Sweet Nothings

I seem to listen to less and less music as the years go by. In 2010 I’ve watched loads of sport , and been to more movies and radio recordings (mostly free, coincidentally) than gigs. Even my iPod listening is increasingly dominated by podcasts. Nonetheless, here follows some brief musings on music from this year. Hopefully all these Sound Of... polls of “tastemakers” and Critics Choice awards won’t go on for too much longer. This year’s HOT TIP~! was Ellie Goulding , who’s only really made the cultural impact that all the breathless hyperbole suggested she would now she's done a seasonally-friendly cover and stuck it on an advert. The problem is that everything about her betrays her origins as a marketing project, artificially born out of target market analyses and box-checking exercises. Take her singing voice: with someone like Bjork, for example, you don't have trouble believing that it's her natural voice because she's such a bonkers character. Goulding seems li

Apparently there was a World Cup this year. I know, me neither. They kept that one quiet didn’t they? Meanwhile, domestic football has reached the point where success or failure is dictated more by the global economy than anything else. The recession was blamed for the English clubs’ lack of success in last season’s Champions League, Man Utd and Chelsea’s owners now unwilling or unable to spunk huge sums on the new players needed to keep them dominant. This season’s bonkers Premier League is further proof of this, although you’d have thought Chelsea already had it sewn up by October judging from the media’s over-reacting to their successful negotiation of what was a pitifully easy opening schedule. Finance dictates everything – the most dramatic events of this season so far have been Liverpool’s tortuous courtroom ownership battle, the ridiculous sackings of two perfectly good managers because of the unrealistic expectations of their chairmen, and the shock exit of another just bef

One thing that’s really hit home this year is that expectations can be a real killer for movies. Take The Social Network   I adore The West Wing and most of Aaron Sorkin’s other work (stepping gingerly around Studio 60), and therefore I was almost indecently excited when I heard he’d written a tale about the creation of Facebook and even more so when I heard early reviews. It’s a highly accomplished film for sure, but I found myself constantly thinking “this isn't quite as good as the West Wing”, or “not sure about that sequence”, or “this cinematography is too darn dark!”, thereby ensuring that my colossal expectations were never likely to be met. Conversely, I went to see Toy Story 3 in Durban after a month in South Africa during which I’d been largely cut off from movie hype. Even though I expected it to be good, there was always a feeling that surely Pixar were milking the franchise slightly, as the third film of any series is wont to do (assuming a trilogy wasn’t the origi

In the style of a 3-2-1 clue, Taking a Leak=Taking a Piss, substituting a word gives you Taking the Piss, which brings you to >>>>Wikileaks. About half of yesterday's Guardian  was devoted to reports of the latest revelations from Wikileaks' hoard of ill-gotten US embassy cables and their wider impact. I imagine the paper has been like this for the entire week. As a Grauniad reader (on Saturdays at least) I should probably approve of these leaks and revel in the embarrassment being suffered by the nasty ol' US administration, Prince Andrew and such. But, as is so often the case with me, I find myself going completely against the accepted grain on the issue. In much the same way as I am ignoring this weekend's Facebook meme of changing one's profile picture to a cartoon character from my youth, which in my head defines me as a rugged, single-minded, lone wolf kinda guy whereas in reality everyone probably thinks I'm just a contrary prick. Noneth

Three movie previews in as many days! When will this breakneck excitement ever end? Firstly, to the Empire Leicester Square on Sunday morning. A new cinema for me, and I quickly discovered that Screen 2’s screen begins at ground level, thereby ensuring that the heads of everyone in front of you will be visible throughout the film. Meanwhile, the pre-film easy listening soundtrack abruptly turned into Ice Cube’s Check Yo’Self without warning. What a curious place. The film was a Brit-flick called The Be-All and End-All . What starts off as a standard-issue coming of age comedy with Robbie and Ziggy, two 15 year-old Scousers, holidaying at a seaside caravan park quickly turns into something very different when Robbie collapses and - in time - finds out he has a terminal illness. From this point it becomes more of a romp wherein they try and arrange for Robbie to lose his virginity before he expires. As you might suspect from that synopsis, tonally the film is all over the place - f