The Event - Issue 176

The Event investigates Ian Fleming’s successor

Charlie Higson

The Raveonettes

Matthew Kneale

Independent Films

Denmark’s “new-minimalist-postpunks” tell us about their new album

The author talks about short stories and the lure of travel

Does the Oscar success of Sideways signal a new era for the indies?

Contents 03

Contents Charlie Higson: It’s every boy’s dream to be James Bond, and Charlie Higson got the chance to put his imagination to work while writing his new novel SilverFin..................4 Forgotten Films: In the karmic world of Hollywood, for every blockbuster there is a flop. The Event salutes three films that never quite got the breaks they deserved............5 The Raveonettes: We speak to the Danish duo about meeting David Bowie and writing an album with “no rules, no guidelines and no restrictions”...............................6 Independent Filmmaking: Alexander Payne and Charlie Kaufman head up a new breed of directors putting the constraints of Hollywood to the test............................7 Matthew Kneale: Short stories might not be fashionable in current literary circles, but they are the perfect medium for Matthew Kneale’s tales of disaffected travellers............8 Dropkick Murphys: If you thought punk rock was the antithesis of folk, think again.

Dropkick Murphy’s do both and, as they tell The Event, they do them with style..............9 Should we be Watching?: The ongoing trial of Michael Jackson raises tough questions about the dramatisation of difficult subjects such as child abuse on screen.....10-11 Albums: New releases from Idlewild, Stromba and The National.........................12 Singles: Single of the Week from Green Day, plus tracks by Jem and The Others........13 Cinema: Reviews of Downfall, The Ring Two and Palindromes.............................14 DVDs: Movies to buy including Vera Drake and Napoleon Dynamite......................15 Arts: Highbrow entertainment from Aisle 16 and Miss Saigon..............................16 TV/Digital: Christopher Eccleston steps out of the Tardis as the new Doctor Who.....17 Creative Writing: A selection of top literary treats from new writers..................18 Listings and Competitions: An assortment of giveaways and things to do........19

Editorial

IS: concrete.editor@uea.ac.uk Editor-in Chief: Philip Sainty concrete.event@uea.ac.uk Editor: Tim Barker concrete.eventeditorial@uea.ac.uk Editor: Sarah Edwardes concrete.arts@uea.ac.uk Editor: Luke Roberts Assistant Editors: Niki Brown & Roanna Bond Writers: Gabrielle Barnes, Dean Bowman, Amy Lowe, Shaun Newport, Philip Sainty concrete.film@uea.ac.uk Editor: Dean Bowman Assistant Editor: Sebatian Manley Writers: Sam Brooker, Stephen Sharrock, David McNaught concrete.music@uea.ac.uk Editors: James Banks & Ben Patashnik Assistant Editors: Charles Rumsey & Suzanne Rickenback Writers: Miranda Bryant, Hayley Chappell, Sophie Driscoll, Victoria Holland, Chris Hyde, Rosalind Knight, Catherine Lansdown, Kat Paterson, Steph Rawles, Tom Souter concrete.tv/digital@uea.ac.uk Editor: Kate Bryant Writers: Martha Hammond, Kim Howe, Stephen Sharrock Creative Writing Editor: Merinne Whitton Writers: Brett Cummings, Andrea Tallarita, Alan Ashton-Smith, Holly Curtis, Jon Stone, Joe Dunthorne, Becki Harris Design Consultant Nathan ‘Design Consultant’ Hamilton

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here’s nothing like a televised trial to keep us glued to the small screen – especially when the person in the dock happens to be a major celebrity such as Michael Jackson. Following the story in the media it’s easy to forget how serious the abuse claims against Jackson are, and the repackaging of his hearing as entertainment raises all sorts of problems for us as viewers. The Event asks some challenging questions about our attitudes towards this difficult subject on Pages 10-11.

On a much lighter note, this issue is also packed with the usual dazzling array of interviews and features. First up is Charlie Higson, who talks about making the grand step from catchphrase comedy to children’s literature, and why Bond is still the coolest man in town. Rockers The Raveonettes speak to us about their new album and The Dropkick Murphys explain why they’d rather be playing small gigs than stadiums. Then there are some of the movies that never quite made it big in “Coulda Been in Contender”, and a report on the rise of independent cinema.

Shopaholics can turn to the reviews section for all the best CDs and DVDs to buy this week, while anyone on a budget might prefer to try winning some free stuff from the Competitions page. And don’t forget to check out the Listings for a bundle of excuses not to spend another evening on the sofa.

The Event is published fortnightly by Concrete: Post: PO Box 410, Norwich, NR4 7TB Tel: 01603 250558 Fax: 01603 50682 E-mail: concrete.event@uea.ac.uk Printed by: Archant

The Editor

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04 Feature

Photo: Tessa Bowles

The Name’s Higson...

Kate Bryant chats with Charlie Higson about

Silverfin, the first in a series of new Bond books

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ost of us know C h a r l i e Higson as the d e l i g h t f u l ly filthy Swiss Toni, or perhaps another of The Fast Show’s characters whose catchphrases have become cornerstones of common parlance. However, he is also an established fiction writer and has been asked

by Ian Fleming Publications to write a series of books starring a young James Bond. The first book in the series, Silverfin, hit the shelves at the beginning of March this year and has been going down a treat, so The Event decided we’d better be having a chat with the man who will be guiding James Bond through his rather formative adolescence.

When The Event managed to meet up with Charlie Higson, the setting was one of the many bustling cafes of Norwich city centre and less than ideal for an engrossing dissection of the Bond phenomena. Nonetheless, smiling a smile which suggested that at any moment something might be compared to “making love to a beautiful woman”, Higson began delving into the whys and wherefores of his love for all things Bond and his plans for the development of the Young Bond series. “I didn’t want to make him a child spy, like Agent Cody Banks and so on,” he explains, obviously weary from comparisons between Silverfin and the clutch of films starring kiddies who work for the secret service in some capacity. Rather than start out the series with a fully formed, pistol-

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packing, tux-wearing Bond, Silverfin sees James (as he is referred to throughout) with only the faintest leanings towards the world of spydom. Instead he is a rather solitary boy, not unpopular, but also not the suave smart-talking Bond of Brosnan and Connery. Silverfin paints a rather refreshing picture of a Bond who is not always entirely in control of things, this James has no Q, no gadgets and only the glimmer of the bravado all of us think of when we hear 007.

Charlie Higson continues: “Fleming’s Bond was very different to the Bond of the movies, he was a lot deeper, he would get hurt or upset about things.” It is surprising that the man whose name is synonymous with machismo began as a far fuller character. The young Bond of Silverfin is clearly emulating the more human version of Bond created by the original literary series rather than the larger-than-life image of Bond seen in cinemas, which may help to attract a different audience for the book. “I took the Fleming books as my guide, rather than any of the other work on the Bond franchise,” stresses Higson. “There have been several other

Charlie Higson

“I didn’t want to make him a child spy, like Agent Cody Banks and so on” attempts to continue the Bond saga and they start to contradict one another.

Fleming forgot stuff he’d put in the earlier books sometimes too so it gets difficult to follow all of them.” With this said, even the uninitiated fair-weather fan of

Bond would find Silverfin an ideal entry into the books of Bond without prior knowledge of the character.

“I have kept one or two Bond standards in there that people will recognise,” Charlie Higson tells The Event.

Silverfin may not have a womanising 007 but it certainly does have its own Bond girl – suitably named Wilder Lawless. The U.S. release of Silverfin cut one passage involving James and Wilder because it was too steamy:“Oh yes, I think it was something to do with him being gripped by her muscular thighs, but it’s all so innocent.”

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f course, any book that charts the growing up of a young boy destined for greatness is inevitably going to be set against that mammoth yard-stick that is the Harry Potter franchise.

Hailed as the savior of child literacy and the first successful link between adult and children’s literature, it is impossible to have a male protagonist under the age of eighteen who isn’t thought to be simply an imitation of the young wizard.

It is also becoming an all too common occurrence to have a children’s novel make the leap to the small screen, and occasionally the cinema. When The Event suggested this to Charlie Higson he replied that “people tend to say that because James is at boarding school, but this is a good way to get child characters into a world where they can be independent. They aren’t the same at all really when you read them. I don’t think that we’ve got a TV series or anything in the pipeline either. I’d like for the books to establish themselves before anything like that happens and there’s four more to come yet.”

Always eager to maintain at least a few plates spinning simultaneously, Charlie Higson has also tried his hand at adult thriller fiction and even had a stint as the front man for a band called The Higsons. “It’s really important, before you start writing, before you are a writer, to get some life experience.

That’s what my advice to all those students who want to be writers is, go out

and do other things. Fleming was all sorts of things before he became a writer, he wrote about what he knew and that’s why his books are so interesting. He’s talking from experience.” This wealth of experience is evident throughout Fleming’s work. Many of the Bond novels are focused just as keenly on details of Bond’s surroundings and an exploration of their mechanics.

For example, Casino Royale (soon to be hitting our screens) explains the inner workings of a casino in between narrating Bond’s death defying antics.

As well as writing the remaining four books in the Young Bond series, Charlie Higson is also planning a return to comedy with fellow The Fast Show writer and performer Paul Whitehouse. “It could possibly be a film, or TV… just some funny shit really,” he reveals, but won’t tell The Event anything more than that one tantalising detail. Since The Fast Show and its various spin-offs, Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse haven’t worked together on comedy projects.

These include Paul Whitehouse’s Help, a comedy series that takes place in a psychiatrist’s office with almost all the patients played by Whitehouse, and a superb Chris Langham as the deadpan psychiatrist. It has been a real hit on the Beeb and should help to get tongues wagging about the reunion of the two writers. We can expect to hear far more about the project, whatever it might be, in roughly a year’s time.

If you’re a Bond fan, or just fancy a little light reading to take the taste of revision away, Silverfin is an easy pageturner. It is also an excellent amuse bouche for the Fleming work, which is heavier on the attention span. Without having compared anything to a beautiful woman, Higson leaves The Event contemplating life experience, Bondian adolescence and Ian Fleming - and very excited about the next installment of the Young Bond series.

Feature 05

I Could Have Been a Contender!

The Event charitably allows Sam Brooker to give a heartfelt rant on some films that you may have missed...

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t’s just an honour to be nominated.” The c l a s s i c Hollywood lie.

Top dog is where it’s at, and second place may as well be last. The movie world has a short memory for the middle ground. When some fatuous talking head comes on TV and tells the world that “Titanic was the first film to deal with the tragedy of that legendary ship”, Roy Ward Baker must cry bitter tears. At least he has the comfort of longevity. For every big-budget blockbuster that “breaks the mould”, there’s another equally or more worthy movie that gets forgotten. To reset the balance, here are three movies which were eclipsed unfairly by their more successful brethren. The Also-Rans, the secondplacers who deserve better than an “influence” credit, but should be taken as dukes of the genre, rather than servants-in-waiting.

Batteries Not Included

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f you find yourself at a funeral and you can’t summon up tears, you only need to remember one film to get them flowing: *Batteries Not Included. In fact, it’s a film and a half. No, it’s two films, that’s how damn good it is. In the cavernous loft of your mind, under a big stack of Beanos and Page 3 clippings, is a box marked 1980s children’s classics, most of which are staggering disappointments. Then, underneath No Holds Barred and Twins you find a battered VHS copy of *Batteries not included. The magic returns. *Batteries Not Included is not a kids film. That’s like saying Quadruple Chocolate Fudge Surprise is a kind of snack. It’s the Don, the Daddy, the CocoPops of kids movies, because under the hood it’s packing some heat. Who’s that with a sneaky Exec. Producer credit?

Why, it’s Mr. Steven Spielberg! So, you’ve got that Play Mountain magic pouring treacle down our throats. But how are we going to temper that? What we need is someone who understands acerbic family entertainment… Oh look there’s Brad Bird, Simpsons executive

and creator of The Incredibles. Talk about Dream Team. Then as an unknown quantity, let’s have Matthew Robbins in to direct, a guy with the patchiest record for films.

Now let’s look at the film. First off, you’ve got the Aliens from the planet SuperCute.

They look like metal Frisbees w i t h b i g bug

eyes and spindly arms, but somehow they tug at the heartstrings like they’re an internal violin. The big “community, not consumerism - peace and harmony” message would kill most films, but here the sheer vileness of the evil guys overwhelms the sugar. It’s like when you go home after a semester of Aeros and Pot Noodle and all you want your mum to cook is Vegetable Stew.

So much of this film has been ripped off, it’s hard to know where to start. Just as a quick note, watch Frank McRae as the slightly slow ex-PrizeFighter with a heart of gold. The scenes where he strokes the little baby Alien on the back. You’ll be amazed he doesn’t leave a light on after bedtime.

Yeah, there’s some weird racial politics going on - the house full of kindly white folks, the Hispanic gang led by a bumbling fool - but this is full-on fantasy and sometimes you just have to let stuff go. If you sit down to watch this somebody’s going to make sarcastic comments just to show how ironic it all is, but they’ll be the ones weeping like little tiny children when all the Fixers fly in to … well, that would ruin the film.

The Spanish Prisoner

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teve Martin is the black olive of film: an acquired taste and more often than not thrown in to add flavour to bland, inedible rubbish. He’s been the dubious substance in more than a few Hollywood wet farts, but occasionally he remembers to pack his acting

Now tell me again. Is The Matrix or Dark City the better film?

before he goes to work. He remembered it in The Jerk and Little Shop of Horrors. He definitely remembered it in Spanish Prisoner, a proper thriller with more twists than Air and magician Ricky Jay thrown in for good measure. Taking a leaf out of Robin William’s Big Book of Career Reinvention, he plays it straight and it works.

David Mamet, public opinion scythe, has made and written some pretty risible nonsense, but here he gets his Glengarry Glen Ross hat on fast.

The dialogue is citrus-sharp and the situations absurd and ingenious by turns.

Often overshadowed by The Usual Suspects, this is a film that deserves to have altars built to it, a tangled spiderweb of intrigue. Watching The Usual Suspects for the first time, many people work out who Kaiser Soze is, completely negating the movie’s purpose.

Without the twist it’s all pastry and no sausage.

