FILLMORE DISCOS 10

You could say a few lessons have been learned.

Iron Man (**)
that's it, no more of these stupid superhero movies for me - and this particular trash doesn't even have a bad guy like The Joker, The Dark Knight's saving grace; Downey really annoys the hell out of me here, Paltrow's character is pathetic, more product placement than even 007, and this all added to some of the most puerile corniest Hollywood dialogue I've ever heard in my fucking life

Happy-Go-Lucky (*)
another scandalous waste of celluloid funded by UK Lottery money - apart from the rotten acting, the excruciatingly phoney London accents alone will drive you to the brink of insanity

Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden? (**)
it's an irony that a rather unconvincing Morgan Spurlock needs the Bin Laden legend almost as much as Bush and those who would support 'Al Qaeda' do - otherwise he doesn't have a film; Spurlock comes across as a decent guy and this lightweight movie contains a few genuinely interesting moments which needed to be developed at the expense of the dubious premise, the cop-out ending, and the corny jokes and songs, and, it goes without saying, all the meh crap about his baby's birth

Sex And The City: The Movie (**)
not a welcoming experience for us guys and if these four ghastly women are truly representative of the female gender then we are really in trouble - unattractive, atrocious dress sense, egotistical, materialist, narrow-minded, vacuous, unreceptive, superficial, immature, rude, condescending, judgmental... however, I'd like to think that they aren't; that said, there are lots of funny lines and moments to enjoy and there's a cheerful energy to it despite the second half dragging a bit towards its inevitable and utterly predictable outcome

Stanley Cuba (*)
worthless indie crap

Water Lilies (***)
only French cinema could get away with a pervfest like this, and one can be glad for that - that said, let's be honest and not fool ourselves, it's not at all a character study of blossoming female adolescence, it's wishful thinking with all the mandatory bisexual symbols, references, and motifs neatly packaged up and delivered by a drooling director having a field day indulging herself with the talent - so hallelujah if it's what you too are into

Suffering Man's Charity (*)
did this cast of third rate thespians all take a humungous speedball before the shooting began? the resultant overacting is utterly unbearable

SEVEN WONDERS

Voted lists nearly always turn up hopelessly unsatisfying results with the usual horrendous and ridiculous results - I'd always much rather hear what one person's opinions are along with their own personal reasons. There's one happening for the Seven Natural Wonders Of The World and, before listing my choices for those, here are my nominations for the manmade ones with precious little reasoning other than that an important criterion was to have a variety of structure types, ages, and locations within the list. Disagreement most welcomed.

• Great Pyramid Of Giza, Egypt - beyond their enormous scope, mystery, and perfect surrounding location, I love it that for Emperor Hadrian, upon his first inspiring visit, they were already ancient monuments
• Moais, Rapa Nui - ever since I was a small child, these statues, and the stories they seem to tell, still fascinate me as they continue to stare out into the open sea
  
• Amalfi Coast, Italy - in a country of architectural miracles around almost every corner, I've chosen this achingly, impossibly beautiful coastline drive
  
• Golden Pavilion, Japan - so precious in its setting, it's as if nature had been exquisitely designed around the structure, rather than the other way around
  
• Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany - like a hi-def screen that has a higher resolution than real life, this dreamlike castle is more fairytale than a fairytale
  
• The Kremlin, Russia - an iconic exterior that tells but a mere part of the full story: it's the modern day Forbidden City
  
• Nazca Lines, Peru - arguably the most mysterious manmade art of all
  

DESIDERI PENSIERI 3

DJ Benetti : updates for August!

italoBLACK
Sneaky Pete's
73 Cowgate
Edinburgh, UK
Thursday August 7th / 14th / 21st / 28th : 10pm-4am

FILLMORE DISCOS 9

Of these, Stuart Gordon's Stuck is a must-see.

Shadow Company (****)
well-balanced insightful documentary on the mercenary business; it mostly focuses on Iraq, yet also discusses the profession's historical background and compares other contemporary topical scenarios like Sierra Leone and Equatorial New Guinea - features an excellent range of articulate interviewees and some amazing footage you won't have seen on the BBC

Donkey Punch (**)
Donkey Punch has a decent premise and in better hands could have been a memorable ride (pun regretted) - yet it's undermined by its very Britishness in the form of the ugly chav Heat magazine Big Brother alcohol culture that sullies every frame of its 90 minutes as it does many a town and city centre on a weekend evening: from the boneheaded violence, the dumb dreary conversation, all to a soundtrack of lame club tunes; the movie climaxes into absurd bloody pandemonium and you can't say that all of these thicko stereotypes don't get what they deserve

Purple Violets (*)
there's nothing good about this awful movie whatsoever - all the characters in this unfunny unromantic comedy are uniformly obnoxious and the acting is like a third rate sitcom

Stuck (*****)
brilliant and original tragicomedy directed by Stuart Gordon - Stuck is funny and horrific without being silly and there are superb performances by the entire cast; a breath of fresh air in this season of blockbuster trash

The Ruins (***)
gory horror flick set in the Mexican jungle: it is well acted and tightly enough directed to allow you to (mostly) overlook the rather silly basis for the bloodshed

Smart People (***)
Sarah Jessica Parker might be the unsexiest woman on the planet but this wry, laconic US comedy has a couple of great compensatory performances from Ellen Page (much better here than in Juno) and Thomas Haden Church (who easily steals every scene he's in)

DEATH ON TWO LEGS 2

On this occasion, words almost fail me. Apart from the totalitarian extent of these kinds of powers, it's clear that this absolute moron Chertoff has not the slightest clue how easy it'd be for the types he identifies as 'threats' to bypass physical border controls with this 'contraband' without physically carrying it, and I quote, "on any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form, including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, ipods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes... also... all papers and other written documentation, including books, pamphlets and written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter'". Have a nice day.

