The Event - Issue 131 - 14 November 2001

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the Wednesday, October 31, 2001

And The Winner Is • • • Plus: Seafood Interviewed Ghost World Previewed The Forum Reviewed

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Picture : Thora Birch in Ghost World. rev1ewed on page 16

What with so many television dents Who is the Most Tragic awards ceremonies floating Excuse For a TV Star? Is around at the moment. includ- Trevor Morgan really the ing the BAFTA awards. the TV Nastiest Man on Television?

Quick Awards and the British What is UEA's Favourite Soap Awards, we decided to Reality TV Show? Find out cash in on the trend and hold these and many more burning our own. We asked UEA stuquestions in the Event TV

ide: 03 Bi ts an d Piece s Round up: Gorillaz at the music awards.

Competitions: Dreadzone; Rainbow

04 The Forum The Event takes a look at Norwich 's Millenium building, the history behind it and its bright future

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Rainbow Everyone's favourite camp kids' TV characters, George and Zippy, chat about the good old days, being taught dirty words, and being 'happy' icons.

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Harry Potter The Event disc uses the phenomen<?n of the diminutive wi zard

Movie Rumours Our oversees contributor, Jim Whalley, t akes a look at w hat's happening in Hollywood at the moment.

08 Seafood Talk about nu-metal, gigging for free and being idolised in Japan

Cinefile 09 Tom Courtenay Dark Star

The acclaimed actor and author talks about his work throughout the years

10 Apocalypse Now The Event examines Franc is Ford Coppola 's masterpiece in the wake of its impending re-release

11 OPM

Awards.

Also in this issue, Seafood talk about indie music and Chevy Chase, Rainbow· s Zippy talks about why he's "into zips" and Tom Courtenay talks about himself.

Read on to find out more ...

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The skate-punk band talk about their recent suc cess

12 Event TV Awards We publish the results of the UEA students' favourite TV stars and shows.

Knowledge 13 Inquisito r

1 tin s: 22 Listings The best guide to what's happening in Norwich

Deep Purple

Fuu Lightyears

ews: 14 Albums So Solid Crew; Ministry of Sound; Ocean Col ou r Scene; Radiohead ·

Editor-In-Chief • Adam Chapman • Editor · Markland Starkle • Arts Editor · Charlotte Ronalds • Film Editor · Merek Cooper • Assistant Film Editor · Phll Colvln • Music Editor · Anthony Lovell • Assistant Music Editor · Kleren McSweeney • TV/ Radio Editor· Llz Hutchinson • Assistant TV/Radlo Editor · Gemma O'Donnell Picture Editor • Will Benthall Assistant Contributors • Matthew Picture Editor · Ed Webb-lngall Beavan • James Brown · Clare Butler · Ben Cannon · Colln Dunlop · Wes Finch • All Green · Kate Herrlngton · Tom Hines · Dan Hutchlngs · Greg lvlngs · Tessa North · Jim Whalley · Mark Wheeler • Luke Wright Photo Contributors • Tanya Burrage · Slmon Howarth • Gemma Waters

15 Singles Muse; Eddy Grant ; Spiritualised ; The Charlatans; Depec he Mode

16 Film Ghost World; Kiss of the Dragon; The Piano Teacher

18 Video Pearl Harbor; Ed Gein

19 TV/Radio Cruel Winter, Robbie Williams; Soaps; Meet the DJ

20 Arts DiverSiFy revi ew special; The Wizard 's Den; The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan

The Event is published fortnightly by Concrete: Post: PO Box 410. Norwich. NR4 ?TB Tel: 01603 250558 Fax: 01603 506822 E-mail: su.concrete@uea.ac.uk Printed by: Eastern Counties Newspapers, St Andrew·s Business Park, Norwich

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Bits and Pieces 03

Round up: Competitions: Dreadzone tickets· Rainbow paraphernalia

An irreverent look at the events of the past fortnight Sycophantic arse kissing has-beens telling a disinterested public that Travls are a real talent and a pleasure to work with. lt can only mean one thing: it's award time again for the music industry. Woop-de-fucking-do. About five or six times a year the music industry personnel have a party to tell each other how great they all are and then we're forced to watch a sanitised and boring version of the events at about half past midnight on a Wednesday night. In the past two weeks MTV Europe and Q have done exactly that, giving their awards to almost exactly the same people as last year, with the occasional new addition here and there, the most notable of these being the Gorlllaz.

When Damon Albarn's virtual band first appeared, he was very cagey about his involvement in the project and when the band play live they do so behind a screen depicting the animated members of Gorillaz: 20, Murdoc, Noodle and Russell. But give him an award night and up he pops with his new 'serious' haircut, desperately attempting to disguise the fact that Britpop's former pretty boy is now, sadly, a balding old man. After snubbing the Mercury Music Prize, it seems a tad paradoxical to appear now and say with trophy in hand, "Er, yeah it was me all along, I did this, this is my band. I am a genius aren't I? And Jamie's videos are alright too. Oh is that for me, chet:irs."

So why these awards and not the Mercury? And don't feed me that crap about the fan's opinion being more important than those of the music critics. The fans only vote for what the music critics tell them to, the only difference is that the music critics don't tell them everything because they want to sound clever every September. The simple reason is that Damon misses the limelight, and wanted the excuse to get on stage and shout 'Fuck the War.' Why do popstars feel the need to get political in acceptance speeches? I thought Bono was the only one who'd try and ram world peace down our mouths, but they were all at it - empty slogans we 've all heard a million times before. What did Damon expect, Misters Blalr and Bush to turn around and say "Shit, do you think so Damon? I'm sorry, hadn't realised you felt so strongly. Tell you what, we ' ll stop shall we. " Bollocks he did, he just said it so we 'd all cheer and clap and he'd steal the attention away from the issues he's addressing. Funny that, seeing as music awards do exactly the same thing.

Luke Wrlght

• Mixing dub, sampling and electronica, Dreadzone have recently released a new single , called Believing in it, from their third studio album, Sound. On November 28 they will be playing at the Waterfront, and we have a pair of tickets for the gig to give away to one lucky reader. To win the tickets just answer the following easy question : Q. How many studio albums have Dreadzone released?

• Furthermore, to celebrate Rainbow's George and Zippy visiting the tCR last week, we have a HUGE amount of Rainbow goodies - including DVDs, videos, folders, pens, keyrings, and pencil tins - to give away . If you want any of these fantastic prizes. just answer the following question: Q. Only one of the three puppets on Rainbow had any legs.

What was his name?

Answers for both competitions should handed in to the Concrete office (located upstairs in Union House, next to Room 1.33) or emailed to us at su.concrete@uea.ac.uk) with your name , phone number or email address and favourite colour.

• The answer to last Issue's Caffe Uno competition question was AI Paclno. The winner was Varghese Alexander and will be notlflfld accordingly.

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05 ver seven years ago, the skyline of Norwich was orange, caused by the blaze of the county library - the worst library fire in England since World War 11. Its destruction cost Norwich invaluable historical materials including half ~he Norfolk Studies Collection, and left the city without a central public library.

Plans to build a new library have existed in various guises since then, including the cheesily named 'Technopolis', a £70 million leisure-centre-come-library edutainment-fusion fest, which was thankfully rejected by the Millennium Commission. Thankfully, the new library is now completed and boasts a much more sober, grown-up name, 'The Forum'; and again it is lighting up the Norwich skyline. But this time no fire-engines are involved.

Besides being a gorgeous piece of Millennia!

Modernism, The Forum comes fitted with a host of features that place it firmly at the cutting edge of 21st century technology. The library boasts 85 computers, each providing free Internet access, e-mail, word-processing and spreadsheet functions- even better, each computer is equipped with a sexy flat-screen monitor and very fast 2mb connection, making for suitably speedy and effortless web-browsing. Helping people of all ages learn is clearly an essential function of The Forum. The facilities are designed to enable the library to help users learn at their own pace in an environment that is not overwhelmingly 'academic'.

The library aims to offer quiet places to study, and provide support for literacy and family learning. The library also states that one of its functions is to "offer support in acquiring basic IT skills to help people learn and develop competence in information searching and analysis, which will help them make sense of the mass of information that comes their way.· Admirable sentiments, and topical too, considering Mr Blair's recent statement that he wishes to have the entire country e-mail competent by the year 2005.

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Be i ng pl o n ked behind a giant Next might afford somewhat less spectacular views than those of Porticullis House, the central London project. But, nonetheless, the pedigree of the design shines through every glass facet of The Forum."

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compact library containing a selection of the most popular materials from the wide range available throughout the rest of the library, and thus extends the availability of such materials to insomniacs and students alike. Perfect if you finish the last chapter of your novel and feel the urge to start another, as you can pop down to The Express before bedtime to get a new book. And it's certainly worth visiting the library on one of these increasingly long and. dark winter evenings- the glass structure is simply radiant with beauty at night, brightly and thoroughly lit up, a glowing beacon of welcome on the otherwise dark and foreboding area around the market square.

