Coming back from an overnight trip to Northampton (speaking engagement at the Kettering Rotary Club, if you must know), I saw two stories on the newsstand at the station that seem linked. The Daily Star had the exclusive on Big Brother's Chanelle "bottled" by stalker, and Heat (the publication that more than any other keeps the careers of BB winners and losers articificially alive) leads this week with Big Brother's Charley attacked outside club by member of public. So - is this a case of the Great British Public turning on the "celebrities" it helped create? (And the unnamed attackers must take full responsibility, as anyone who couldn't give a fuck about BB's latest wave of would-be glamour models is unlikely to go out of their way to mount an assault on any of them. If you're really lucky, and avert your eyes from the covers of Heat and Nuts on newsstands, as I am unable to, you might not even recognise Charley or Chanelle, which would be the ultiimate insult to the pair of them.)
The facts, as I have gathered them from the Internet are (and this is a culturally interesting trend, so read on even if you despise): "a crazed stalker tried to maim Big Brother beauty Chanelle Hayes in a terrifying nightclub attack. The shocked star could have lost an eye as the demented woman hurled a beer bottle at the babe who was standing on the stage." In other words, she didn't bottle her with a broken bottle, as suggested by the headline, and, in fact, she didn't hit her with one either. The whole story hinges on what might have happened, had the headline been true. Chanelle ducked and was rushed off stage at Jumpin' Jaks nightclub in Halifax, by bodyguards. A nasty enough experience for the hapless nude model, and I wouldn't wish it on her, but at the same time, you can't prostitue yourself across national TV, then OK! and all the others, for weeks on end, with your fake boyfriend Ziggy, pocketing huge sums of cash along the way, and not expect the odd strange fan. This stalker is clearly a bit cracked, as I believe she fancies Ziggy, and Chanelle now has round-the-clock security, which I hope she can pay for. The stalker is described as "a short, stocky girl with greasy, mousy brown hair." Note: greasy and stocky. Implication: what a loser, eh? A member of Chanelle's "team" added, "She was very cheap and chav looking." (Pretty easy to spot at Jumpin' Jaks then, I'd guess.) What a wonderful world these people inhabit.
Meanwhile, deluded Big Brother loudmouth Charley Uchea got into a "violent catfight outside London's Embassy Club" at 3am the other morning, her fake hair "viciously pulled by a mystery brunette in a pink dress." Charley apparently "sank to the pavement looking terrified." Having quietly watched some of BB this year, breaking my own boycott for reasons of cultural fact-finding, I find it hard to believe that Charley would be terrified of anything, except perhaps not being noticed. We need not feel too sorry for her, in which case. Charley, 22, recently revealed, "When I go shopping, it takes four hours because everyone mobs me. I've got an entourage bigger than J-Lo." Yes, and if your ambition is to have an "entourage", well done. They'll certainly be there for you when Heat no longer consider you newsworthy.
I know I don't usually trouble myself with silly gossip like this (although it's still more newsworthy than a survey about flatpack furniture), but I wonder if there's something in the air. Are we finally sick of these idiots? And if so, wouldn't it save a lot of trouble if we just stopped adding to C4's phone/text-vote coffers and stopped buying the magazines with their needy faces on - that would soon bring the whole sorry edifice crumbling down. (By the way, I didn't blog about BB when I was secretly watching it, as the last time I tried to commentate upon the programme sensibly, it drew unsavoury types who must have happened upon my website while searching for BB-related material, and I have no interest in getting into a dialogue with them. If the same happens here, I'll just jettison the post. As you were.)
I suspect I shouldn't get worked up about this, and I'm not really, but I read my newspaper every day and from it, I expect one simple thing: news. I just need the events of the world reporting, organising and disseminating for me, that's all. Some anaylsis, yes please, some comment, OK, but mainly I want the facts of what's been going on, whether it's in Parliament or Iraq, or any point in between. What I don't want are news stories which are not news stories, but thinly-disguised adverts. Here, from today's Guardian is a classic of this type. It's short, so I'll let you read it first.
The flatpack fans riding for a fall By Martin Wainwright
Almost half of people living with home-assembled flatpack furniture are in danger of falling out of bed or collapsing when they sit on a chair, according to a survey. Haste and over-confidence have turned the relatively simple system into one of the biggest potential sources of home accidents, says a report on the 1.1bn sector. "Bravado shoulders aside logic, especially among men," says the survey, which finds that 67% of male flatpack buyers fail to read the instructions. Women are far more cautious, spending an average of 12 minutes preparing, but none the less, 47% of all jobs are never properly finished. Sliding doors are high on the list of failures in the data, collected from 2,000 homeowners by the online trades directory RatedPeople.com. Just over 2% of flatpack buyers are so intimidated that their planks and bags of screws are never even unwrapped. "Even so, the seemingly simple self-assembly bed was named as the biggest problem overall at 22%," said Andrew Skipwith of Rated People, which promotes the alternative to DIY of GSI - Getting Someone In. The survey also checked out regional variations in failure to read instructions, finding Manchester the runaway hotspot with 69% not bothering.
1) So fucking what? 2) Are you really telling me that that there is so little actual news the Guardian has space to fill? (At least the tabloids would presumably have had some fun with this daft and inconsequential survey - I haven't checked - whereas here, all we get are the facts, reported as if it was a story about the NHS, reported as if they matter.) 3) As with all survey-based stories - and there are a lot of them about, as websites and publications get wise to the value of sending out a press release with a survey on it to achieve free publicity - you have to read to the end to find out what it's an advert for. In this case, a website promoting tradespeople. Nothing wrong with that, but why not make them pay for an advert, like everybody else? The Guardian has been had, and now so have I, for stupidly reading the story to the end. (I did so, because you often need to, to get to the punchline.) This website is free to customers, in return for your details, and is funded by the membership of tradespeople, who also pay a referral fee for any job they get through the site. It's not a bad website. I wish them no ill-will, it's the newspaper I have a problem with, and not just the Guardian, that just happens to be where I saw the story.
In summary: a website promoting tradespeople over DIY has conducted a survey which suggests, in a lightly comical way, that people shouldn't do DIY, because it's dangerous. A national newspaper prints this as news.
