Sweet Nothings

Until last weekend I’d not been to Berlin before - a non-achievement that becomes more remarkable/incomprehensible given that I lived in Germany for half of 1999 and studied the language for years. However, being a lazy student I considered the mere act of moving to Munich to be more than enough upheaval, hence the idea of travelling around the whole country - which would hardly have been hindered by my near total lack of social life at that time - barely even occurred to me. I also spent far more time in internet cafes and Irish bars than in more culturally worthwhile establishments. I didn’t go to any museums in Berlin either, but at this time of year there was a fine alternative in the form of the Christmas Markets. If you’re thinking it sounds slightly odd to spend most of a winter’s holiday shuffling around increasingly-crowded mazes  in sub-zero temperatures rather than inside toasty warm buildings, maybe a nice gluhwein or a good currywurst would change your mind. Back in

So I bought the Sunday Times this week. It's a paper I started taking (love that pompous phrase) when I was a student, for reasons which were less to do with politics and more for the value for money it offered due to its sheer bulk. Plus the sad truth was that my student days were not spent in a 24-7 haze of sex'n'drugs'rock'n'roll, and therefore I had plenty of time on my hands at the weekends. (They certainly weren't filled with actual work either). My limp-wristed, muesli and knitted sweater-y, Guardian-reading habit was not yet fully-formed then, although it had been the paper of choice during free periods in the sixth form when we were stuck in the library but didn't fancy doing any actual work (spotting a pattern here?). And it was the Sunday Times that first made me question whether the Grauniad had been right about everything, thanks to a certain Mr AA Gill. Gill is one of my absolute favourite writers, and I immediately fell in love with h

Skyfall has justifiably been getting great reviews and there is much talk of it being the Best Bond Ever~!, which is quite the claim. Is it one that’s even remotely close to the truth? No, is the short answer. The long-winded and infinitely more tedious answer - which will almost inevitably involve SPOILERS - is below: The Bond franchise is a funny old beast, frequently rebooting or reinventing itself while still cradling the same recognisable bunch of characters and tropes tightly to its be-suited bosom. A Bond film can wander from the template, but only in some ways and never by too much. This is why rumours of an auteur type like Tarantino ever getting the director’s gig are so much hot air, even though the media still tries its best to fan the flames - Tim Burton was asked about it last week, for example (memo to Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli: I will hunt you down if you ever try this.) Casino Royale was the most recent, and best, reboot - probably because it went

More preview screenings to warm the heart and save us from the autumn rains, or something. First up: Untouchable , the Weinsteins’ latest French acquisition now being aggressively peddled on a social media outlet near you. This is an odd couple tale of posh paraplegic Phillipe (François Cluzet) and his working-class carer Driss (Omar Sy), who is hired on a whim and of course brings about much mutual discovery and understanding for the pair despite their chalk’n’cheese origins. The whole thing hinges on the character of Driss, and luckily in Sy – who served his apprenticeship in TV comedy – they’ve found an actor who can clown with the best of them but is imposing enough to convince as a guy who hasn’t lead the most law-abiding of lifestyles up to this point. Having said that, realism is definitely not on the menu here. This is classic feelgood fare in which a man disabled from the neck down gets stoned, driven around Paris at ridiculously high speeds and has his ears fo

Dexys - Birmingham Symphony Hall, 12 September To the uninitiated - that is, anyone whose knowledge starts and ends at Come On Eileen , maybe extending to their rib-tickling performance of Jackie Wilson Said on Top of the Pops in front of an image of burly darts star Jocky Wilson - this Dexys tour would have been a curious experience. What's up with the singer's diction, they might very well ask. What happened to the Midnight Runners bit of their name? And why does a diminutive guy in the dungarees and pencil moustache seem to inspire such rabid devotion in a hallfull of old men? Being a mere thirtysomething, I wasn't there from the beginning. From reading up on the interviews and the period details though, and more importantly from listening to the records, I started to gain some idea of the impact that Kevin Rowland and his band must have had. Rowland (left) and chief sidekick Pete Williams share a chuckle An 80s band carefully cultivating a particular image wa