Much thought has obviously gone into making The Forum a place that people might really want to visit, a far cry from the usual silent and stuffy atmosphere of many county libraries. lt aims to be a place to socialise, as well as a place for scholars. Facilities like the {oh-sovery-Millennia!) gourmet coffee shop are obviously designed to be attractions in their own right - to establish The Forum as a part of the social lives of the folk of Norwich, and not just a place to get old Mills and Boons, or look in the Strathclyde telephone directory. And on the first floor, to draw more people in and to assuage the post-study munchies of the already-dedicated, a slender meuanine extends across the front of the building, forming a seating area for a Piua Express restaurant and affording superb views across into the main body of the atrium and library, and out onto the St Peter Mancroft Church, an area now to be know as the Millennium Plain.

The Forum is also designed to act as a mustsee for visitors to Norwich. A short zimmer from the bus station or Castle Meadow, the ground floor contains a newly-uprooted Tourist Information office, packed with brochures and

Palace of Westminster. Being plonked behind a giant Next might afford somewhat less spectacular views than those of the central London project. But, nonetheless, the pedigree of the design shines through every glass facet of The Forum.

So, is our cherished backwater and inbred Norwich turning into somewhere good? Recent developments like the 450,000 square feet of sparkling Riverside Centre with its gobsmackingly gorgeous UCI Cinema and brilliant collection of bars would suggest that perhaps finally Norwich is seeing some of the investment that

could really place it on the map - for reasons other than having a ridiculously large number of old churches. The £14.5 million grant from the Sport England Lottery Fund is certainly providing direct benefit for UEA, helping to provide the brand new Sports Park with its Olympicsize swimming pool and extensive sports facilities. With the capacity of the All soon to be doubled, getting to Norwich from the outside world is becoming easier. Quite what the future holds for Norwich is unknown, but increasing infrastructure and investment can only be a good thing.

Five Fascinating Forum Facts The Forum's Opening Hours: 1. Work has now started on a second smaller Forum building that will stand behind the Next store, aiming for completion by the end of next year.

2. The Forum also houses a City Learning Station, a multi-media centre that will offer training in IT, business and management-related subjects.

3. In keeping with the to-the-minute style, COs and DVDs can be borrowed from The Express.

4. The complex occupies around 185 square metres of genuine Norfolk land.

5. The Norfolk Heritage Centre will house the information on Norfolk Studies and Norfolk Records Office that survived the blaze at the previous library.

Main library: Monday 9am to 8pm; Tuesday lOam to 8pm; Wednesday 9am to 8pm; Thursday 9am to 8pm; Friday 9am to 8pm; Saturday 9am to 5pm; Sunday closed.

Express section: Monday 9am to 10.30pm; Tuesday lOam to 10.30pm; Wednesday and Thursday 9am to 10.30pm; Friday 9am to 10.30pm; Saturday 9am to 8.30pm; Sunday 10.30am to 4.30pm.

"Aesthetics aside, The Forum does present another place to work. one that is a degree removed from the constant reminders of how overdue your essay is that abound on campus."

Entering through a twin pair of arched glass automatic doors, the first thing to hit the visitor is the sense of space and air- The Forum's atrium is simply huge, filled with light and extending the full height of the structure. The curved theatre-shaped layout allows you to see much of the library from the entrance; an expanse of sparkling green-tinted glass and brushed steel that holds the library's seven miles or so of shelving. More sliding glass doors separate the library from the main body of the atrium, with staircases branching off to the left and right, allowing the eye to fall naturally on the 'panoramic' glass elevator in the centre of the library's arc. Accessibility for all was obviously another of their primary con- · cerns.

The open-plan layout removes any sense of an oppressive regime deeming that 'Thou Shalt Be Silent' and that 'Thou Shalt Never Find the Book for which Thou Art Questing'. As well as the main reception desks, manned by surprisingly friendly and useful staff, dotted sporadically around The Forum are self-service terminals that, in a more-or-less idiot-proof fashion, help you track down whatever materials it is that you're searching for. Finding something is thankfully pretty easy, remarkable considering The Forum holds some 120,000 books, over 80,000 more than the previous Norwich library.

Special terminals even have access to tools like a local press search- although, when researching this article, asking it to search for 'library' only came up with ten entries, then a syntax error 'around line 329'. A very minor teething trouble, perhaps.

In an attempt to tackle the age-old problem of inconvenient library opening hours, The Forum's ground floor is dominated by an area known as The Express. Whilst the main library is open until 8pm on weekdays, The Express's function is to be open for even longer hours, a groundbreaking development in British libraries. lt is a

flyers about Norwich and its environs. Of course, the library forms an attraction of its own. The complex also contains a special multi-media feature called 'Origins', a two thousand-year journey tracing the influence of invaders and settlers on the people, culture and language of our region, culminating in a fascinating-sounding '180-degree film', apparently 'the first of its kind in England'. The library building also holds the memorial library of the 2nd Air Division of the USAAF. The Forum is clearly intended to be something which the people of Norwich can be proud.

Furthermore, BBC East and Radio Norfolk are soon to relocate to and broadcast daily from the south wing of The Forum, which can only help raise the profile of Norwich, the Athens of the East, demonstrating the BBC's continued commitment to us. quick straw-poll in the Hive revealed that many UEA students were willing to try working in The Forum rather than the UEA library. ·After all," spoke Emily Knee, "The Forum's about the same distance from houses in the Golden Triangle as UEA is. And The Forum's got less concrete." Aesthetics aside, The Forum does present another place to work, one that is a degree removed from the constant reminders of how overdue your essay is that abound on campus. And there'll be fewer people trying to tempt you off to the pub for a 'quick break'. Not that The Forum doesn't come equipped with its own fully licensed bar.

Sited atop a 200 capacity car park, the project cost a total of £63.5 million, £31.5 of which was provided by the Millennium Commission, with the rest being supplied by Norwich City and County Councils and various businesses.

The architect, Sir Michael Hopkins, recently designed Portcullis House, the £235 million office block for MPs, situated opposite the

A

Wednesday, Novem b er 14 . 2001

e vent the

06

Somewhere over the Rainbow ••

It has been ten years since Rainbow disappeared from our TV screens. but the antics of its three cuddly stars have remained in a generation's consciousness ever since. But are r-nnfGeorge. Zfppy dnd Bungle really as we rememb- .... - 7 spoke with George and /ippy to find out.

Text : Gemma O'Donnell

p above the streets and houses. rainbow climbing high. Everyone can see it shining over the sky. Paint. The. Whole. World.

With. A. Rainbow !" And you lot know the rest. a funky interlude that made you twitch over your lunc h before the emergence of two of the most famous puppets on the planet. More famous than Kermit in thi s country, I'd dare to say . Yes kiddywinkies. it was Zippy and George, starring on ITV's answer to Sesame Street and now as staple a part of our childhood as Dairylea triang les. A double act to rival the greats such as. well. Ernie and Bert. and Kermit and Miss Piggy, I imagine. Or Cosmo and Dibs. And whi le we sang, danc ed and clapped away .with the likes of Rod , Jane and Freddy, our woolm ix celebrities were living li ke kings, enj oying themselves at the height of their fame . So when offered the opportunity to catch up with my past favourites it was an opportunity far too delicious to miss. Just don't insinuate that they are not living creatures or call them puppets. Ever.

'' U

Hello Zippy, hello George! You're coming to see us soon, aren't you?

Zippy: Oh yes. yes, we 're going to sing some lovely songs for you.

George: Yes. we're going to play music for all the boys and girls.

So, do you prefer performing to little boys or little girls?

George: I like t o perform to everybody, but I lik e performing to grown ups as well as little boys and litt le girlsZippy: -1 like performing to everybody as we ll, but I prefer performing to boys best because they chee r and shout. heh heh.

Why do you like playing songs for grown ups?

George: Because they are more, erm, more intelligent and they treat us with respect.

Zippy: lt takes a lot to treat George with respect.

Don 't be mean to George, Zippy.

Zippy: I'm never mean to George, never in a million years!

George: No. he's not really. But , sometimes he gets a bit too excitedZippy: -1 don 't get excited.

George: Well. he does sometimes. but he's not really mean. sometimes he is very kind.

Do you both miss being on TV? Zippy: Yes;, I do. I'm sure all the public want to see me.

even t t he

TL.-

"I never believe 1n using two arms when you can d 0 i t Wi t h 0 ne. " - Zippy Do you still see Geoffrey and Bungle, or are you too famous to hang around with them now?

George: B ... B ... Bungle isn't very we ll at the moment, he is in bed. He has a bit of a cold. He is in bed, all poorly.

Zippy: What do you mean ·too famous'? Of cou rse they are my friends. They are. Yes, even though Bungle is a bit of a nuisance sometimes .

Go on then , tell me some.

George: No. I'm not going to.

Zippy, I've got a question for you .

What! You've got a c rush on me?

Ohh, I was hoping Zippy would talk dirty to me.

Zippy: I don't do things li ke that . not me, no.

No, I've got a question for you! Why have you only got one arm?

I haven 't got one arm, I've got two arms!

Did you like having your head stroked by Shaun Ryder on The

But why is your other arm always under the table?

Zippy: I never believe in using two arms when you can do it with one.

George: He he he .

Go on, George ...

George: All right then, Schoolgirls Knickers.

Zippy: George you naughty boy!

George: That's it, I'm not going to say any more.

Word?