The McGuffin (the Hitchcockian device that motivates the plot but remains an enigma) of The Spanish Prisoner is great, and the complete implausibility of it adds to the strange, mid-stage drunkenness feeling of the film. It’s clever, it’s funny and it’s not Cheaper by the Dozen. What are you waiting for?

Dark City

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lex Proyas, with a Dutch soft cheese for a surname, has made three notable films. The Crow is much beloved by the children of the Korn and men with long ginger

Carrie-Ann Moss, is a cracking actress shoe-horned into The Matrix because two slightly queasy nerds wanted a hot chick in their film. beards. The second, I, Robot, is based loosely on the book jacket summary of Isaac Asimov’s novel and topped up with lashings of Will Smith nonsense.

The third is Dark City, a Tech-Noir romp that deserves better than the Blockbusters Bargain Bin and scathing comparisons to The Matrix. Most people criticise Dark City by saying that its story is improbable, as if The Matrix, a story of a messiah figure who discovers that the world is an electronically produced fabrication designed by superintelligent machines, was The Bicycle Thieves.

The Matrix may have more flash.

However, people who say that the first Matrix film was made on a shoestring should probably insure their trainers: a $65,000,000 budget is some shoestring.

Dark City was made on just over a third of the money, meaning that plot had to substitute for Carrie Anne Moss kicking people in the face. Dark City wasn’t made on Super-8, however. The setting is a spectacular, Gotham-esque cityscape, where special effects, used sparingly, are the Lucky Charms in your cereal.

Kiefer Sutherland goes all asthmatic on us with a wheezing, choking performance that must have required a 60-a-day habit to achieve. At times, his performance degenerates into just “lots of acting” but for the most part he’s bang on the money. His counterpart in The Matrix, were you to seek it, is Laurence Fishburne.

In the lead is Rufus Sewell, whose patchy career is testament to the fact that when you’re good, you’re very very good, and when you’re bad you’re box office poison. In this, he’s very very good. Just compare his reactions to the stoned Goldfish expression that Keanu Reeves wears as Neo. Additionally, Rufus Sewell would never inflict his skinny white buttocks on us in an outstandingly unerotic sex scene.

In the “let’s stick a girl in, or this film might be a bit homoerotic” role is Jennifer Connelly, making both dimensions of her character work. Her counterpart, Carrie-Ann Moss, is a cracking actress shoe-horned into The Matrix because two slightly queasy nerds wanted a hot chick in their film. It’s tougher to say that Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith is a lesser character than Richard O’Brian, particularly as Hugo has cool lines like “No, Lieutenant, your men are already dead” and Richard has “We use your dead as vesselsssss.” However, in Dark City’s defence, remember how much the Wachowskis leant on Agent Smith to make the last two risible Matrix sequels stagger along, even to the extent of trying to fill the screen with duplicates to cover the holes. It’s like a little kid shouting “Look! Over here!” to get your attention.

Oh, and anybody who thinks that the Matrix films delve deep into philosophy should read something other than Penguin books. Quoting a couple of spicy nuggets from hugely influential philosophical works is not big or clever, (though neither is the whirling brain energy fight at the end of Dark City).

Finally, here’s a little tip. Watch the beginning with the sound off, until Kiefer makes his phone call, and you will be spared the Village Idiot commentary that explains what the film is about so that you don’t have to watch it.

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Back on the Chain Gang

The lady in red: one half of The Raveonettes

Miranda Bryant speaks to Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner of Danish duo The Raveonettes about tearing up the rule book.

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ual voices were rarely heard – in fact it was easy to forget that the vocals were coming from two bodies. So to hear solos in their new material felt surprising and novel, but equally effective.

On The Event’s expression of interest in their concepts for working creatively within self-imposed rules (such as only working in one key, limiting track lengths to three minutes and adopting a generally “back to basics” approach)

“If there’s a movement, then everybody does it.

That’s not the way you create an interesting music scene. It’s really about just making the music that you love and then going for that.”

Sharin quickly informs us that they have since moved on from this way of working.

Recoiling quickly as Sharin jokes that The Event might no longer be interested in the Raveonettes, we ask why they used to find these rules inspiring.

Sune explains that their first album was “a reaction against music we thought was just too complicated or intricate. The rules and all kinds of crazy stuff helped to make it even more simple.”

Since then they have shifted and changed musically and personally to produce an album with “no rules, no guidelines, and no restrictions.” It is hard not to feel a bit sympathetic as Sharin, in justification of their new ideas about making music, adds: “Naturally you just want to do something different when you’ve been playing in the same key for like two, three years. We sort of revolted against ourselves, you know.” If you are put off by the artistic terminology, don’t be. Essentially the Raveonettes are about making good music, which they know

Photo: Sarah Watson

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he Raveonettes, almost as much about their stage presence as their music, left the audience captivated at the 2003 Reading Festival.

Frontwoman Sharin Foo’s stunning aura had something to do with it, leaving the guys confident of their heterosexuality and the straight girls toying with the idea of lesbianism. That was just after the release of their first album Chain Gang of Love. Now on tour and exposing their new material for the first time, the band are in the UK with Dogs and The Boxer Rebellion. On their way to the US via Norwich, The Raveonettes went to the Livewire studio to record a session and answer some questions for The Event.

Intrigued to hear their new material and to question them on their Dogme 95esque ideas about making music, the opportunity to meet the Danish partners in crime and creativity – Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo – was one not to be missed. With a guitar and a tour manager, the duo swiftly recorded two new songs acoustically for the Livewire session. Their decisiveness and firmness with the technicians during recording was surprising, but both were absent of any rock and roll arrogance – only demonstrating their capability and knowledge of sound production. Their “hands on” approach to making music has enabled their admirable creative independence, which has contributed to what they are today – a great live act with some sufficiently raw-sounding recordings.

“We’re basically just a touring band and that’s really what we do,” says Sune.

When asked what makes a good live show, Sharin replies: “When everything kind of clicks… when you’re connecting with the band, the audience and when the music sounds amazing. That’s the best thing, that’s good.” Today everything certainly seems to be clicking.

In Chain Gang of Love their individ-

they are good at. In Sune’s words, “We’re just a very good band right now, we’re playing really really well and the audiences can see that.”

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hilst Sune and Sharin are very focused on their own music, they do not live in an artistic vacuum. Aware of passing musical trends, the couple in creativity keep an eye on what is going on but sensibly stick with what they love, which is rooted in their own musical upbringings. “If there’s a movement, then everybody does it. That’s not the way you create an interesting music scene. It’s really about just making the music that you love and then going for that… We like to have a different take on it.” Sharin goes on to very concisely articulate what “their” sound is, as a combination of the retro, the nostalgic and the sentimental, but with their own modern element. Their new album looks set to embody these aspects by working with many of the legends amongst their musical influences.

Pretty in Black will generate a lot of interest on the merit of its guest appearances alone. Featuring Mo Tucker of the Velvet Underground, Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes and Suicide’s Martin Rev it is a more-than-exciting line-up of collaborators. Whilst it is likely that the guest appearances will generate interest, Sharin hopes that it will regenerate interest in the older bands. “I just wish that kids that like the Raveonettes that don’t know music from the 50s and 60s are going to start listening to the Ronettes again, that’d be great!”

Talk of musical legends leads us to the subject of fame, during which they tell The Event about meeting David Bowie in the studio – they played his guitar but were too shy to say hello. This is imaginable. Sune and Sharin’s pride and modesty makes them comfortable people to talk to but is probably what also drives them to test their ability and their creativity in order to create such a unique sound.

“We set very high standards for ourselves. All those bands [the ones featured on their album] have inspired us so much.” The Event suggests to them the idea that some people might find themselves “star struck” meeting them.

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t seems that whilst the band would love to be appreciated on a massscale, thankfully they would not sacrifice their musical integrity for it. From Wembley Stadium supporting Supergrass, to Norwich Arts Centre, to 20,000 at Roskilde this summer, Sune says they are not picky about venues: “We like to have a varied tour schedule.”

In agreement Sharin adds, “You need that kind of diversity otherwise it gets very monotonous really.”

So it seems that the Raveonettes have got the right attitude to making music, regardless of how you choose to define their musical style. The Event suggests “ N e w - m i n i m a l i s t - p o s t - p u n k . . .”

Delighted by this, Sune replies “Sure, sounds great!”

An articulate and beautifully perfect raw-yet-smooth sounding band finally going back to “art for art’s sake” as opposed to “art for cool’s sake” and yet they are effortlessly cool even so.

Feature 07

That’s Indie-tainment

Like a fine wine, independent cinema only gets better with maturity.

Sebastian Manley discusses the virtues of independent filmmaking.

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t the Oscars this year, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind won Best Original Screenplay, and Sideways won Best A d a p t e d Screenplay. They won – well they won because they were good, of course – but they won here, rather than in the Best Film or Best Direction or Best Actor categories, because they are obviously and deliberately different to the film mainstream and the values that go along with it. Neither of the two films featured large-scale effects-driven action; neither dealt in American heroism or onetrue-love life-changing romance; certainly neither cost $110 million to make (as did The Aviator - compare with Sideways at $16 million, and Eternal Sunshine at about $34 million). If they were foreign-language, they’d be “art cinema”, but they’re not, so they’re “independent”, which is well understood as a term, but refers to something far less specific than it used to.

It’s hard to talk about films as “independent” on economic or production grounds any more. It used to be that an independent film was simply a film made by an independent film company, specifically a company that could finance, produce, and distribute a movie all on its own, without pressure to compromise from the big studios or distributors. In fact, even companies thought of as independent were usually linked to a major distributor in some way, and in the 1980s and 1990s such “independents” as Goldwyn, New Line, and Miramax were finally subsumed by major players wise to the limited but steady profit to be had in “niche” film production (Disney snapped up Miramax, Turner took New Line, now owned by Time Warner). Today there’s really no such thing as a truly independent company, and certainly the recent films we would call independent are firmly embedded in “the system”.

Sideways may have been low-budget and starless, but it was distributed by Fox Searchlight, a subsidiary of Fox. From the mouths of pessimists, that means independent film is dead, and the radical artists of American cinema are just spokes in the wheel of commercialism after all, exploited and/or kept in check like everybody else. Obviously that’s rubbish. It’s rubbish because even alternative cinema might benefit from imposed restrictions (Spike Lee’s efforts to change cinema’s black stereotypes, for example, would have been less

effective had his films not been made within a commercial framework that demanded the material appeal to a sizeable audience), and it’s rubbish because “independent filmmaking” can quite easily be filmmaking done in a certain spirit, that is with a wish to work apart from the norm, with different subjects and ideas, different stories and styles. Sideways and Eternal Sunshine are clearly independent in spirit, and are part of what is emerging as a quite brilliant phase for alternative American cinema.

Of the group of daring new filmmakers that appeared in the mid-1990s, nearly all have released something like a masterpiece in the last year: David O. Russell with I Heart Huckabees, Wes Anderson with The Life Aquatic With Steve Zizzou, Alexander Payne with Sideways, Charlie Kaufman with his screenplay for Eternal Sunshine (directed by Michel Gondry), and now Tod Solondz with Palindromes (only P.T. Anderson seems to be lagging a bit,

With less emphasis on momentous action and more on self-inspection, character-puzzles become much more important than plot-puzzles. Chunks of exposition often go missing or big narrative events unresolved; what the films really want to look at is how people think and cope and make relationships and break down. Characters are rarely idealised, and hold the interest precisely because they are conflicted and imperfect (we root for Miles in Sideways with the knowledge that he has no qualms stealing money from his own mother!). Indeed, one of the biggest pleasures of these new indie films is seeing an established Hollywood star explore new depths in their acting and play against type – who can forget Tom Cruise in P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), trading on his patented good looks and blinding white smile to peddle relationship advice as a sex guru, and later falling into spectacular collapse as he is forced to deal with deeply repressed feelings about his father.

Similarly remarkable is the change in Bill Murray’s acting persona – from wisecracking comedy-hero to flawed but basically good man in emotional crisis – thanks to his roles in Wes Anderson’s pictures (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic).

Alongside the humanistic perspective, the current indies invest a lot in look and style. Too much in some people’s eyes – Wes Anderson took a few critical blows for what was seen as visual preciousness in The Life Aquatic, detail and artificiality at the expense of real heart.

Solondz composes his films with a similar attention to colour and composition, although he’s concerned more with investing everyday suburbia with a threateningly heightened reality (very green grass, sunshine so bright it hurts), rather than the creation of a fantastic new world. Both The Life Aquatic and Palindromes, as well as Eternal Sunshine and I Heart Huckabees, use formal playfulness to ask questions about reality and illusion, about whether some things are more authentic than others, and whether

“Independent filmmaking” can quite easily be filmmaking done in a certain spirit, that is with a wish to work apart from the norm, with different subjects and ideas, different stories and styles. with no feature since 2002’s PunchDrunk Love, and apparently nothing on the cards). They’re all different in many ways of course – and maybe that’s part of independent cinema’s identity, as a paradoxical “community of difference” – but they share in common some deviations from mainstream Hollywood.

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irst off, they’re not tremendously consequential. Big things don’t really happen – certainly not to the world (America is not saved from terrorist attack, the Spruce Goose is not invented) and usually not even to the characters; Miles’ “adventure” in Sideways, for example, consists of little more than gulping the red and white and watching his friend have an affair, and though there is a change to his personality, it is a slight and slightly ambiguous one. Palindromes, with its tale of a girl who undergoes a series of bizarre transformation but ends up where she began, is expressly about the part of ourselves that cannot change, or our “palindromic nature”, as Solondz puts it.

that matters. Is Zizzou in The Life Aquatic a fake, or is he simply part of a fake world?

Are those rectangles of “dismantled” reality floating around in Huckabees something the characters make happen, or are they pure artifice, something the movie puts there to visually express a thought process?

If independent films raise more questions then they resolve, they also don’t demand an answer. It’s not necessary, for example, to devise a complex set of reasons why Aviva in Palindromes is played by seven different actors in order to enjoy the wit, the music, the different emotional performances, the moral complexity. That the current American indies can mix experimentation and sparkling entertainment in a way other alternative cinemas do not (it’s hard to imagine anyone being uplifted or amused in quite the same way by films such as Baise-moi or Ma Mère from the current French Extremist movement, for example) is down to their innovative engagement with the mainstream, in terms of funding and distribution, actors, and some filmmaking personnel; and as long as there’s a mainstream, there’ll be this special independence within in. Long live Hollywood, then.

