ACQUISITIONS 2

reading
Disco - Albert Goldman
Men And Pandas - Ramona & Desmond Morris
The Commissar Vanishes - David King (on privileged loan...)
Catwatching - Desmond Morris

listening
Afrikan Machinery - Lukas Ligeti (CD)
Junko & Mattin - Junko & Mattin (vinyl)
Reuters - G-Park (vinyl)
Skywalker - Claudio Simonetti (vinyl)

viewing
Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears
I Sell The Dead
Face To Face
The Irony Of Fate

ACQUISITIONS 1

AFTER SIGHT 3

AFTER SIGHT 2
AFTER SIGHT 1

RHODIUM 7

A chance conversation a couple of days ago at the awesome Anstruther Fish Bar, that most venerable of fish and chip restaurants, reawakened my love for the music of Karen Carpenter. When even the merest mention of a song title can cause a grown man to splutter over his glass of milk, his eyes welling up in emotion, you know this is music of incredible power: such to elicit meaningful responses that totally belies its common positioning within the otherwise moribund genres of MOR or easy listening.

In the BBC Arena interview special with an eightysomething Ingmar Bergman, he talked about his love of music (of which, by the way, he has impeccable taste). He pondered on the mystery of its origins, asking people along the way as part of an almost Diogenesian inquiry into its whys, yet never receiving a plausible answer. Neither do I have an answer, and my passionate feelings about these songs is a perfect reason for not having one.

The Carpenters : Love Songs (1998)

Compilations are rarely little more than lazy affairs to cash in on an artist's popularity later in their careers, or posthumously - and at their charitable best, a way of creating interest in further exploration of an artist's career. However, in the case of The Carpenters, this affectionately selected and sequenced collection makes perfect sense. Whereas their original albums were rather tepid affairs showcasing a variety of styles from inoffensive soft rock to country to pop, it was the torch songs and love songs that really stood out.

Karen Carpenter's voice is impossibly beautiful. She breathes life into her lyrics in a way that defies all reasoning, in a way that many others have tried yet all have failed - in fact, so painfully sweet and heartbreakingly pure that you have to admire Richard Carpenter's strength of resolve in not having to be constantly having to reconstitute himself from a sorry puddle of tears.

All the Carpenters' songs that I personally love are on this album, ones like Superstar, (They Long To Be) Close To You, This Masquerade; and there are a few wonderful new discoveries too, such as the soulwrenching A Song For You. A definite criticism could be levelled at some of the fancy post-production applied to this album - it does sound as if they've been 'enhanced' a bit (in my opinion, unnecessarily), and the original version of Close To You was a minute or so longer than the one offered here.

RHODIUM 6
RHODIUM 5
RHODIUM 4
RHODIUM 3
RHODIUM 2
RHODIUM 1

BIRDS 6

Here in the UK, the luminous yellow reflective jacket is the new uniform of choice for the wannabe Stasi or Gestapo functionary, and other aspiring goons. Alongside the snoopers, informants, finers, interveners, and 'community police', a new squad in Aldeburgh will now also have to be decked out in said jackets in order to enforce a stringent new policy against those that would dare feed the local seagulls.

It's enough to compel you to initiating a nationwide campaign to start chumming the birds with raw meat. Resistance to the oppression begins here, with the gulls leading the way.

In the meantime, I am once again most grateful to Lorin for sending this moving anecdote:

When I was very young (five or six years old), I had two parakeets, a male and a female, who I named Biff and Plumas. They were little splashes of bright color, so, so cute in a way one can only appreciate before the age of ten or after the age of 30. I would open the cage to let them flap around the house a bit and they would return to the cage in five minutes or so. Knowing what I know now, they both would have flown away forever had they not been purchased at the most sickening of all retail spots, the 'pet store' where birds have their wings clipped to keep them seemingly domesticated but ultimately crippled and reliant on the cage.

I recall the day Plumas died. I had a ceremonial shoebox burial in my family's backyard. The strongest memory, though, was Biff's mourning. I am not abusing the word; he had an actual, visible mourning. He lingered upon the place in the cage where my mother found Plumas dead, he refused to eat anything, even sesame treats, and he heaved pained, horrible coos that sounded EXACTLY like human crying. Not a pleasant memory, by any means, but at an early age learned that a bird is capable of (and imbued with) the kind of dynamic passion that humans stupidly mislabel as 'feelings', or worse, 'a soul'.

BIRDS 5
BIRDS 4
BIRDS 3
BIRDS 2
BIRDS 1

FILLMORE DISCOS 31

A bumper collection to negotiate this time around.

