Film/TV: Leslie Nielsen

The comedy legend, star of Airplane and Naked Gun and other such cracking send-ups has died, and left a lot of people laughing in his wake, purely down to the fact that they have trawled youtube to find suitable clips to post as tributes online.

I landed on this one from the short-lived TV series 'Police Squad'. Absolute class:



"He's got a signed Picasso!"
"He's got herpes! He's got cold-sores!"

Doesn't get much better than that...

Music: Javelin and Jay-Z get all mashed up...

I like Javelin. But I also like Jay-Z. But which one's better? There's only one way to find out:

MASH UP!!!!

Music: Gay Pirates

Hmmmmm. Is it intended to be funny? Who knows. Personally, I had a bit of a giggle AND a bit of a cry when I first heard this song. Lyrics like "But it's you my love/You're my land ahoy" can't help but bring a smile to my face. I hope you like it too.



PS. Is it not just a brilliant video as well? More music videos shot on theatre stages please. Yessir.

Music: November Playlist

The candle of new musical talent is still burning bright. Despite the persistance of Westlife to release the same song for the fifteenth time. Wait for the key change, then they'll get of their stools and walk forward. Watch...watch...THERE IT IS!!!

1) KAT FRANKIE - Love Me (from the album entitled 'The Dance Of A Stranger Heart')



A truly sumptuous and stirring album by this Australian-born, Berlin-based songstress reminded me of PJ Harvey, of St Vincent, and of other fantastic female musicians. The guitar work is exemplary; brooding and sparse put complimentary of her powerful vocals, and the song-writing gives her ample room to be both delicate and explosive at the same time. Lovely jubbly.

2) ERIC LINDELL - That's Why I'm Crying (from the album entitled 'Between Motion & Rest')



Delicious jazz-inflicted blues from this smooth-voiced Californian. The album is short but sweet, and reminds one of John Mayer (if you don't hate him).

3) SEAN HAYES - Garden (from the album entitled 'Run Wolves Run')



Stunning song from this excellent album. Sean Hayes has a fantastically throaty and pained voice that will burrow into your head and stay for a while. Very very nice indeed.

4) RYAN BINGHAM AND THE DEAD HORSES - Depression (from the album entitled 'Junky Star')



Hard-nosed country from the man who is best known to me for having written Academy Award winning song 'The Weary Kind' for 2009 film Crazy Heart. Somewhat traditional, but with a contemporary weight to its production, Junky Star is a great album that rouses even the weariest country fan.

5) FRANCIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Monsters (from the album entitled 'In The Woods')



Euphoric choruses and upbeat, soaring chords abound in this standout single from this Austrian (I think...) band whose press release compares them, predictably and, frankly, lazilly, to indie darlings Grizzly Bear and Beach House. This is so, but I would urge any band not to try too hard to match these good, but highly overrated bands, lest they become self-important and a magnet for music snobs. Animal Collective? Best band ever? So much more intelligent than normal indie bands? Yeah, great, see you later.

6) GYPSY AND THE CAT - Time To Wander (from the album entitled 'Gilgamesh')



This Australian electro outfit are channeling an EXTREMELY 80s sound, but to reasonable effect. The album has shades of Duran Duran, some Human League, some Wham!, and a splurge of that epic dance ballad that you might hear on a Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Very tacky and camp, and this track is BY FAR the standout track, as it reminds me of a certain Yeasayer.

7) TANG IN THE ATTIC - Leftside (from the album entitled 'Bank Place Locomotive Society')



Scottish rockers do little harm with some twangy choons aboot not much. Fine.

8) JAVELIN - Vibrationz (from the album entitled 'No Mas')



Funky sounds of summer from Javelin, whose album was released in the summer and is a good little LP for those who like their music electronic, chilled and seamless.

9) SMOKE FAIRIES - Hotel Room (from the album entitled 'Through Low Light And Trees')



Beautiful, hypnotic, haunting folk landscapes from this much-hyped band come thick and fast on their debut. This track is more structured, more punchy than some of the other stuff on the album, and I would actually sell them as a better version of Warpaint, who I think lack a certain something to make them stand out. These guys, though, seem to have an edge that I cannot ignore. Very marvellous indeed.

10) SHARON VAN ETTEN - One Day (from the album/EP entitled 'Epic')



This singer songwriter is fast becoming a cult favourite, such is the power of her voice and songs. Here she shows off her majestic and heart-breaking sound to full effect. Watch the space.

11) MUDDY WATERS - Got My Mojo Working



A fantastic documentary about Chess Records brought me back to Muddy Waters, who almost single-handedly launched the label back in the late 1950s with his fresh and exciting brand of full-band blues that had Chicago, the windy city, in a fever. This is one of his most recognisable records, one a few sex-driven, upbeat hit singles that made him the toast of the town, and this recording, if you ignore the strangely-goateed guy that seems to be on acid doing the introduction, shows just how energetic and unstoppable the first full electric blues bands were, just when the harmonica was being introduced as a leading instrument by players like Little Walter. Absolutely, positively, finger-clickingly brilliant.

