Sweet Nothings

Yes hello, I’m not dead or anything. I was going to apologise for not posting for a while, but apparently us bloggers aren’t supposed to do that , so I suggest you accept what you’re given and be grateful that I can be arsed to write anything at all. (There’s a really good article somewhere that collates such “sorry, I was busy!” posts which I can’t find, but I’m not going to apologise for that either.) Anyway, we got to our seats in time to catch the end of Public Service Broadcasting .  Stock footage on a projector screen is accompanied by surprisingly direct and jaunty instrumental rock, as played by one man on guitar-slash-laptop dressed as Matt Smith from Doctor Who, and a drummer who seems to have gone for an IT Crowd-era Richard Ayoade vibe. They talk to the audience through a Stephen Hawking style voice machine. The carefully assembled blend of vintage and modern is all very now , or at least is trying awfully hard to be. This may be a crap photo, but at least it...

  *** Disclaimer *** There’s a group on Facebook for residents of my local area to air their views. Obviously I don’t want to name names here without permission, and I won’t be quoting anybody directly for that reason. Having said that, all these comments appear on a public Facebook group which holds no stringent requirements for membership; it’s not exactly difficult to find out where I live either (not many local council seats will have just had a by-election due to a recent death of the sitting Councillor), and so you could probably locate these discussions for yourself with minimal effort. All this can be summed up thus: privacy sure is confusing these days. So, where does local politics fit in? Oh yeah, sorry: *** End disclaimer *** Privacy is one of this group’s prevailing themes - many of the posts are about recent robberies in the area, which are helpfully advisory/paranoia-inducingly ominous depending on one’s views. The local MP is active on the group, ...

Thought I’d better round up a few things I’ve seen recently, just to prove I’m not dead, or worse. *     *     *     *     * Heart in the Park is the latest brand to be added to the ever-growing list of summertime mini-festivals taking place in Hyde Park. If you think my paying to attend a Heart FM event instantly destroys any lingering sense of reviewer credibility and makes me a properly middle-aged sod then you’d be right on both counts. But, well, Chic were playing, and the weather was going to be nice and that. We arrived in time to catch some of Eliza Doolittle . My dad used to sing “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag” to me, a song familiar from his own youth. Although music has always recycled itself to appeal to new generations, I still can’t quite get my head around a young pop artiste singing a remixed version of it in 2013. Bizarre. Unfortunately Chic were bedevilled...

On a scale of Star Trek enthusiasts, where 1 is reserved for occasional dabblers and 10 means you got married in an exact replica of Worf and Dax’s Klingon garb from You Are Cordially Invited (Deep Space 9, S6, ep 7), I would sit no higher than halfway. Which I think stands me in good stead when it comes to judging New Trek - I’m informed enough to know how much JJ Abrams has deviated from the original material without getting het up at the fact that he’s been allowed to have his way with the franchise in the first place. Seeing as Hollywood has been on a mission to reboot every classic movie or series recently (not to mention plenty of rubbish ones), a shiny new reset button-smashing Trek was always going to be on the cards. The 2009 film took plenty of money and vindicated Paramount’s decision to hand Abrams the reins - being a self-confessed Trek virgin (not in the stereotypical Trek fan = virgin sense, either), our man was able to approach the franchise with a fresh p...

Plans for those recent Kraftwerk gigs went through several unsuccessful drafts On paper,  Iron Man 3 wasn't quite the home banker that some may have thought. Whilst Robert Downey Jr's show-stealing turn in Avengers Assemble arguably made up for the lacklustre second instalment of his own franchise, did this merely prove that the character was best taken in smaller doses rather than as a chaotic focal point of the action? With their third Stark-starring film though, Marvel have proven themselves once again to be no mugs, giving the Tony Stark character a post-Avengers hangover to deal with but wisely maintaining the series's identity by keeping any crossover characters out of the mix. Plus, they've executed something of a coup by handing the director's chair to Shane "Lethal Weapon" Black. In the interests of full disclosure, I should confess at this point to never having seen anything else which Black has written or directed. Good job I'm not...

I participated in an awful game of football this week. Thanks to a lack of bodies, what would normally have been 5-a-side became 5 on 4. We were thoroughly outplayed and my performance - shoddy at the best of times - grew steadily worse thanks to our failure to do the basics, keep it tight, get amongst them, or any other Sunday league cliche you could mention. Needless to say, I was in the team of 5. Granted, the team selection was such that the best players were on the other side. But, as time went on and we became steadily more outplayed by opponents with more teamwork, movement and desire despite our apparent superiority on paper, I was consoled by the fact that, having grimly followed Wolves throughout this season, at least I'd experienced such feelings before. A year ago, I wrote this blog  after one ignominious relegation. Never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine that trapdoor opening once again and us bumbling right through it - and I am quite the accomplished pessim...