Zippy: Yes. but it was a bit too rowdy . I didn 't get enough singing and that for myself, but it was okay.

What do you use it for?

Zippy: I' m not telling you, ha!

So, do you like getting your head stroked by strange men then?

Zippy: Erm. it de pen ds on the people. very much.

George: I do. I like people stroking my head.

Zippy: George is more cuddlier than me, I like stroking other people better, sooner than them stroking me.

And why can 't you unzip your own mouth? Are you into zips, Zippy?

I can't unzip it . I can zip it up, but I don't do that very often.

But unfortunately I cannot unzip it . And yes. I am into zips, other people's zips though, not mine.

Zippy, what kind of animal are you , are you a man?

Zi ppy: Well, people ask me this all the time, I will tel l you exactly what I am. I am a unique . That is my breed. I am a Unique.

George: Well, I'm just a big pink hippo aren't I?

George, do you actually know why you are pink? it 's a beaut iful colour isn't it? Some people think it is because I blush too much, but I don't think it is.

So if you two were to mate, what would your child look like?

George: Mate? Zippy is my mate, yes.

Zippy: Yes. he is definitely my mate aswel l. Ha!

And what do you think about being a gay icon?

George: Do you mean happy? A happy icon? I don't really know what you mean.

Zippy: No he doesn't. I do though and I 'm not going to tell him .

Ha ha.

I get the feeling you are withholding from me there Zippy ...

Zippy: Withholding what? I'm all for holding. not withholding, ha ha ha!

Did you always work with good ch ildren, or did they sometimes teach you rude words?

Zippy: Oh yes. sometimes. but I don't listen to them.

George: Yes. and I don't understand them .

Zippy: And I know them all, cos I know everything lik e that.

George: He doesn 't really, cos I know some he doesn't know.

~·Jednesday , Novemtler 14, 2001

nd with that Zippy and George, along with the innocence of my childllood, disappear forever. lt is true what they say; you should never meet your heroes. you always end up disappointed, or speechless. or disgusted.

Personally I felt an amalgamation of al l these things, and respect , possibly. because that Zippy has some bollocks I can tell you.

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With Harry Potte r and The Phi lo sopher's Stone released this Friday, every one is trying to discover the phenomenon behind the books. Potter expert The Event offers its advice ... Text: Charlo tt e Rona l ds he tagline states: Let the Magic Begin . Reading more like an advert for the opening of a new Disneyland, readers will be forgiven for not real ising that these four words are being used to describe one of the most famous works of fiction. And this is no exaggeration.

With Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone set to hit screens nation-wide this Friday, surveys are being conducted at a phenomenal rate , all seeking to ascertain the truth behind the mysterious phenomenon that is the Potter experience. And the results are not quite what the experts imagined. When Waterstones asked adults to name a character in fiction , 22% said Harry Potter, with Oliver Twist, Sherlock Holmes and Winnie the Pooh only managing a meagre 2% each . A further 46% knew the main characters when asked to name them, with only 26% being able to get all of Enid Blyton's Famous Five . More astounding than that, 97% of adults had heard of Harry Potter and over half had either read or were going to read one of J K Rowling 's soon-to-be classics.

The film, costing £100m to make, is set to be a blockbuster no matter what. But has anyone thought of the possibility that the film may actually be no good? Having read the Philosopher's Stone when it was first publ ished way back in 1997, I have very clear views on how the characters should look . And these views do not correspond with the film. Ran 's

T

"When Waterstone s ask ed adults to name a characte r in fiction. 22% sa id Har ry Potte r . while Wi nne the Pooh and Sherlock holmes onl y man aged a meagre 2% each ." nose (and the rest of him, played by Rupert Grint) is not pointy enough for starters, and Harry in general (Daniel Radcliffe) j ust doesn't have the right look. But of course he wouldn 't.

And soon , it appears, he is not going to have the right pitched voice, forcing filming of The Chamber of Secrets to have already started .

But despite th is, advance cinema bookings have broken all records. Odeon cinemas announced their advanced sales have reached £1m (having already trebled their call centre for the bookings) and is dedicating 225 of its 599 screens to the film in the first week after its release. But is this all necessary? The film was directed by Chris Columbus whose other wo rks include the not-so-impressive Home Alone 1 and 2 and Mrs Doubtfire, all of which contain American brats as the leads. But perhaps I am being too harsh. The film is visually spectacular and with such a strong story to work with , Steven Kloves could not have made too many mistakes adapting it for the screen .

The makers have also thought hard about the cast list, with Alan Rickman excelling himself as the smarmy Snape, whose past relationship with Harry 's father means that Harry is in for a tough time. But of course Potter fans already know this.

There is one danger with making popular books into films, though, and that is the destruction of the imagination. The books were popular enough on their own, getting children to read, so is a film even necessary? Maybe now children will become complacent and stop reading altogether, just waiting for a film to be made instead. Of course this won 't be the case with Harry Potter, but what happens when all seven of the books have been written? Parents should watch out. Some things can only be experienced through literature, no matter how hard visual mediums try. But of course that won 't stop me queuing with the kids come Friday .

Movie Rumours •• After spending the past two months being quiet and respectful following the events in New York, Hollywood is finally getting its ac~ together, and amusing news of future projects is beginning to emerge.

By far the most entertaining announcement is that Leonardo DICaprio (having discovered simply making bad movies isn't enough) is attempting once again to lose his screaming teenage fans, this time by staring in the lifestory of Johnny Eck, a carnival side-show performer in the 1930s. Eck was known as "The World's Only Living Half-Boy", having been born with no legs and a shortened torso.

Although he is most famous for appearing in the 1931 movie Freaks, he also found time tb become an accomplished painter, musician and racing-car driver. There's no word yet on how Leo intends to create the '50% missing ' effect, but Caroline Thomson ( Edward Scissorhands) has been hired to write the screenplay.

However, it does look like the fate of the World Trade Centre will be in the studios' minds for some time yet. Having removed the twin towers from Zoolander and Spider-Man, and refused to screen Schwarzenegger's Collateral Damage until next year at the earl iest , it now appears that not even films brought out decades before September 11 are safe from the image conscious corporations.

Concerned about audience reactions, Steven Splelberg has made a number of alterations tb E. T. before its re-release in March . The line ·you look like a terrorist " has been re-dubbed, and computer graphics have been employed to change FBI agents' guns into walkie-talkies, which they proceed to wave menacingly .

Exactly how this will ease the suffering of grieving families isn 't clear .. .

The Star Wars : Episode 11: Attack of the Clones trailer debuted in front of Pixar's fantastic Monsters, Inc. recently and surprised everyone by being completely and utterly awful ; at least The Phantom Menace had a good advertising campaign. From the tiny amount of footage shown , it seems George

Lucas has responded to requests to make this installment 'darker' by turning down the lights.

To the accompaniment of Darth Vader's asthmatic wheezing , audiences were treated to brief glimpses of a city on water, a load of robots and Ew an Mc Greg or 's hilarious new beard. A second, longer trailer is set to appear with Harry Potter, hopefully it will feature some of these attacking clones we 've been hearing so much about. it 's been half a decade since Quentln Tarantlno last bothered to make a film , but evidence is growing that he may soon get round to doing another. The big-chinned director has finished work on a script called Kill Bill and casting is underway. Uma Thurman is confirmed as the star, possibly along side Warren Beatty as Bill . According to Tarantino, the pict ure is his homage to Kung Fu movies, to the extent that Thurman will wear the same yellow tracksuit that Bruce Lee sported in Enter the Dragon. Many accused him of 'maturing ' with Jackie Brown; thankfully Kill Bill looks like wall-to-wall violence, all packaged within an innovative 10-chapter structure.

Jlm Whal/ey

Wednesday,Noovember 14 ,

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Text: Al i Green

What's this all about then?

Dark Star is t he result of a student collaboration between Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter.

Dan 0 who?

O'Bannon. He went on to write Alien, Total Recall, and Return of the Living Dead among others. And writer/di rector Carpenter would go on to add Halloween, Christine, Big Trouble in Little China and The Fog, to name a few. to his C.V. What's going on?

Well , they've been in space 20 years. 'They' being five crew (one dead}. plus one alien , one ineffectual computer that can't fix anything and one sentient, irritated, highly explosive, 'thermostell er' device that want s to fulfil its raison d' etre. Oh , and they are also totally stir crazy; the ship is falling to pieces and, to add to their problems. the entire supply of toilet paper has been lost. They live in one of the food storage areas (t he sleeping quarters went with the toilet paper) whe re the co mputer (a cross bet ween 2001's 'Hal' and ' Mother' from Alien) plays muzak at them. Pinback, played by O'Bannon, chases the alien all over the ship being outwitted at every turn . The alien damages the bomb release system .. . see where this is headed?

But Is it any good?

Yes. black humour abounds. No guffaws to be had, sadly, but plenty of si lent grinning, especiall y in a cartoon-esque scene with O'Bannon stuck going up and down in a lift that no one is using. The script is razor sharp. Imagine a man called Doolittle, trying to talk a self-aware bomb out of exploding by convincing it that it was never told to go off in the first place. it's a film about boredom, loneliness and futility. Everything the sanitised universes of Star Trek or Star Wars really aren't. The romanticism of space flight is stripped away completely in Dark Star and we are left with production line workers who happen to be in space, wait ing for the siren to go off so they can go home .

