Angles

It’s always nice when a song comes along that hits so many giddy nerves in your body that it makes you whistle and skip from the breakfast table right through to your midnight cereal raid… and it just so happens that “Under Cover Of Darkness” on The Strokes’ fourth album Angles is one of those tunes. In fact it’s so riff-tastic and catchy that you almost curse yourself for not coming up with the idea first.

Thankfully though this isn’t the only gem on the band’s long awaited (and much feared by this reviewer) follow-up to the deeply flawed First Impressions Of Earth which frontman Julian Casablancas managed to spoil almost single-handedly with a collection of vocal melodies which plunged to the very nadir of songwriting craft. Angles, predictably much like it’s title, has a few new angles to it, but the resulting record is neither confused nor rambling… it’s also mercifully shorter than it’s overlong predecessor.

From the colourful opener Machu Picchu onwards it’s clear that The Strokes have finally remembered how to infuse a bit of sunlight and fun into their garage rock groove and have brushed away the cobwebs of the past to march ahead to a more promising, productive and artistically valid future.

There are some lovely 80s flavours to the album, so much so in fact that on tracks like “Two Kinds Of Happiness” and “Games” you half expect Cyndi Lauper to make a guest appearance and wink cheekily through your speakers with a mouth full of bubblegum.

Elsewhere there are more earnest experiments into Radiohead-style alt-rock that thankfully aren’t left field enough to spoil the flow of the record and end up being entertaining in their own right. For those yearning for a reminder of their first two albums then “Taken For A Fool” comes with a lush chorus that must’ve been picked straight up off the cutting room (on fire) floor.

Angles is certainly one of the better albums to appear during this guitar-rock lull and the shoulder pad inducing synths are mixed well with the band’s familiar retro sound.

Give it a go… it’s a very rewarding “grower”.

4/5

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps – film review

I’m not sure what the moral implications are of watching a sequel before the original, but I’ve not really been that keen on catching Wall Street 1 but sort of guessed what the general gist of it was and heard roughly how it ended.

So, how does watching a sequel “blind” work out?

I guess I’ll find out when I finally watch the original, but for some reason I was attracted to seeing Money Never Sleeps to satisfy certain curiosities… namely, why does a director who tends to tackle quite serious political issues in one-off releases feel the need to dig out a film he made twenty years ago and make his first ever sequel?

I’ve not seen many Oliver Stone films, not because he’s a bad director or a boring visualist, but because, like Martin Scorsese, his usual subject matters don’t tend interest me very much. On the odd occasion that he does stray away from war films or political musings then you’ll find me forking out the cash for a reduced-to-clear dvd copy.

There’s an important and valid point made in Money Never Sleeps which the news media really needs to make clear to the general public when the country falls into another recession: a capitalist economy is cyclical, you’ll get dips and crashes in the market but this needs to happen in order for it to regenerate itself… so don’t panic!! Numbers can’t hurt you, things will work out in the end and people, lives and relationships are far more important than year end bonuses. Freedom and wealth can’t be counted and felt in bank balances and possessions.

I did brace myself for an angry film about sharp suited yuppies clambering for money and power, but I’m guessing that’s what the original film was about. Even though this one sort of starts off like that, it actually turns out to be a very sweet and warm hearted little film that wants to inspire people to push themselves to improve the world for the greater moral good rather than for personal gain.

There’re ace performances from the lovely (oh so lovely) Shia LaBeouf (who’s managing to prove that he’s not just another young stud from the Hollywood cookie cutter to end up in the forgotten footnotes of movie casting history), Michael Douglas (one of my favourite movie stars… he’s just so cool and nobody gets angry quite like him) and Carey Mulligan (who’s stunning emotional breakdowns and twinkly, tear filled eyes are given extra screen time and pauses by Stone’s adoring camera).

Money Never Sleeps is a film about hope and believing in doing the right thing even though it doesn’t earn you millions and billions of sweet, sweet dosh.

Give it a go, then watch the first one.

4/5

Scott Pilgrim vs The World - film review

“Alfie tells the story of a young man who leads a promiscuous lifestyle until several life reversals make him rethink his purposes and goals in life.”

- Alfie (1966 film), Wikipedia

“Slacker:
someone who, while being intelligent, doesn't really feel like doing anything.”