OK, so The Sopranos finally ended, after eight years, on my telly. If you haven't seen the final episode, Made In America yet, look away now. I don't even know how I managed to avoid reading about the ending for five months, but I did, and other than the scare we all got when the Guardian printed that grab of Tony asleep on a pillow, which looked like he was in a coffin, on the day after the US aired it, I've remained blissfully oblivious. So, how was David Chase going to wrap up the second greatest TV drama ever made? Well, by writing and directing the final episode (he hasn't directed since the very beginning), and by not wrapping everything up. Apart from Phil's assassination, which had to happen - and gruesome it was too - and Tony's crew leaving behind "the mattresses" to return to normal life (the kind of normal life where you could be dead at any second, as Tony discussed with Bobby in the first episode of the final run), there was no sense of everything being tied up. Certainly, AJ seemed to pull himself together, but that was very messy, and anyway, he's pulled himself together before and it hasn't lasted. Quite what Meadow was doing having all that trouble parking her Lexus, I don't know (you might look for symbolism in the fact that AJ's SUV blew up, but then again, he seemed to have merely downgraded to a BMW in its place, so not exacly the cleansing rebirth it at first seemed). Chase has warned people off reading too much into it, but the music has always been so carefully chosen on The Sopranos it's hard not to seek enlightenment in Journey's Don't Stop Believin', the final tune, with its talk of "strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard, their shadows searching in the night". Also, check out this verse:
Working hard to get my fill, Everybody wants a thrill Payin anything to roll the dice, Just one more time Some will win, some will lose Some were born to sing the blues Oh, the movie never ends It goes on and on and on and on
Whether Chase likes it or not, this song seems to hint that Tony is not dead. Born to sing the blues, perhaps, but the movie never ends. (I actually don't care if it means anything or not, I lap this stuff up.) I haven't really investigated the message boards yet, but with Phil dead, why would somebody shoot Tony? Aren't the two families square, after the meeting in that hellish barn? The closest Tony came to death in the series was when his own uncle shot him, suggesting that family will be the death of him in the end.
It's been a glorious run. I've thoroughly enjoyed the second half of the final season. Possibly some of the best episodes of the the lot. The final episode sort of ducked out of competing for being anyone's favourite. It just rolled on, and ended. I was as frustrated as anybody when it did this, the sudden cut, the blank screen, but the more I think about it (and there's a novelty, television you think about afterwards), the more apt it becomes. What did we expect? A Mexican stand-off? A musical number? A wedding? A speech to camera? The sound of Chase yelling, "Cut!" and the actors returning to being themselves? No, a blank screen will do for me.
Thank heavens for all the other American shows I've previously mentioned to tide me over until The Wire Season Five finally gets here in 2008.
No, not the "torture porn" film that's out at the cinemas tomorrow, I just used that sexy title to lure you into reading another blog entry about supermarkets. Sort of. The reasons are not interesting, but I needed to buy a hacksaw the other day, as the thing I asked the man at the wood-cutting desk in B&Q wasn't able to do it. He directed me to the saw aisle where I found it affixed to the backing card, above. I bought it. It is a small but effective metal hacksaw. And it cost ...
78p. That's seventy eight of your English pence. Now let's remove B&Q's mark-up from this and wonder how much it actually cost to manufacture. 40p? 30p? Remember, it may only be two bits of metal joined together, but it's still a precision tool that has to work, and yet it costs mere pence. Somewhere down the supply chain, somebody is being exploited for this item to be so cheap, surely. It's like the loss leaders in Tesco, the toilet paper and the milk and the bread. Unless you know something about hacksaw manufacture that I don't.
I should have bought a more expensive one, just on principle, but I thought I could at least make an example of it on Britain's premier political discussion forum.
OK, the coffee-loving, gym-going, procrastinating comedian and writer Richard Herring regularly donates a page of his Warming Up blog to the New Statesman website (easy money, but then again, writing a blog every day, as he does and has done for about five years, is no mean feat). One feature the website offers is an automated audio version of Richard's column - not a podcast with Rich reading out his scabrous words, but that of a robotic female voice-recognition software programme. If you want to cheer yourself up in this world of torture and abuse and corruption and hypocrisy and Abel & Cole selling out to a private equity firm, why not click on the "Listen" option and enjoy this column about swear words being read out by a posh lady. Oh, and then you can leave a comment underneath (that's a neat idea), and tell him he's not funny, and then run away. If you're a twat.
Torture is as the forefront of my mind. I'm reading Naomi Klein's compelling and wide-ranging The Shock Doctrine, as I've mentioned, which I wish was lighter so I could take it out with me on the train - although my "train book" at the moment is Fiasco by Thomas E Ricks, the most detailed book I've read about the Iraq war, which contains a whole section on Abu Ghraib. Last night I caught up with HBO's powerful The Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib, an account of the atrocities that went on at Saddam's old prison and put 12 soldiers in prison, or else they were demoted. This was a clear, unsensational, narration-free documentary, which spoke to a number of soldiers charged with abuse, who tried to describe why they did it. I also saw Rendition on Friday, the first Hollywood blockbuster to directly address America's renamed habit of removing terrorist suspects to other countries, there to interrogate them in what is now a government-sponsored manner. (The definition of "torture" was rewritten after September 11 so that only endangerment of life or acts that might lead to organ failure are now deemed torture: all manner of degradation, psychological tricks and abuse were sanctioned under the signature of Donald Rumsield, about whom I recently read the simply relentless but essential book Rumsfeld: An American Disaster by Andrew Cockburn. One such is making a prisoner stand for four hours at a time, to which Rumsfeld made a footnote: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is there a four hour limit on standing?", missing the point in a way that either suggests pure evil or weapons-grade idiocy, neither of which is very comforting.) And, to add to my current torture-a-thon, last night's Spooks saw Harry cross that particular line, in order to save London from half a million plague fatalities.
In Ghosts, we saw clips of Dr Stanley Milgram's film Obedience, which blew my mind, even though I'd read about the experiments he conducted in 1961. In brief (and I've lifted some of this from Wikipedia to save my typing shoulder, but it tallies with what I already know): the role of the "experimentor" in these tests done at Yale was played by a stern, impassive biology teacher dressed in a technician's coat, and the "victim" was played by an accountant trained to act for the role. The participant and the victim (supposedly another volunteer, but in reality a "confederate" of the experimentor) were told by the experimentor that they would be participating in an experiment helping his study of memory and learning in different situations. The "teacher" and the "learner" (apparently chosen by slips of paper, but both slips said "teacher" to guarantee that the real participant would assume this role) were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. (Read on, if you don't know the tests. It's astonishing.)
The "teacher" was given a 45-volt electric shock from an electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then made to give word tests to the "learner" - if the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to the learner, with the voltage increasing for each wrong answer. In reality, there were no shocks. The "learner" just acted a response, increasingly severe as the voltage increased. If you see the footage, you'll see that the acting was good, and as the screams increase, it's totally macabre. After a number of increases, the actor would bang on the wall and protest about a heart condition. At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment. But most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal encouragements from the man in the white coat, the experiment was halted.
In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65% (26 out of 40) of participants administered the experiment's final 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment; some said they would refund the money they were being paid. No participant steadfastly refused to administer shocks before the 300-volt level, despite the screams.