Bad points?

Hmm ... Dodgy sets and FX for one thing. Not as bad as Blake's Seven but worse than Doctor Who. The crew has only aged three years yet they've been in space for 20; the computer who can't do anything somehow manages to limit the planet busting bombs range to only one kilometre. The narrative is unbalanced in the middle of the film but worth sticking with for the lift scene. The foot tapping alien is just a space hopper sprayed with dots and the acting is definitely less than brilliant at times ... I suppose I could go on forever listing its faults, but at the end of the day none of it matters because on t he whole the film really works: a cult class1c.

Anything else?

This is the man who thought up Alien ... what more do you want?

Colln Dunlop

eve·nt ~·JednP~day,

eafood have been around for five years, but formed purely by chance. as Kevin recollects. " Dave and Charles, they've known each other since they were seven and decided that they wanted to be in a band , and they wanted to be the Pixies, so they advertised in Lute [London classifieds paper]. Myself and Caroline were reading Lute tryi ng to sell a scooter, and there we came across t hi s ridiculous advert. We had no intention of joini ng a band , but were so impressed that we phoned them. They were so shocked that anyone had bothered to reply to their stupid advert and the rest is history."

"We 're big Chevy Chase fans," admits Kevin, explaining how the band decided upon their name. "There's a film called Caddyshack where there's a boat that crashes into a pier. and runs someone over. The boat is called Seafood. " When the band first formed, they found them selves thrown straight into the limel ight by an aggressive music industry. Has their popularity dwindled in the new millennium? " When we started, our first single got lots of attention and a bit of radio play. lt kind of shocked us. We were very shambolic at the time, more so than we are now, and had about four songs so we were kind of thrown into this spotlight. We were completely new and this song was really popular, and the people who thought it was good, they wanted another 20 like it."

Although they had to pull out of their forthcoming gigs in the USA, American music has always had a large influence on Seafood 's music. " I had no problem with Surviving the Quiet being likened to Ameri can bands such as Sonic Youth. lt was our first album and we didn't really know what we were doing.

We were writ ing music as we went along, as opposed to the

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mally listen to us. At My Vitriol shows, a lot of people hadn't heard of us. and were saying,''l'm going to buy your album!".

We 're excited about doing Ash because they're huge venues and we're both aiming at the same people ."

eafood were recently forced to cance l their Norwich show wit h My Vit ri ol. Kevin tells us more. "Abso lute disaster!

Som, the lead singer of My Vitriol, had some weird allergy, and his face was swollen. Apparently he couldn't sing, and this was all ten minutes before the doors were set to open . We were totally raring to go because we always have good gigs in Norwich. We would have loved to play, but it was their gig and that's what happens when you're a support band- you have to bite your tongue . We've never cancelled a gig in our lives but if you're ill you can't do it. lt will be rearranged . and we'll come back and the re'll be no swollen faces ...

The band have also had some unusual experiences outside the UK. ·•1 can't stress how different it is from touring in this country," says Kevin. "Everything you read about Japan is true, which blew us away. We only went out for the week and we were treated as pop stars. We 're not huge, but big enough to sell out venues and have loads of young people turning up at our hotel telling me I'm their knight in shining armour. Being fairly tall and blonde catches a fair bit of attention. In America , we only did a short tour, but we were so well looked after.

There was a real sense of community with the bands we played with. We would get lost on the way to the venue and they would go 'That 's okay, you can play higher on the bill.' it's completely unheard of. ..

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"The lead singer of My Vitriol had some weird allergy and his face was swo -llen. Apparently he couldn't sing, and this was all ten minutes before the doors were set to open." new album, where we've had to write an album from scratch.

We've played together a lot longer since then, so it's go1ng to be better, and the songs are going to be more Seafood ... Kevin, however, is less tolerant of the nu-metal bands that threaten to swamp ind1e. "I don't remember slagging it off, but it is pretty c rap. We were quite recently 1n Glasgow. and there was this numetal club. it was over-14s and full of kids with green hair.

That's got to be good, it's just a shame that the whole thing's so corporat e. At least it 's trying to piss off your parents which is more th an you can say for Starsailor.''

Having just completed a successful UK tour with My Vitnol, Seafood are currently preparing to support Ash in December.

"At the moment we're kind of an eternal support band. it's taken us up to the end of the year and we've played with different bands who are of a similar genre, but obviously quite different . it' s just a great chance to play to people who wouldn't nor-

November 14, ?001

So what about the free gig on Thursday in London? " We've got this new website going, and the tour with My Vitriol didn't come to London. so we wanted to do something about 1t. it's really just a little thank you. You're only going to get 250 people in there, and we had nearly twice that trying to go. We're also doing an Xfm Christmas gig ...

So, do Seafood find playing in front of large audiences daunting? "We are the resident Read ing fest ival band. We did it this year for the third time and played it way back in '98 when we first got together. We did it as a three piece because Charles walked through a glass window and cut his hands. At Read ing we've played in front of 8000 people and it was absolutel y amazing. We're not shy . I think our sound comes across better on a bigger stage even at festivals, which are a nightmare for sound. I'm really looking forward to Thursday, when it's go1ng to be tiny and intimate. it' s goi ng to be a real buzz."

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Sir Tom Courtenay has won two Baftas and has been twice Oscar nominated. But he hates watching films and thinks British cinema f'f)l nrl has been on the way out ever since his last f;lm Te xt: Charlotte Ronald s out what he's been doing with his 1 if e.

T

here is not always much basis required for a stereotype to be formed in society. In the British film industry, for example, there exists the one of the older male actor being cultured, arrogant and slightly bitter about his dwindling career. After talking to Tom Courtenay, it becomes apparent that this stereotype at least is based on an actual person.

Tom Courtenay used to be one of Britain 's most promising film actors. Having been Oscar-nominated twice and winning two Baftas, Britain could be forgiven for thinking that they finally

I wonder what Courtenay thinks of the new British film industry and its produce. By his answer he doesn't seem too impressed.

"Well I'll say one thing; now I did two films that were very famous, Billy Liar and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, yet neither was successful in America. Now it is no longer possible for a British film to be famous without being successful in America , but that's about as much as I know about the British film industry. There hardly exists one [British film industry] in one sense. I mean I was talked of as the new wave in British cinema, but it was the last wave, really; films

"Oh, you should read the book, you'll find out a lot about me and it, s awfully good. It's terribly successful, wonderfully received, critically acclaimed, even." - Courtenay on his new biography had a star in the making; someone that they could show off to the Americans. Yet while the likes of Albert Finney and Alan Bates were bursting onto the scene during Britain's film renaissance in the late 1960s, Courtenay was no longer playing his diffident anti-heroes and was slowly slipping away into obscurity.

When asked whether he's satisfied with his career, Courtenay becomes sullen, "No, I don't think I would say that I was satisfied, but it could have been a lot worse, let's put it like that.· Yet Courtenay had the potential to achieve great things.

Having graduated from RADA with John Thaw, it did not take long for the innocent-looking boy from Hull to be getting film offers. He explains, "Well it's just like graduating from university and entering the world of business. You know, John Thaw was my best mate at Rada. I hadn't see'l him for years and then my wife persuaded me to play a murdere ~ in Kavannagh QC. I didn't want to do it but I think it worked very well, I never saw it, but it was very well reviewed.· This lack of television viewing appears to be a growing trend with Courtenay. "I don't go to the cinema a lot and I don't go to the t~eatre much either and I hardly ever watch acting on television, hardly ever. I've seen a few Oscar-nominated films but I didn't think much of them; I didn"t like American Beauty, I found it to be very thin."

that were successful without recourse to American dollars and American exposure, but it didn't stop them from being thought of as classics."

Yet it appears that America is finally giving Courtenay the acclaim that he deserves, having re-released his 1963 version of Billy Liar, a role which he also played at the West End. Indeed continuing with the stereotype, Courtenay is also one of those actors who feels just as at home on stage as he does on screen. Two weeks ago he finished starring in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. "it was terrific" he enthuses, " I did it for six and a half weeks and we had a very good company." Playing Vanya, Courtenay had a tough job on his hands as the character is slightly peculiar, a buffoon, as the play reminds the audience. But for Courtenay, there is nothing hard about acting.

"A lot of it just comes from saying the lines, which of course a lot of actors never learn to do. They think there's a magic power in them, that it doesn't matter what they say because they're so wonderful. But if you say the lines clearly, that will do the part for you, by actually speaking the lines, it's then that you can actually hear them. There 's a simplicity to it all, it's the thoughts in your head that are very important to be convincing.

Concentration, focus and thoughts will makes your character for you. That or the feelings. If somebody is overwhelmed with feel-

ings, you can't manufacture that. You either have it or you don't. I inherited a lot of feelings from my parents, both of them. " Assuming Courtenay means that he has two parents rather than just two feelings, it is perhaps unfortunate that his performance received such damning reviews. The Guardian found his stresses and inflections to be "off-kilter", adding that "He will not stand still for a second ." Maybe, then, there actually is more to acting than just speaking the lines after all.

