly Another Film

We're still here

We're just busy at the moment.

Hey , remember that list of stuff I said I was totally going to review?

"Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens
The Avalanche by Sufjan Stevens
Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads
The complete Long Winters discography
Silent Alarm by Bloc Party

The Shining, Evil Dead 2 and 3, Superman Returns, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Clerks"

Here is that review: All these things are totally freaking awesome, except Superman Returns which is pretty ok.

¬_¬

More soon, try next weekend.

The Tell-Tale Cathart(ic).

I've spent literally about three hours producing this review out of necessity and in my quest for heinous objectivity and all that crap, it's tarred with bookish results. But I haven't contributed anything in a while and am in need of blogging. Maybe we can all look back on this moment and giggle.

People think they know Edgar Allan Poe because he married his thirteen year-old cousin. Granted, its ethical implications are more than a little questionable and as such could be considered grounds for an appropriate affixation for Poe’s foaming, vitriolic ramblings on love, hate, insanity and ostensibly everything in-between. Such a criticism, though, profoundly over-simplifies and understates a personality at once disconnected and yet palpably ferocious.

This duplicity is no more prevalent than in The Fall of the House of the Usher, one of many short stories by Poe, which does away with the usual barmy protagonist as narrator and instead supplants this upon Roderick Usher: the one-time friend of our nameless guide, not only plagued by his unearthly place of residence and ill-fated twin sister but also an oppressive mental disorder which may or may not have something to do with the previous two. By eschewing the first person in this manner and up-playing the non-didacticism, Poe simultaneously adorns and degrades the soul. For itself is an emotional terror, not one of factual integrity. And so, as you’d expect, initial descriptions of the house sniffle of perpetual indulgence (“a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit”), but Poe merely uses these fantasist extortions to legitimise his realist intentions. Thusly Usher has little to do with a wildly transmogrifying abode, and everything to do with the wearing of individualism – an admittedly sensationalist conclusion is poignantly two-fold; as the Usher house falls so, too, do the lives and lineage of the ashen siblings.

One can accuse The Fall of the House of Usher, and by extension most of Poe’s repertoire, of being comfortably digestible in its own horrific way. Its finale is a fitting one, it flirts with both the supernatural and spiritual, and the plot serves to typify insanity just enough to entertain. Poe is restrained and let loose at the same time, both pure and puerile, frothing at the mouth like a witless animal circling the epicentre of innate ‘Baroque-ness’. And yet this is not a desperate lunge like the slovenly poet who overflows his passion in For Annie, neither the murderous semantics of The Tell-Tale Heart. Instead Usher teeters somewhere in the middle: suitably aware of its own grunge and stream of consciousness but less audaciously. Then it is not with grim fascination we enter the House of Usher as the host’s ‘friend’, rather with a snooping curiosity. We are drawn to its grotesqueness not because we ourselves are grotesque – that honour is bestowed upon, ironically, a house more animated than its inhabitants- but because we ask why. Why is it the house compares to “no earthly sensation” other than “the bitter lapse into everyday life” one receives after an opium trip? Our narrator even feigns a shaky justification, and in this vein taps into some odd wealth of primal human emotion. Poe makes us afraid, and out of nothing other than opinion and manipulative observation.

The fact that Poe is able to mask these machinations so completely is nothing short of intimidating. So whilst there’s a veritable gamut of now familiar horror staples (internment while alive, doors slamming, the original haunted house) it’s a tribute to the author that his story of the corrupted individual transcends any potentially dating genre trappings. The most obvious manifestation of this would be the invention of The Mad Trist, supposedly by Sir Launcelot Canning in fact Poe himself, which serves as unlikely means to extrapolate the reader’s fear further as the sounds contained within the story-within-a-story begin to mimic those in reality. Appropriately, though, Poe drenches the story of the knightly drunkard deep in satire and the plot is intentionally nonsensical. This gimmick in other hands would be nothing other than a scant excuse to showcase the author’s talents. In Poe’s case, it rings of a knowing selflessness many strive for but few achieve.