- The Urban Dictionary

“Me and some guys from school
Had a band and we tried real hard
Jimmy quit and Joey got married
Shoulda known we'd never get far”

- from “Summer of 69” by Bryan Adams

The self-indulgent fantasies we have throughout our lives include themes of revenge, heroism, regret and sex. Scott Pilgrim vs The World joins a steadily mounting list of films such as Kick-Ass, Brazil, American Psycho, Inglorious Bastards and Once Upon A Time In America where the reality of what we’re watching is blurred by the suggestion that we are not watching events from a third person perspective, but from a first person perspective.

Scott Pilgrim, Kick-Ass and Brazil all feature fairly ordinary young men who go about their lives in a daze, fantasizing about being somebody they’re not and achieving things they can only dream about. In Brazil this is clear, most of the time Jonathan Pryce’s character Sam Lowry drifts off into soft-focus fantasies about being a winged hero rescuing a damsel in distress but eventually finds the reality of enacting such a scenario in real life far more complicated and painful. In Kick-Ass the fantasy is vague and based on how the viewer perceives things. Our main character pretends to be gay in an attempt to maintain a deception-based relationship with a girl he is in love with. The justification for this lying alter-ego manifests itself in a world of superheroes, where retaining ones secret identity is just as important and acceptable. Scott Pilgrim seems to be a little of both. A lot of what goes on in the film is clearly a fantasy, but there is no definition between the real world and the comic book/video game/superhero world. They are all integrated and intertwining in Scott Pilgrim’s mind.

The revenge fantasy of Inglorious Bastards presents an alternate reality where high ranking Nazi’s receive different and much more personally motivated ends and shares themes with Sergio Leone’s gangster epic Once Upon A Time In America about characters who cope with unresolved issues and feelings of guilt or desires for revenge through fantasy. It is believed that in Once Upon A Time In America the scenes where Robert DeNiro’s character Noodles returns to New York as an old man and attempts to solve a thirty year old mystery are the mere opium fuelled dreams of a guilt-ridden young man. With this in mind, you could argue that Inglorious Bastards ends at the beginning with the young girl escaping certain death from murderous Nazi’s through an open field… the rest of the film is her revenge fantasy unfolding as she flees. Scott Pilgrim gets his chance to revise the ending to his own movie, but not so subtly… he can just rewind events and play them out differently, something we’ve all wanted to do from time to time. I suppose you can forgive this time-bending attempt to wash away feelings of defeat and regret, after all, Pilgrim is being forced to play out the extremely petty revenge fantasies of seven other characters.

Towards the end of Scott Pilgrim vs The Word the titular lead character apparently earns the “power of self respect”. However he seems to have nothing but misguided ego and self-respect throughout the film as he lies and cheats his way through a series of meaningless relationships. Somewhere down the line Scott Pilgrim has convinced himself that this is acceptable behavior. He is another Patrick Bateman, and as with the American Psycho “serial killer” how can we possibly trust what our antihero tells us. If he is a liar and a cheat, then why should we accept anything that we see? Has the whole violent series of events we’ve just witnessed been just part of his fantasy?

Taken at face value Scott Pilgrim vs The World is a film let down by a central romance involving two attractive but rather dull and heartless people and never really recovers from it’s weakest but most pivotal plot point: if Scott Pilgrim has to fight seven ex-partners of a girl he’s only just met and knows very little about, how long will it take for him (and the audience) to get fed up and question whether she’s actually worth it?

Not long.

But as a first person fantasy about lust and wish fulfillment it’s an exciting visual spectacle with an abundance of strong supporting characters that add dimension to an otherwise cold little movie. In fact the film really seems to crank up a notch when Jason Schwartzman arrives on screen towards the end. He does so well to brighten things up that you sort of wish they’d written him into earlier parts of the film.

Anyway, none of this matters of course, as it was all just a dream…

3/5

Speed Racer - film review

Caught somewhere between Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Star Wars Episode II Attack Of The Clones, the purpose of Speed Racer seems not to evoke the cardboard feel of it’s origins but to exist in a bouncy Warner Brothers universe that dabbles in the uncertain editing and awkward silences of the Star Wars prequels.

If you’re not sure whether the film’s creative team wants us to take the disjointed and gravity-defying reality of Speed Racer seriously, fear not, the moment some penguins provide a screen wipe whilst waddling through a car factory then you’ll cease to care and accept that you’re just here to enjoy the ride.