Cinefile Casshern

no. 55

Another dystopian vision of the future?

Yes. After fifty years of chemical, nuclear and biological warfare The Eastern Federation has triumphed over Europa, but the human race is facing possible extinction. A “neo-cell” treatment has the potential to regenerate mankind but in an experiment gone wrong a race of NeoSapians is created. Escaping the human soldiers the Neo-Sapians create an army of robots to wipe out the humans in revenge. Against this exists a growing insurgency, a love story, a power battle between father and son and a scientist trying to save his dying wife.

And where does Casshern fit into all of this?

In the film a dead soldier is reincarnated as Casshern a legendary hero. Complete with an invincible body suit he provides hope for the humans as he takes the battle to the robots.

Humans vs Machines! This all sounds a bit Matrix?

Indeed. Until Casshern, The Matrix was the closest we got to live action anime. Furthermore the battle scenes between robots and humans set to a rock soundtrack are similar to The Second Renaissance (part of The Animatrix) which recounts the war between machines and humans prior to The Matrix. However it is important not to get bogged down in comparisons, for Casshern offers a very different experience to The Matrix.

What’s this about a digital backlot?

Casshern was filmed almost entirely against a digital backlot in the same manner as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Sin City.

The actors perform their scenes in front of a blue scene and the rest is added digitally later.

This presents a unique challenge to the actors and underlines the fact that performance is secondary to the visuals. Thankfully Casshern does not disappoint on the visual front as the photography is stunning. Some scenes are shot in a grainy black and white and elsewhere the film is rich in colour as it shifts through various landscapes from the industrialised cityscape, spewing out smog to lush fairytale-like forests.

Where did this director come from?

Casshern is the debut feature of fashion photographer and music video director Kazuaki Kiriya.

Gorgeous visuals then, but what about story?

Kiriya clearly has an eye for stunning photography and set pieces, and he mixes these well with music giving the film a real vibrancy, yet he is less competent when it comes to telling a story.

Despite moving at a fast pace the film is very long and whilst there is an interesting story and a thematic concern with the nature of war and human coexistence it does become a bit too convoluted at times. Characters come and go and things happen seemingly at random, which can get frustrating. Yet Casshern is well worth checking out for the photography, as a rich and varied digital world is created and there are some thrilling, creative set pieces from one-onone sword fights to massive battles between man and machine.

Casshern is released on 2-Disc DVD by Momentum Asia on 25th April.

David McNaught

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08 Feature Photos: Gabrielle Barnes

Short Stories in the Age of the Novel Whitbread Prize winning author Matthew Kneale discusses travelling, writing and his new collection of short stories Small

Crimes in an Age of Abundance with Luke Roberts.

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a t t h e w K n e a l e divides his time between his family, writing and travelling. His excursions around the globe have provided inspiration for narratives set in many different countries. On a perishing spring evening travelling and writing brings him to Norwich to speak about his new collection of short stories Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance.

Short fiction is currently something of a rarity in the publishing market and Macmillan are going somewhat against the grain with Small Crimes. But considering Kneale’s bibliography, and the seemingly unquenchable demand for travel writing, the publication of Small Crimes is unlikely to raise too many eyebrows.

Kneale has had itchy feet for most of his life. After graduating in modern history from Magdalene College, Oxford, he uprooted to Japan. “It’s always a difficult one when you finish university. You don’t quite know what you want to do. Well I certainly didn’t.

So I just thought if I went to Japan it would be an interesting place to be. I might learn some Japanese, and I liked the idea of being a photo journalist.” Although

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meticulously planned, this scheme didn’t quite take off. “I didn’t really know how you became a photo journalist. But I had a camera, which had to be a start.”

Kneale’s gung-ho attitude paid off, but led him in a direction he had not expected. “So I got on a plane to Tokyo and got a job there teaching English. It was then I started writing short stories.”

It was in Japan that he wrote and set his first novel Mr. Foreigner. This was followed by Whore Banquets (1987), also set in Japan, which Kneale describes as,

island now known as Tasmania.

Reverend Wilson is accompanied to Tasmania by Dr. Potter, a sinister scientist who exhibits the prevailing vile attitude of the English towards the aborigines.

Cultural divide is a motif throughout Kneale’s fiction. Small Crimes is set in contemporary times. It is made up of twelve chapters or short stories. The majority are told from the point of view of English or American people abroad.

The Western travellers occupy uneasy

“At times Small Crimes asks whether we have progressed from the sinister racial Darwinism of eighteenth and nineteenth century explorers.” “a wry look at mutual cultural incomprehension.”

Most of Kneale’s books have dealt with previous eras. Sweet Thames (1992) looked at London in the 1840s and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

His best-known book, English Passengers, won the 2000 Whitbread prize.

It describes the voyage of R e v e re n d Wilson, a religious eccentric who believes that there is geological evidence that the Garden of E d e n existed on the

positions and often end up paying a heavy price. “I actually wrote a whole volume of short stories about travel which never made it to publication years and years ago. They were tales of things going wrong for people who go away and can’t understand the place.

Or the characters would get caught up in wicked local goings-on,” says Kneale.

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n the first story the Winter family make a terrible mistake, accidentally condemning a local man to death, as they go off the beatentrack in China. Their material wealth and dubious moral positions are a source of discomfort to the Westerners abroad. It distances them from the culture and the people they have come to see. They carry a sense of guilt with them. There is Toby Chisholm the arms dealer, teetering on the edge of a breakdown as he tries to broker a deal in a small African country. Benny the oilman pays a local Uygur man from a remote Chinese village $8000 to marry his daughter and give her a new and deeply unsatisfactory life in Dallas.

“Unfortunately this imbalance is very much the situation in the world at the moment.

Look at what’s going on militarily in far-flung places. I started writing Small Crimes almost the day the last Gulf war began.”

The stories set in England about English people also ferment a deep sense of dissatisfac-

tion. Is Kneale pessimistic about the state of the world and the lives most of us live?

The small crimes or mistakes that Kneale’s characters commit are in a sense, microcosms of the global picture.

“It is an unusual time we’re living in.

Having grown up in the Cold War era, and then having reached the relief of the 1990s - when it seemed like the dangers we had always feared had finally, amazingly, just gone away - we now seem to have gone into a new cycle of aggression, almost by good intentions. At least, we go into foreign countries, saying we have good intentions. I think we are fighting over things that really should be avoidable.”

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t times Small Crimes asks whether we have progressed from the sinister racial Darwinism of eighteenth and nineteenth century explorers. Kneale only partially resists comparisons to English Passengers.

“Small Crimes is a very different book in some ways, and I wanted it to be, because I think it’s important to write different things, to keep things alive. If you go down the same road too much your writing will go to sleep. It’s always my wish to try to write things that are very different from each other. And this is very different, because it’s contemporary and it’s short stories. But at the same time, it’s not a million miles from English Passengers. It’s just that that was 150 years ago, when we should have known better, and this is now, when we should know better.”

Later, when the tape recorder is switched off, Kneale says that the book is getting mixed reviews. The Telegraph isn’t keen and The Sunday Times gave it a luke-warm reception, he says.

Undetered, he is eager about his upcoming plans. “Well we’ve got these two babies now. It slows down the travel.

But we will be taking a family outing to Croatia in May. I’m doing a travel piece, and I’ve never been there. There’s some Roman ruins along the Croatian coast, that I’ve always wanted to see. So we’ll drag the scraped and battered Fiat Punto along the coast of Croatia.” It doesn’t sound too bad, and most of us could probably force ourselves to do likewise.

With any luck, the Kneales won’t become embroiled in an arms deal with Croatian paramilitaries.

Feature 09

United they Stand

The caring, staring band.

They might be partial to a bit of traditional Irish folk, but Dropkick Murphys are punk to the core. Ben Patashnik

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l Barr, singer from The Dropkick Murphys, is sitting opposite The Event on a leather sofa in the DKM's admittedly less-than-spacious tourbus. A large road map of the UK is open on the seat next to Barr, and just before the interview starts he flicks it shut. “I’ve heard of Norwich but... where the hell is it?”

After forming in 1996 in Boston, MA, the Murphys proceeded to build up a stronger and stronger fanbase by doing two things - releasing quality albums and touring harder than almost any other band. “The danger of white-hot success in this industry is that you burn out,” says Barr. “I'm not saying we don't want to sell millions of records because everyone does, but the danger is that you’re flooding yourself with such an unfamiliar audience that gives you all this attention. There’s all this hubbub about this one song that’s hit big and

speaks to the band about their eclectic influences. there’s a danger that they won’t know your other music that you’ve been working on for ten years, and more importantly, that they might not stick around for whatever you do next. I’d rather be in a working band where people buy the record for every song.”

Noble words indeed, and with the pedigree that DKM have, it’s hard not to believe Barr. After releasing Do Or Die and The Gang’s All Here on Hellcat Records, original vocalist Mike McColgan left the band (and can now be found in Street Dogs), leaving Barr to take centre stage. Asked for the secret of their success, the reply is simple:“We’ve been constantly working steadily, coming over since ‘97, opening for bands and coming back over and over. Playing little holes in the wall, showing people that it matters to come back and play, that it’s not the glory of playing a huge room.We have such a diverse age group - a guy in Birmingham took out his phone and showed me his 8 year old son singing Walk Away, holding a guitar! I was singing Beatles songs when I was 8.

Then there’s the older people because we do the traditional songs. We like to have a family environment at a rock show - none of us are on tour to get laid!

We’re not saints, but we’re all family orientated people and that's what we sing about.”

But in a band such as yours when, in your own words, you’re on the road for anything up to eleven months of the year, what about your life back home?

“I look at people that live in the real world and I know that this bubble will end. We’re very lucky to do what we do.”

“Of all the man-holes in all the world, you had to crawl outta this one...”

"I've got a 15 month-old son - being away from my wife and child is tough.

He started walking three days before I left and every report I got from home is that he’s bombing it around! But the upside of that is that I’m blessed enough not to have to work nine to five and pay my bills like this. When I get home I can spend all my time with my son, and I look at people that live in the real world and... I know that this bubble will end and the real world will start again.We’re lucky to do this and it's not always going to be like this.”

In that case, why are you able to play such big gigs at the moment? “We’re trying to come over to Europe more often and we're seeing the results of playing Leeds and Reading last year on the Main Stage. It was a huge opportunity to hit a listening audience that doesn’t normally come and see you and get new listeners. A lot of people are saying that they’ve heard of us but never seen us, and then came to see us there. We’re very fortunate to be able to travel all over the world and have people come see us. Our theory is that when you put a record out, you have to go to people’s hometown and play it for them.”

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fter 2003’s Blackout, also released on Hellcat Records and the recent release of Singles Collection Vol. II, it must be about time for another DKM studio album, and sure enough, Barr reveals that one is on its way, to be delivered in June. “I always hearken us to AC/DC because you’re going to get your Irish, your rock, your punk. Every record we try to introduce something, we try to push our limits and put out the best record we can. I think that’s what this record we’re going to put out this summer is going to be. We feel like it’s our best record and we’ve poured our heart and soul into it for the last five months.”

Anyone lucky enough to have seen

the Murphy’s headline gig at UEA will know the integral ingredients of their sound. A healthy dose of Irishness, embodied both by the traditional instruments (bodhran, tin whistle, bagpipes) and the familiar folk songs, all topped off with the punk rock sensibilities of a band that has released splits with, among others, The Business, Agnostic Front and Face To Face. They unite all these disparate influences with enough energy and passion to stun a small horse: witness Barr stalking the stage, fists clenched as his band pound through a startling cover of Guns of Brixton, as guitarist James Lynch throws himself around the stage with wilful abandon. Then turn eyes right to see bassist Ken Casey huge grin as he leans into the crowd only to have every word shouted back at him.

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t’s fair to say that DKM aren’t your average band. But Barr is keen to get back onto the subject of their new album, such is his enthusiasm for the music he makes. “It’s more on the lines of Sing Loud, Sing Proud.

Blackout was more of a rock ‘n’ roll record, and this one’s going to have a lot more of the hi diddly dee on it. With this record we feel like we’ve cemented everything together. We have everything from piano and banjo to raging guitars. I’d recommend it to anyone that didn’t previously know the Murphys. I spent about four months working with a vocal coach, everyone wanted to learn as much as possible to see what we can actually do for this album. We wanted to build on what we had but bring a lot of new stuff too.” Anyone fearing a Tapesque “Hope you like our new direction” has nothing to fear, as the new songs aired tonight seemed to be quintessential Murphys, while being new enough to kick the already-devoted crowd up a notch.

So, Mr Barr, what’s left to achieve?

You’re a few thousand miles away from home, about to play a gig to a rammed room full of kids, adults and everything in between, you’ve recorded with Shane McGowan and others, you’re about to release another album on Hellcat... what keeps you going? “I measure success by, at the end of the night, if I’m shaking excited hands and people are saying, ‘That was awesome, this was my blah blah time seeing you’ or ‘wow you guys are great, this is the first time I’ve seen you but it won’t be my last.’ That’s success to me, a room full of people singing words that you’ve written back at you.

You can’t get a bigger compliment than that, especially when you’re so far from home.” And for a man as friendly as this, leading a band as good as his, the only thing to do is raise another Guinness, grab your best mate and jig around like it’s the end of the world.

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10 Feature

Feature 11

SHOULD WE BE WATCHING THIS?

Brass Eye and the confronting of taboos...

Paedophilia could hardly be desrcibed as an issue constantly in the public eye, perhaps it can more accurately be desribed as a topic we have our eyes closed to. For all the conversations about the Jackson trial, few have dealt with the nature of his supposed crimes. Occasionally films like The Woodsman or programmes like Brass Eye will attempt to address the issue, but is this really what we would like to happen?

Lolita, Carrol, Barrie and tabloid hysteria... bre is Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

In a letter to New Directions, dated February 3, 1954, Nabokov wrote: “Would you be interested in publishing a time bomb that I have just finished putting together? It is a novel of 459 typewritten pages.”