Subtlety is not something one usually associates with Poe, and The Fall of the House of Usher is no exception. Indeed, he all but stops short of bludgeoning us over the head with the novella’s wanton spirituality and vagaries of quietude. But there, in that moment, in that house, when Roderick Usher gives up his soul to bellow “MADMAN!” at his alarmed guest, there is an instant of such utterly sublime terror that strikes such a chord of unspeakable feeling that it warrants the excess that has preceded it. Expectedly compulsive and emotionally shattering, yet just as deliciously disordered as its titular dwelling, Usher is a decisive work with a slobbering intensity. Just what you’d expect, then, from an American who married his thirteen year-old cousin.

“By utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher.”

For Edgar Allan Poe, that idea is fear.

Some Films You Should See

Little Miss Sunshine

The Squid and The Whale

If you do not see them and enjoy them, I will come to your house and punch you in the face.



What do you mean what happened to quality reviews? We're busy! And lazy. And busy!

Fine -

Little Miss Sunshine starts off as a subtley funny Wes Anderson-a-like dysfunctional family comedy and half way turns into an outright hilarious Coen Brothers movie. For reasons you don't need to know, the family (mother, self-help-guru-wannabe father, heroin sorting grandfather, silent marxist son and beauty queen in training daughter and mum's just-failed-to-commit-suicide brother) set out on a road trip from somewhere to somewhere else. It's really, really funny. Some journalists have accused it of having a "cop out" ending. These journalists are soulless bastards who probably kill puppies for fun. Sorry, qualit reviews, right - If you wanted it to be all Royal Tenenbaums then you will perhaps feel let down by the ending. If on the other hand you "like comedy" and "enjoy fun" and "have a soul" then there is no reason you will not love it.

God I write some apalling stuff when I am not trying hard. Let's see if I can get back into the game

The Squid and the Whale - A lot has already been written about this by the rest of the world who saw it last year. But still. This might be my new favourite movie. Definitely into my top 5. Another comedy about a family (but definitely not a family comedy) this time one being TORN APART BY INNER TURMOIL (Any movie studios need writers for those idiotic trailer voiceovers?). Yes, parents divorce in Brooklyn in the late 80s. Hilarity ensues. We learn a lot about life, love and tennis. Well not much about tennis really. Basically nothing about tennis. But there is tennis in it.

...

It's a fantastic film anyway. Very smart, very well writte, brilliantly acted, wonderfully shot, perfectly soundtracked, [positive adjective] [verb]ed. Go rent it now. Now. Right now. Go on.

SpiralFrog

We've all heard about this right? Major record labels band together to give free music to the world. Daw, how nice of them. All I have to do is sit through a few advertisements to get the hot new joint from Britney Spears? Sign me up!

Or, you know, don't.

I am of course being overly harsh. There are lots of good artists and bands on major labels. But I'm only expecting the really mainstream popular stuff to make it to SpiralFrog. And I would bet the farm (if I had one) that their will be some hideous, crippling DRM on the downloads.

Still, we shall see come September.

As I write this I am listening to the delightful Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads and David Bryne shares some thoughts of his on SpiralFrog at his journal - click here to read.

I'm going to see Little Miss Sunshine this evening so review tonight or tomorrow.

Back with a Vengeance: Bad Music

Ladies, gentleman, that sort of mole type thing

All is not well in the world

1) The Arctic Monkeys won the Mercury. Admittedly they very rarely get it right but surely Thom Yorke or the Guillemots or, well, ANYONE deserved it more than the Sheffield Strokes

2) The new My Chemical Romance song that they performed at/before that MTV awards show. I'm not embedding the YouTube video. If you want your ears to be assaulted by a minute of drum roll (OMG, MCR ARE BAK! THEYVE BEEN AWAY FOR LIKE SIX HOLE WEEKS!!!) followed by two minutes of hideous Queen pastiche that then descends into the usuall "mall-punk"(Thanks Stereogum) rubbish. I mean i didn't like MCR before but this is the worst thing of theirs I've ever heard.

3) I can live with the Monkeys being popular. I just don't like them, you do, that's ok. We probably both like The Strokes. But who in their right mind is buying that Kooks record? All of you are BAD, BAD people. I hate you. I still hate you less than anyone who bought the last Oasis album though.