Film: Source Code Trailer

A trailer for this interesting film, directed by the hugely talented Duncan Jones (whose debut, Moon, was utterly brilliant, but a very different project), has me torn. On one hand it looks like an interesting concept, the idea of having a short amount of time, over and over again, to try and figure out who is at fault for a terrorist attack. Throw in a pretty girl (which they have) and some big explosions (which, well, obviously they have) and you've got yourself a blockbuster.



On the other hand, there are already glaring questions to be answered. Why, for instance, if our hero can repeatedly return to the same train, does he not just search each passenger on the train with each visit, gradually ruling everybody out until the guilty person is found.

And how, if every time he goes back the pretty girl doesn't know him, is he going to make her understand, or even believe, in just eight minutes, that he is part of this confusing military experiment. Because they have to fall in love, don't they? And she can't fall in love with the guy he's pretending to be. That's not how it works. She has to fall in love with the Jake, not the weird preppy-looking guy that Jake's been put into. So either he's going to prove to her VERY quickly that he's not who she thinks. Or she's just going to believe his weirdo sci-fi ramblings like a ditsy idiot. I'm going for the latter.

Music: Megafaun

With a groggy head (last night was a late one...oops) and soggy heart, I have revisited one of my most favourite bands of recent times, the magnificent and adorable Megafaun. Recognise the loveliness of this song, The Fade, from their album entitled Gather, Form, Fly...



In newer news, their new EP, entitled Heretofore, is available on general release, and is a beautiful, slow, ethereal country record. Well worth a look, and hopefully a precursor to some more recordings that I believe are just being finished in WI, USA. This track, Volunteer, is a standout...



On a slightly damp day this summer at Greenman Festival in Wales, I had the pleasure of seeing these three North Carolina boys bring the second stage, some tent with a name I can't remember, to it's feet and knees at the same time. Hoedowns, throwdowns, banter, it had it all. Afterwards I bumped into the band's lead singer and guitarist, Brad Cook, who I then complimented profusely and offered a drink. He turned it down initially (don't they all...) but then found me and told me he was going to get some food but he'd come back and find me. I waited. He never came. Was I foolish? I don't know. He was lovely, and I wanted to buy him a beer, so I stayed. What happened Brad? Huh? WHAT HAPPENED? I was cold, I was NOT naked, but still, were you there, were you there? No you were not.

Film: Rosario Dawson jiggles while the rest of us giggles...

Clerks 2 was an okay film, not a patch on the first but still funnier by far than most contemporary attempts at Kevin Smith's brand of purile gross out banter. This scene is a bit of dance fun for a thursday arvo, and for those with a more adult mind, Rosario Dawson doesn't seem to wearing the most rigid of support systems.

ENJOY!

Film: Harry Potter and the blah di blah blah Pt 1

To be perfectly honest with you, I've not got the energy or the time to write about this film in particular detail, such was my lack of energy upon leaving screen eight. So what I'm going to do is do a list of brief points, as if I were drunk in a pub at eleven o clock, somewhere near the Wandsworth Town rail station, probably The Alma, scrawling notes for this review on the back of a beer. So here we go. Let's get into character...

Okay. Sitting in a pub, sitting in a pub, Wandsworth Town, nice pub, full of rich middle class types, lots of tweed, lots of tracksuit bottoms with big letters on, gillets, lots of gillets, bottles of wine, bar snacks, olives, everyone has olives, I have a pint, I have a pint of beer, I paid a lot for it, I paid an extortionate amount for it, probably can't afford the train home now but hey, I have a pint, I've just been to the cinema, just been to see Harry Potter, just watched Potter, eaten lots of sugar, didn't drink anything, very dehydrated, full of sugar, teeth tingling, meant to go home and do proper review, can't be bothered, want beer, write it here, got pen, got beer mat, pen and paper, pen and mat anyway, right, ready, here we go:

1) If one is expecting the first part of the two-part final chapter in this monstrous franchise to stand alone as a film in it's own right and not just act as an extended prologue to the actual last film, then one would be sadly mistaken. HPDH-1 (as I'm now recalling it, and I don't care if it sounds the name of a printer/scanner) is hollow in humanity, lacking in character development of any real note, and flat as a proverbial witch's in its plotting; a succession of great escapes performed by the central trio of heroes that merely re-address the fact that they need to find a bunch of things and that there are people looking for them and it'll be hard. Not to sound like someone from The Hills but, well, like, DUH.

2) It is too long. Probably an hour, even an hour and a half too long in fact. If the second film is similarly over-extended, then there will be no arguing that splitting the films was not a creative decision but an act of greed.