Time bomb is certainly one way of describing the public reaction to a novel whose subject is the relationship between a middleChristina Ricci as Lolita aged man and a twelvenumber of books and year old girl. Lolita has been read variauthors are surrounded by ously as the triumph of love and paspaedophilia issues. But sion over censorship and taboo, but how much does hysteria also as an act of condoning paedophilcloud our views? ia.

Literature usually engages with the There is a tendency to look back on issue on a more complex level than the lives of authors such as Lewis tabloid newspapers, whose smear Carrol and J.M. Barrie with suspicion. campaigns create the impression of a Inevitably this snowballs into a re-evalbogeyman-like horror preying on a uation of their celebrated children’s neighbourhood near you. In literary books. Suddenly Alice’s adventures in terms, perhaps the greatest cause cele- Wonderland and Peter Pan flitting

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through the air to Neverland take on unsavoury connotations for some.

There is no denying the ambiguity of these men’s relationships with children. Lewis Carrol’s practice of photographing or sketching nude girls has added to speculation that he was a paedophile. Stylistically there is a clear difference between his photographs and depictions by other Victorian artists; almost all of his girls are depicted unburdened by the heavy weight of Victorian symbolism. They are simply and strongly themselves. But whether these photographs make Carrol a paedophile per se, or reveal paedophilic tendencies, is at best speculation.

Like, Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie was also a keen photographer, and took numerous nudes of boys - the Llewelwyn Davies boys and many others - in various wooded and beach settings.

The poet Hakim Bey describes,“JM Barrie’s sepia photos of longgone english boys playing pirates naked in the woods, paleskin washedout blonds with ashgreygreen and faded turquoise eyes.” J.M. Barrie’s much

questioned relationship with the Llewelwyn Davies boys, along with some of these nudes, is discussed in J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (1979) by Andrew Birkin.

Barrie is a problematic figure, and hence much of the suspicion directed towards him. He admitted to “worshipping from afar” young actresses of the 1890s London stage. He was scarcely 5 feet tall and his legendary shyness and reserve was broken only in the presence of children. The recent film Finding Neverland, starring Johnny Depp, portrayed Barrie’s relationship with the Llewelwyn Davies boys in an entirely innocent light. Nonetheless contemporary views of the novelist remain murky.

Should authors depict paedophilia at all? In September 2002 the French publishing house Gallimard came under fire for the novels Il Entrerait dans la Légende and Rose Bonbon. The main characters are an obsessive paedophile and a perverted serial killer with a preference for very young girls, including his two-year-old daughter.

The authors argued that they were merely portraying the ills of society. But child protection groups and a number of critics, including Alexis Liebaert, from the news magazine Marianne, called the books “sickening, unacceptable, pornographic and above all entirely devoid of literary merit.”

Unlike ‘real events’ such as the Jackson trial, books are usually judged on their literary merit. However the inflammatory nature of paedophilia is such that the removed view of the critic is often thrown out the window.

Moreover, suspicion directed at authors will inevitably have a bearing on the way their books are viewed.

Protecting a child’s innocence is vital parental and societal responsibility. But it would be a shame to be controlled by the tabloid myth of the bogeyman.

Luke Roberts

Cinematic representations of paedophilia in Capturing The Friedmans and The Woodsman...

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o film loosens our anxious grip on the differences between the fact and fantasy surrounding paedophilia more than Capturing the Friedmans. Andrew Jarecki’s debut feature is a documentary, but one composed partly from footage shot by the Friedman family members; looked at another way it is a collection of family movies shoehorned into a cinematic storyline. It includes very personal recordings – ‘this is between me now and me in the future’, says David Friedman to the camera – family memories, talking-head interviews conducted by the director, and news footage. As the film rolls forward, the questions we most need to ask – is Arnold Friedman, a respected teacher and father, a paedophile? Is his son? – become nearly impossible to answer.

The questions get even harder to ask.

Are we to question the victim’s families, who are possibly suffering False Memory Syndrome? Or a police force using intimidation tactics?

As a film, Capturing the Friedmans puts the viewer in a quandary because although it offers a privileged position where we see private moments and many different testimonies, it also denies us concrete knowledge of the crimes. We end up in a personal ‘story’

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which is actually ‘real’ and so impossible to completely reconstruct. This is unusual, both for documentaries (Michael Moore has no problem serving up an overwhelmingly one-sided ‘reality’), and for representations of paedophilia, because the films are usually fiction. In Todd Solondz’s indie feature Happiness (1998) for example – one of the few films to have a paedophile for a central character – the question we face is not did someone commit paedophilia, but, having committed such crimes, whether he is an entirely bad person. Bill drugs and rapes several of his son’s friends, but he is also a devoted father and good husband. Here Happiness enters into the discourse of paedophilia-as-a-disease against paedophilia-as-a-choice, something that Jeremy Irons (who starred in Adrian Lyne’s remake of Lolita) has talked about recently, commenting that parental love has a ‘sexual element’ and paedophilia should be treated as a disease where feelings of affection are excessive and uncontrollable. A view on this subject will obviously colour how you watch the film, but Happiness further complicates matters by portraying Bill’s seduction of a young boy as a sort of comical farce.

Of course, cinema has arguably been ‘glamorising’ (i.e. using as enter-

tainment) murder, crime, and even rape for a long time – paedophilia though is a particularly sensitive subject, and mainstream cinema has had little to do with it except to portray revenge actions of victims (Sleepers, 1996) or later-life repercussions for the victims (Mystic River, 2003). In both cases, the figure of the victim provides a safe point of identification, while the pederast is largely absent and easily judged.

Recently, Nicole Kassell’s The Woodsman has given a high-profile to a film that focuses on the abuser (played

by Kevin Bacon) rather than the victim, and pushes us to confront problems that have long been ignored or even denied. By forcing viewers to empathise with Walter, someone we can see is caring but know to have committed some repellent crimes, The Woodsman speaks of both the difficulties of preventing paedophilic offences, and of the trauma and fear felt by abusers who receive 12 years in jail and little or no help once they get out.

The Woodsman is very close to Fritz Lang’s masterpiece M. Made in 1931 M is probably the first film to deal with the issue of child sex offence and told the story of a child killer in Germany, played by Peter Lorre (Casablanca).

The film portrays the police and crimi-

nal underworld both attempting to hunt down the killer, and ends with a lynch mob holding a mock trial in an abandoned warehouse. Ultimately the mob justice that is to be doled out by the public, in collaboration with the organised crime leaders, is presented to be as bad as the offences themselves.

Perhaps films can never have the same social or political impact as a high-profile news-covered affair like the Michael Jackson trial. Perhaps The Woodsman or Capturing the Friedmans are deeply thought-provoking for two hours, but are remembered as ‘stories’ or art (even a documentary has a named director, or artist), where the news presents an educational and objective ‘record’.

In the effort to understand and start to solve a problem as complex as paedophilia, both film and the news media can be valuable.

Still, it’s good to see that cinema is providing an alternative to the sensationalism that currently reigns in some quarters.

Sebastian Manley

Kevin Bacon in The Woodsman

“G Jackson on his way to court

The reality of the Jackon Trial...

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hort of living under a rock, there is really no excuse for not having seen at least some of the Jackson trial over the past few months. The journey from uber-celebrity to infamy for the King of Pop has taken place almost entirely under the scrutiny of the international public eye, with every salacious detail easily accessible on a range of websites and TV broadcasts. Even the most tabloidhardened cynic must feel a little saddened to see the man who once topped the charts with some of the most loved and influential music of the century, transformed into the gawping, confused figure we see in Jackson’s mugshot. No matter what the outcome, it is sure to be one of the most discussed media

events in years to come, at least until the next tabloid expose.

Accused of molesting a number of under-age boys (including Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin) over a period which spanned decades, Jackson’s is just another celebrity trial to add to the heap with only its sheer scale setting it apart. However, the issue of paedophilia mixed with celebrity and our reaction to it casts some rather disturbing light on us as consumers. It seems we delight in creating a ‘child-catcher’ figure of Jackson, entirely separating him from the icon of music he used to be.We just can’t cope with the notion that the two figures are, and always have been, the same man. The figure we see being led into court corresponds entirely with the stereotypical paedophile who is an easily recognised bizarre loner, someone we would never enjoy watching onscreen, yet when clips of Jackson at the height of his career are shown it is difficult not to cringe with the comparison to present day. Sadly both are creations of media coverage; neither image comfortably fits the description of the ‘real’ Michael Jackson.

Since the trial began Jackson has experienced an unexpected boost to his career, most notably Moonwalker (Jackson’s feature film) has been rereleased on DVD and is holding a respectable position in the charts. The film sees Jackson starring as himself only endowed with magical powers, being chased by drug baron Mr Big and saving three children. The clucking of tongues and stroking of chins at the content of the film can only further the assumption that the trial is based on the violently swaying barometer of public opinion rather than any solid evidence. This isn’t to suggest that there is not solid evidence being used in the case against Jackson, but that this is not where the emphasis lies. It seems the more outrageous the claims of various grief-

stricken mothers are the more likely they are to hit headlines “I let Jackson lick my son’s head” being the most recent, rather than the real evidence such as Jackson and a young boy’s fingerprints both being present on an adult magazine.

After what seemed to be an exit from the limelight for Jackson in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the Martin Bashir documentary in 2003 rocketed the ‘is he or isn’t he?’ questioning to the forefront of media agendas. The excessive plastic surgery he has patently had performed yet denies, compliments the plunge into the world of ‘other’ that Jackson has taken and seems to have aroused more suspicion amongst most of us than any number of out of court settlements. It has to be wondered exactly what the furore created by the case is in response to – the paedophilia charges or the grotesque appearance of Jackson.

Numerous documentaries have followed Bashir’s, including Louis Theroux talking to Joe Jackson (Jackson’s father and supposed abuser) and a focus on Jackson’s rather obsessive fans.

Throughout all these journeys into the world of Jackson that purport to reveal something never seen before, the overall impression never really touches upon the very thing everyone seems to crave about the Jackson phenomenon – reality – and they certainly never directly discuss the issue of paedophilia for more than a passing moment. The trial and the events surrounding it have become so much bigger than the reality of them, there are even recreations being made of the more exciting in court moments at the same time as they hit the headlines.

We have an increasing fascination with the gritty realness of faces we see on television and in magazines, so much so that people can become famous merely *for* allowing cameras into the crevices of their existence.

Now that Jackson’s rather skeletonfilled closet is being ransacked and the intricacies of a real paedophile court case are available for public discourse they are all immediately turned into fiction. Yet by doing this we avoid having to discuss any of the issues central to the trial.

Kate Bryant

enetically, paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you or me.” ‘Dr’ Neil Fox, radio DJ and committed exponent of “Nonce Sense”, looks directly into the camera.

“That is scientific fact. There is no real evidence for it, but it’s scientific fact.”

Fox’s claim is a glorious moment in Chris Morris’s Brass Eye Special, the show that in 2001 made a bold attempt to satirise the issue of media panics over child sex abuse. In an inevitable response, the media panicked.While TV pundits and newspaper columnists frothed at the mouth, government ministers fell over themselves to denounce the programme as “unspeakably sick” (Beverly Hughes) and “not remotely funny” (David Blunkett). The Star trumped them all, running an article praising the then 15 year-old Charlotte Church’s breasts next to its feature on the “sicko” comedian.

Until Jerry Springer: The Opera sent religious groups scuttling for their placards earlier this year, Morris’s show held the record for the highest number of complaints made against a TV programme in the past decade. Of the issues objected to – the use of children in explicit sketches, jokes apparently being aimed at the victims of abuse – the complainants’ overriding conviction was that this subject simply should not be tackled on television, let alone in comedy. Never mind that Fox’s willingness to talk gibberish on screen was a devastating indictment of ill-informed celebrity spokespeople, or that the target of Morris’s ire was never paedophilia itself. Some topics, they argued, should remain taboo.

This is a charge that has met many artists’ decisions to tackle difficult issues on screen. Damning critical responses to The Woodsman and new release Downfall, which presents a humanised portrayal of Hitler, indicate a continuing reluctance to allow moral

and sexual transgression to be tackled unsensationally on screen. Even in fiction we would rather our monsters remained monstrous.

Yet these taboos are indeed being confronted on an almost daily basis – and without the objection of our moral guardians. Flick through the circus of prurience that is satellite TV and it doesn’t take long to find a courtroom, complete with judge, jury and accused.

Perhaps the accused is an unknown member of the public coming face to face with Judge Judy. Or perhaps it is Michael Jackson, charged on numerous counts of child molestation, whose trial has been dramatised and broadcast across the television networks.

The use of Jackson’s trial as televisual spectacle is not confined to lowbudget low-ethics cable stations. It has even permeated the BBC, which – in true public service spirit – offers a comprehensive account of the case on its website, complete with useful subheadings (“Culkin ‘fondled’”, “‘Jesus Juice’”) to accompany each week’s most important events. While a film such as The Woodsman offers no easy answers, reality TV (and there is no escaping the fact that Jackson’s trial has become just that) is infinitely more palatable. In reality TV, just as in a trial, the good win and the bad lose. Everyone gets what they deserve – whether it’s an all-expenses holiday to Barbados or a multiple life sentence.

Four years on from Brass Eye, and it is clear that the hypocrisy which made Morris so angry is still with us. Ours is a society that, while it reddens at the mere thought of introducing sex education in primary schools, sells thongs to six year-olds. Where paediatricians are at risk from vigilante groups. Where irrational fear is privileged before rational debate. As Morris himself says in the programme that caused all the fuss,“We have become a people confused.”

Sarah Edwardes

Brass Eye’s Chris Morris

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12 Music

MUSIC NIGHT

Albums

Jazz House @ Garden House, Penbroke st,

Ratings:

Sunny

Fair

Stormy

The National

Nch (Thurs 14th & 28th April) & The Crypt

Alligator

Bar at Bedfords, (Tues 3rd & 31st May)

Well low and behold the era of depressed-rock is once again at our side. We all love the thought provoking lyrics of The Smiths, and adore the bashful snarl of Johnny Cash; yes and you have to admit that Interpol are a good band. The National are in that same vain, and Alligator shows that the golden road of fifth avenue sells more than simply Gucci and Tiffany diamonds. New York is the home of great music and The National are the diamond in the rough. Playing this album will make your record player light up in a thousand ways.