Yes the racing scenes are confusing, but the Wachowski’s don’t seem particularly interested in terrestrial car racing, they want you to feel like you’re watching the podrace from The Phantom Menace or the speeder chase in Attack Of The Clones. You sort of work all that out pretty early on and get on board, so don’t worry.

As with JJ Abram’s recent Star Trek resuscitation this is a film about people taking pride in their work and finding passion and creativity in the most greasy and sterile of environments. We all have a purpose, something that drives us, but not everybody can relate to our individual needs in life. Some people are race car drivers, some are businessmen, some are sports commentators, some are gangsters. Whatever. Speed Racer has an abundance of passionate souls who, without their chosen vocation, would be lost in life.

Beyond the look and moral centre of Speed Racer we’re treated to some strong and earnest performances. I’m guessing these days most acting schools come with a “Working With Blue Screen” module that puts budding thesps at ease when speaking and performing to perhaps nothing more than a marker for their eye-line. Things are improving. Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox and Roger Allam all punch through the millions of dollars worth of special effects and give their characters real weight and value, as opposed to some CGI filled efforts where actors stand around looking bemused and slightly frightened.

Some odd pauses could have been trimmed or edited out and the time jumping narrative tightened to avoid some moments of confusion, but these elements seem to add to the heightened quality of the experience.

Speed Racer is fun, dazzling, camp, exciting, silly, surprising, full of heart and definitely worth a viewing. Even though references can be made and comparisons drawn, this really is a unique experience and will leave you desperate to find out how things end.

Go for it.

3/5

FAN TRACKLIST: Led Zeppelin Double Bill

In my relatively fresh history of enjoying Led Zeppelin I’ve found it difficult to acquire a fondness for their fifth and sixth albums, Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti.

I guess it doesn’t help that Houses of the Holy is rife with questionable genre experimentations and a self-indulgent overall theme of how big and successful Led Zeppelin were at the time (the title referring to the enormous stadiums they were regularly playing in and the song The Ocean named after the sea of fans that the band would observe from the stage every night), while double album Physical Graffiti is sprinkled liberally with studio outtakes from previous records that only serve to undermine the album’s flow and consistency.

So, a niggling doubt and theory in my mind grew and blossomed into something rather revelatory: if the title track from Houses of the Holy was left off that record for artistic reasons and added, rather clumsily, to Physical Graffiti… what would happen if it was moved back? In fact, what would happen if you removed all the tracks that weren’t recorded specifically for Physical Graffiti and ditch all but the three intended for Houses of the Holy (The Rover, Houses Of The Holy, Black Country Woman) and put them back where they belonged in place of the three songs (The Crunge, Dancing Days, D’yer Mak’er) that really don’t seem to work on that album?

Well, you have two slightly better albums, that’s what…

Houses of The Holy:

As well as just replacing three songs on Houses of the Holy I had a play around with the tracklist to make it more engaging… pushing the dreamy and beautiful The Rain Song closer to the end where it feels better served and bringing the haunting and strangely ahead-of-it’s-time No Quarter forward to give the middle of the album more power and gravitas. I also keep The Rover as the second track on the album (as it appeared on Physical Graffiti) and try to keep alive the Led Zeppelin tradition of finishing things off with a rootsy stomp with Black Country Woman.

Here’s my “Special Edition” of the album:

1. The Song Remains The Same
2. The Rover
3. Over The Hills And Far Away
4. No Quarter
5. The Ocean
6. Houses Of The Holy
7. The Rain Song
8. Black Country Woman

Physical Graffiti:

The sleeker version of Physical Graffiti has a faster pace, a heightened intensity and a significant musical consistency that the standard Physical Graffiti lacks. The things that bothered me about the album before just don’t stand out so much anymore…. basically the songs sound like they belong together and the “filler” has been trimmed. I understand that just because an album is shorter it does not always mean it will feel shorter, however the original extra seven tracks just seemed to weigh the whole thing down to the point that sometimes, when I played it, the album felt like it was wheezing on the floor.

Here’s how my shortened and preferred version runs:

1. Custard Pie
2. In My Time Of Dying
3. Trampled Under Foot
4. Kashmir
5. In The Light
6. Ten Years Gone
7. The Wanton Song
8. Sick Again

I often feel guilty when I tamper with the intended flow of an album (no matter how much I disagree with it), but in this instance it just feels right.

Give it a go, it’s interesting and fun.