We move on to discuss what Courtenay thinks of the current actors on television. This is another topic with which he is displeased. "You see people doing phoney emotions on television all the time, and in American films. There are people on television who are very, very successful, and quite untalented."

Asking for examples, he politely refuses, "Well I wouldn't dream of saying who, people will just have to work that out for themselves. I don't mean people like my friend John or that Frost man [ David Jason]. I mean they're terribly good, but there are some younger ones who are not remotely good, but they can be in anything, playing anything, and it's just painful to watch them. So I don 't."

Yet this lack of viewing may also be because Courtenay is too busy getting on with his own career, which seems to be on the up. Early next year he has a film coming out, Last Orders, based on the novel by Graham Swift . Rather appropriately he plays an undertaker who has to take care of his friend's ashes.

"I'm in it with Ray Winstone, whom I love and who is a good example of someone on television who is actually talented .

Michael Caine is in it too, and Bob Hoskins, though I was more with Michael's ashes than him. But we had a terrific time, it was a lot of fun.· Courtenay has also got a book published, Dear Tom: Letters from Home, which is about his mother. He asks if I've read it. admit that I haven't. "Oh, you should read the book," you'll find out a lot about me and it's awfully good . it 's terribly successful, wonderfully received, critically acclaimed, even."

Yet for some reason the thought of knowing more about Courtenay doesn't seem so a11pealing anymore.

Finally I offer up my own piece of information to Courtenay. I inform him that his name, Sir Tom Courtenay, is a rather amusing anagram: 'I'm one rusty actor". He laughs. So do I. e

Wednesday, November 14, 2001

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It is one of the most infamous shoots in Hollywood production history. A mammoth 236 day odyssey shooting entirely on location in the Philippines \vhich spiralled almost 20 million dollar~ over budget. An actor. pa;d a miilion dollars. who never read the script.

Another lead actor who was fired literally weeks into production and whose replacement went on to almost die of a heart attack. And a shoot plagued by a sasters both nat ural and •nan made. al l under the control of a dirPctor who was pushed so far that he considered suicide . This is the story of Apocalypse Now. one of the biggest films of all time. And now . 20 years later . it has just got bigger .

Text: Phil Colvin

B

ack in the mid 70s, riding on the back of his successes wit h The Godfather and its sequel, Franc is Ford Coppola was looking for a new chal lenge . He found it in a script he had concocted with friends and col leagues George Lucas and John Milius . Apocalypse Now was Milius ' attempt to film Joseph Conrad's 1900 story of despair and corrupt ion in the Congo , Heart of Darkness, by updating it to the 1960s

Vietnam war. lt was a story many in Hollywood deemed unfilmable . Lucas himself passed on the project to make a strange sounding adventure story set in space. And even the great Orson Welles had abandoned his own plans to make it many decades earlier. Coppola, however, seemed undaunted by the challenges awaiting him and in 1976 begun construction of several elaborate sets deep in the Philippine jungle and cast high ca libre actors. Marlon Brando was to

be the insane and AWOL Colonel Kurtz and Harvey Keitel as Captain Wi ll ard, the soldier who is sent down river to find and eliminate Kurtz.

Like the Conrad story. much of what happened in the jungle over the next two years was shrouded in rumour and mystery for over a decade. In 1992, however, the si lence was broken with the release of Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, a documentary on the making of the film formed from the video diaries filmed by Coppola 's wife, Eleanor. during produc tion . lt remains to date perhaps the most revealing and shocking insight into the making of a major film. Like a bizarre episode of Big Brother. we witness Coppola and the rest of the production trapped in the jungle together, beset with ca lamity upon ca lamity . lt began with Coppola's replacement of Harvey Keitel wi th Martin Sheen.

An act which immediately pushed the production a week behind schedule as every scene featur-

American helicopters to the music of Wagner.

And the sudden, senseless murder of a Vietnamese family by Sheen and his crew.

However, as much as there was praise there was also criticism. Many compla ined at the incomprehensibility of the Heart of Darkness themes. And, in particular, Brando 's extraordinary performance. As prominent critic Roger Ebert remarked: "The journey up river , with its remarkable set pieces, leads us at last to Brando's awesome, stinking hideaway ... Where the only truth we discover is that Coppola really doesn't have an ending."

Coppola himself was, unsurprisingly, never satisfied by the finished product. As well as his problems with the ending, he was in constant fear that the entire film was too long and so constantly cut scenes out right up until its release.

And so. in early 2000 he went back to his original raw footage (an unprecedented step, even for directors' cuts) and assembled a completely

"We were in the jungle, there were far too many of us, too much money and little by little we went insane.

Sunday 4th November - Top Tribute Bands Steps Beyond & Pure Britney 3.30prn •

W e dne sday 7th November- 7.30pm

The SpectacuJar Rockin' On Heaven's Door Music from Bvis Presley, Roy Orbison,

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Buddy Ho lly and Eddie Cochran

W e dne sda y 14th N ovember - 7.30pm "Find a Star'' 2001 Grand Final - Karaoke Competitio n 10 Finalists and Guest Singers plus T.V.'s Popstars 'lan Harvey'

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Thursday 6th December - 7 .30pm

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Rock Explosion!

Queen and Bowie Tribute Featuring Queen B and Jean Genie

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Sunday 9th December - 6 .00pm

S Club Heaven with Kylie Ukely Monday 17th December - 5.00pm

The Mag ic Toy Box Xmas Show

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Theatre Box Office O pen Daily 2pm to 8 pm

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event Wednesday,

November 14, 2001

ing Keitel had to be reshot . The film was pushed even further behind because the Philippin e army, who were lending helicopters for the battle scenes, would periodically withdraw their support , even in the midd le of shooting, to fight rebels in the South of the country. And, under pressure to put the film back on schedule, Sheen suffered a heart attack whilst filming the constant rewrites of a script which Coppola was working on any second when he was not filming.

Sheen was only 36 at the time . lming finally finished late in 1977, after Sheen had recovered and several elaborate sets had been entirely rebuilt after having been destroyed in a typhoon several months earlier. The final few weeks saw Marlon Brando arrive on set to film his scenes as Kurtz.

Alarmingly obese and having evidently not looked at the script, Brando would improvise his scenes with seemingly random stretches of dialogue before stopping mid-sentence and complaining he could not think of anything else to say that day. it' s no wonder that, in several secret conversations with her husband which Eleanor recorded, he wou ld blame himself for making "a twenty mi lli on dol lar disaster movie" and threaten to shoot himself. And on top of all that. he still could not think of how to end the film , leaving the script's final pages unwritten until literally days before they were filmed.

The film was finally released in 1979 to mixed critical opinion. Most critics praised Coppola 's viv id depiction of th e horrors of Vietnam, part ic ularly in prominent set pieces such as the now legendary attack of a Vietnamese vil lage by

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new version of the film entitled Apocalypse Now Redux . Now running almost fifty minutes longer than the original release , Coppola believes he has finally achieved his original aim for the film, w hic h is to: " ... let audiences feel what Vietnam was like: the immediacy , the insanity, the exhilaration. the horror, the sensuousness and the moral dilemma of America's most surrea l and nightmarish war."

Redux features the reinsertion of several cut scenes back into the film. Most notably, a long sequence where Willard and his crew dine at a French plantation untouched by civilisation for decades. lt is a visually stunning scene.

Howeve r, its incl usion only strengthens th e feel ings that critic s had back in 1979: it is yet another elaborate set piece in an already disjointed film. Arguably the most effective inc lusion is one of the shortest: a scene in which Brando reads American propag anda of the war to the battle scared Sheen. Despite the alterations, Redux still succeeds best were Apocalypse Now did: as a glimpse into the conflict of morality in the Vietnam war.

Back in 1979 when the film was released after yea rs of waiting , Coppola summed up the shoot to the press at the Cannes film festival: "We were like the Ameri can army in Vietnam . We were in the jungle, there were far too many of us, too much money and too much equipment.

And little by little. we went insane." Indeed, it's sti ll debatable to this day whether we learn more about man's descent into madness from the cast and crew's voyage to the cinema screen than we do in Apocalypse Now Redux.

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California Dreamin ' •• Si lly ni ck name s , cr owd - su rfin g mums , half pipes , it can only be OPM. The Event ca ught up wit h t he ban d on t our, dr i nk rum, and 'i i scovered Text : Kieren Me Swe eney th at t he re i s a dark s id e to Cali f ornia.

"In general we get a really weird mix of people. A lot of young h no! Not that stuff!", exclaims Matt with a grin, noticing the unopened bottle of people show up, people our age, people whose parents bring Captain Morgan on the table. "Is that the them to the show. The night before last this kid's mum was black label? We had a really bad time with crowd-surfing. She was like 45 or something. We're used to seethis on the last tour. Do you remember Ing parents in the corner, sitting at the back. moving their when we made the bus driver drink a pint of it?~ heads a little bit but she just came over the top of the crowd.· Love them or hate them, the first thing you notice about OPM is The band's catchy previous single, Heaven is a Ha/fpipe, a noshow laid back they appear. in contrast to the arrogant, rock brat stereotype suggested by their nicknames, as Matt, aka Shakey Lo, goes on to demonstrate. "it's the bottom of the bag or the 'shake' as they say. When you've just got shake you're shakey lo. it's just a word I made up. I thought it was funny. People would be like, 'Have you any talgic anthem dedicated to blunts and skating, spent four weed?' and I'd say, shakey lo. lt also means you're broke."