There was, understandably, a lot of ethical criticism of the tests. (Probably from people who wouldn't mind if it was monkeys or mice.) Clearly, this was a very stressful position to put even volunteers into - I'm surprised Balls Of Steel haven't revived it (maybe they have, I only watched it once). The implication was not necessarily that 65% of people would willingly torture, but that they would if they were told to do so by a figure of authority. I wonder if, 46 years on, people would be more, or less likely to comply? Certainly the soldiers on Ghosts, male and female, as we know, blamed their behaviour on the stress of being at war, the need to let off steam, peer pressure, boredom and ignorance. Even though it was later established that 90% of Iraqis being held were innocent, these night-shift military police treated the prisoners as if they were guilty and this abuse, much of it involving nudity and a strangely homoerotic manipulation of bodies, was either punishment for something, or a way of preparing them for interrogation. One soldier, Sabrina Harman, said that she stuck her thumbs in the air and smiled for the camera in the incriminating photos of her with a dead body, and with naked prisoners in a big pile, because that's what she does in photos. She got six months.
I am haunted by the world I live in. So let's stop arguing about the merits of a sitcom for a moment. Anybody else see any of these films or progammes? Anybody else reading Klein, or the other books? Is it just me who's obsessed by all this?
Another plug, not because I really think you'll rush out and buy it just because I mention it on my blog, but the DVD of Not Going Out Series One is in the shops today. I've just been a bought a copy. (It's quicker than waiting to be sent one.) Although I am understandably bitter not to have been involved in the audio commentaries - Lee did them with director Alex - they are very funny, and reveal some things that I didn't know, such as, at last, the origin of the theme song. It was written by Alex Hardcastle, our aforementined director (I had no idea), and sung by the bloke who impersonates Frank Sinatra in the Rat Pack show that was still on in the West End at the time. I don't know his name, but there you go.
The final episode of NGO on Friday managed to pull 3.6 million viewers, which I'm really chuffed about. Thank you for watching.
A plug, but at least a very creative one. On Friday producer Caroline and I finished making our documentary for Radio 4 about the history of the rockumentary. It's called Rockumentary Rollercoaster (for want of a title easier to marker pen onto a sheet of cardboard), and airs on November 13, as far as I know, on Radio 4. Because, among others, we have interviewed DA Pennebaker, who shot Dylan's Don't Look Back (I know, I know, it doesn't have an apostrophe, but I couldn't bring myself to leave it out) in 1965, and use that as our jumping off point, thereafter attempting the impossible feat of covering this fascinating subject in just 30 minutes, it was Caroline's genius idea of finding the exact spot behind the Savoy Hotel where Dylan stood with his cue cards and present the introduction to the show from there. This, we did. (I know it's radio, but you can't fake these things.) Anyway, we took a publicity shot while we were on hallowed ground and this is it. I doubt it'll be printed anywhere else because I'm too small in the shot, but it's a fabulous souvenir. All we knew is that the alley was round the back of the Savoy, so when we found it, it was truly thrilling, just like the first time you see the Abbey Road zebra crossing, or the tenement block from Physical Graffiti in New York, which I once had pointed out to me.
Most people will already know that you can send your own personalised Subterranean Homesick Blues film as a message via the official Bob Dylan site. You can't embed them yet, but here are some grabs of the one I just sent to myself. A fantastic way for us to advertise the show, virally, I guess. Get yours done here.
The train I get every morning to my office is on a very good, direct line into Central London. Although on the way home I have to pick my train carefully, as the lines diverge and spread out across the South of England and thus not all of them stop at my home station, on the way in, as for everybody else, all trains stop at exactly the same further five stops, the last and most popular of which is a busy mainline London station. These trains come every three to four minutes at peak times, on both platforms. Even at off-peak times you'll never have to wait longer than about five minutes. I repeat, it's an excellent line. (Having lived outside the M25 for three years, I know what it's like to get a suburban train into London, and this is nothing like it.)
The station where I get off is, is a connecting station; thus, a lot of people get on and off here. Every morning, as I disembark usually between eight and nine o'clock, I have to fight my way through the scrums outside the train doors. People clamour to get on, especially at the end of the platform nearest the entrance. But this is just passengers who are already waiting for train. There's another imminent wave, charging down the stairs when they see that a train is in the station, barging past people coming up the stairs, dashing for the train doors, which are bleeping as they are about to close automatically, and the guard is blowing his whistle and shouting, clearly, "Stand clear of the closing doors please!" But still they dash and barge, with a look of sheer panic in their eyes, many of them not in a fit state to walk briskly, let alone run, but they put themselves through this torture anyway, because ... why? If they don't they'll have to wait three minutes for the next identical train? What is it about commuting that sends these ordinary, seemingly sensible people insane? I've seen people throw themselves, sometimes with a heavy bag or case, at the diminishing gap between automatically closing doors. Sometimes they make it, like Indiana Jones, sometimes they are clamped between the doors, so that the driver has to reopen them. (And guess what happens when they reopen? Exactly. More panicking commuters cram in.)
What is that pushes these people to the edge? Let's generously discount those passengers who descend the stairs but do not realise that another train will be along in three minutes. Fair enough. They might think that if they miss this one, they'll have to wait 20 minutes, or longer, for the next London train. In the same spirit of fairness, let's discount a few more who simply do not know anything about overground train lines - they're lost, or they're foreign visitors, or, even more likely, they have seen others doing the four-minute mile with a brief case and imagine that there must be some urgency, so they pick up speed too. And maybe some of the commuters are actually late for work, and three minutes will actually affect whether or not they are sacked or reprimanded, or will lose them an important client. Fair enough. But for most people making a mad-eyed oaf of themselves, getting all het up and sweaty and out of breath, and actually risking personal injury in those jaw-like doors (which, by the way, are nothing like as malleable as Tube doors - these ones close tight), the added stress is unecessary. I say: calm down, commuters. Chill. It's not as desperate as you think. I worry that the modern world is killing these people. But they are bringing it on themselves.
Equally, people who use their car horns unecessarily. For instance, the person who rammed their fist on the horn on Saturday evening when, in busy Central London, a driver at a crossroads snuck over a light and momentarily blocked oncoming traffic, trapped out there in the yellow grid. It was moderately annoying, but nothing that doesn't happen every 10 minutes in a congested city centre, and yet, about two cars behind me, this driver felt that the only proper response to the possiblity that his journey might be extended by three minutes, was to actually hold down his car horn to create an angry, unbroken siren, thus winding everybody else up. You might say that by sounding his horn this driver (and yes, I believe he was in a van) was releasing his tension, rather than holding it in, and might actually reduce his chances of getting cancer in later life, but externally he was merely adding to the stress of driving in a city. My guess is that by sounding the horn he was addressing the other driver and simply expressing his displeasure. But what would a horn do the driver who was now trapped out in the middle of a box junction? Within about 30 second, the traffic moved, and he was able to move forward, and we were able to move forward too within the green light.
