Doves - Some Cities

Say what you like about Doves, they know how to chime. I suspect that for me, they'll forever be an outfit under the shadow of their first, great album, Lost Souls, which happened to come out at the ideal time for me to get right into it; still, Some Cities has its moments...but I haven't taken it to heart.

Tift Merritt - Another Country

Several coatings glossier than Bramble Rose, Another Country is also several steps further down the 'pop' path - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, particularly when, as sometimes happens with this record, this involves echoes of Dusty Springfield along the way...

The Walkmen - A Hundred Miles Off

As usual with the Walkmen, a couple of killer songs (most notably album bookends "Louisiana" and "Another One Goes By") and a handful of other good ones, and the balance fairly indistinct. (Also, I never noticed before how much the singer sounds like Bob Dylan sometimes.) I like their sense of drama, and at their best they can be genuinely exciting, but somehow these guys have never really taken with me.

Laura Veirs - July Flame

July Flame is pretty good - probably the best thing that Veirs has done in a while (it's certainly caught my ear more than Saltbreakers or Year of Meteors). Though I haven't really been into her more recent stuff, I have a soft spot for Veirs that's about a mile wide, and if I've mostly had this one on as background music, I've been enjoying it nonetheless.

Enemy at the Gates

A war movie, and a reasonably involving one. Something's missing, though - as well mounted as the film is, it didn't really make me care.

The Hudsucker Proxy

A film that always pleases me, the Coen brothers drawing on all sorts of cinematic influences to produce an off the wall yet surprisingly cogent (on its own terms) melange, Robbins and Newman and JJL each making the screen their own every time they appear.

(last time)

Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter - Oh, My Girl

Heard a couple of songs by this outfit on last.fm a while back, and the name stuck in my head; the album's about what I'd expected, melancholy contemporary country, reminiscent at various times of Mazzy Star, Beth Orton and Kathleen Edwards. Pretty sweet, but lacking the extra ingredient that distinguishes the best artists in this territory.

Adventureland

In its low-key way, Adventureland feels heartfelt, something reflected in the relatively realistic (for the most part) way its characters are rendered; also in its favour, it plays the nostalgia card effectively on not one or even two but rather three levels (it's set in 1987 (one), but the soundtrack draws on both late 80s alternative and its 60s and 70s forerunners (two), and it's about a time of life which, playing the averages, will be in the past for most of its viewers, me included (three)). In the end, there's not much to this film, but it's pretty okay.

Mulholland Drive

It's been a while since I saw a David Lynch film; I'd forgotten what a beguiling experience it could be. I saw Mulholland Drive when it was first out in cinemas, and that first time, it felt exactly the way it was supposed to - like a shadowy, spirallingly dream-like descent into the unconscious, disorienting and oddly familiar in equal measures (ie, 'Unheimlich'). This time, knowing in advance how the pieces would fit together in terms of the film's structuring conceit, I was most struck by its formal perfection - the craft with which it sets up and then detonates the late-act identity/reality blur and shift while swathing the whole thing in that unmistakeable Lynch/Badalamenti mood.

Sugababes - Overloaded: The Singles Collection

Glossy, enjoyable girl-band pop with replay value that's only surprising if you've never had "Overload" or "Push The Button" stuck in your head.

The Be Good Tanyas - Blue Horse

Nicely put together bluegrass-tinted modern country with the bonus of Jolie Holland's appearance on a few tracks.

School of Seven Bells - Alpinisms

Like many things, I suppose, School of Seven Bells are at their best when at their most ecstatic - most notably, on the strategically-tracklisted (at tracks 2 and 3) "Face to Face on High Places" and "Half Asleep", a pair of gauzey, zoomy, ascendant dream-pop cuts somewhat surprisingly woven through with, respectively, an Eastern-sounding rhythm line (underpinned by thumping, tribal drums) and an IDM-at-its-most-friendly cum Delerium-esque dancefloor haze. There are a lot of ideas on this record, sometimes overwhelming the musical content of the songs, which can seem a bit thin despite (or perhaps because of) how much is going on sonically throughout (the abovementioned threads are various enough, but only scratch the surface); perhaps that's why the most straight-ahead songs on Alpinisms are its best.