Orphan (*****)
super high quality popcorn horror that's polarised the critics right down the middle - there's the odd cheeseball moment here and there, and I suspect the producers made a couple of minor interventions, but it'd be churlish to give this anything less than 5 stars for so much it does with such wickedly brilliant glee: in particular, its extremely subversive perspective of children and their relationships with adults; Isabelle Fuhrman is incredible as Esther, so badass a character that you find yourself shamelessly rooting for her from the moment she arrives on the screen right to the very end

Antichrist (**)
Lars Von Trier's homage to Tarkovsky, disappointingly, is a failure; Gainsbourg is hopelessly out of her depth as an actress, where even LVT is incapable of provoking her into anything more than to some amateurishly mechanical histrionics, meanwhile Defoe desperately vogues at the directors in the audience to once again take his arthouse credentials seriously; the film's Stalker/Mirror flourishes come across as third-rate David Lynch, and the arty sound design and fancy visual filters seem forced, thus incongruent; and don't get me started on the cheeseball religious symbology and references in the dialogues; this is the first film in Von Trier's illustrious career that I've reacted disfavourably towards, and I can only think that his otherwise likeable arrogance got the better of him in the belief that he could operate outside his usual domain of cinematic expertise and excellence

Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait (****)
amazing close portrait of Idi Amin, never anything but compellingly alpha (as well as bonkers), he remains the antithesis of the stereotypically stunted dwarven chip-on-the-shoulder tyrant

En Passion (*****)
a classic masterpiece by the genius that is Bergman

From The Life Of The Marionettes (*****)
Bergman mindfucks you again, and you keep coming back for more - some of the dialogues in Marionettes are memorably, and deliciously, depressing

A Bittersweet Life (**)
what starts out full of depth, a superb cast, visual style, and the promise of transcending the staid genre of stupidass gangster movies, ultimately descends into a vacuous farce in the final act, precisely what you hoped it wouldn't be

Tempo Di Viaggio (****)
as a documentary, as enigmatic as Nostalghia itself

Last House On Dead End Street (*****)
a masterpiece of the genre, and one of remarkable originality and artistic expression; it'd be more useful to compare this with Buñuel or Godard than any Wes Craven trash; we can only dream that the original 3 hour Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell (much better title anyway) might one day resurface

Tokyo Sonata (**)
non-Japanese critics are falling over themselves to present this as a poignant drama study into contemporary social alienation in Japan, a country ever exotic in their eyes - in my own opinion, it's a slow plodding heavy-handed soap opera of very little real substance and an extraordinarily contrived third act

Possession (1981) (*)
I really don't understand some of the eulogies bandied about for a feature-length film that plays like an interminable short - Adjani is little better but Sam Neill's relentlessly ham performance, albeit with a crass dialogue, is truly embarrassing in what is a hokey lo-budget horror; I'll stick to Bergman for tortured relationship dramas, thank you very much - the best thing you can say is that Heinrich has great taste in art

The Human Contract (**)
an erotic drama with good intentions, one loosely based on the moral of the Frankenstein tale; sadly, director Pinkett Smith has the real emotional drama and pathos arrive way too late in the proceedings and thus the film fails to make the meaningful impact it could have

The Cranes Are Flying (*****)
simple tale told devastatingly effectively - the cinematography is way ahead of its time (1957), the movie is filled with incredibly memorable and meaningful moments, and there isn't a single character that you don't care about in one way or another; the gorgeous Tatyana Samojlova would have made her great-uncle Stanislavski proud with her deeply affectional performance (should also be said that the Criterion print is, as we'd expect, outstanding)

FILLMORE DISCOS 30
FILLMORE DISCOS 29
FILLMORE DISCOS 28
FILLMORE DISCOS 27

AFTER SIGHT 2

AFTER SIGHT 1

BLACK METAL PENCIL

There's really nothing like a sweet bit of come-uppance, and after decades of humourless digs at all and sundry in the world of music via his artistically null cartoon, Edwin Pouncey (aka Savage Pencil) feels the heat and sweats cold. All because some Wire reader without a life felt the need to write in and complain about Pouncey's inclusion of an utterly obscure heavy metal band in a playlist; and thus it seems panic has broken out at the magazine's offices, and said Pouncey has had to grovel for mercy by means of a public written apologia.

Of course, what he should be apologising about is his singularly embarrassing taste in music, not to mention his crimes against humour. As far as I'm concerned, black metal is what boys listen to after they've finished all their Harry Potter books; I imagine Iron Maiden would also still be cool, but not a band to be namedropped in The Wire. Graveforests And Their Shadows indeed. Seriously, Stars In Their Eyes is more experimental than this crap.

But that aside, here is Pencil's awkward obfuscating squirm from the latest issue, with annotations.

"My inclusion of Walknut's album in my Black Metal 15 was based purely on the group's music rather than any ugly fascist message..."
hang on, 'ugly fascist message' as opposed to 'nice fascist message'?