There are an awful lot of stressed people out there, and they seem to be spreading the stress, is what I'm saying. It makes me feel even less like running for trains, which I make it my business never to do anyway. (People run for Tubes all the time. See a closing door, run for it! After all, the next train might not arrive for another two minutes, and then where would we be? I actually saw a woman with a baby in a push chair instinctively go to prevent the doors from closing on a Tube train with the push chair ie. with her baby. We are all going to hell, aren't we?)
To a restaurant/bar called Floridita last night for the MD&JA, or the Magazine Design & Journalism Awards, which you may remember I attended last year to be beaten in the Reviewer Of The Year category by the New Statesman's TV reviewer Andrew Billen. This year I was there to be beaten in the Reviewer Of The Year category by the New Statesman's film reviewer Ryan Gilbey. I mention this only because Paul Ross was the event's host. It was supposed to be Daisy Dononvan, but, we were told, she had to pull out for "personal reasons" (with a hint that we would read all about it in the papers this morning - nothing in the Guardian).
Anyway, Ross did a warm-up routine that had the whiff of What He Always Does At This Type Of Event. Fair enough. Late booking and everything, and to host any industry event is to be on a hiding to nothing, as everybody rudely talks all the way through the preamble. I've seen Chris Tarrant and Angus Deayton die at such events, in both cases, we may rest assured, thinking about the money as they cracked gags to a talking room. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Paul Ross does a couple of gags about his brother, Jonathan, one about the money he earns, two about his speech impediment. He also does this one, which I shall attempt to repeat verbatim.
"Jonathan's happily married with a family. You've probably seen his wife Jane. Have you seen his wife Jane? Yeah? She's a babe. Isn't she? She's a babe. [comic pause] Yeah, have you seen the film Babe? Oink oink."
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he actually did a pig noise. Needless to say, he lost the room at this point, and only got it back when he started reading out the nominees. This was a man addressing a couple of hundred magazine journalists, many of them women, and he thought that describing his own sister-in-law as a pig was a funny joke to tell. Talk about misjudging the mood.
A young foreign gentleman in a distinctive kagoule and hat did not try to thrust a free copy of men's weekly Shortlist at me when I emerged from the train station yesterday morning. Has it gone under already?
I'm reading a book called Tescopoly by Andrew Simms, which is very good, in that it tells me a lot of stuff I already know being an avid reader of dangerous anti-capitalist literature but tells me it in a very clear and inspiring way. As you might guess, it's about Big Supermarkets and how they are destroying communities and fucking up the environment and taking away choice by offering choice. There's nothing new here, but it's so current, and Tesco, which Simms picks out for special treatment because it's the biggest and most voracious of all the supermarket chains, is not satisfied yet. CEO Terry Leahy famously told Management Today in 2004 that because Tesco accounted for one pound out of every eight spent on food in Britain, there was still seven pounds to go after. Tesco are already in Asia and Eastern Europe; America is next. This is not a story unique to Tesco, and I'm not going to rant about them, because I'm no angel, I do some of my shopping in supermarkets (although not Tesco), and I also live in a big city where I can much more easily pick and choose where I buy my salad leaves and chicken thighs. The thing that's been bothering me as I read yet another anti-corporate tract is this: what makes a capitalist? Are we all pre-programmed to desire "growth" and "expansion", or is that just the type of entrepreneur, like Leahy (he grew up in a "prefab maisonette" in Liverpool, we're always told), who feels that he has something to prove?
I have realised that I would make a useless capitalist. I am a small businessman, in that I'm self-employed, and ticking along fine, but aside from the pleasure I get from my work, I do it in order to make enough money to live comfortably. I have no burning desire to "expand", or buy a second car, or a second house, and doubt I ever will do. I'm sure that if I owned a shop, I would be happy if I made a profit sufficient to keep trading. I may be dreaming, of course, but it seems to me that the only mark of success in business is to get bigger, buy a second shop, buy a third shop. That's how Tesco started, and all the rest. Small, "family" concerns like Innocent and Green & Blacks and Ben & Jerry all start out as little backroom operations, but these types of business become successful and the next thing you know, they're either selling out ethicially, or literally, or floating on the stock market (whatever that means). I believe Innocent have their sights set on America. Why? Don't tell me it's to bring healthy smoothies to a wider public. I don't believe it. It's to make more money. Now, I'm not a economist, which is why I'm baffled, truly baffled, by the holy grail of "growth". But does every businessman/woman or trader have to dream of taking over the world? isn't it shareholders and the City that cause all the trouble? I'm also reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, which joins a lot of dots and looks at the sinister, deadly side of Milton Friedman free market economics, but the thread is the same: deregulated trade is king, all competition must be trodden into the dirt, and if they can't compete, it's their stupid fault. There is no room for the individual, ticking-over small business in this utopia. Mrs Thatcher used to go on about the small businessman, but look what her beloved free market did for such small businesses in the end. One of the reasons Tesco has the lead on out-of-town supermarkets is that it was rich enough to buy up loads of land in advance. Apparently they have enough to take 45% of the market, should they be allowed to build on all of it. How is the small trader to compete with that?
So I come back to my point: what makes a capitalist? I'm pretty sure that I don't have the gene. Is that possible? Or am I just allowing my dangerous Communist views to stifle what is a natural instinct to shop my neighbour and steal their roses? From birth now we are assaulted by images of things that we ought to own, in order to improve our lives. The pitch is almost deafening. I come from a generation that was more satisfied with less things, and was prepared to wait for them. Those born after 1975 who grew up with video and multiple TV channels and computers are less likely to know that experience. And for as long as we believe that whatever we have isn't enough, capitalism and growth will never be defeated. We must be a nation of shop-users for the shopkeepers to continue to expand. And yet it's far easier to walk out of a small shop with just what we went in for, than a huge barn of a supermarket.
I don't mean this to be a soapbox entry as such. I'm just actually fascinated by this apparently genetic need to be more successful. It even infects the BBC, where I do a lot of my work, and that's a publicly-funded body. For 6 Music to be deemed a success it must get bigger; it must get more listeners. Why must it? Why can't it just be good and get better? Green & Blacks must get bigger, and if that means selling out to Cadbury, one of the biggest chocolate manufacturers in the world (who now benefit from the prestige and eco-credentials of having G&B in its "portfolio"), so be it. Small price to pay.
Oh by the way, you can buy Tescopoly from Tesco's. You almost have to admire them for that. But then again, profit is profit, wherever it comes from.