Sally Seltmann - Heart That's Pounding

There's a lot to like about Heart That's Pounding - Seltmann's knack for sweet tunes and interesting arrangements, a song ("Dream About Changing") whose main, and totally catchy, hook is the refrain "I'm a little bit shy" (and repeat), an overall coherency which makes the differentiation as between individual songs all the more impressive...I could wish that it had more of the delicately nocturnal, music-box air of her New Buffalo recordings, but this is a very nice record on its own terms, more rousing and outward-looking than anything she's done before.

Goldfrapp - Head First

Heavily 80s-tinged electro-pop with an eye for big choruses - Head First represents a direction that, now they've gone in it, isn't hugely surprising given Goldfrapp's previous output, as full of interesting shifts and wends as that back catalogue has been. Unfortunately, it's the first real interruption to their brilliant run - Felt Mountain, Black Cherry, Supernature, Seventh Tree (with a bit of an asterisk for that last, which isn't as unimpeachable as the other three, but is still really damn good) - for Head First feels oddly lacklustre, as if some essential spark is missing...it's pleasant enough, but nothing special.

Margot at the Wedding

Not everyone likes Nicole Kidman, but I reckon she's a good actor, verging on great on her day (also, I like her hauteur); Jennifer Jason Leigh, of course, is consistently dependable and usually brilliant. Margot at the Wedding is really about the interplay between the sisters those two play, Margot and Pauline (their names an odd, and almost certainly unintentional, echo of the Neko Case song "Margaret vs Pauline") - and, to the extent that the distinction's meaningful, more about their interactions rather than their relationship. I like the kind of spiky, cutting, distancingly cool dialogue (the description could apply equally to the film as a while) with which the characters lacerate each other; I'm not sure why. Anyway, I went along with this film easily, but probably wouldn't watch it again; it was something like Rachel Getting Married crossed with Closer, but more oblique and without the punch of either.

Optical Illusions

A pleasant mix of social drama and social comedy, and of the deadpan and the whimsical; has its moments, though the pacing is perhaps a bit uneven.

(@ La Mirada film festival, w/ Meribah, Ruth and a couple of Meribah's friends)

Ian C Esslemont - Night of Knives

More confined in scope than any of Erikson's Malazan books (or, for that matter, Esslemont's own Return of the Crimson Guard), but still enjoyable.

"Elizabeth" (Malthouse)

Pleasingly profane and frequently grotesque, Dario Fo's "Elizabeth" comes to life in a typically Kantor staging, where what matters is as much the style and theatricality of the play as its reimagining of the private and interior late life of the virgin queen. Though it's never less than diverting, overall I felt the play was a mite shallow, its irreverences, anachronisms and throwaway lines and devices (fourth wall-breaking and otherwise) often coming off as a free-floating postmodernism-lite lacking any genuine artistic purpose; that said, there were moments in its second half which felt like real theatre, which is another way of saying that they felt real, which in the end, and coupled with with a fantastic set and strong performances (Julie Forsyth in the lead role, so that pretty much goes without saying) left me feeling that this was well worthwhile.

(w/ Wei)

The Last of the Mohicans

This really is very good - a stirring historical adventure in which all of the elements work, from the vivid action sequences which punctuate it to the sweeping love story that runs through its middle, set against a spectacular natural backdrop and relayed with just enough historical context to satisfy without slowing the pace of events down. I think it's the combination of the fluency of the story-telling and characterisation, strong performances from the lead actors, and evocative score that gives the film's most dramatic moments (of which there are many) their force; given what it is, it's hard to imagine how the film could have been any better.

(Also, I'm pretty sure that my first watching of the film, way back when (mid-teens), was one of the first times that an actor registered with me as being particularly attractive - namely, Madeleine Stowe's fetching turn as Cora...M scoffed at this, but I was quite pleased by this evidence that my 'type' has remained so consistent after all this time.)

(Last time - which, incidentally, wasn't the aforementioned first watching...)

Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison & At San Quentin

Surprising to realise that I've never listened to these all the way through before - anyway, both are just grand, full of familiar and familiar-sounding songs, completely inimitable...there's just something about Johnny Cash.