Since the release of their funky, ska-punk debut, Menace to weeks in the UK top ten and won the Kerrang! best single Sobriety, the band have been promoting their material on tour award, but do the band feel that its novelty has worn off? , "I can understand what you are saying; John E replies. "After a with the permanent line-up additions of Etienne (bass) and Gary (drums). while there will be that person saying, 'God, I'm sick of that song; But, then again, there will always be people who love it.

"Gary, our drummer, was a friend of mine, and Etienne knew John E [number two of the original trio]'s sister, which is Record labels have a lot of power so obviously they try to cash Matthew's wife," jokes Geoff (the third and final member), ·and In as hard as they can and play the shit out of it. At the she recommended him to us. They've been with us since we moment you might a have a bit of an overdose but it'll stick started touring and the plan Is to make the next record with around. Three years from now you'll hear it on the radio and maybe it will trigger some memories. That's what we're about, them around. We like the guys. They're cute. They grow on you, kind of like mould." representing our time."

Fortunateiy, that is where the similarity ends. So far, like a half· What about the rumours c laiming that you can't skate? pipe, the tour has had Its ups and downs, resulting in the band "I don't know who said that," Geoff admits. "I've skated for 15 having to pull out of touring Canada. years." . " If anybody's ever tried to Skate a halfpipe," continues John E. "A few of us," Matt explains, ·rm not going to name names, have past criminal records and Canada does not look upon that "they know it's pretty difficult. I'm not great. When I was 13 lightly. We actually had a bunch of gigs booked for Toronto but years old I was quite good, but that was a long time ago. The song doesn't claim we're professional skateboarders. we couldn't get over there.· The new single, £/ Capitan has also caused quite a stir with the Skateboarding is a lifestyle that stems from surfing culture, artwork showing a large pair of bikini clad breasts. The song which in California is very prominent. At the age we were, the " looks set to topple Terrorvislon's Tequila as the ultimate rock only real form of professional skating was halfpipe and Christian drinking song.

Hosoi was one of the biggest skating pros. There's a free "I don't think it was that crazy a picture", reflects Geoff. "The Chri stian Hosoi website that has raised a hundred and fifty thou· sand dollars to help get lawyers to speed up his release from song's just about having a party. We were told when making the video that we couldn't show any drinking, smoking or nudi· incarceration." (The skating legend Christian Hosoi was arrestty, and we. were like, 'What kind of party is this supposed to .ed at Honolulu airport after being found in possession of nearly a round of crystal meth). be?' We had to stick something in there somewhere. That girl was really little too. You should have seen how big the boobs Whilst recording their album OPM worked with a large number looked in person!" of guests ranging from DJ SWamp to Melvin Gibbs from the A party it may be, but watch out for crowd-surfing mums!

Rollins Band.

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"When we first started making the album,' Geoff recollects, "the band consisted of John E, Matthew and myself. We thought it would be cool to work with people that we really admired. We had Eric Avery from Jane's Addiction, Angelo (Moore) from Fishbone, DJ SWamp and Melvin Gibbs who played in the Rollins Band. We were looking at it from a production standpoint. We would be working on a track and suddenly think

"We were told when making the video that we couldn't show any drinking. smoking or nudity, and we were like. 'What kind of party is this supposed to be?' We had to stick something in there somewhere." it cool to get some horns on the song, so who do we know who plays horns? As soon as we sent them some music they were really into it which was cool. '' B

etween the three of us we listen to just about everything. I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock and heavy metal like Slayer and old Metallica, Dead Kennedys, Misfits, Exploited. And then I started getting into a lot of weirder shit, classic rock, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, hip hop and reggae."

Growing up in California has also had an effect upon their music. "I don't think we realised how much we were products of California until after we started travelling, then it got a lot more obvious to us. I think there is a general perception of California that it is all beach and blue skies. In one way it is, but at the same time there's a lot of police around. I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and there's a ton of drugs. My first girl· friend went to rehab when she was 13 for a speed problem. lt's a pretty tucked up place to but no one really talks about that part of it.· OPM finished their tour in support of Everlast earlier this year as the butt of a practical joke that resulted in them finishing their set in front of a seven-foot, neon pink GAY slogan. Geoff tells us more. "That was the last night of our tour and it 's pretty standard to play jokes on each other. They kept playing jokes on us but we were specifically Instructed not to retaliate. The Astoria turns into a gay club after the show and they already had the lights set up. Everlast's lighting guy saw them and was like 'Oh shit, do I have the best practical joke ever! ' The first time he did it I didn't know. lt was when he put it on at the end that we saw it."

Wedne sday, November 14. 2001: ~vent

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Deep Purple

Inquisitor:

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on the up . in the chair

Forget the Os car s , this month our TV screens are do mi .nate d by home -grown talent in a deluge of national TV awards, but how far do they rep re s_ent the views of· students? We took to the streets (we 11 , the Hive actually) to find out what's hot and what's no t on the sc reens of UEA... text: El in Jones

Who? Good question. The highly influential British metal pioneers aren't exactly famed for maintaining a stable line-up...

Gr rl f r onted . in di e pop sters. t he Fuzz Lig htyear s. on wh at makes them t i ck ...

Well, start from t he beginning .•• Okay then. Purple began with left-handed drum maestro I an Paice, gui tarist Ritchle Blackmore, Jon Lord on keyboards.

Presley-soundalike vocalist Rod Evans and bassist Nick Simper. They entered the studio on Saturday May 11, 1968, t o record their debut album, Shades of Deep Purple. lt was released the follow ing Monday.

Fast movers, then?

Always- two more albums followed by mid-1969. However, throughout the recording of the third album, plans had been made to replace Simper and Evans with screaming singer I an Gillan and bearded bassist Roger Glover, and pretty soon, Simper and Evans were gone.

How long did the next lot last, then?

For Purple, an eternity. Purple Mk.ll lasted four years , and produced the classic albums ... In Rock and Machine Head, and Purple's best known tracks, smoke On The Water and Black Night, duri ng what is widely considered their golden era. They even found time to fit in a date with the Royal· Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall, which produced the famed Concerto for Group and Orchestra.

Impressive •••why didn't lt last ?

Gillan and Glover got fed up with Blackm'ore and resigned. In came relatively unknown bassist Glenn Hughes and Redcarborn boutique assistant Davld Coverdale, who shared vocal duties between them, and Purple Mk.lll was born. The new recruits introduced a heavy blues and funk influence to the band's sound that Blackmore disliked, and soon it was all change again. Blackmore left to form Rainbow, and was replaced by Tommy Bolin. Purple Mk.IV recorded one album before Bolin became addicted t o heroin, and overdosed in December 1976. Purple called it a day. with Coverdale, Paice and Lord forming Whitesnake.

End of st ory?

Not exactly In 1984, Mk.ll reformed, intending to carry on where they had left off in 1973. They failed to match previous heights, producing two albums before Gillan left once more. Rainbow's Joe Lynn Turner was drafted in for one album, until Gillan made another return in time for 1993's 25th anniversary tour. lt was a success until Blackmore got up to his old tricks, and walked out midway through the tour in protest at Glllan's return. Joe Satriani filled in until the end of tour, when a permanent replacement was found in the form of another US guitar hero, Steve Morse.

And t oday?

Purple Mk.VII still rock on with Morse at the helm.

Meanwhile, Blackmore has swapped his Strat for a lute, and has become America's most temperamental wandering minstrel as part of Medieval restoration act 'Biackmore 's Night.'

In retrospect...

If you're leaving/Close the door...

Daniel Lome

event

Where did the name come from?

Aisle (guitarist): lt wasn't exactly a react ion to other boring band names but we really wanted a band name that you couldn't sit on the fence about. We wanted people to hear it and either love it or think we were a bunch of wankers.

And again it incorporates OUf fascinat ion with animation. ost national TV awards are mainly voted for by the qverweight readers of sub-Heat standard listings magazines. We set out to reward the shows that are reallf popular with the students of UEA. The votes have been counted and we are pleased to announce the winners of The Event TV awards 2001. ..

Unsurprisingly, the genius rJ the Eastenders script writing was recognised with a huge number of votes clearly showing that the recent change from three to four nights a week hasn't diminished the high standartls in any way. New characters such as the Slater family, the retJrn of stocky Sharon, and the Machiavellian Trevor have kept us glued to our screens. In fact, the Slaters were voted best soap family by an overwhelming 54% over the Battersbys, tl'e Cunninghams, the Scullys and the Fowlers. This is no surprise. When they first arrived on Albert Square, the Slater sisters rrade a lasting impression with their short skirts and lip gross. slagging their way around Walford armed only with an Essex twang and the phrase " What you looking aht?". With the addit ion of the loveable Charlie and big Mo, played by Gary Oldman's sister and possibly the worst actr!'!SS ever seen on screen (with the obvious exception of Cat from Family Affairs, coincidental ly an Eastenders cast-off) things could only get better. And they did. The story of Zoe's dubious conception ( incest~ous paedophiliac rape by Boon) had the nation gripped, and was voted best soap plot by Concrete's readers by 66% over Lewis' death in Hollyoaks, Steph and Woody's escape in NeighboJrs and Maxine's pregnancy in Coronation Street. The sensitive, yet enthralling, handling of this difficult subject Is a credit to Eastenders, especially in comparison to the titillating Nat;George plot in Brookie a few

M

hamming it up a little - exchanging knowing looks with Terry (another former wife-beater), raising his fist at any female who crosses his path, he even has a catch phrase - "Are ye lying teh me, Mo?". But when it really matters, he's back to his sly old self again, subjecting Mo to a rollercoaster of emotions. Is it any wonder that Eastenders was voted best soap over Coronation Street (with a measly 6% of the votes), Brookie (4%), Hollyoaks (12%) and Neighbours (12%) by 66% of UEA students?