The album is mainly bass driven and has a downbeat sound that is in contrast to the current wave of garage rock. In a weird and peculiar way this helps to relax the listener. If you like the mad lyrical style of Interpol, then Val Jester and Looking for Astronauts will cure your curiosity for all things weird. However, the sound of Alligator is deep and sounds a lot more developed than a lot of albums and artists out at the moment. You better snap this album up now before its to late! Sorry for the pun, but it had to be done!

James Banks

Idlewild Warnings/Promises

T

his event has certainly proven itself to be very distinctive because of its varied genres and mediums of music. It's promoters are very musically orientated (some classically trained, and ex UEA-ites) who pride themselves in providing the very best. The inclusion of Live keyboard and percussion jamming (for all) alongside retro & contemporary World music, rare jazz, funk, ska, and more, is administered to you on vinyl, a much warmer sounding medium compared to its counterpart, the compact disk. All these elements have been put through the highest quality soundsystem to provide punters with the finest bass & melodies. As someone famous (though I can't remember who now) once said: "Music is the gateway to the soul...”

The promoter's philosophy's is to try to encourage up and coming DJ's and musicians to come and play to keep things "Fresh", so if anyone is interested, come and check them out...even if you just want to play with percussion, people are welcome to bring their own!. The event also boasts the involvement of numerous well known, loved & established local Norwich dj's such as Dj Vinyl Vera (Club M,) Dj Steve Sratch Wurley(Phat Kat Club), Dj Spenney(Soundclash), Rad Dad(Beatfix), Tom Wilkes (Stuff), and many, many more...

Idlewild released one of the greatest punk albums when they released Captain. Hope is Important was a fantastic follow-up where When I Argue I See Shapes has been part of the inde-disco circuit for years now. However, love for Idlewild went back out of the 100 Windows when American English was released. So on the back of that disastrous album is where Warnings/Promises comes in, especially in a world where Scottish rock has now been shaped into the sound of Franz Ferdinand. Classic Idlewild only comes out of hiding by the third track where I Want a Warning is led by highpitched guitar distortion hooks; sadly that remains in hiding for the rest of the album, opting for the “safe” option in chart friendly songs.

Not a bad album, but not a good album either; use this as a lever to open up Idlewild's back catalogue.

James Banks

O

ne of Jazz House's venues is situated in an incredibly old and beautiful listed building. The place used to be a crypt and is situated below the bar at Bedfods. Despite it’s rather macabre origins, it in now an intimate and cosy type of venue and the vaulted ceilings lend it a subterranean charm that is unrivalled in the city. Jazz house has always had a really varied crowd. It is partly run by current UEA students, who are all a really warm and friendly bunch. It is held at the Crypt on 1st Tuesday of the month, so the next one is on Tues 3rd of May (See Concrete & Outline magazines or local press for all Jazz House listings) Another of Jazz House's venues is the old favourite student haunt, The garden House on Penbroke Street. The night is there every 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month.

As the summer heats up, so should the ambience of Jazz House; so hopefully the revision will go well for all you finalists, and if and when you've had enough, you'll know where to come to "re-charge"!...

Elizabeth Wood

Event 20.04.05 the

50 Foot Wave Golden Ocean Not the best name to have right now but it’s a good album for a band to have in their collection, since it meanders a bit but has potential. Kristin Hersh’s voice is a hybrid of Skin and Brody’s and rocks when need be (for example Clara Bow). The intros to some of their songs (Dog Days and Long Painting) are addictive, although they tend to flounder

mid-song as the tempo fails and the song is left unfulfilled.

As a result the album tends to be hit and miss. It still grooves impeccably in Sally is a Girl, but leave it too long and it’ll start to get boring. With tweaking this could improve vastly, but overall it’s still a pretty decent offering and shows more potential and personality than some of the bands that have managed to make it into the mainstream.

Suzanne Rickenback

Mennen Freakzoid Freakazoid is fairly entertainging, despite being appallingly bad. Mennen are kind of like a three legged dog - they can’t do everything a normal dog can do, and they probably get teased by the other dogs, but they’re so just so endearing, it’s hard not to like them.

They’re a four piece Dutch band who, judging by the album art, are a group of misfits, ranging in age from 14-40, who share one thing in common. They just discovered Bon Jovi. The album seriously sounds like that most wondrous of things, an attempt at a Bon Jovi tribute, but one that you would expect to hear from a high school band. This might be very negative, but you can’t escape the fact that this band is blatantly not very good.

combines haunting pianos, country acoustic sounds and lots of electrical reverb. Most of the songs are eccentrically named (Plim Plom Autumn Song, anyone?!), but don't be put off by the self-aware wackiness - this is brilliantly constructed, unusual, and interesting music. And how many current albums can you say that about?

Kat Paterson

Tom Souter

Meat Katie Fabric Live

Stromba Tales From The Sitting Room

Meat Katie (Mark Pember) is the latest DJ to hold the reigns in the Fabric Live series.These seventeen tracks are taken from his late night set at Fabric in London and they showcase the eclectic style that has made him one of the world’s foremost breakbeat DJs. And that is what has made the Fabric Live series and the club nights so popular and highly rated. As they provide the opportunity for world famous DJ’s, from all styles to lay down some underground tracks to a more knowledgeable and appreciative audience. A particular highlight from this album has to be the mix of Unkle’s Reign and Infusion’s Better World, as Ian Brown’s vocals from the former float seamlessly around the hard industrial beats. This may not be the perfect album for listening to alone in your home, but it sure makes you want to hit Fabric for a night of great clubbing.

Classification is difficult upon listening to this album.

Perhaps it is easier to describe what this album is not. It is not mainstream, it is not unoriginal, and most strikingly, it is not predictable.

Numerous genres are seamlessly blended across these 12 tracks, infusing funk, dub, triphop, and more than a few styles which, as of yet, have no genre attributed to them. The twin talents of production and musicianship unite beautifully.

In all honesty, there is very little which this journalist has sampled to compare this piece to. Some bands come close in terms of eclecticism and innovation - the Mars Volta for instance - but where other artists rock and, in the Volta’s case, completely freak out, Stromba seem at all times content to lay back and deliver their music in a most relaxed, and at times effortlessly sophisticated, manner. Utterly mesmerising.

Nick Brookes

Drowsy Growing Green Growing Green, the forthcoming album from little-known Finnish lad Drowsy, might well be the most beautiful and musically diverse album to be released this year. Released in the UK by hit-and-miss Fat Cat Records, Growing Green sees the boy Drowsy (He's 22 years old. We should all be ashamed) recalling the likes of Nick Drake and the more recent Wilco, to create what is essentially a folk rock album, but with a dark and surreal edge that puts Belle and Sebastian's most recent offerings to shame. Beginning with the decidedly menacing Some Cursing, the album easily

Simon Grittiths

Music 13

Live Reviews

Singles

Dropkick Murphys LCR 07/03/05

Green Day

Holiday

Obviously the only thing that Green Day could have done after releasing an album as globe-straddlingly successful as American Idiot was release a slew of singles effective enough to make both the pop-emo wannabes (Fallout Boy, Taking Back Shitday et al.) and the more “serious” rock bands (The Bravery etc) tremble in terror in the face of the melodic behemoth that is Holiday.

It’s not an overstatement to say that this is quintessential Green Day - full of musical beans, bounding along at a pace that could injure a room full of Ritalin-addicted littl’uns with a singalong factor that could dwarf, ooh, that song that has been made famous by The OC and anything to have spewed forth from Pete Waterman’s bowels in the last decade put together. It seems like it’s been genetically designed to cut through the commodified pap that has colonised the charts and it’s even more thrilling to know that this proto-anthem will be blasted out at rock clubs across the world, whether people understand the message or not.

When a band like Green Day can make an overtly politicised song such as this and let it seep onto the airwaves and into the public consciousness it sends a clear signal: there is hope for the music industry.

Ben Patashnik

Hard Fi Tied Up Too Tight

Jem They

The Bees Chicken Payback

Hard-Fi’s latest track, following their debut album Stars of CCTV last year, is good and should finally get them the recognition they deserve.

Having said that, they are quickly being noticed, with several appearances on Zane Lowe’s show, in the NME and supporting Graham Coxon.

Staines’ newest big thing offer Tied Up Too Tight as the follow up track and it allows Richard Archer to display his vocal talent. The introduction is misleading with a garage/hiphop-esque feel, before the drums and guitars kick in for the true punk-rock spirit. All in all, this single is well worth a listen.

Jem: the new approachable face of sophisticated British dance? Quite possibly. The core of her forthcoming single They is a blend of electronic beats and pretty vocals; but should Jem ever enter this single in the Competition For Most Eclectic Sampling, she’d probably do pretty well, throwing some Bach, some Godfather-esque classical guitars, and what can only be described as scary-kiddievoices into the mix. It sounds like it could be hideous, yes.

Bizarrely, though, it all seems to work, with Jem’s girly voice holding the whole shebang together, and producing what’s actually quite a good single.

The single Chicken Payback, taken from The Bees' latest album Free the Bees is perhaps one of the most surprisingly upbeat tracks you will hear this summer. Try as you might, it is almost impossible to listen to this song and not let the crazy mix of jazz-influenced, hoedown-style music and bizarrely fun lyrics surge through your soul and initiate an involuntary head-nod, toetap or perhaps even a small jig. This song sounds like it ought to be your own personal soundtrack to one of those lost summer days spent drinking into oblivion with your mates, and with summer around the corner, for many this is what it might well become.

Kat Paterson

Sophie Driscoll

Steph Rawles

The Dead 60s The Last Resort Thankfully nothing to do with Papa Roach, The Dead 60s are releasing this single from their upcoming album. Their influences (reggae, funk and dub) are clearly shown on The Last Resort, with the haunting ambience of the song recalling The Specials. The drumming dominates the track, as does the rumbling bass when it kicks in; the guitar is restricted to simply a few chords.

Singer Matt McManamon’s voice is similar to RHCP singer Anthony Kiedis - the song could easily have come from their last album. Complete with the mellow Invader Dub Bside, this unusual single shows a lot of promise.

When the “let's go murphys” chants begin in earnest it’s obvious that the mighty Dropkick Murphys are going to be welcomed as heroes, even thought they've never visited Norwich before.With one of the best crowds this reviewer has ever been in, comprising of old schoolers, kids with parents and everyone else, the DKMs ripped out classic after classic.

Sing Loud Sing Proud and Barroom Hero made everyone go nuts while the band mixed traditional folk-inflected music with a heavier branch of punk rock – combining so many disparate instruments and retaining such a level of tightness throughout is no mean feat, and is a testament to how wellversed this band is at playing live.

Newer material like Blackout was received as well as the classic set-closer Boys on The Docks, with Al Barr marshalling the crowd from start to finish. A great cover of Guns Of Brixton was a particular highpoint as it made the entire room start dancing, and even during the poignantly low-key Forever they held the attention of everyone within earshot. It says a lot that the worst moment of the gig was when they stopped playing.

For an hour and a half DKM were the only band on the planet.

Ben Patashnik

Doves LCR 11/03/05

Nelly Over and Over

Chris Hyde

Avril Lavigne He Wasn’t

Railing not included as standard.

The Others William

Up to a point, this is classic Avril (if that’s not an oxymoron). It’s the catchy tune, skater riff, her short-stop vocals and likeable pop song structure that’s never disappointing with Avril, although lyrically she’s falling into selfparody. I'm With You for example, was a respectable ballad, and Don’t Tell Me, despite its teeny lyrics, had a good point about standing up for yourself.

He Wasn’t will be a hit with the kidz, but for the slightly older (closet) Avril fans, the popclichés seem, on this occasion, to lack that hint of substance and err on the side of irony.

However, over-analysis aside it’s a good, fun song.

The simplicity of a Busted classic but without the cringe-worthy charm, the new single from The Others promises to woo nobody. William tells the emotional story of a good friend called William who the voice of the song went to school with, followed by the chorus “baa ba ba ba ba ba-ooooom” (times 5). Deep? Well, in fairness, Mr Masters (lead singer) does endeavour to elaborate marginally in the second verse but only to build the suspense for a repeat of the very meaningful chorus. After the initial excitement over their not-soimpromptu guerrilla gigs faded, all that remains is a sad attempt at a Libertines tribute band.

Pure Reason Revolution The Bright Ambassadors of the Morning

Catherine Lansdown

Miranda Bryant

Suzanne Rickenback

This song is somewhat schizophrenic, changing its pace, style and vocals throughout its course. There are too many elements to the song, which tend to go all over the place, confusing both itself and the listener. The track starts off sounding Air-esque, before it goes from electronic pop to driving guitars. Parts of this song are something that could be great… if they were separate songs or at least in the same style as the others.

Unfortunately it is drawn out for too long and the bad eventually outweighs the good.

This latest “cut” from the “master” of “slick” r'n’b (i.e. the bastardised version of r'n’b that has about as much in common with the original as Michael Howard does with a trustworthy, affable human being) masquerades as a “song” when it is, in fact, an exercise in how to make utterly worthless “music”. Nelly slithers along, all arrogance and vacuous bling while completely disregarding the fact that not only can he not sing, but he is unable to bring any of his questionable personality to this track. It makes one wonder what sort of brainless moron would pay money for this overproduced abortion.

Ben Patashnik

Supported by Hal, one of the best lesser known groups to visit UEA in a long time, Doves played an energetic gig in the LCR. Promoting their most recent album, Some Cities, they played a mixture of both old and new tracks, but their best performance had to be of There Goes the Fear, which really proved the Doves’ versatile musical skills, as the members swapped instruments and created some fantastic samba rhythms. On their official website, the band states that the crowd in Norwich “were on top form” making this gig “one of the best on tour!” The decision to include a video at the gig of Delia Smith screeching “Let's be ‘aving you!” was pure genius.