Friday 10th - Athletics (Olympic Stadium) At last came my chance to have a wander around the Olympic Park, and a balmy Friday evening had surely created the ideal atmosphere for it. The Park feels more authentically Olympian than visiting other venues elsewhere, and it felt great to immerse myself in a place I'd been reading about and seeing from afar for years. It's easy for the Park to radiate warmth and vitality when it's teeming with people, of course. The real test will come once the Paralympics are over, and all the talk of Legacy will become real. Having been to both Barcelona's and Munich's parks in recent years, they give off a sense of occasion as memorials but both felt somewhat barren and sparse. World's largest McDonalds~! Still, I doubt this was on anybody's mind when they were inside the stadium, which was packed as it was for every session. Minor quibbles such as long queues and incompetent staffing at the food stalls couldn'

How 'bout these Olympics then? Despite all the prognostications of organisational disasters and transport armageddon, it appears that everything is going terribly smoothly - almost as if the media's sensationalist pre-Games focusing on the negatives was not entirely helpful or relevant. Imagine that. Even G4S's textbook demonstration of the ultimate consequences of unfettered privatisation was saved by the wasteful old public sector in the form of Our Brave Boys (and Girls) (TM), thereby providing the Daily Mail with a properly perplexing paradox. Empty Seats-Gate is the one thing to have really riled a lot of people, but even that has taken a backseat now that the medals have started rolling in for Team GB. For a hardcore sports fan it's a strange situation to have what feels like the whole country as enthused for a couple of weeks as you are for the rest of the year. Naturally our loved ones will return to being pissed off once we're back to watching the C

Old bands never die, they merely reform. The music industry not being what it once was, a reunion tour has become an almost compulsory step for ex-acts of a certain vintage. Surely, though, the Stone Roses were different? After the much-delayed and ultimately disappointing second album followed by a slow, painful implosion and years of bitter recriminations, they looked to be one of the few bands destined to remain in the past tense. The wave of excitement that followed last year’s historic press conference and the giddiness I shared with thousands of others after successfully getting tickets to the Manchester homecoming shows were therefore more than justified. And yet, the question remained as to whether a reunion was the right decision. Sure, it was a financial no-brainer, but artistically the Roses resided in a rarified place that only a band who started out with such magnificent promise yet failed to live up to their true potential could ever reach. As undignified as the

Lessons in movie marketing #5476: four of the cast of  Friends With Kids featured in the highly successful  Bridesmaids . Much of the advance publicity, eg an interview with Chris O'Dowd a while back, focused almost exclusively on this connection. Friends With Kids does not, however, share a writer, producer or directer with Bridesmaids , and its two leads are Adam Scott and Jennifer Westfeldt. They're tucked away on the right-hand side of the poster. Westfeldt and Scott play Julie and Jason, two thirtysomething best friends. Their other friends are two couples whose marriages seem to have gone sour after the introduction of children to proceedings. Julie and Jason then hit on the wizard wheeze of having a child together, giving them all the benefits of a family without the worry of a marriage to be potentially ruined. Yeah I know, what could possibly  go wrong with that? Although this movie is pitched at a grown-up audience and contains dialogue that isn't merely du

At the risk of turning this into a pure football blog (as opposed to an "infrequently updated with any old random shit" one), the FA's decision to appoint Roy Hodgson as England manager is noteworthy for more than mere footballing reasons. At a time when scrutiny over the UK media is as forensic as it's ever been, their collective reaction to the appointment has managed to cast yet another blow to their already abysmal public standing. Past form suggests we should never be surprised at how low a tabloid headline may go, but the Sun's infamous piece of speech impediment-based mockery was crass and classless even for them. Still, what should we expect in a Murdochland where the solution to its sister paper getting caught with its tackle out was to close the thing down and effectively relaunch it a few months later? Sports journalism in the last couple of days has proven itself to be every bit as base and compromised as its front-page counterparts. The basic form

Let's rewind to the beginning of the 2011-12 season: the general feeling amongst the pundits was that Wolves had made a couple of good signings which would improve the squad and help them achieve a respectable mid-table/bottom half Premiership position. April 2012: Wolves are relegated with three games still to play, boasting nine straight defeats in nine home matches and, despite our CEO's pointed comment of "This is no job for a novice" after sacking the previous manager, an utterly out of his depth novice in charge. Where, as the old cliche goes, did it all go wrong? Firstly, it's worth tentatively suggesting that the UK sports media are not entirely objective and unbiased, and  that Wolves-related coverage at that point might possibly, due to Mick McCarthy's genial nature and sometime membership of punditry's old boys' club, have been a tad rose-tinted. That being said, predictions of us comfortably solidifying our big league status wer