Andrew Zuckerman - Music

A handsome collection of photo portraits of famous musicians, accompanied by surprisingly substantial written pieces by the musicians themselves, mostly circling around the themes of their artistic and creative practice and what music means to them. Subjects including the contemporary and more or less so (Fiona Apple, Julian Casablancas, Bic Runga, Dizzee Rascal), others whose heyday was just a few years earlier (Billy Corgan, Sinead O'Connor), a bunch of classic songwriters and legends of their various fields (Burt Bacharach, Chrissy Hynde, Dave Brubeck, Iggy Pop, Afrika Bambaataa), a smattering of uncategorisable multi-talents and general provocateurs (Laurie Anderson, Henry Rollins, Yoko Ono), and a range of composers of various kinds (Philip Glass, John Williams, Danny Elfman).

John Rolfe and Peter Troob - Monkey Business

An amusing insiders' account of life in an investment bank written by two former Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette associates.

Hanna

This was a good one. The overt fairytale elements and motifs combine well with the rapidly paced action and the parallel coming of age-type thread; Saoirse Ronan perfectly cast.

Thor

Watchable enough; I liked the way that the magic of Asgard was rendered in a 'technology sufficiently advanced' kind of way, an idea made explicit in an exchange between two of the characters about midway through the film. Nothing special, though - more flash than substance, more sizzle than sausage.

Melancholia

For better or for worse, actors carry something of their past roles with them into every film they make; for me, in the case of Melancholia, this meant that the first half of the film (title-carded, in characteristic von Trier fashion, 'Justine') was underlaid with shadowy echoes of Marie Antoinette, another mood piece with Kirsten Dunst at the centre of a gaudy, elaborately appointed series of events and settings, and like that other, lent both intimacy and distance by Dunst's ability to convey a mingled sense of rich (if inchoate) internal emotional experience coexisting with a sort of listless, alienated affectlessness (here, through the sequence of formalities at Justine's abortive wedding, and in the other, across a series of events and vignettes mostly at Versailles).

The most striking part of the film is its vivid, symbolically-charged prelude, in which the major images and happenings of its second section, 'Claire', are foreshadowed; frankly, parts of the rest of its more than two hour running time drag. But it's certainly an experience - I'm glad that I've seen it.

(w/ Andreas)

Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot - The Numbers Game

Enjoyable and at times enlightening - a useful guide to the way that numbers are used and misused in public discourse, particularly by media types and politicians. The sorts of things that any of us would realise about the many number-type facts and figures that are constantly bandied about (expenditures, averages, comparisons, cause-and-effects, etc) if we stopped to consider them, but usually don't...a lot of salutary reminders, the most important being implicit and underlying - namely, to think critically about exactly what any particular number or statistic means.

Conan the Barbarian

Not very good. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but for some reason I am, a little bit.

13

A nasty, effective Thai thriller/horror about a man is given the opportunity to win a fortune on a mysterious reality 'game show' if he can complete 13 increasingly difficult, violent tasks.

Holly Throsby - Team

I've been sort of vaguely aware of Holly Throsby for a while, and liked her well enough when one of her songs has crossed my path (eg 1, 2). Seeker Lover Keeper is the first time I've really focused on her, though, and one of the highlights of their show the other night was Throsby's "What I Thought Of You", a gradually building and ultimately rousing folk-pop-ish number. "What I Thought Of You" is the lead-off track on her most recent album, Team, and its standout song, but the whole thing is nice - sombre, subtle and good.

Wilco - The Whole Love

They're practically part of the establishment nowadays - almost inevitable, I suppose, when you've been around for a while, become pretty popular, and kept on turning out records of impressively consistent quality every couple of years or so - but there's still a decent-sized contrary streak running through Wilco. On The Whole Love, this is most evident in their decision to put the record's most abrasive track, "Art of Almost", at track 1, though the 12 minute long, wonderfully-titled and wonderful "One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" is also a decent argument; in some ways more to the point, it's also apparent in the countless small surprises and unexpected nuances and diversions across the set, which shapes out as yet another high quality outing, if maybe not as memorable as most of theirs.

JCVD

Jean-Claude Van Damme and metafictional gestures are not two things that one expects to find side by side, but that's just what JCVD offers, in a muted, uncategorisable movie featuring Van Damme playing a version of himself who gets caught in a real life hostage situation, including one extended scene in which the actor addresses the camera, and us, directly, musing on his life and career and perhaps presenting something that resembles the 'real' Van Damme in both the film's world and ours (or does it? etc, etc).

The Story of Mary MacLane by Herself

I wanted to like this one - starring and written by Bojana Novakovic, who impressed in both Eldorado a few years back and Woyzeck more recently, and interesting-sounding in the promotional grabs. But unfortunately it was a bit of a mess - a sometimes engaging one, but overall too loosely conceived to really work, even allowing that its terrain is more a sort of a-narratival, fourth wall-breaking invocation of an idea of a character than that of a conventional drama or depiction of a person's life. Admittedly, it might have helped had I known more about the titular figure before the performance - but nonetheless.


(w/ C)

Moneyball

Well made and real-feeling. Didn't excite me, but I enjoyed it.

(w/ C)

Seeker Lover Keeper @ St Michael's church, Monday 28 November

Exactly the way you'd expect a Seeker Lover Keeper concert in a church to be. Blasko, Seltmann,
Throsby all sounded great, individually and together - often in harmonies. And seemed genuinely nice too! They would've done the whole of their lp (*), plus one of their solo songs each ("Bird On A Wire", "Emotional Champ" and a great Throsby song called "What I Thought Of You") and covers of Neil Finn's "Sinner" (fantastic) and a Stevie Nicks song called "Wild Heart" (makes perfect sense that they'd be Nicks fans).

Support act Henry Wagons.

(w/ Trang, one of her friends (Trinh?) and Meribah)

Bound

Tightly plotted noir/caper film that gets plenty of mileage out of its central protagonists being lesbians. Pretty good.