... American telly. I know, I know, we only get the best of it here, but so what? I'm not saying I like all American telly, I'm just saying I like an awful lot of what we're currently getting over here. Brothers & Sisters has just finished, and it has been my favourite schmaltz of the year (possibly the only schmaltz I would make an appointment to view). The Sopranos is moving inexorably towards its conclusion (don't tell me what happens), with all the grace and patience and entitlement of a great beast heading for its natural place to die. The [exciting twist] that occured last Sunday was such a jolt, and so casually handled. I feel as excited as I imagine Harry Potter fans do when finding out if or when a favourite character will make it to the end. Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is, I feel, slightly unloved here - as indeed it was unloved there. I see no downside to Aaron Sorkin's skyscraping confidence, and, yeah, so the characters all speak in that special Sorkin way, so that they're all clever and pithy and quick and meaningful, but that's why I tune in. That's why I truly wish it would never end, which is a pointless wish, as it will. I particularly like Amanda Peet as Jordan McDeere, and Steven Weber as Jack Rudolph, and these are the execs - that's how good it is! (Perry and Whitford go without saying.) Entourage I'm late with. (Is this the third season on ITV2?) But it's a real tonic after the hour-long eps of all shows mentioned already, as it flies past in 22 minutes, just like Sports Night and Seinfeld and Raymond used to. Like everybody else, I am particularly fond of Jeremy Piven's agent character, Ari. It's about an actor and his gang. It shouldn't be endearing. It is. The Riches, jewel in the crown on Virgin 1, is the spikiest of the new imports, more in the vein of Six Feet Under, and bravest, too, centring as it does on a gypsy family (not hoping for Jimmy Carr among its target audience, then). Eddie Izzard just about keeps his American accent up, and the story that's already developing has a darkness beneath its capering and class satire that keeps it this side of a comedy. Only on Episode Two, so plenty still to prove. The other two newies turned up on the same night on Five, and are thus still in a holding pattern. Of the two, Californication, worst title of any series, any nationality, for a long time, is the most promising, despite an overpreponderence of female flesh, as if to prove how "edgy" it is. As long as it calms down, post-pilot, and gets into character, rather than just trying to frighten horses, David Duchovny might have found that difficult "second role" as a scumbag writer. His only redeeming feature can't just be his handsome face. There must be more. And last, 30 Rock surprised me, as it's a sitcom, not a drama. I was expecting the latter, clearly not having read enough advance hype. I liked Tina Fey, who I've never seen before, who seems to have created it, writes some of it, and is a producer as well as the star, so good going for her. Alex Baldwin: yet another past-prime Hollywood actor who's found a new lease of life on telly. This is a little loud and brash for my tastes, especially the Marin Lawrence parody played by Tracy Morgan, and as such is clearly never going to be a patch on Sanders or Studio 60 in terms of TV-based shows, but there's a spark here. Fuck, that's an awful lot of US telly I'm watching. I still like Jamie At Home!
To the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts ("working to remove the barriers to social progress") in this fine old building tucked behind the Strand in London's busy West End. I was invited to take part in one of their Thursday lunchtime debates, entitled How the digital revolution is changing the way we discover, create and consume media. It was about the digitopia and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. David Jennings, a smart individual who runs an online learning consultancy and is also a trained psychologist, has written what looks like an interesting new book called Net, Blogs & Rock'N'Roll, which formed the centrepiece of the debate, with a very nifty PowerPoint presentation to go with it about the "discovery" part of the download/online/networking world we are all now forced to inhabit. David's view is not apocalyptic, by the way - he's all for it, and just believes we have to adjust to the new methods of discovery, and see them as enabling rather than oppressive. The other panellists were a Swiss-born musician, Claire Tchaikowski, who was dropped by her record label with the masters to her first album (produced by Mike Hedges), and our chair, Paul Hitchman, founder of Playlouder.com. While David delivered his address, with slides, I grew more and more passionate about my angle, which was to express my concern about the download world. I had brought along with me, showman that I am, a plastic bag full of vinyl records (including the first record I ever owned - rather than bought - the Jungle Book soundtrack album, and the last vinyl record I'll probably ever buy, the seven-inch of Arctic Monkeys' When The Sun Goes Down from last year), and although I was very kindly introduced as a "tastemaster" when I came to speak at the lecturn I was more interested in speaking as a member of the public. A member of the public who's concerned that technology and the attendant ridiculous ease of access has created a generation who do not appreciate art, who do not value the product, as there is no product, and who have enough disposable pocket money to go and see Michael Clayton at the cinema even though they're not interested in seeing it, and then proceed to talk and text all the way through it. (Although I appreciate that not all teenagers do this, I worry about them as a whole.) I got quite worked up while saying my piece and I don't think it was out of place. I produced an empty plastic bag and said that it had the new Radiohead album in it. Ha ha. Pure theatre. After that, and Claire's tale of woe, the discussion, which included questions from the audience, covered a lot of ground, with a big focus on the record industry, but we ran out of time before we'd really scratched the surface. I hope people enjoyed it. I did. It was certainly something unusual for me to be doing of a Thursday lunchtime, and if we even nudged the barriers to social progress it was worth the Tube ride. (I hope you like all the links in this entry - I did them to impress David Jennings, as his blog's like that. Sorry, I mean his blog's like that.)
(Pictured above: what the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows, actually looks like.)
So, I've been listening to the Radiohead album pretty much non-stop since I downloaded it using my special log-in (price: five of your English pounds) at 11 minutes past 11 this morning. I was at the gym when it became available at 10am, which is a bit lax for a so-called fan. On first listen, it sounded like more of the same, a natural follow-on from Hail To The Thief with a bit of Kid A thrown in (the first track, 15 Step sounds a lot like Idioteque), but subsequent spins (ha!) reveal it to be a much more mature work than its predecessors, with lots of proper songs that rely on melody and riff rather than memorable clanking soundtracks, and even some upbeat moments. And Thom's voice is either improved, or he's using it for different jobs, singing so sweetly on tracks like Weird Fishes/Arpeggi and the string-supported Nude (are they real strings, or synthesised ones? I must check the credits on the sleeve ... let's see ... oh yeah). There's plenty of electronic invention, and strange effects, and jacknifing time-changes, and shifts in tone, mid-song, and House Of Cards is almost dub. Jigsaw Falling Into Place is a proper rock band playing together, and my favourite track thus far, All I Need gives me Blue Nile thrills. As for content, without lyrics to consult, it's difficult to say what he's singing about, as his voice is often buried under special effects, or fuzzy guitar. I must go off now and write my actual, considered, 700-word review for Word (which will hit the streets in about a month's time!), but I'm keen to hear others' thoughts.
Word have overhauled their website, thus. There is a new bit where they take feeds from other blogs, including this one. I have just signed up, which you have to do to comment and join in, and typed my username as Amdrew_Colllins (I blame the Radiohead album, which I'm listening to intently). I wonder if this entry, about the Word website, will be fed to the Word website? Let's see, shall we?
The Northampton Chronicle & Echo interviewed me, as they kindly seem to do once a week. This time it was for a piece about blogging, and I promised the writer, Lily, I would put a link to their site, so I will. Now, back to Radiohead.