"...that they may have secretly buried in the mix."
what, like backwards messages?

"Although ignorance is no excuse,"
...

"...I was blissfully unaware that Graveforests And Their Shadows contained material that supported extreme racist viewpoints."
...so ignorance is indeed an excuse

"Instead, I heard what sounded like an excellent example of ABM (Atmospheric Black Metal) that I felt was worthy of mention for its musical and experimental qualities."
I'm sure The Wire complainant will be most grateful for having the acronym ABM explained to him - cf. 'paediatrician' (a doctor who looks after the health of children)

"Should its inclusion in my chart have caused any distress to readers of The Wire,"
'distress'?!?

"...or embarrassment to the magazine's staff, I sincerely apologize and promise to be more alert and responsible in the future. I also agree that racists should not be allowed to have a platform in the pages of The Wire. That said, however, I do feel that Black Metal is producing some of the most interesting and diverse music today, and for that reason alone I shall continue to support it. Savage Pencil"
so, by definition of the 'that said/however' contrast, does it mean Mr. Pencil does feel that it/they should be allowed to have a platform in the pages of The Wire, or that he'll just continue to support it/them for demonstrating excellent musical/experimental qualities?

This was the guy who got so hot and bothered over an erect penis on an album cover? Oh dear.

PRAVDA 7

Russia does not believe in tears: some of the latest, greatest news stories from Pravda.

Russia Loses Its Poker Face Entirely
Before the sad break-up of the Soviet Union, chess used to be a national sport, if not a valued art form. It was said that any Muscovite cab driver was of international grandmaster standard. So it's a bleak day for the Russian nation when, that most American of games, good ol' Texas hold'em poker has become so popular that steps have to be taken to ban it, and furthermore on the grounds that it's not a 'sport'. It reminds of that recent Haiti documentary I saw (whose name escapes me), whilst hoping to discover some new things about vaudou, learnt that all the kids wear baseball caps and Nike trainers, and are into Tupac, Shaq O'Neal, and drive-bys. So depressing.

Michael Jackson’s Bubbles Probably Became World’s Richest Chimp
If this is true, I don't care what you say about Jacko. I've absolutely no idea on what grounds he was ever hailed as a musical genius - but then the same could be said about Elvis 'The King Of Rock 'N' Roll' Presley (assuming he is in fact dead), Brian Jones, and Jim fucking Morrison. Aside from prurient curiosity, neither do I care what he got up to (or not) in his bedroom at Neverland, nor whether his children are really his, nor whether he actually had sex with a woman. However, if he's left $2,000,000 to Bubbles the Chimp, then he's a damn saint in my book.

Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport Ranked World's Second Worst
Thus one immediately wonders which could be the worst; and there are plenty of candidates that come to mind without ever having suffered the alleged indignities of Sheremetyevo. The joyless purgatory that is Heathrow quickly springs to mind for its universally rude unpleasantly inept officious staff, its unending corridors to nowhere in particular, its retail overkill, and the outdoor queueing; not to forget inevitable delays and guaranteed loss of baggage. Then there'd be Stansted or Luton (alternative so-called 'London' airports), both vortices to oblivion; the vertiginous nightmare landing strip at Hong Kong's Kai Tak (though now no more); O'Hare (Chicago's own version of the Gaza checkpoints on a bad day); and surely many other worthy nominees. Is Moscow's really that bad??

PRAVDA 6
PRAVDA 5
PRAVDA 4
PRAVDA 3

AFTER SIGHT

FILLMORE DISCOS 30

Watchmen (***)
Watchmen might be a superhero movie like all the rest, but at least it's genuinely dark in tone, and at last there's a bit of sexuality; it also benefits greatly from having a less familiar cast (i.e. none of the usual suspects like your Christian Bales, Michael Caines, Morgan Freemans, Robert Downey Jrs., Gwyneth Paltrows et al) - the overall aesthetic is beautifully achieved, and clearly a lot of attention has been paid to detail to keep faith with the source material

Kairo (*)
yet another stupid Japanese film about ghosts appearing in screens - the wooden acting and clunky script help not at all; also, any movie that utilises the internet, or computers, as a plot device is condemned to instant anachrony

Adventureland (**)
wet coming-of-age comedy with godawful 80s soundtrack - Kristen Stewart puts in a great performance against the odds

Visioneers (*)
spectacularly tedious indie film that is neither remotely funny nor intellectually absorbing

Bruno (****)
less spontaneous perhaps than Borat - but in truth Sacha Baron Cohen is at the top of his game in an uproariously, outrageously, consistently funny comedy whose great effect is only sadly undone by the horrid sell-out ending

The Hangover (**)
stupidass guy comedy that's marginally better than average thanks to the splendour of Las Vegas, a witty script, and a few clever plot devices - I always end up hating myself for watching this type of thing however