Inception - film review

Tired of waiting for somebody else to bring William Gibson’s Neuromancer to the big screen, Christopher Nolan has clearly turned frustration into creativity and written his own version of the story to make. However, with Inception, we aren’t dealing with the internet or the “matrix”, but with dreams. The idea is basically the same. Thieves try to break into dreams and people try to hide within them.

What I like about Inception is that it is what it is: a heist movie. It’s a tight, clean-cut sci-fi tinged thriller with no grand, reality shifting twist to second guess or new plane of amazement to attempt to wow audiences with in the final reel. All the film asks you to do is listen, concentrate and remember. If you don’t… then you’re lost.

I was surprised I enjoyed Leonardo DeCaprio for once. You completely forget you’re watching that annoying twit from Titanic and just get drawn into the world of his character. I also enjoyed the performances of 3rd Rock From The Sun’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt (now all grown up and sporting some very flattering sharp suits) and Tom Hardy (who’s throaty Brit accent is to die for and his line reading is wonderfully frank and fresh).

I was disappointed by Ellen Page, who I loved so dearly in Juno. Her purpose in this movie is to soak up exposition. She’s the “noob” character who needs things explaining. In effect, she’s our insider, we watch her and hear what she asks in order to understand the world of Inception. Unfortunately she doesn’t fit the role very well and quite often gets vocal intonations wrong whilst delivering a string of dry feed lines for the other actors/characters to play off.

The role of Cillian Murphy could have done with a little more clarity and moral definition. As the pawn in a very confusing game he is neither good nor bad, however since so much in the narrative is rested on his character’s decisions then this ambiguity leads perilously close to letting go of the viewer’s attention towards the end.

In summary, I enjoyed Inception for the complex suspense/espionage thriller that it is. Unlike The Matrix, it won’t change your perception or make you want to discuss what is real and what isn’t. Inception is clear on that: what’s real is real, when it’s not real then you can tell by the people walking on the ceiling.

4/5

Bastards, Butchers, and Bums: Hard Target

Last night I dusted of this Jean-Claude Van Damme starring Hollywood debut from renowned action director John Woo. I was terribly worried that I’d be embarrassed by my consistent assertion over the years that it’s still the only decent film that Woo has made in America. I wasn’t really in the mood to back track and spend time re-evaluating things, but realised I might have to.

Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable and well crafted the film still felt.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a very silly film, but everybody involved in it seems to be trying their hardest to make it better than perhaps it’s budget would have allowed it to be. That’s not to say everybody takes the experience too seriously, as there’s a lot of lightness and fun in the right places, but some elements to the film are better than you would expect them to be.

Whilst Van Damme is reliably stone faced and intense as loner Chance Boudreaux his support cast really do shine and bolster the heart and soul of the action. A surprise standout is South African Arnold Vosloo (later to turn up in the Mummy series) who’s menacing demeanour is counterbalanced nicely by his cheeky bad-boy asides (not to the camera though, thank goodness). His performance is very natural and human, rather than two-dimensional and one-note.

Also on board is cinematographer Russell Carpenter who went on to lens James Cameron’s True Lies and Titanic… and you can tell that Hard Target must have helped him to get those valuable assignments. His lush oranges and blues are all in check and the waxy tone to his pallet is very rich and an interesting texture. He seems to have learnt a few things from the great Freddie Francis.

Most importantly, though, this isn’t a film that meanders. It could possibly be compared to the Liam Neeson kidnap thriller Taken for it’s tight construction. There isn’t a second wasted in Hard Target. Yes there are plot, character and emotional development scenes, but they don’t outstay their welcome or slow the pace. They are all key moments and aren’t cast aside as perfunctory. They all lay the foundations for the adventures to come.

So, why “bastards, butchers and bums”? Well, it suddenly occurred to me afterwards at how poorly men, as a gender, seem to be represented in the film. Hard Target shows a world full of destitute ex-soldiers living a rough and desperate existence, callous pornographers taking advantage on the vulnerable, malevolent and murderous businessmen who hunt for sport and crooked doctors who conceal and tamper with evidence for their own gain. Even random men in the street are unhelpful and refuse to provide sanctuary to characters being hunted to their deaths. I suppose Hart Target could be watched as a double-bill along with Once Upon A Time In America, a film thought to be let down by many critics as only portraying women as either “saints or whores”.

The balance seems to be lost in both films.