I'm doing a culinary experiment whilst sitting in for George Lamb on 6 Music this week. My plan is to eat at the Pizza Express at the foot of Broadcasting House in Central London on all four nights and each night have a different salad. (I realise it's not the most exciting experiment ever conducted, but you have to make your own entertainment when you're a late-nite DJ.) Last night I ate a Chicken Caesar. Very tasty. Tonight I had a Nostrana, which is even better: it's got grated beetroot, green beans, potatos, avocado and an egg in it. Tomorrow I may have a Pollo or the Nicoise. It's going well. One comment I will make about the otherwise very nice Pizza Express is that whatever you have, even the non-pizza-based dishes, they give you dough anyway. They'll find some way of sneaking it onto your plate, in the form of sticks or balls, or else they'll convince you with their mind-control powers to get garlic bread which you know will fill you up, and is like five dough sticks stuck back together under another name. It's almost as if they like making pizzas so much they can't stop themselves sliding great tinfuls of it into that oven and as a result they've always got some left over. It's nice and everything, and you can, of course, specify that you don't want the sticks or balls, but you forget, don't you, and you end up eating a pizza anyway.
It's been 19 weeks since I last appeared on 6 Music. I'm back filling in for George Lamb again all this week, 10pm-1am, which can be a punishing shift, but it's also quite cool being on in the night time. So here I am, back in the old studio, and the machinery has already foxed me! I thought it'd be like hopping back up on a bike, but I've fluffed the pre-fade! This picture shows me asking producer Neil, "What have I done wrong with the pre-fade? Why won't it go back? Why can I still hear the beginning of the Mark Ronson track?" I'm sure it'll all come back to me before the night is out.
So much has changed round here since I last trod these carpets in May - they've got a new logo; many desks and offices stand vacant; competition prizes are piled high in every available space since we are no longer allowed to give them away; oh, and my pigeonhole has been sealed up. I don't know what happens to any residual mail that comes for me now. Perhaps it just goes in the bin. Bear that in mind if you've sent me a CD in the last four months.
Nice to hear from a handful of old listeners from the old days emailing and texting in: Chris Spurgeon, Justin, Loretta, Martin Shipperley ... in many ways it's like I haven't been away.
And I played I Believe In Miracles by the Jackson Sisters at 10.35.
Ah well, Control is as good as they said. Saw it Friday, and despite advance hype that risked eclipsing the mundane task of actually sitting in a seat and watching it for two hours, I was indeed transported to late-70s Manchester before they introduced colour to the city (it must have been murder watching the local derby in those days). Even though I've read somewhere in the region of 200 features interviewing all concerned, I still wasn't fully prepared for how uncanny the actual playing by the four young actors portraying Joy Division is. When they first launch into Leaders Of Men, if you didn't know and you weren't one of the three suriviving participants, you wouldn't for a second think it was anybody but Joy Division/Warsaw. Sam Riley (who's perhaps a little too fleshy and not blue-eyed enough for Curtis, but inhabits him nonetheless and has studied his every blink and twitch in pursuit of this supernatural channelling of the dead man's spirit), James Anthony Pearson (who managed to play Barney's guitar parts without having ever picked up a guitar before being cast), Joe Anderson (not the dead spit of Hooky but right there in attitude) and Harry Treadaway (always difficult to mimic a drummer, but he does a beat-perfect job as Stephen Morris) deserve some kind of collective acting award. It goes without saying that Samantha Morton, the only recognisable "name" actor in the film, is totally three-dimensional as Deborah Curtis, moving from schoolgirl shyness to domestic isolation with seamless subtlety, but hats off to Toby Kebbell for bringing life, once again, to Rob Gretton. It is he, not the foppish Tony Wilson, who emerges as the driving force. (It's an amazing coincidence that Kebbell first came to our attention as Anthony in Dead Man's Shoes, alongside Paddy Considine, who played Gretton in 24 Hour Party People.) Although Control is about Curtis, and his pain and morbid frustration dominate the story, it's these supporting players who prevent it from being one long Anton Corbijn photograph. They bring the humour, which is an essential part of Manchester life. I worried that the Dutchman might have missed this, but to his credit, he didn't. Matt Greenhalgh's script even chucks in a joke about Mark E Smith. One for the gallery.
Talking of humour, it's odd to have seen the Joy Division story (ie. the story of Ian Curtis) already played on film, except almost solely for laughs. Even his suicide in 24 Hour Party People had a comic edge. Not in Control. This is a relentlessly grim film, with its tower blocks and overcast skies and grey shirts and sticky carpets, but it teems with life. The early scenes when schoolboy Ian brings home his prized new copy of Aladdin Sane in a paper bag keenly recreate the shared love and escape of music that was so much more vital in the 70s before video and computers and Channel 4. The detail is breathtaking: the NME photos stuck to bedroom walls (later echoed by Joy Division's first cover story), the old-fashioned light switches, the pint glasses with handles, the fact that none of Curtis's pill bottles had child-proof caps ... it's a period drama just like any Dickens or Austen, it just happens to be a period many of us actually lived through. And yes, John Cooper Clarke plays himself, almost 30 years ago, and it works.
It's a shame that there's only one cast recording of a Joy Division song on the actual soundtrack album (there are ten in the film, from Candidate to Love Will Tear Us Apart), but then again, the other music chosen is just as evocative, from Bowie's Warszawa and Drive-In Saturday to Iggy Pop's Sister Midnight and Roxy's 2HB.
Another plus: there were no stupid teenagers in the cinema on Friday. Just grown-up music fans. It was a pleasure, almost unknown these days, to sit in a cinema in collective reverence.
I've been listening to, and enjoying, Ian Brown's new album The World Is Yours. The reviews have generally been positive (he has a lot of goodwill in the bank for calling an album King Monkey, I think - that, and some residual Stone Roses love from older listeners), but I've detected a rather unfair sniggering at his "political" lyrics, as if perhaps it's uncool to be singing about Iraq and street kids and the environment. Now, I'm not saying Illegal Attacks is poetry ("So what the fuck is this UK/Gunnin' with this US of A/In Iraq and Iran and in Afghanistan ... bring the soldiers back etc."), but at least the bloke's having a go at addressing the world around him, which you can't say for most "indie" or "rock" bands these days. In a post-Coldplay world, where everbody "cares" but nobody's putting it into lyrics, I salute Ian Brown for trying a bit harder.
Also, who's to argue with this sentiment from Street Children: "Wish I had a home with ten million rooms/I'd open up the doors and let the street children through/Wish that I could scoop up all those children in my arms/Give them all they needed to protect them all from harm"? What a pity the social conscience in mainstream rock has become such a laughing matter.