3) The National Trust may well have slipped Warner a little something juicy over the past year or so, such is the feast of British countryside imagery on show in HPDH-1. Snowy hillsides, luscious rolling fields, mystical, magically woodland, it's all there, backdropping the tedious teenage love triangle that makes you pine for Twilight's melodramatic, pasty-faced, Dawson's Creek-meets-Buffy romping. It's not a great sign if, when the final credits roll, you can turn to your companion and say, with a straight face, that there were some lovely places to go camping in that film, weren't there...

4) With this new (is it new?) power called Disapparation, which is essentially a fancy pants way of saying teleportation, there is an undermining of the tension in many of the sequences in which Harry et al have to escape from the clutches of something or someone evil. Rather than fight their way out with wands and girly slaps and the like, our troubled heroes can simply hold onto each other's hands like their about to do the hokey cokey and - POOF - magically evaporate and reappear somewhere else, usually somewhere that somebody's been thinking of. With this power at their fingertips, it doesn't fill you with such dread when they find themselves trapped in a corner by some leather-wearing Dire Straits fan with a wooden stick. It goes: "Oh bloody norah, there's someone after us with a wand and a VFX snake, and there's no way out, no way at all, not even a magic toilet, I mean how the hell are we ever going to...oh, no, hang on, sorry, I just remembered, hold my hand, hold it, then I go like this..." and BAM, they're back in the woods, or on a cliff edge, or on Shaftesbury Avenue (suspiciously close to the windmill, the dirty blighters). Magic, yes, but a bit of a buzzkill, tension-wise.

5) Where once there was light, now there is darkness. Harry Potter of old was a bit of a laugh, remember? Little kids, all cute and cuddly and accidentally zapping each other in a bumbly British way, turning each other into goats and whatnot, fancying each other and having red hair and big round specs and losing control of their brooms so they flap around in the air like gloves in a hot tub. Remember that? The good old days? Fun, weren't they? Well, not anymore. Oh no. There's no laughs now, it's all got serious. It's all dark and green and grey and every time there's a chance for someone to say something funny, they cut away to another wide shot of some heather or something, or some ice, something cold and emotionless, because that's what's happened, it's all got dark and cold and scary, see?

6) Despite having a billboard cast of some of the finest British acting talent on offer, most rehearsal time seems to have been spent focusing Daniel Radcliffe's ability to look serious, despite wearing a frankly laughable pair of wire-framed spectacles. He pulls the same deadpan, pursed-lipped face when he's shouting as when he's thinking, and the only time in the film where I think I saw him smile was during a rather surreal dance sequence between Harry and Hermione in which it seems someone has pumped laughing gas into the room (maybe it was Danny DeVito as Penguin, sticking his umbrella underneath the edge of the tent and hissssssssssssss), because Harry starts twirling Hermione round and grinning like he's a plastic automaton in Mr Bubble's Bubbleworks (if you haven't been on it, you haven't lived, and get you to Chessington World Of Adventures).

7) The end is a bit of a damp squib, yes, as EVERYONE and their dog has pointed out, but that's what you get when you split a book in half. It's not the emphatic end to the show that we're used to from a Potter, but then the rest of the film isn't exactly Muse at Wembley, so what does it matter?

8) The end is nigh, both in Potterland and for the franchise, and it seems like its run its course. The relationships have become strained, and though the production quality is still as high as ever, especially in the visual effects and cinematography department, it seems the makers have lost sight of what attracted many cinemagoers who perhaps hadn't read the books (and that would include myself) to the films in the first place. Fun. Excitement. Adventure. These things have taken a back seat now to plot exposition and emotional angst, and I for one have slightly lost my taste for it.

9) Lastly, but not leastly. For all you yummy mummies out there. If you're thinking of taking your eight or nine year old child to see this, and that is your right with this being rated a 12A, can I just I just say this: DON'T. It's very scary, very scary indeed, for the younger audiences, or even the older audiences with a fear of slithery bastard snakes. It's better suited for older children, and even some of them might struggle.

That is all. I'm drunk now. I need to home go.

Film: Senna

The usual sensation I am struck by when faced with motor racing is of being rather under-whelmed, such is the way the sport fails, much of the time, to deliver any sort of explosive excitement. There are crashes, and there are surprises, but in between these moments are tens of minutes, even hours, of repetitive boredom and number-crunching. Tactical pitting; lap times; Qs one, two and three. I care not.

That being said, I do remember, despite being a little boy, the thrill that surrounded Ayrton Senna and his racing of a car. He was heralded as a maverick, a new breed of driver, an instant superstar. And then, tragically, he died. He was young. And the racing world, the sporting world, every world, mourned him.

Working Title have put their name to a new documentary about this almost mythological character, and the trailer suggests that it will bring all the heat, humour, heart and hurt of Senna's story to the vivid foreground. I look forward to it greatly:

Music: James Blake - Limit To Your Love

Hullabalooh! Is this or is this not just heart-breakingly, spine-tinglingly, speaker-meltingly lovely? I don't think i've met anyone, scenesters, dubstep fans, metalheads, anyone, who isn't impressed by this cover of Feist's original.