"Christopher!" shouts an American tourist to her husband from a  Looky Looky Man stand on the edge of St Peter's Square , "These ones have got the new Pope on 'em!" Yes, we had no inkling when booking this holiday in January that we would find ourselves in Rome when Papa Francesco received the ultimate promotion (apart from the one from here to the heavens, I suppose). And however fantastic an opportunity this was for us to soak up a bit of living history, I'd have much rather visited the Sistine Chapel, which let's be honest is everyone's Roman must-see. Instead, it's been closed since the beginning of the conclave and reopens tomorrow when I'm back at work. So yeah, great timing with that resignation, Joe - thanks ein Bunch. We didn't attempt to brave the rain or the huddled masses in the square on Wednesday night just on the off-chance that the Cardinals would make up their minds, but it was quite surreal to watch the white...

It's a sad fact that, after visiting Venice, any other city can appear somewhat humdrum at first. As soon as we came out of Florence's station we were confronted with roads! And traffic! And no canals to be seen! Many of Florence's streets approach Venetian levels of narrowness and yet still allow all manner of vehicular access. Any pavements that do appear when you get out of the very centre are often precisely wide enough for one and a half persons to walk abreast, ie of little use for soppily hand-holding couples. The various vans, taxis and buses (including electric ones, excitingly) at least have the decency to take things slowly around the city streets. But the bikes... oh the bikes! Some cyclists will attempt to weave around the hordes of pedestrians with whom they are unwisely allowed to share the ways, whilst their more resolute bretheren keep to an arrow-straight course and rely on their bell to get tourists to move out of the way, with varying degrees of suc...

Visiting anywhere the second time around means you're free to notice the more intricate details you probably didn't have time to ponder on the previous occasion. For example: Gondoliers. If a lifetime's worth of TV and movies has taught me anything, it's that these men should conform to a very specific stereotype. I don't care if it's mid-March and a bit nippy - if I'm forking out extortionate amounts for you to paddle me around in your glorified canoe, I expect you to remove the puffa jacket - ensuring the stripey top is fully on display - don a stupid hat and sing me Just One Sodding Cornetto on repeat until I'm sufficiently romantically stimulated. Okay? Looky-Looky Men . They all probably come with tragic stories of life-and-death escape from war-torn hellholes and unfulfillable dreams of better lives, but never mind all that. We were far more interested in figuring out just how on earth they make a living. They all congregate in the same places ...

Way back when, it was possible to derive pleasure from a game where you simply rode your bike down a street each morning, delivering papers and avoiding loads of tyres/dogs/balls jumping/rolling/flying out at you. Happy days. Sadly The Paperboy is the new film from Lee (Precious) Daniels and not a better-late-than-never adaptation of the classic video game. If only it had anything resembling a coherent structure. “Now this is where things get complicated”, says the narrator (Macy Gray) at one point, the patronising cow. But she’s kind of right, because no sooner does the film starts to develop something approaching a plot, it gets bored of that, pumps up the sleaze levels and just throws stuff at the screen, intending to provoke as much as entertain or tell a proper story. The setup can be summarized thus: journalist returns to Florida hometown to investigate a possible miscarriage of justice, with his younger brother, a local bimbo who’s been flirting by mail with the ja...

I came away from Zero Dark Thirty  with my mind curiously un-blown. This was partly a case of media coverage reaching saturation point long before I got to see the thing, and partly a structural issue (of which more later). Neither of which are entirely the filmmakers' fault, unless of course you fall into the "anti" camp, for whom the film represents at best the CIA's manipulation of Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal into making them a two-hour recruitment ad, and at worst an outrageous endorsement of America's vile imperialism brought to you by a modern-day Leni Riefenstahl. Frankly I'd become bored with the back-and-forth arguments from both sides of this particular fence way before Zero Dark was released here. The rant that was teased at the end of my last post is not going to materialize, since I can't see there being anything new to add to the debate and nothing I say could possibly change anybody's mind. (Yep, I've been reduced to bait-...

"Whip" Whitaker (an Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington) is not bad at this aeroplane piloting lark, managing to flip a nosediving plane upside down in order to land it relatively safely in a bonkers and gripping sequence at the beginning of Flight . Unfortunately Whip is also rather fond of the sauce, amongst other substances. As the airline's lawyer (Don Cheadle) coolly informs him, America is the most generous country in the world regarding blood alcohol levels and he was still three times over the limit - and that's for driving a car . This film must rank as one of the best anti-drink drive ads of all time. (Except that Whip appears to fly well because of the drink and drugs rather than despite them, but we'll ignore that.) Needless to say, after the accident the twin pressures of sudden celebrity and potential lawsuits begin to take their toll, and Washington holds a slightly patchy movie together with a measured performance. The script gives more scope fo...

It’s that time of year again when we can pretend to be distracted from the grimness of the post-Christmas and New Year but pre-holiday freezing wilderness by the glut of awards-bait filling up our cinemas. There are still some movies coming out which aren’t up for any sort of baubles though - Gangster Squad is one of them, although it feels like a project that was commissioned with at least a vague hope of bagging a nomination or two. The trailer promises a glamorously gritty gangster piece, studded with moral ambiguity (the titular squad operating outside the law in an attempt to take down Sean Penn’s kingpin by any means necessary), a starry cast and - better yet - a supposedly true story as its inspiration. So what went wrong? Well, you never really feel pulled in. Characters rarely stray beyond the generic, the squad including a clever-but-weedy type, a grizzled old-timer, a black guy and a token hispanic. Ryan Gosling, as a smooth young cop who doesn’t seem to give a da...