I'm wary about getting into a debate over the rights and wrongs of Michael Moore. But there's a new documentary out, Manufacturing Dissent, by Canadian filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk that has been picked off of the herd because, hey, it's not been made by Republicans! In fact, they claim to be "fans". However, the fact that they can't get an interview with Moore while making their film (anyone spotting the giftwrapped irony?) and are denied accreditation while tailing him on various promotional tours, Caine and Melnyk turn, and wind up making a film that attacks, or at least undermines, Moore, just like all those right-wing books and films called things like Michael Moore: He's Actually A Thin Fascist And He Doesen't Really Wear Baseball Caps. I watched the film (which is out tomorrow, although seemingly only in one cinema in London - it follows on DVD on October 22) today, albeit with little enthusiasm. I'm a fan of Moore, and not just because I went out for a Chinese meal with him in Soho the night before interviewing him onstage at the NFT in 2002 [full transcript here], because I actually think he has done some good. No, he didn't alter the course of the Presidential Election in 2004 - indeed, you might argue that his support for Ralph Nader helped lose it for the Democrats in 2000 - but he encouraged plenty of students to register to vote on his college tour that year, and whatever you may think of them, his documentaries (or polemics, which is what they really are), have opened the floodgates for non-fiction filmmakers, not all of them good, and many of them just mini-Moores, but to have docs opening in theatres as a regular occurence can't be a bad thing. Manufacturing Dissent isn't really joining them. It's not a brilliant film.
Some of the facts it states may be news to anyone who doesn't follow in detail the Moore Witch Hunt. That he actually had interviewed Roger Smith, CEO of GM, despite this failure to do so being the core of his film Roger & Me. In fact, he'd interviewed him before making the film, when he worked for Nader, but it was on film, so he could have used it - instead, he chose a more effective narrative and worked to that. Again and again he is accused of manipulating the truth to serve the purpose of a point. He's addressed this. There's even a clip of him addressing it in this film (which reflects well on the openmindedness of the filmmakers, by the way, but also becomes problematic, which I'll come to) - he admits to manipulation. Someone else with an axe to grind accuses him of using "the tools of the the editor." We're into BBC territory here again. When Charlton Heston walks away from him in Fahrenheit 9/11 it cuts to a shot of Moore looking disappointed. Well this wasn't shot at the same time, or else we'd be able to see another camera as Heston walks past it. We can't. It was shot afterwards. This is editing. It is indeed a tool. "The Canadians", as they call themselves, each time they pop up to try and get a Moore face-to-face, also "reveal" that Moore didn't grow up in working-class Flint, but in the more middle-class suburb of Davison, ten miles outside. This is like accusing me of not coming from Northampton because I was raised for a few years in Duston, on the outskirts of town. It's nitpicking, and it's a soft target. It's beneath Caine and Melnyk, as it's a common route taken by the right to "discredit" the left.
There's a really interesting clip of Moore being cross-examined by TV host Phil Donohue, early on in his career, and he virtually denies knowing certain people with whom he'd worked on the Nader team, which is unbecoming for Moore. Certainly, he has an ego. And yes, he can come across as paranoid, another barb, and controlling. He obviously is. And I don't think it was very nice to rubbish Nader voters when he switched to the Democrats in 2004, realising that they were the only viable lever with which to oust Bush. He's filmed wherever he appears, and this stuff will always get out. Perhaps that's why he had the Canadians thrown out of a rally because they had falsified accreditation to get in. They cite this, boldly, as using Moore's own tactics against him (he did it to gain access to the plant in Roger - true). But they were found out, and thrown out. If you play dirty, with whatever higher moral purpose, you may get ejected from premises. Which leads me to my final complaint. It's a whiny film. Moore even gives them a 20-minute interview at the end. In many ways, I'd rather their film was fuelled by righteous anger than a bruised ego.
Michael Moore's new film is out in a few weeks. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing it. He's got problems, for sure, but his real crime, it seems to me, is to be successful. I thought that was a good thing in America, but apparently not. He's indulged in a lot of creative editing. I found his racist montage to illustrate the Coalition Of The Willing in Fahrenheit to be its one bum note, and such oversights do taint the work, but at the end of the day, he does more good than harm. And he was good company at that Chinese.
How interesting is Sir Paul McCartney's new haircut? Very, seems to be the answer. It seems to have made the papers because it is a moptop, a bit like the one he used to have when he had a moptop. (Hey, Gordon Brown standing in front of some soldiers isn't the only thing that's happening in the news!) Paul is 65. He is often accused - and it is an accusation - of trying to recapture his youth through his hair. Why? We all find a haircut that we can live with, usually sometime after our twenties, and it's likely to be one we had in our youth. I spent most of my thirties with variations on a quiff, and have in my forties settled into a longer fringe, which basically harks back to my early New Romantic style. Hair loss often dictates which way you go, too. Looking at the fine head of hair my dad has in his sixties, I'm fairly confident mine will see me through a few more decades.
McCartney is, of course, under unlikely scrutiny. (If Linda had never died and he hadn't sought a new, younger, more glamorous wife, my guess is that we'd have allowed him to slip into his autumn years with whatever the hell hairstyle he liked, but the "wisps of grey" he "allowed to show" after his divoice from Heather were a sign of depression, according to the armchair psychologists who write for the likes of the Mail. Not neglect due to having other stuff on his mind, then?) Macca even had to go on record two years ago to insist that, yes, he was dyeing his hair, but no, it wasn't under pressure from his scary wife. He'd been colouring it for years. To quote Macca himself - "Shock horror!"
Writing a song called When I'm 64 when he was 16 (although it wasn't recorded until he was 25) was always going to come back to bite him on the arse, but the world's moved on. Gentlemen of 65 wear trainers. They wear fleeces and hooded tops and jeans and, as a rule, don't wear flat caps like they used to. (The flat cap became de rigueur for working men because it kept the head warm and could be taken off and folded up in a coat pocket once inside the pub. Which is why the baseball cap has superceded it, a development that has further sealed the generation gap.) But what of the moptop? Is it acceptable for a 65-year-old man, regardless of whether he helped popularise the style in the first place, to have a whispy fringe and a bit of a bouffant on top and hair over the ears? I hope so. I saw an old man at the station this morning with a full combover, the kind that comes from behind both ears and is greased over the top of the balding dome, effectively glued there for the day. I couldn't help but think that such a hairstyle will soon be extinct. Vanity, and not just in rock stars, has crept in. Even those who despise our image-obsessed culture can surely be thankful for that!
I had my hair cut today, as usual self-conscious about using a salon at my advancing age, but look, I had a moptop. I am 23 years younger than Paul McCartney.
So, the Charlatans are giving away their next album for free and Radiohead are giving theirs away for 45p (which is an administration cost, apparently). Hark! Is that the sound of the record industry crumbling into the sea? Coming in the same year as the Mail On Sunday's Great We-Don't-Give-A-Fuck-About-Prince Prince Giveaway, this sort of wayward behaviour puts the "traditonal" retailers in a spin, and new bands, who can't necessarily afford to give their records (or downloads) away, secure in the knowledge that they'll recoup at the arenas and civic halls. As the Guardian are so fond of asking: should we be worried?