Any band that can combine samba, Delia and a polite warning “not to squash people” in a live performance deserves great acclaim. Apart from their big anthems, Doves are also known for the moments in which they build up a variety of melodies to create one huge wave of sound. For those people who aren't serious Doves fans, these moments can provide a chance to drift in concentration, but when played live they are really very beautiful, and are much more of a musical experience rather than tracks which you might skip on your album at home.

Rosalind Knight

Event the

20.04.05

14 Cinema

The Other Screen

The Main Feature

Palindromes

The Ring Two

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alindromes is the third Todd Solondz feature to take on taboo sexual practice, the fourth to explore alienation within a suburban family home, and quite definitely the first to cast seven different actors in the same role. If this is the one that confirms Solondz’s remarkable, Woody Allen-type ability to plough the same subject furrow again and again and still come up trumps, it also stands as a brave gambit on the part of the director – a purposeful and unapologetic move into avant-garde territory that leaves him and his film wide open to accusations of intellectualised showing-off.

Happily, Palindromes is as entertaining as it is complexly provocative. In fact, it’s very often uproarious: witness for example the antics of the Sunshine Singers, a family Christian-rock group who sing about Jesus with the same synthed-up suggestiveness that *NSYNC used to sing about girls (‘Nobody else could ever love me this way – nobody Jesus but you’); or the headphoned teenager who we take to be listening to nu-metal as an act of social defiance – and is actually listening to self-esteem help tapes. Life in Palindromes is absurd, and people cope however they know how.

The things they all use or invent to get by – religion, ‘family values’, love – are absurd too, and funny, but not to be simply written off; the beliefs of pro-life Christian ‘Mama Sunshine’ may drive her to violence (against an abortionist), but they also give her the strength and compassion to take in and care for abandoned children.

Such high-dimension storytelling puts a lot of stock in actors, and Solondz’s cast returns the investment with interest. Ellen Barkin provides a complex portrait of a loving mother who fails in a crisis, and Debra Monk, as the Sunshine mother, brings an unaffected gravity to a role that could have got bogged down by the dappy maternalisms. But the main attraction of course is the set of young leads who play 13year-old Aviva, the girl we follow round the country as she tries to become a mother. Taking acting turns are a six-year-old girl, several teenagers, a young boy, and two adult women (one of them Jennifer Jason Leigh) – many of them appearing in their first feature film, and all of them handling some fairly extreme material with assurance and subtlety. It’s thanks to the sensitive performances that the more troubling scenes – a young girl picking up a lorry driver and having sex in a hotel room, for instance – can be comical and sadly touching, and also that Palindromes’ multiple-casting conceit comes across as thoughtprovoking rather than coolly arch (in this Solondz cites the unremarked actor switches in both Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and TV soaps including Bewitched as influences).

In its exploration of the relationship between acting and identity, Palindromes works a self-reflexive line that Solondz has taken before with Storytelling (2001), and has been adopted also in recent indie films like Adaptation (2002) and The Life Aquatic. Some will regard this alertness to film’s workings as needless tinkering at the expense of human drama, and Palindromes certainly lacks the profound emotional tragedy at the heart of the Solondz’s own Happiness (1998). But here is something uncompromising and resonant in other ways (and some of the same ones too). That its director is still pushing and changing film, and still getting down to American society and morality with a wit and bravery that nobody else can muster at the moment, is nothing but a good thing.

Sebastian Manley

Event 20.04.05 the

H

ollywood is notorious for its cynical habit of remaking foreign films badly without crediting its source, such as Vanilla Skies, a shameless copy of Alejandro Amenábar’s Abre los Ojos. In that case the new remake on the scene, The Ring Two, is something of a revelation. After a fairly interesting remake of the masterpiece of contemporary Japanese horror Ringu, as The Ring by Gore Verbinski, Dream Works have rather daringly invited the original director, Hideo Nakata, to remake his own film’s sequel in Hollywood. Ignoring the similar incidence of Takashi Shimizu’s film The Grudge (2004), remade from his original Ju-On (2003) - which is itself a rather crude rip-off of Ringu and therefore not worthy of consideration - this kind of transnational project has rarely been seen since Hitchcock remade his The Man Who Knew Too Much for an American audience in 1955.

What is interesting here, moreover, is that the remake shares only a couple of scenes with the original and that rather than remake his film Nakata has virtually rewritten from scratch. The result of this extensive rejigging of

material is that the remake is now far more thematically cohesive than the original; indeed you get the impression that Nakata was using the project as an opportunity to go back and improve upon a completed film. It is absolutely fascinating to see a director adapting his own material for a foreign audience and changing it so completely, and so confidently, in the process.

The Japanese original, Ringu 2, starred the respective work partners of the parent/heroes of the first film Reiko and Ryuji, who have both fallen victim to the ghost of Sadako and only occasionally appear throughout the film as helpful ghosts. As it follows their investigations the film becomes little more than a continuation of the mystery structure of Ringu, whilst struggling to maintain the dramatic tension set by its predecessor. However in the remake, The Ring Two, the mother Rachel (Naomi Watts) has survived and remains the principle character along with her son Aidan (David Dorfman), who she takes to a small town in order to escape the vengeful ghost of Samara.

Ringu worked best as a complex study of family relations, and The Ring

Two picks this thread up in its very interesting exploration of motherhood, a theme that was regrettably absent in the original. Rather than follow the same narrative line as the original, this film sees Samara’s ghost attempting to cross over by using Aidan as a host, whilst all of Rachel’s attempts to stop her are misconstrued as child abuse.

Nakata has constructed the film from a string of intelligent and genuinely terrifying set pieces that transcend any of Hollywood’s recent gore-fests, as well as improving upon the anti-climactic Ringu 2, where everything is suggested and nothing shown. In this version more is made of important symbolic motifs such as the well, the television and water, which were all explicitly linked to Sadako in Ringu only to be underused in Ringu 2. The variations between Ringu 2 and The Ring Two clearly demonstrate that there is a difference between subtlety and tedium, and the final confrontation between mother and ghost is a particularly astonishing improvement on the original.

Whereas most remakes or sequels suffer from a sense of unoriginality that results from the dilution of the original concept, The Ring franchise by its very nature avoids this, paradoxically becoming more and more complex with every new manifestation. This is because the growth of The Ring series perfectly mirrors the narrative structure, in which a cursed videotape is copied and passed from victim to victim. If the Gore Verbinski remake of Ringu saw Sadako’s ghost entering Hollywood and the American psyche in the form of Samara, then The Ring Two sees Hideo Nakata himself taking the place of the cursed video. Watch it or die.

Dean Bowman

Newsreel

Downfall

B

runo Ganz’s incredible portrayal of Hitler in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s dramatisation of the last few days of the Fuhrer’s life, Downfall, has been causing quite a stir. Based on the diaries of Hitler’s personal secretary, Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara), the film is a meticulous historical recreation focusing on the intimate relationships between Hitler and his closest followers in his besieged bunker. The result is a highly claustrophobic film, which forsakes the kind of epic battles normally associated with the war genre.

This is not to say that the film is undramatic - on the contrary the many scenes set below ground drip with tension and convey a sense of hopeless futility as the relentless pounding of bombs keeps cutting the electricity.

Meanwhile, on the impressively recreated war-torn streets of Berlin the absurd horrors of war are only too apparent; child soldiers attack tanks with bazookas and zealous Nazis set about exe-

cuting their own civilians as the soviet troops move ever closer. This chaos is all seen through the incredulous eyes of Traudl Junge and the benevolent Doctor Ernst-Günter Schenck (Christian Berkel), who represents the ignored voice of reason.

The greatest strength of the film is its fusion of realism and the absurd. In one breathtaking early scene Eva Braun, played by Juliane Köhler in a performance that matches Ganz’s for depth, demonstrates the unreality of the situation by throwing a party, but whilst she dances on a table an artillery shell blows in the room’s windows, swallowing the dancers in a plume of black smoke.

To accuse the film of giving an overly sympathetic portrayal of Hitler is ludicrous in the light of the prevailing simplified

perception of Hitler as an embodiment of pure evil, which makes him about as believable and substantial as a pantomime villain. Ganz’s Hitler, in contrast, is a three dimensional figure who shuffles through corridors like a decrepit old man (which he was by the end of the war), showing great affection for his dog Blondi and acting in a very grandfatherly way to Traudl; however he also rants and raves in a despicable fashion and has clearly lost his grip on reality. Conversely it is hard to see anything sympathetic in the character of Goebbel’s wife (Corinna Harfouch), whose belief in Hitler is so strong that she is willing to murder her six children in their sleep with cyanide capsules rather than have them survive.

Hirschbiegel’s Downfall is an incredibly important film that offers a refreshing perspective on WWII and resists the glut of morally simplistic Hollywood films on the subject. The film is framed by some very interesting documentary footage of Traudl wrestling with her conscience, shot just before her death in 1997, which helps to contextualise the project as a daring and provocative investigation into issues of complicity and the nature of morality.

Ganz’s complex portrayal of Hitler as an incredibly flawed, but still human, character is central to this project.

Dean Bowman

DVD 15

Play Movie

Director’s Commentary

Vera Drake

A

fter its deserved BAFTA success and Oscar nominations, our ‘Vera’ now makes it onto DVD. Though slightly disappointing in terms of extras, the DVD reveals some interesting details about one of the most talked about films of 2004, dealing with Leigh’s unique style of improvised filmmaking.

The film poses a moral quandry: Vera, a respectable housewife, mother, cleaner, and carer, is also a criminal, practicing abortion in the days before 1967, when it was legalised. As trailers and posters made clear she is simultaneously a ‘Wife. Mother. Criminal’.

Imelda Staunton is perfectly cast as Vera, the bedrock for a comfortable London family and community in 1950, and is well supported by her husband Stan (Phil Davis), Sid (Daniel Mays) and by loner Reg (Eddie Marsan) and Ethel.

Vera and Stan seem to have it all: good jobs, a home of their own, and good prospects for their children –even the extremely shy Ethel gets engaged to Reg. When this comfortable life gets

interrupted, Vera looks as if she has aged twenty years immediately: she becomes haunched, frail, and weak in front of the various authority figures.

Tensions inside and outside the family seem to boil over, providing opportunities for the actors playing Sid (‘Ow could she do somefink like ‘at?!’), Sister-in-law, and Stan to thrash things out.

The film was well received by the liberal press on its first release, and it is not difficult to understand why: in the apparent contradiction between Vera as ‘mother/wife’ and ‘criminal’, Leigh was felt to be posing lots of moral questions. Whilst the film’s themes are presented in a non-judgemental fashion, the performance of Staunton is so powerful that we cannot do anything but sympathise heavily with her situation.

To some this may seem sentimental, but this neglects the radical potential that the issues raised will evoke internationally.Vera, in her humble way, presents a different side to a question that Popes and Presidents are grappling with.

Ma Mère The ‘making of’ documentary on the DVD provides some useful information on why the performances seem so powerful and radical. As with all of his films, Leigh spent a long-time with the actors developing the characters beforehand. We learn that Leigh is the only one with complete knowledge of the plot, the actors are kept separate from each other until necessary, and that the Vera character had been rehearsed right back to her teens. The film then, was only the final part of a process taking place over months, in which most of the key moments in the characters lives were rehearsed by the actors. In scenes like the arrest Staunton, like Vera, didn’t know anything about the police coming. The emotion registered by the actors is real and this is why the central performance seems so powerful.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the chance to find out more about this fascinating method of film-making, as, apart from this short documentary, and a trailer, there are no other extras. This seems a shame for the actors and someone of Leigh’s stature, but is probably a conscious effort on his part to keep the focus on the film, which makes the transfer to DVD superbly. For those who saw it first time round, the well-chosen furniture, cloth patterns, wallpapers, and tablecloths of 1950’s suburbia look just as good on the small screen; evidence of the great care and attention of cinematographer Dick Pope that make the film seem a slice of life. Despite the Oscar disappointment then –it was always going to be Marty or Clint’s dayand despite the lack of extras, this DVD should quickly become a firm favourite.

Vera Drake is released on DVD by Momentum on 25th April Stephen Sharrock

Extra Features

H

Drunken Master 3

ow about this for a plot: Imperial China, around 1920, Emperor Manchu (Gordon Liu from Kill Bill) has just been made King, and has chosen a Princess, Sun Yu (Michelle Reis), who he has given a sacred jade ring. However the White Lotus Sect, who rule over him, have warned him that if he gives it away his reign will end within a hundred days. The Emperor then tries to find the princess. Meanwhile Communist revolutionaries, led by Yuan Kwan (Andy Lau from Infernal Affairs) kidnap the Princess, and the ring. The Emperor then chases quickly after them. What follows is a bizarre and entertaining hunt through houses, vil-

N

lages, farms, and churches, cities and countryside.

This chase, which takes up most of the film, mixes farcical humour and action: such as the scene in which Princess Sun Yu tries to drive a bus to safety – only to go through the window with the steering wheel still in her hands. The action sequences sit well alongside this humour, and are great lessons in aerial acrobatics. A lot of them involve revolutionaries causing mayhem on rooftops, using the ancient art of ‘Dragon Fist’ – a clever use of footwork and anti-gravity that is a sure means of success. It all ends in a church where the Princess –having broken the

ring - is to be sacrificed by the Sect. She is saved, but most of the church is destroyed in the process. Ultimately, this film’s mixture of political intrigue, myth and fun is a good way to spend a few hours. Its anarchic, surreal humour seems to fit in well with films like Time Bandits, Jabberwocky or The Princess Bride: if you liked those, you’ll definitely like this.

Drunken Master 3 is part of five martial arts films released by Optimum Asia on 25th April. The other releases are Fire Dragon, Iron Monkey 2, Deadful Melody, The three Swordsmen.

Stephen Sharrock

Napoleon Dynamite

apoleon Dynamite, the first feature from Utah filmmakers Jared and Jerusa Hess, was the surprise break-through hit of 2004.

Surprise, because the film deals with nothing extraordinary: the average existence of a nerd in a small town in Idaho, featuring unknown actors, and made by an unknown director. The film went on to scoop plenty of awards, and receive backing from MTV. What then, was the attraction?

In short, Napoleon himself is the attraction: easy to laugh at, he quickly becomes a likeable character. Annoyed with his Uncle Rico and brother Kip

(who spends hours in an internet chatroom), and constantly bullied, Napoleon seeks friends at school.