Despite the popularity of Coronation Street with middle aged housewives and everyone's grandparents, it didn't score well with Concrete readers. The Battersbys only pulled in 3% of the votes for best soap fami ly, Maxine's pregnancy again only 3% for best soap plot, and the soap Itself only 6% overall. The influx of younger characters over the past years such as Sarah·Louise, Toyah and Tyrone doesn't seem to have struck a chord with students - either that or the grim Northern setting is too similar to the wind-swept concrete of the UEA campus. Sunny Neighbours and the shiny happy Hollyoaks have proved more popular with 12% of votes each. The lunchtime slot of Neighbours is responsible for many a missed lecture, and the draw of sunny weather and plenty of pretty people mean that Ramsey Street is a staple of student life. The Scully family received 27% of your votes for best soap fam ily, with the popularity of the scantily-clad Flick with many men's magazines no doubt a factor here. The love tri· angle between Darcy. Tess and Dione al~ proved popular (12% of votes), perhaps because it has more than a passing resemblance to sexual politics on campus. Darcy also came on top (no change there) in the award for best soap bastard with 37%, and we still don't know what his plans are for the surgery.

can't thank the Ho llyoaks writers enough for writing so many plots involving Finn 's peachy a r se...

I

years ago. Another demandng subject dealt with in the soap is that of domest ic abuse- o~e again in the Slater fam il y. The Eastenders writers must have wet themselves with excitement when they came across A lex Ferns who plays Trevor in the show. The man is a genius. Charming one moment and scowling from behind the bar at t he Vie the next. he perfectly encapsulates the role of a wife-beater who manages to smarm his way back into Mo's affections, even after burning her hand with an iron and announcing to the whole of Albert Square that Peggy 's ex was a paedophile and thil father of his brother's daughter1 s child. In fact, he only misse.:l out by 3% on being the best soap bastard to nasty Darcy from Neighbours (who pulled in 37% of the votes) .. Could this be because he's becoming a bit of a comedy character? lt may just t:e me, but lately Trev seems to be

Wednesday. November 14. 2001

Hollyoaks, on the other hand, is populated by nice, shiny peopl e. Lewis only pulled in 16% of votes as soap bastard, wh ich is far outweighed by the lovely Finn's triumph as the sexiest man on TV w ith 50% of votes. When he takes over from Ant and D.ec (who received 5% and 17% respec tively in the same category) on SM:TV in three weeks time it seems that the whole of UEA wi ll be tuning In as his eo-presenter, Cat Deeley, won sexiest female by 60%.

T

earing myself away from soaps, it seems that the populari· ty of Chris Tarrant's Who Wants to be a M illionaire extends to the UEA as it won best TV Game Show by a massive 57%. Could this be practice for the evil game machine in the bar which no-one has ever won any money from? Anne

Roblnson's transparent attempts to be a bitch (we- remember your cheeky winks on Watchdog, Anne) didn't help The Weakest Link which received 33% and Friends Like These is mourning the loss of Ant and Dec with only 3%. The geordie twosome once again showed their popularity in the best TV male category, with 33% and 37% respectively. Many of you seemed unable to comprehend that they were separate entitles, but Dec emerged as the more popular of the two, again beating poor Ant with his Frankenstein's monster-esque forehead in the sexiest male category. Another of their shows. Pop Idol, was narrowly defeated as best reality TV show with 27% of votes, compared to M odel Behaviour's 28%. We just can't get enough of seeing people embarrass themselves, but the votes suggest that we'd rather see pretty women in their underwear do so than the rejects from Popstars (which , by the way, came In fourth with 18%). Talk ing about pretty women, an alarming num· ber of you seem to have a penchant for shrew-like red-heads.

Yes, Anne Robinson received a worrying 15% of votes as sex i· est woman on TV - that's the same number as Eastenders' Tamsin Outhwaite. What is wrong with you people? Celebrity bike Usa Faulkner received 7% of votes and Lisa Rogers was left trailing with only 3%. lt seems that if you want to charm a man at UEA you should dress in black and adopt a clipped tone,

reminiscent of your headmistress from school and, when he falls to satisfy you in bed, quote her well-known catch-phrase which I can't even bring myself to write as it's been done to death. As for the TV boys, 1 am pleased to repeat that James Redmond ( Finn from Hollyoaks) was voted the sexiest man on TV by 50% of Concrete readers. The man is a fox and I can't thank the Holiyoaks writers enough for writing so many plots Involving his peachy arse. Admittedly we did have to sit through endless hours of Ruth cavorting in her underwear to catch a glimpse of Finn's beautiful behind, but it was all worth it in the end.

Trailing behind foxy Finn were Martin Kemp with 20% of votes, Ant and Dec, and teen favourite Jack Ryder with 8%. it's c lear that the overall favourites in at the UEA are those cheeky cockneys from Albert Square, as well as the delightfully camp Graham Norton, models in their underwear and Ant and Dec. Not all at the same time , I hasten to add. Is this escapism • watching mindless trash in order to forget the mundane reall· ties of essays, work and money worries? No it isn't. it's educational. Who Wants to be a Millionaire? teaches us general know ledge, from Neighbours we learn about foreign culture, and Eastenders tells us the value of community spirit and the family unit. And James Redmond's arse has certainly given me food for thought ...

The votes in fu 11 ...

· Anne Robinson · lisa Rogers · llsa Faulkner

15% 3% 7%

· . · ·

Befit TV Female: · lisa Tarbuck ·Cat Deeley · Fern Britton · Davina MacCall · Gall Porter

3% 21% 15% 57% 4%

Best TV Game Show:

Best Soap Bastard: · Lewis · Trevor · Darcy · Steve Owen · Pete

16% Sexiest Male: 34% · James Redmond 37% · Martin Kemp 13% ·Ant 0% · Dec

Best Soap Family: · The Slaters · The Battersbys · The Cunninghams ·The Scullys · The Fowlers Best Soap Bitch: ·Kat · Geri · Janine ·Gipsy · Laura Best Soap: · Eastenders · Coronation Street · Hollyoaks · Neighbours ·Brooks/de Befit Chat Show: · Parkinson

54" 3% .12%

· · · ·

Graham Norton Jonathan Ross Frank Skinner Esther Ransom

45% 3" 1m(,

1%

27" 4%

Best Soap Plot: · Kat;zoe · Darcy/Tess/Dee · Lewis' death · Steph and Woody · Maxine's baby

66" 12% 1.5 " 4% 4%

· Absolutely Fabulous ·My Family - Gimme Gimme Gimme ·Friends · Never Mind the ... · Banzai

25% 14% 0% 36% 18% 7"

Sexiest Woman: · Tamsin Outhwaite ·Cat Deeley

15% Best Reality TV Show: 60% · Big Brother 2

15% 15% 54% 0% 16% Funniest Show: 66% 6% 12% 12% 4%

3 9%

· · · · ·

Popstars Pop Idol Castaw ay Model Behaviour

The Weakest link ... Millionaire People Versus Friends like...

15 To 1

·Jack Ryder Best TV Male: ·Ant · Dec · John Leslie · Graham Norton · Parkinson

18% 27% 0% 28%

33" 5 7% 0% 3% 7% 50% 20% 5% 1 7% 8%

33% Most Tragic Excuse. for a TV 37% Star: 3% · Dean Gaffney 12% 24% · Natalie cassicly 6% 3% ·Twiggy 2 7% · Carole Vorderman 15% · Anthea Turner 40% 2 7% · Richard Madeley 0%

Are you going t o use animation as part of your Image like the Gortllaz?

Aisle: Well, we've just started a website, but a bunch of corporate blokes did it and it was terrible. So after we finish touring we're gonna have a go at it ourselves. Although we were discouraged a little bit by our record company, because they thought we were going to put loads of porn on it. And they were right, we are!

You have quite a pop sound. What kind of pop Influences • you ?

Aisle: Destiny's Child had us all in a tizzy this year.

Supergrass too, who are the best band in Britain. And Jamie likes Aphex Tw in. But I heard his new album and it 's not that good. [cue much Aphex. Tw in related c hat] He's stlll a dude though.

What sort of ambitions have you got for your career?

Aisle: We've achieved everything we wanted to achieve Turner (lead singer): We're gonna retire now, successful.

Aisle : Yeah we've made a record, I'm in a band, but haven't had a groupie yet.

Turner: You got one! The Italian girl.