It seems to be a win-win for fans of the Charlatans or Radiohead. Alan McGee, who manages the Charlatans, has come up with the following cunning plan: the band will offer their forthcoming single You Cross My Path and subsequent album free as a download on the Xfm website. So, it's not a deal with a stupid old archaic record company, but it is a deal with a commercial radio station. (The band must get something in return for this fantastic traffic-booster for the website - lots of free advertising, and airplay, one assumes. So let's not for a moment imagine that McGee's doing it for the kids. He's a businessman, and a great marketeer, and he's come up with a good one this time. "Nobody buys CDs anyway," is his soundbite.) Like Prince, were the Charlatans to just release their next album, normally, it would hardly be front page news. Well, now it might well be. Ker-ching! Prince was the talk of the town when he turned up for his O2 gigs, and all thanks to the Daily Mail, who "sampled" thousands of new readers with the free-CD offer and racked up acres of coverage in rival newspapers. Ker-ching!
Radiohead are doing something slightly different. Their next album, In Rainbows is going for whatever fans wish to pay for it. The price is literally voluntary - you fill it in yourself on their website, honesty tin style. It's as much of a marketing ploy as McGee's but done more quietly, announced only through their site, and chimes with their no-logo noise-making. (There's this 45p admin cost, and of course, in order to download the album you have to enter your details, which I'm sure Radiohead won't be using to their own advantage. But beyond that, a brand new album for under 50p is a bargain. Especially if it's as good as their last album. They've had four years to make it.)
The big question is: does free music devalue music? I've had this debate many times over free DVDs with newspapers. Part of me thinks: great! Free films for all! Another part of me thinks: will the constant availability of gratis movies eventually devalue movies as a whole? Who's going to pay full price for one and cherish it if it might be bagged with next weekend's Sunday Telegraph? You might equally say: the record companies and video companies have been ripping us all off for years with their over-marked-up shiny discs - it's about time we had payback! I'm not thinking about the money, though, but the principle. Already we have a generation of kids who go to the cinema to talk to each other and send texts, with not an ounce of wonder or respect for the film they're nominally there to see. If they expect music and films to cost nothing, will they ever love them the way we did, and still do?
For the record: I've paid five pounds for my Radiohead album, out of courtesy for the creative energy invested in it. I look forward to downloading it with my special code on October 10. I wonder if they'll offer me a refund if I don't like it? Perhaps we should be able to download it first and pay afterwards, as if giving a tip in a restaurant for good service. Frankly, I'd pay full price for the next Radiohead album without seeing or hearing it first. Radiohead have earned that kind of loyalty from me.
This is an advert, for a product, made by people who are trying cleverly to make you buy it. Not my usual sort of thing. But it is fucking brilliant*. Just promise you won't be influenced to buy the thing it's advertising if you enjoy it. Deal? Good.
*Actually, having read about it in whichever media section I read about it in this morning, it's not quite as good as I'd hoped, but it's still worth a look.
Because I was on News 24 on Friday, filling in for Mark Kermode, I saw three big films in two days at the end of last week. This is me sitting next to Gavin Esler and concentrating really hard so as not to nervously swing around on the swivel chair like I did last time.
And this is me talking, about the following films:
Michael Clayton is the latest legal potboiler from Hollywood, this time the directorial debut of Tony Gilroy (who scripted, or co-scripted the Bourne trilogy, and wrote this). Now, I don't mind admitting that I love George Clooney. If I were female or gay, I would fancy him. As it is, I'm just glad he's around on the big screen, filling it with his old fashioned movie star looks and presence. For me, he's in the mould of Gary Cooper, or Clark Gable - that is, not necessarily the greatest actor ever to walk the earth, but one with whatever alchemy it is that makes someone a movie star. He's also a hardworking Hollywood liberal, which means the projects he takes on - such as Syriana or the self-directed Good Night, And Good Luck - are not the standard, right-wing studio slop. Michael Clayton is an odd one, though. Certainly, its anti-corporate, pro-environment message (he's a law firm "fixer" expected to clean up when attorney Tom Wilkinson loses it after 15 years of defending an indefensible agrichemical giant) is a happy fit with today's "liberal porn", but it's not a campaigning piece. Rather, it's a downbeat character study in which Clooney doesn't smile once (or at least, when he does it's false). His marriage is over, he gambles, his brother's a junkie and he owes thousands of dollars after a bad restaurant venture. This is a refreshing role for Clooney, and sets the tone for the whole piece, which is dark and broody and paints a vulgar picture of corporate power. I cannot trust my own judgement on Clooney films though, as I love him too much.
The Brave One is also about law, but not the corporate kind. We're down on the streets, and in those tunnels in Central Park that nobody should ever venture down at night in films. Jodie Foster does, with her perfect boyfriend (Naveen Andrews) and lovely dog, and regrets it. Emerging from an extended spell in hospital, she turns into Charles Bronson and takes the law into her own hands. Directed by Neil Jordan (although not written by him, which is why it doesn't fit into his ouevre), it shows New York as we imagine it used to be before Guiliani "cleaned up" the city, except he didn't, as it's still wall to wall muggers and jackers and pimps, many of whom Jodie dispatches, to much cheering in American theatres, I'll be bound. It's a bit corny - Jodie has an African lady living next door who dispenses wisdom like only black characters can ("There are plenty of ways to die - you have to choose how to live"), her relationship with the cop (Terence Howard) who's after the mystery vigilante is unlikely, and one pithy line she delivers before killing a seedy pimp who called her a "supercunt" ("I'm the last supercunt you'll ever see") is pure Bruce Willis - but Jodie holds it together with her usual grumpy dynamism. Interesting how in 30 years she's gone from child prostitute protected by a vigilante in New York, to vigilante protecting prostitutes in New York: the first act of retaliatory violence even occurs in a convenience store.
3:10 To Yuma was my favourite of the three: James Mangold's old-fashioned Western. I like Westerns. I could sit down right now and watch anything with John Wayne on a horse, or Jimmy Stewart, or Gary Cooper. Thus, I approve wholeheartedly of this century's mini-revival (Open Range, Seraphim Falls, The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, The Proposition, I suppose Brokeback Mountain, although that has pick-up trucks), and 3:10, a remake of the 1957 film, is on the money. Aside from better camera techniques (you can really see the dust flying off a wheel), there's nothing you can add to an old-fashioned Western. Thus, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale play it as if they were in 1957. It may be a sign of the times that the two leads are Welsh and Antipodean, but it doesn't matter a hoot. All the boxes are ticked and I left the cinema happy. There's something back-to-basics about Westerns that appeals: a pre-techonological America - not necessarily a pretty one, but at least one where a mobile phone call can't save the day.
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