DEATH ON TWO LEGS

If you thought like me at the time it happened that the post-9/11 anthrax scare was extremely fishy (as with so many other events of this whole era of the so-called 'war on terrorism'), then I thoroughly recommend this article. And considering what a huge story this was at the time, and one which arguably had even more serious consequences than 9/11 itself (i.e. a crucial part of the rationale for the invasion of Iraq), why the hell are these developments getting such scant news coverage? Especially in August when there's so little genuine news to report.

CLARA ROCKMORE 2

A big thank you to all who recommended seeing this fascinating and exceptionally inspirational film.

Theremin - An Electronic Odyssey (****)
Leon Theremin's is an amazing story, though for me the real star is Clara Rockmore, one of the greatest musicians of all times, and here we have, in addition to moving footage of her captivating performances, the treat of witnessing her...(read more) with an understandably adoring Leon on her 18th birthday - Brian Wilson's pointless ramblings should have been edited out completely

ARCHIVED 2

Some people have asked so here's one last reminder if you missed the Resonance FM transmission of the Afro Noise I mix, it's still up at the CYRK site.

update: 1,600+ total downloads so far as of July 30th!
update: first 2 vinyl afro noise vinyl releases are now completed and ready to be mastered

FILLMORE DISCOS 8

Another batch of increasingly less succinct reviews - The Babysitters is definitely worth checking out.

Cocaine Cowboys 2 (***)
continues where CC1 leaves off; we get a more detailed and intimate insight into the mad world of Griselda Blanco aka La Madrina ('The Godmother'), the ruthless Colombian drugs trafficker, mostly as told by her Oakland cohort Charles Crosby; can we take his remarkable testimony at face value? I guess so, but often he comes across as a gangsta/thug fantasist in the mold of Tupac Shakur; curious to see sub-GTAIV animation incorporated into the storyte..(read more)lling

The Dark Knight (**)
how did the once-great Christopher Nolan get this bad? other than Ledger's consistently brilliant turn as The Joker, the movie is but a dreary formulaic Hollywood blockbuster action thriller with an over-familiar cast of journeyman actors which is all dressed up with scavenged bits of lite contemporary morality themes (more neocon than Dirty Harry) and a few contrasting moments of faux transgressiveness welded on to compensate for its little suspense... (pause for breath)... furthermore, it's just way too long, and has a soundtrack by numbers to boot; just like the removal of nipples from 'The' Batman's costume (reputedly at Bale's request), the harder The Dark Knight tries to be 'dark' and 'serious', the more daft and lightweight it becomes

Black Wine (**)
a watchable no-budget STV thriller

The Babysitters (****)
a dark comedy whose subversive sexual themes have, predictably, invoked many US critics' deepseated puritanism - Katherine Waterston is brilliant in the lead role of a slightly gangly but pretty 16-year-old accidentally embarking on a lucrative career of pimpi...(read more)ng herself and her schoolfriends under the subterfuge of babysitting

Dark City (director's cut) (**)
not seen the original to compare this with yet I can't imagine there's that much to choose between the two: stylish and ambitious, but too many directorial flaws to suspend your threshold of disbelief for very long

THE POWER OF THE IDEA

What a glorious twenty-four hours it's been. And not just because the weather has finally seemed to break from the relentlessly bleak grey spell endured here in recent weeks.

Firstly, last night. While I'm loath to give the BBC credit for absolutely anything, a despicable organisation if ever there was, I have been lapping up its 6-part documentary The Story Of India like a dehydrated canine; why the hell we didn't get this kind of stuff in school history lessons is beyond me because you can't help but be enthralled, inspired, and have your imagination captured.

Then there was a nice Sunday lunch.

Finally, the afternoon culminated in a couple of hours spent in the sunshine reading and listening to Imagination (therein lies another tale) by Bruntsfield Links, a beautiful bit of city parkland for such sedentary activities. And it was just as I was about to leave that an impeccably besuited elderly gentleman, with a rather dashing younger guy in tow carrying a large bag, approached proffering a flyer. He was inviting all the sunbathers in turn to visit his nearby Evangelical church, and his companion offered me a bottle of mineral water which was a neat and potent metaphor for the flyer's message of thirst for spiritual guidance. As a psycholinguistics connoisseur, I was most impressed with the minister's persuasive design of his language (and believe me, I'm not at all easily impressed).

Anyway, in more shameless times gone by, like a Venus fly trap, I might have attempted to lure these Christian would-be prosletysers into questioning their own belief systems, however since I am no longer an atheist, considered that option churlish and so graciously accepted their gift.