Pedro, a new Mexican student, becomes his friend by default: after a long time standing next to each other, Napoleon whines at him ‘So me and you are pretty much friends by now?’.

As the film progresses, their friendship takes in poignant and funny moments. One scene works particularly well, when Napoleon looks beyond despair as his date leaves him at the dance. The eighties new romantic tune blaring out over the speakers only seems to compound this. Eventually,

Pedro decides to run for high school year president, and enlists Napoleon’s help. This ‘help’ culminates in a hilarious finale involving Napoleon, a dance tape, the school hall stage, and ‘some awesome moves he invented’ - moves the school audience likes. Perhaps this is the innocent appeal of Napoleon Dynamite: nobody dies, nobody gives birth, no one gets into a gunfight, but one person becomes just a bit more liked.

Napoleon Dynamite is released on DVD by Paramount on the 25th April.

Stephen Sharrock

I

sabelle Huppert galvanises her reputation as the most daring actresses in France with her performance in Christophe Honoré’s controversial second feature Ma Mère. Adapted from prominent surrealist Georges Bataille’s novel, the film probes the incestuous relationship between a sexually depraved mother, Hélène, and her son Pierre, here played by Louis Garrel who also starred in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers.

After being raised by his grandparents Pierre is spending some time with his parents at their villa on an island resort off the Spanish coast. However when the father dies whilst on a business trip in Paris the news seems to unsettle mother and son very little, Hélène even tells Pierre to appear upset in front of the servants, and their lack of emotion serves to accentuate the morbid detachment of the events that follow.

Ironically it is the servants who represent the stable parental model in the film, in contrast to the real mother’s corruptive influence, so it is absolutely fitting that Pierre decides to cruelly fire them in one of the film’s most powerful scenes, which comes to symbolise his absolute emersion in his mother’s Sadean world.

Despite the claims of Pierre’s lover Hansi (Emma de Caunes) that guilty pleasure does not exist, the film is essentially a catalogue of perversions in which Hélène and her unscrupulous friend Réa (Joana Preiss) initiate Pierre into a world of sexual promiscuity. Ultimately, however, this can only lead to self destruction, a moral that is borne out by the film’s ending where Hélène decides to turn her own violent suicide (she disembowels herself off camera) into an erotic encounter with her son. This darkly shot sequence, in which sexuality is linked to the death drive true to Freudian psychoanalysis, is the peak of Huppert’s devastating performance and one of the most disturbing scenes ever committed to film.

Ma Mère clearly betrays its surrealist origins in the frank portrayal of sexual transgression, its anticlerical incorporation of religious iconography (Pierre is Catholic) and its overt subversion of bourgeois propriety. However whereas the material remains as shocking today as the novel must have been sixty years ago, much of its purpose seems to have disappeared. Whereas the anti-Catholic elements would have once seemed incredibly daring, such as when Pierre realises that he loves Hansi’s ass more than he loves God, they now come across as somewhat trite. It seems a shame, also, that in order to provoke the viewer as much as possible the characters must appear so isolated from society and consequently, because we are not told their histories, appear rather two-dimensional. Ma Mère is thus a far cry from the relevant social critique of Huppert’s earlier film The Piano Teacher.

The film’s strength is its camera style, the harsh objectivity of which creates an uncomfortable level of moral detachment that recalls the recent work of Michel Houllebecq, the agent provocateur of French literature to whom the film seems to owe a debt. The film also appears to be infused with the aesthetic of reality TV, the nightclub scenes in particular sometimes feel like an extra explicit version of Ibiza Uncovered and the house scenes have the same voyeuristic atmosphere of Big Brother. Whilst the narrative is ultimately too schematic for this to be a great film, Hélène’s depraved mother is obviously offset against the redemptive sexual qualities of Hansi, it does however mark another astounding performance from Huppert and is unmissible for those interested in controversial French cinema.

Ma Mère is released by Revolver Entertainment on 25th April.

Dean Bowman

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16 Arts

Book Reviews

Aisle 16 launch their new book Live From

the Hellfire Club.

Do Animals Have Rights? by Alison Hills

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Aisle 16: Lean, mean, poetry machines.

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orwich based Aisle 16, “Britain’s only poetry think tank with corporate social responsibilities”, have always been opposed to corporate and celebrity culture. Now they parody the very form of the corporate board meeting in their latest show Powerpoint. Immaculately dressed in suits, virtuoso word-wranglers Luke Wright, Ross Sutherland and Chris Hicks perform their poetry next to a screen on which appear accompanying images, a parody of the eponymous corporate visual aid.

Tweaked and improved from their critically successful show at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, Powerpoint is the most structurally accomplished of Aisle 16’s performances to date. Unlike previous shows, which took the form of fragmented flows of poetry, the corporate metaphor knits the individual pieces together to make a pleasingly consistent whole and give the show an extra theatrical dimension. The visual element is also highly effective and original, complimenting the words and adding a whole new level of meaning to the performances. It has been impressive to see Aisle 16 rise, over the last three years, from their punky student roots here at the UEA to confident and competent performers.

It is, however, a shame that Tom Sutton, who featured in the Edinburgh show, was absent from this performance. Arguably his unique form of performance correspondence, in which he hassles companies with over zealous and hilariously ironic letters of praise or complaint, makes him one of the most talented and individual members of the group. However the razor sharp vitriol of Luke Wright, the quirky concise pieces of Chris Hicks and the often poignant lyricism of Ross Sutherland- (“a twitching curtain sent semaphore messages/Out across a lonely city”) - make up for the absence.

To coincide with the show, which continues in the Old Red Lion Theatre in London, Aisle 16 have released their first anthology, Live from the Hellfire Club, by local Egg Box Publishing. The book is a generous greatest hits collection, with old and new material from all members of Aisle 16 including Ian McKenzie and Joel Stickley whose pieces include “Sleeping with the NME” and “The Collected Reports of Benny Ladderfield, Political Correspondent” (aged four and a half). Keep an eye out for Aisle 16 and don’t leave UEA without familiarising yourself with their work.

Dean Bowman For more information see www.aisle16.co.uk

Detail from the front cover of Live From the Hellfire Club.

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nimal rights activism is the extreme to beware of in the often confusing, and consistently emotive, hazardous moral terrain of animal rights. Alison Hills provides a brief but concise overview of the history of humanity’s treatment of animals and makes an erudite case for the middle-ground approach to animal experimentation and our general attitude towards other species.

For some readers, the validity of experimentation by differentiating between species on the grounds of, for example, their self-awareness, may be outdated and amount to no more than a focused revision of the ideas that have already been espoused in works such as Singer’s Practical Ethics. But Hills also makes an appeal to greater understanding and clemency from both sides that is certainly welcome.

Won Kar Wai by Stephen Teo

S

Despite The System

by Clinton Heylin

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tephen Teo, in the first book-length work dedicated to the director of such arthouse classics as Chungking Express, takes on the almost impossible task of attempting to get to grips with Wong Kar-Wai’s oeuvre.

Teo argues that Wong is both a “quintessential Hong Kong director and a maverick who bucks the system.” Indeed, Wong’s works are richly woven abstract meditations on themes of desire and memory, in contrast to the highly commercial genre cinema. The strength of Teo’s book is that it doesn’t offer a reductive overarching explanation; rather it is an interesting attempt to articulate some of the complex interrelations between Wong’s films and their context, revealing some of the enigmas behind the most intriguing artistic genius of our time.

n absorbing and detailed account of Welles’ years in Hollywood, and his relationship with the Hollywood machine, evoking with great clarity the belligerence of a visionary man forced to work within a stifling, success-driven environment. Welles’ conviction that “There has never been a motion picture of consequence that has not been… the product of one man” is contrasted with the nervousness of studio executives, to give us a story of the trials and frustrations of artistic endeavour that still has relevance today. However, its focus on professional rather than personal aspects of Welles’ life means it lacks a certain narrative element that would give it wider appeal, and as such perhaps only film buffs will have the stamina for this mammoth volume.

Dean Bowman

Amy Lowe

Philip Sainty Won Kar Wai is published by bfi publishing.

Do Animals Have Rights is published by Icon books.

Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios is published by Canongate.

Theatre Reviews Roanna Bond joins the throngs for Miss Saigon

C

ameron Mackintosh’s newly designed touring production of Miss Saigon recently arrived at Norwich’s Theatre Royal, breaking box office records. It is the largest production ever to have been seen at the theatre.

The ground-breaking musical has been redeveloped by Mackintosh so that it can access smaller theatres, as the original production’s lavish stage design could not be accommodated by many of Britain’s more rural stages. This exciting new adaptation encompasses a vast range of innovations for the stage, using cutting edge visual techniques to recreate the bustling streets of Vietnam and Bangkok.

Perhaps most renowned for its spectacular flying helicopter sequence, the old version of Miss Saigon has been dramatically

transformed by director Mitchell Lemsky, with the helicopter now re-imagined as a three-dimensional projected image.

Criticised by many for being commercial and heavy in special effects, and relying predominantly on spectacle to draw audiences in, the previous production is grossly overshadowed by this vibrant new visual conception, which far exceeds the impact of its predecessor. This version relies much more on the people at the heart of its story to captivate its audience, than cheap theatrical grandeur and over-decorated sets. It is undeniably all the more breathtaking for it.

The impassioned performances given by the principles are undoubtedly the highlight of the show. At times the emotions are so achingly believable that it becomes painful to watch the events as they unfold.

Jon Briones is fantastic as the oily Engineer, while Miriam Valmores is terrific as the eversuffering Kim, her performance adding a sharp emotional charge to the thrilling musical score.

Perhaps Mackintosh’s greatest achievement in developing this newly conceived staging, is that he has finally managed to put the soul back into Miss Saigon.

He has rediscovered the emotional core that was so long overshadowed by the effects.

Miss Saigon runs until Sat 30th April at the Theatre Royal, Theatre Street.

Shaun Newport reviews the Drama Society’s The Play About the Baby

E

dward Albee is a playwright who embraces existentialism, absurdism and the metaphysical. Those long words rightly suggest that Albee’s audience must value being challenged and Jordana Zeldin’s, production of The Play About the Baby concurred.

Boy and Girl played by Theo Leonard and Claire Carter, a young couple, have their space invaded by an older couple, Man and Woman, played by Dan Roberts and Jessica Pidsely. Man and Woman examine the culture that Boy and Girl inherit; a culture that substitutes artificial chirpiness for real values. They demonstrate the futility of it through cruel game-playing using the young couple’s newborn as fodder. Helen and Theo, vacant and sexy, cavort across the stage, less childlike than defiantly cute. The juxtaposition with slick, suited Dan provides proof of their success as innocents. He impressively balances both a foreboding and repellent characterization while his sinister charisma pulls us in. Jessica swans onto

the stage in an elegant red costume as if going to a book club luncheon, braying and pausing, striking awkward dainty poses, commanding a type of camp which is her manipulative charm.

On the other hand our enjoyment is heightened by removed menace and suspense. Once they have revealed that there perhaps is no baby, the engagement and sympathy with Boy and Girl has seamlessly and subtly dissipated. The terror and devastation one expects is paled by Claire’s numbness, Theo’s simple, weakly angered puzzlement as an adolescent, and the distance between them.

The effectively backlit timelessness of the simple, cream, tented drapes and sterile metal chairs on stage feed the modern mythos as well as pathos in The Play About The Baby. This production brought Albee’s trademark anti-apathy and rejected complacency on both sides of the curtain to produce uneasy, thought-provoking, brilliant student theatre.

All eyes on the baby.

TV/Digital 17

TV Preview: Dr Who Saturday, 7pm BBC 1

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s it, as the trailer says, the “trip of a lifetime”? The final judgement remains undecided, but what is certain is that the episodes already shown have caused a considerable amount of excitement, with the input of producer and writer Russell T. Davies (Casanova, Queer as Folk, Bob and Rose) producing unexpected results. The first episode was fun: lots of explosions, android dummy aliens, and a good introduction to the Doctor – making light of the fact he’s got big ears, he’s northern, and he’s extremely jolly. The second, was, for many, much better: involving us with some properlooking aliens, not dummies, we also saw the end of the world, as well as a satire on the cosmetic and plastic surgery industry in the form of the paperthin Cassandra. Billie, in this episode and the following one, proved good at playing the awestruck, amazed and sympathetic human. The doctor would happily rush backward and forward through time: Billie stands for our more normal reactions.

The third episode was an exciting trip back into Victorian times: it was well supported by the writing talents of The League of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss,

and Simon Callow as a convincingly old Charles Dickens, confronting ghosts with the Doctor. It does seem a shame then, given all this success, that Christopher Eccleston is only doing one series: however, to be fair, his film record alone (28 Days Later, Shallow Grave, Elizabeth) shows he is one of our most in-demand actors. His decision has prompted the inevitable round of speculation: questioning who will be the new “Who” has become much like

Dr Who and Rose being distracted by the boom

the age-old ‘Bond’ issue. Favourite to succeed, according to the columnists, is BBC3’s Casanova (David Tennant), who has already admitted entering into negotiations.

What’s to look forward to in the meantime then? Details for the next few episodes are hazy, but feature among the following: an attack on Parliament, (well timed to coincide with the general election campaign), and some more topical satire, with episode eight supposedly parodying a Rupert Murdoch figure. We also get to see Simon Pegg and Richard Wilson later on in the series. We should be finding out more about the Doctor too, with rumours of The Master – his half brother – emerging (Who buffs should know more here). The series has been dismissed already by some as ‘sub-Buffy fodder’ and “kids TV”: all that can be said is if this type of “kids TV” continues in its witty writing, strong support, and excellent plots, then hopefully it’ll convince these critics too. After all, a lot can happen in 45 minutes – not quite WMD, but there is an episode coming up called World War Three…

Stephen Sharrock

Soap News: Hollyoaks and Neighbours Izzy’s back on the slag-wagon, Stu’s been hit by a car and there’s a royal arrival in Hollyoaks...