4) Oasis in general. Their continued existance is most displeasing

5) I think I'm done.

Seeking solitude from all this horrible music? Perhaps you will find better music at some of my favourite mp3 blogs. I'll post a list of the ones I check regularly tomorrow.

Till then - It's good to be back.

Hiatus!

What with people being away and everyone trying to make the most of the last few weeks of holiday - Sugar and Noise will be back sometime in September.

I shall leave you with this - What the heck are the critics whining about with Cars? It's a good movie. A great movie perhaps. Yes it is not as good as The Incredibles but so what? Go see it if you were put off by the reviews. You won't regret it. And if you are a Pixar nerd you will fall off your chair when it gets to "the cinema bit" during the credits.

We'll be back

Miles shall return as soon as his home internet connection starts working again. Right now he is posting from a public library. And writing in third person. May god have mercy on him all.

Or something.

PS - Miles is going to be at the Summer Sundae festival in Leicester this weekend. In the extremely unlikely event of a) us having any readers and b) any of them being there, say hi to the guy in the ThinkGeek/Harvey Danger/Weezer t-shirt(s).

And yes, expect write ups. When the my interwubs is back. Also expect a return to Normal English. ¬_¬

Miles out

Slow down now.

Excuse me while I recover from a conniption as my third most anticipated film of the year (the first being INLAND EMPIRE and the second Pan's Labyrinth), Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain just got its full-length trailer right here. I really don't have a lot to type -it pretty much speaks for itself- other than it's been six long years since the over-sexed and over-disturbing Requiem for a Dream was unleashed, and now I think we're all ready for a little space-time continuum fiddling. One thing's for sure: The Fountain is going to be very, very pretty.

Bad Night, and bad luck.

I can't feel too bad for M. Night Shyamalan. Not only is his surname the spelling bane of my life, he also makes terrifically 'self' movies. That meaning self-righteous, self-involved and frightfully self-indulgent, unless of course he's being tamed by Disney (as I assume he was with The Sixth Sense and, to lesser extent, Unbreakable - films at least penetrable to us not of the faux-pseudo-intellectual brat variety). Critics have ripped him a new one with his latest Lady in the Water, which makes me happy, but I am assuming it'll still be making oodles of cash.

Here are the reasons I will not be subjecting myself to Lady in the Water:

• Just like Signs and The Village, the premise is stupid as you like.
• Just like Signs and The Village, it squanders a perfectly good cast (Question: how do you fuck up the delectable prospect of Sigourney Weaver and William Hurt sharing the screen? Answer: make them stupid, mongoloid-like automatons caught up in apparent genre fiddle-faddle; and whose zero emotional relevance is only capitulated by an equally dour grasp on what people should be saying in these ridiculous situations, only they don't, and never will).
• Therefore I don't wish to see Paul Giamatti violated in this way.
  
• And just like Signs and The Village, it's being sold as a supernatural thriller, when we all know -third time's a charm!- that it'll be a bunco attempt at forced melodrama, and with an unwelcome splash at subverting non-didacticism flung in for the sake of it.
  

If Shyamalan was quietly wanking away from the limelight, I doubt I'd mind so much at these delusions of grandeur and the even more horrendous allegations of Spielbergian proportions.

A watery tart in your swimming pool does not supreme executive power wield. I'm just happy a sizeable backlash has begun. Let the drubbing commence.

P.S I excitedly recommend Joe Morgenstern's to-the-point and hilarious critique of Lady in the Water - listen here, if you will.

Coming Atractions

Things Miles really, really needs to get round to reviewing:

Chicago by Sufjan Stevens
The Avalanche by Sufjan Stevens
Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads
The complete Long Winters discography
Silent Alarm by Bloc Party

All the other CDs I got for my birthday and/or bought with birthday money

The Shining, Evil Dead 2 and 3, Superman Returns, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Clerks

Seriously

This is the To Do list. It's been a week with a very high level of media consumption.

Erm...

And just briefly, IGN are offering the first twenty-four minutes of A Scanner Darkly which has left me in a moral quandary. I mean, I'd like to see Winona rotoscoped now, but surely this is ruining things a little? Anyways it's here so I entrust that decision unto you.