E

xciting news, Izzy is getting back to her good old slutty ways and putting herself on show for all the rich men of Ramsey Street – that’ll be Paul Robinson then. It was obvious really, how long could Izzy keep pretending that her common or garden G.P. was all the man that she needed? Paul’s everything that Karl’s not - rich, ambitious with a full head of hair to boot. In short Paul is just the kind of man that the old Izzy would have wanted to sink her claws into, so what is stopping her?

Could it be that Izzy has grown a heart?

Unlikely.

Stuart is having some trouble adjusting to his loss of sight but he is determined to soldier on bless him and

goes back to work, despite his inability to see. Unfortunately he doesn’t get to spend much time on the beat as he is knocked down by a car and left for dead.

It is the start of a new term at HCC and fittingly the Hollyoaks team has increased, most notably by the appearance of Jez. Zara and Danni are most impressed by their new flatmate and get to work trying to impress the cricket enthusiast. Zara thinks that Jez has Royal roots and this time the usually wide of the mark Miss. Morgan is not so far from the truth. Fans will have to wait to find out what the connection is but it isn’t quite as grand as Zara hopes.

Russell turns twenty-one – yeah right, maybe for the second time – but

his celebrations are scuppered by an argument with his brother over a visit from their dad. Poor Russell is stuck between a rock and a hard place as he has to choose between his father and his brother, and to make matters worse Rob (Russell’s father) decides to stay in Hollyoaks for the foreseeable future.

Things look like they’re on the up for Frankie Dean as she heads out on a date with the dishy plumber, that is until he tells her the date is his payment for fixing a broken tap. As the fortnight progresses things get even worse for those unlucky Deans as they are left without a roof over their heads.

Martha Hammond and Kim Howe

Digital Stuff:The Great Art Race Jet-setting, art-dealing, rip-roaring fun for the PC

T

he Great Art Race isn’t n e c e s s a r i ly one of those games you waste half your day playing when you only intended to sit down and have a quick play. You also won’t find yourself getting far too competitive about it, or deciding it’s more important that working on that dissertation you’ve been meaning to get around to. However, with its five-player option and wizzy-jolly feel The Great Art Race

is best experienced when you’ve had a couple, are in a frivolous mood and a board game just had too many fiddly bits to deal with.

It’s the roaring twenties; you are one of several relatives of one Uncle Walter, a rather wealthy chappie. You aim is to win your way into his heart (and more importantly into his will) by recovering his stolen artwork. To do this you must jet off around the world to various auctions and bid against Uncle Walters other relatives for the prized paintings.

To ensure you have the cash required to

bid you also have to manage plantations and sell their produce at profit.

The game isn’t very difficult to complete in single player mode, but when three or more are playing it comes into its own. The graphics are satisfactory and playability leaves a little to be desires, however The Great Art Race stands and a good example of good clean fun. If you were after thumbgrinding action look elsewhere, but for a rainy afternoon it’s tops.

Kate Bryant

TV DVD: Lost in Space

Lost In Space Series 3 £39.99 Released: 25th Apr

F

orget the awful Matt LeBlanc movie, the original 60s version of Lost in Space is a shining example of what good television is. Set in a futuristic 1997, the Robinson family aboard the Jupiter 2 are on a mission to colonize a distant plant to relieve the Earth’s heaving population. The evil, yet unquestionably brilliant Dr Smith is a spy bent on sabotaging the mission.

Of course there are plenty of weird and wacky aliens that pepper each episode also hindering the Robinsons’ progress that make about as much political comment as a party political broadcast. If you’re a fan of television this is definitely worth the money. Fantastic!

Kate Bryant

Oliver Postgate Cult Children’s Classics All Released: 4th Apr

I

vor, the original children’s train engine, was, like the Clangers, Bagpuss and so many other children’s characters, the creation of the “kiddies Kubrick” – television genius Oliver Postgate, beginning life in 1958 for TV mogul Lew Grade’s ATV channel.

In this first series Ivor is found out of sorts by a train driver, Jones.

Ivor desperately wants to sing in the local choir, and Jones manages to fix it so that Ivor’s train timetable can meet the choir practice times. Along the way Ivor meets a dragon, Idris, who he lets live in his engine, (and start a dragon family), and also Alice the Elephant, who has a permanent bad foot. If pure and simple fun isn’t enough to grab the highbrow amongst you, then the - admittedly allegedinvolvement of Dylan Thomas in the early planning stages of the show should.

The Clangers is the next Postgate DVD to be released: this is a true “cult” favourite if ever there was one, replete with hidden meanings and strange metaphors. In brief, the show features little pink things, with big noses, who live on “a strange star in the firmament”, emerge from holes in the floor, and communicate with each other by means of surreal, high-pitched echoes. Needless to say, it’s the best TV show ever, and this DVD has a whole two hours worth.

Bagpuss, that icon of happy childhood viewing is also being released on DVD. As with The Clangers and Ivor, it’s a must for any student wanting to recapture the innocence of youth. No-one can resist Bagpuss!

Stephen Sharrock

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18 Creative Writing

Creative Writing In Association with d i t t o / Arizona Winters

Many people had heard stories about the lake. Staff and students alike joked about it: "Yeah, Nessy's on holiday," and "Arrrgghhh! It's the attack of The Thing!" But few knew that there was much more to the lake than myth and legend.

Chopping carrots, she was a picture of exactness, but juicing oranges, she was not.

Her scent and kitchen knives survive her here.

Grass rustled. Twigs cracked. Footsteps and heavy breathing shook the quiet darkness.

A thump as of a heavy load resounded across the area like a giant's footstep.

"Will you bloody shut up," someone hissed. "Do you want to get caught?"

"Sorry!" A stage whisper.

"Shut up!" Two angry snake-voices in unison.

Three figures hoisted up a big lump of darkness from the ground and continued on circling the edge of the lake. Another thump as the burden was dropped again.

"Sorry!"

"Will you stop that?" a cold voice sliced into the eardrum of the serial apologiser.

"Sorry, but it's heavy."

"Come on, we're nearly there anyway," the third voice interjected.

The dead weight was half lifted, half dragged round the bend to the little jetty. Two figures gracefully detached themselves from the darkness into the slight glow given off from the buildings opposite. They held one end of the load while a third figure lumbered out with the other.

One voice, the first, counted quietly to three while they swung the great sack between them. In it splashed, breaking the placid surface.

They waited.

Movement, over to the left. Something deep beneath the surface was working its way up. Bubble, bubble it came towards them. The three figures were all holding their breath.

Bubble, bubble, bubble…bubble…bubble…snap. It wasn't nearly as ferocious as they expected. The water churned; there was a quick glint of something. Scales? It didn't last long though; the ripples became smaller and smaller. A few scraps of dark sacking drifted to the surface.

Whatever it was had been and gone, moved away from the small party frozen in awe.

There was a whimper.

Two pairs of eyes glared in its direction.

"Sorry, but I've never done this before," the whimperer eventually managed as he sensed the hostility directed at him.

Silence.

If there had been enough light he would have seen the disgust on the faces of his comrades.

Three figures crept round the edge of the lake and went in different directions when they reached the building side.

They spoke to no one.

The next day, everybody in his lecture and seminar groups cheered up immensely when the world's least favourite lecturer didn't turn up. His absence didn't bother anyone for a while: the receptionist briefly noted that he hadn't collected his post for a few days; the other members of staff and the students had an unusually buoyant feeling.

If he doesn't turn up soon though, people might start to talk.

- Holly ‘The Lady Of The Lake’ Curtis

The Glasshouse The glasshouse shattered Yesterday.

It was the phone that broke The silence and the shining Gleaming bubble that enclosed us.

Hope-glue melted, And ran through the cracks.

Now we are glass figures Frozen in place.

The house that protected us is shattered.

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Ye Moft Tragical Hiftory of Kenny Continues!

The Lake

Soon we Will begin to move Again.

Slowly Surely Maybe The glasshouse will return.

Glue will seal our defence.

Glass will reform.

Old glass.

New glue.

- Becki ‘Most definitely not Rebecca’ Harris

I can now beg forgiveness, like the eyes of that cat whose leg we mended in September, ashamed of the attention given to its bones.

That fall the morning sky, dry as an empty coffee can despite the monsoons, appeared not indifferent, and we could pretend to be asleep in the morning, together, awaiting another long dry winter.

- Brett ‘Jesus’ Cummings

It is feral - savage, even to have waited for this crack It takes anti-cohesion, whether lying on one's back, always one hour from sleep or sitting, shuffling a pack of playing cards. It's cheap, unhealthy and chaotic There is nothing to reap

The mounts through which he bled his feet.

I shall therefore skip to the time He reached the place where he would meet The Mondolar and hear his whine.

In death of winter he arrived At the land that he'd been told.

It was not how he'd contrived; He had dreamt an air of gold And the skeletons of leaves For was this not of Autumn Queen The home, the place where Autumn weaves The corpse of what the land had been

ON POETRY Let rhymes be forced or done by halves – If they be done at all, And let vocabularies slip And education fall.

With ripest coming life the birth?

Was this not where life and death Slept like lovers in the earth, And made of one their double breath?...

Let noble themes be cast aside And poets reconciled To writing trivialities; Their former works reviled.

But not the golden air, and not The pretty leaves opened their scent; Nothing there made days but rot, And the putrid wind that bent

Let healthy metaphors submit, And let experiment Push out the great poetic forms Of lesser sentiment.

The branches of the naked trees.

If Death once had a form somewhere, Then when it died and came where we Melt time, it became this very air.

Let smug interpretations fail And critics all depart, And let the finest poetry Be written from the heart.

- Alan Ashton-Smith

Heathenry Birdsong like gun-bark and the night - strong and legion becomes the day, only still dark

His travel was indeed so long That it would take a thousand books, Or one close-to-eternal song, To tell of all the roads, the rooks,

and it's hardly quixotic.

But each muted soundspark is richly hypnotic Birdsong like gun-bark and night - strong and legion becomes day, only still dark The witness? A heathen.

- Jon Stone

- Andrea Tallarita

Trick The magician didn't look like a magician.

He had no wand, top hat or cloak.

Passing a bin bag around the undone restaurant, a turquoise brooch unclipped, watches poured from wrists, the magician was insistent: necklaces clattered in, mobiles, cufflinks, rings.

- Joe Dunthorne

Please send all contributions to m.whitton@uea.ac.uk for the next issue!

Listings 19

Listings Music

Arts

Movies

Ocean Colour Scene Wednesday 20th April, LCR

Miss Saigon Tuesday 5th/Saturday 30th April, Theatre Royal

Downfall Friday 22nd/Thursday 28th April, Cinema City

Rooster Friday 22nd April, LCR

Solid Silver 60s Show Sunday 1st May, Theatre Royal

Maria Full of Grace Friday 22nd/Thursday 28th April, Cinema City

The Hives Tuesday 26th April, LCR

The Michael Jackson Experience Thursday 21st April, The Playhouse

The Woodsman Friday 22nd/Thursday 28th April, Cinema City

Dade Krama - African Ancestral Dance Friday 29th April, LCR

Barry Cryer Friday 29th/Saturday 30th April, The Playhouse

Kirikou and the Sorceress Saturday 23rd April, Cinema City

The Toasters Monday 25th April, The Waterfront

By Jeeves Thursday 21st/Saturday 30th April, Maddermarket

SPECIAL SCREENING: Metropolis (with live DJ set) Sunday 24th April 8.15pm, Cinema City

Wishbone Ash Tuesday 26th April, The Waterfront

Happy New Year Monday 25th/Friday 29th April, Maddermarket

On General Release:

Rawkus Live 34 Friday 28th April, The Waterfront

The Merchant of Venice Wednesday 27th/Friday 29th April, The Garage Theatre, Chapelfield North

Melanie C Tuesday 3rd April, The Waterfront

Crazy (by former UEA students Rosa Wyatt and Laura McPartlin) Friday 29th April, UEA Drama Studio

Jazz House See Page 12 for details

Cursed Wedding Date From Friday 22nd April The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy XXX2: The Next Level From Friday 28th April

Competitions Vera Drake

Napoleon Dynamite

SilverFin Courtesy of Ottakar’s we have a signed copy of the Young Bond book and poster SilverFin, by Charlie Higson, the writer, performer and cofounder of The Fast Show.

The book sheds light on the origins of James Bond, charting his development from boy to legend. To win this prize answer the following question: Who wrote the original Bond novels?

Charlie Higson is interviewed on page 4.

Dellacasa

Dellacasa have another meal deal for us to give away.

Answer the following question to have a chance of winning: Momentum Pictures have given us three copies of Vera Drake by Mike Leigh, (reviewed on page 15). Winner of three BAFTA’s and nominated for three awards at the Academy Award’s it tells the story of Vera Drake, a respectable wife and mother practicing illegal abortions in the 1950’s, before it was legalised. Staring Imelda Staunton as Vera Drake; Phil Davis as Stan; Daniel Mays as Sid; and Eddie Marsan as Reg, and is released on 25th April.

“Outstanding. A powerful, stunningly acted film.” “*****” The Guardian “The most magnificent film of the year.”

The Daily Mail To win simply answer the following question: How many BAFTAs did Vera Drake win?

Paramount Home Entertainment have provided us with two copies of Napoleon Dynamite, the debut feature by Jared Hess, (reviewed on page 15). Staring unknown actors and actresses it was one of the breakout hits of 2004 gaining backing from MTV and garnering many award nominations, it was written by both Jared and Jerusha Hess.

“As long as you don’t mind making fun of the afflicted, there are some killer comic moments.”

Helen O’Hara, Empire To be in with a chance of winning, simply answer the following question: Who was Napoleon Dynamite directed by?

Napoleon Dynamite is relesed on the 25th April.

Name the capital city of France.

Winners The winners from issue 175 are: Poppets, lifetime supply... Zoe Kershaw, Chris Hyde, Debs Turner, Ami Broughton, Justin Doel; Dellacasa... Ian Butt; Adam Green’s Magazine... Jack Pynn; James Dean Biography... Justin Doel, Mathew Sparkes, Alex Dunn; The Kills, limited edition vinyl LP of No Wow... David Hazeldine; Take One Collection of DVD’s... Mathew Sparkes All competition entries must include a name and contact number, and should be sent to: concrete.event@uea.ac.uk.

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