Aisle: What the Stalker?

What's the st ory with the stalker?

Aisle: Well the first rule if someone stalks you and you hate them is never sleep with them.

Turner: You obviously broke the first rule!

Aisle : No seriously she was a dangerous stalker Turner: She was tiny. I could take her!

I read one Interview that described the male member of the band as looking like rejects from Scally-pop plodders Cast .

What did you think of t hat?

Tumer: I though it was pretty rude.

Aisle: I though it was good.

Turner: You Liar , you were furious.

Aisle: Fuckin too right I was. If I ever catch that guy.

Tumer: I think he was just jealous they [the boys in the band] got to stand onstage so close to me.

What' s lt like touring with Soft Cell?

Turner: To tell the truth, We haven't seen much of them.'

But we did support the Bangles in London and we met them.

Wow, do they still walk like Egyptians?

Aisle: Yeah and they still look like four tranny birds.

M erek Cooper

Wednesday. November·14. 2001

event

14 Albums

So Solid Crew: --

They

Don ' t Know

For two years now, we've been beset on all sides by UK garage.

Megastars have been created, DJs have been given their own shows, partnerships have split up, controversies have reigned, and awards have been doled out to the most fashionable. But, like any musical style that has leapt into the public eye, the bottom of the barrel will eventually have to be scraped. The compilations market reaches its saturation point, and the marriage of beats, the occasional acoustic guitar, and smooth as cream vocals/freestylish rapping is carried across everyone's boredom threshold. UK garage hasn't quite reached the same level as nu-metal in its propensity to vanish up its own imageobsessed, radio friendly unit shifting arse), but it will get there eventually. So with this rather depressing prospect in mind, how the hell have So Solid Crew made such a good album?

This is a very fine effort indeed. Although their exploits offstage have gained them more column inches than their performances on it, the awards which followed their arrival in the charts with 21 Seconds will doubtless be joined by further plaudits in trophy form when They Don't Know is released. A short intra track whips you straight into Haterz, which, w ith its irresistible staccato rhythm, would be as comfortable in front of a field of mashing teenagers as it would in a club. In fact, the evidence that So Solid Crew are doing something genuinely new and exciting with UK garage is considerable. There is a tougher sound at work on this record than is standard for other big name acts (it forsakes the slick production of the likes of Craig Oavld and Artful Dodger in favour of an edgier approach), and it is obvious that the vocalists have soaked up influences from American gangsta rap like a sponge. Perhaps most surprisingly, the album borrows quite skilfully from The Prodigy's Music for the Jilted Generation, w ith a fair few of Liam Howlett's tricks being g iven an exciting new context. Friend of Mine is probably the best example of this, but careful listening reveals multiple points of reference. All well and good. Doing something new and different whilst not alienating the target audience is a clear strength for the Crew. But they lose points for fal ling int o some old traps.

There is an absolute arsenal of clich~s at work, with liberal smatterings of misogyny, violence and gratuitous bad language making this irritatingly cheesy at times. The obvious talent of this multi-person collective has also meant that in order to give them all a fair hearing, the album is overlong. There are at least four unnecessary tracks on here, including one absolute howler in Deeper. But whilst these problems do mean that They Don't Know Is far from perfect, they are also rect ifiable. Every genre needs something every once In a while to shake lt up a bit, to rQuse it from complacency, and UK garage has just got Its wake up call. An early contender for multiple awards next year? Don't be surprised...

Anthony Lovell

8/ . dJ

The An nu al 2002

Radiohead:

Ocean Colour Scene:

I Mig ht Be Wrong

Songs For The Fro nt Row

Ministry of Sound launched their Annual Series in 1995 and it quickly became the best-selling dance compilation series in the universe. This time around, the album that marks a high point in the dance collection calendar has had a style makeover, and is now outrageously bright and brash - and the music within is even bolder than the garish packaging. The album comes in a solid box set with this year's booklet and a mini magazine that looks over the past year in clubland.

The music is exactly what you'd expect- an up-tempo, digitally mixed selection of the year's anthems and current releases, all put under the name of huge DJs such as Judge Jules and Pete Tong, and then released just in time for Christmas.

The first CD is packed with commercial house, with all the big tunes you'd expect, from Basement Jaxx's Romeo and Roger Sanchez's Another Chance, to Jakarta's American Dream, and many more - if you haven't been hiding in a cupboard in Toxteth for the last year, you'll recognise most of the t racks on this CD. C02 starts off with the cream of this year's commercial UK garage releases including Pied Piper's Do you Really Like it?, Genius Crew' s 'Course Bruv, So Solid Crew's 21 seconds, and K2 Family's Bouncing Flow, which gets it off to a bumping start, before it moves towards funky UK house w ith tracks from Raven Maize and Todd Terry.

The third CD is jam packed with cheesy trance, with tracks from Paul van Dyk, Darude, tan Van Dahl, N-Trance, and to top it all off, the new Three Drives tune Sunset on Ibiza. which has been cained at Gatecrasher and the Gallery for months now.

While the album has never aimed to satisfy the underground dance scene, it is really easy to listen to, and as it covers house, garage and trance there's something here for everyone. definitely one to bop around the kitchen to.

Ben Cannon

Unless you spent most of last year with a phone sellotaped to your head, nimble fingers practised at dialing the Radiohead ticket hotllne at a moment's notice, I Might Be Wrong will probably be the closest mo~t of us get to the Radlohead live experience. Popular consensus will tell you you missed a treat, b路u t don't you believe it. Cosied up on a comfortable couch with this live album on your stereo is in my opinion far preferable than spending five sweaty hours pressed up against the hairiest man in history, his festering leather jacket slowly adhering to your sodden bo"Ciy. Such is the experience of stadium gig going and chances are the only reward you would have got for this Hillsborough-esque feat of endurance is a fleeting glance of Colin Greenwood's left ear. So count your blessings, settle down and lets see what we 've got here. Bursting onto the scene with The National Anthem, buzzsaw base-riff burning through your brain, I Might Be Wrong threatens to be a pieasur路 ably bumpy ride, but don't be fooled. Maybe the gunpowder got wet or maybe the fuse simply got lost down the back of one of the samplers, but somehow Radiohead fail to ignite the explosive live show witnessed during the OK Computer years. The leaden beat of the title track feels like Radiohead are being made to carry the new high tech equipment on their backs, and the once mighty beat of ldioteque now sounds like the dying bleeps of a ZX Spectrum. Also missing are the drastic changes of pace that make a Radiohead show so spectacular. Where are the hyperspeed jarring tones of Electioneering or the high speed changes through Paranoid Android? lt seems inconcievable that they didn't play them on this tour and the fact that they're not included here Is a great shame. I Might be Wrong showcases a Radiohead that never breaks out of a trot, when we all know that they can run with the best of them.

M erek Cooper

At the height of the Britpop era of the 1990 's emerged Ocean Colour Scene.

For many people, bands st1ch as this, a Weller influenced four piece from Birmingham, were synonymous with the scraggy remains of this 60's revival ist period. But it was this that gave them some success, their unyielding loyalty to creating an acceptable standard of rock 'n' roll.

This is an album made up of many hits and misses from the band's five-year history. The Riverboat Song, in particular that memorable riff, still bares the scars from Chris Evans and TFI Friday, but remains better than many may have first thought.

The Day We Caught the Train would, in spite of everything, bring back summer路f~tival memories, and Hundred Mile High City conjures up images of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Even Better Day and The Circle, are not perhaps as awful as many would remember.

The trouble remains that after hearing the early work, the album falls away. Whilst being apt in the present political climate, Profit in Peace remains both dull and uninspiring. As with all mediocre Britpop bands Best Of's, you realise that there has been a shift In the way indie music is produced and listened to in this era of Coldplay and The Strokes. There are many who are quick to knock Ocean Colour Scene for constantly hanging onto Paul Weller's coat tails, or for pushing that 'retro revival' too far.

However, the truth remains that they were not solely to blame for that trend. OCS may not have shaken the world with this or any other records , but they have maintained their style, an approach that was right for the time, and won a large number of hardcore fans. This is one thing that we must respect them for.

Oan Hutchfngs

8/1 0

5/10

6/ 10

:: event Wedn esday.

November 14 . 2001

Singles 15

Muse •• Feeling Good/Hyper Music We all know how successful these lads have been lately, with Origin of Symmetry selling over 500,000 copies world-wide. So why the hell, I hear you cry. are they releasing a cover of Nina Simone's classic Feeling Good? Fear not; Muse's take on the tune is strongly individual and well and truly a song in its own right. Their version sounds much more powerful than the original with a bass line so pounding that I challenge you not to gyrate along stripper-style. The vocal range of Matt Bellamy ensures that the song loses none of its soulfullness, with contrasting softer moments. This track does more than what it says on the tin, leaving you feeling not just good but bloody fantastic (and possibly naked) . If, having become so entranced by track one, you've found yourself getting inadvertently naked with the wrong person: don't panic. Muse have provided an escape route with track two of this double A-side. With the lyrics "You know that I don 't want you and I never did/ I don't want you and I never will", Hyper Music is the classic dumping tune. Yes, the words lack subtlety, and would incite anyone to boil your bunny. but this tune 's all about the post-dumping pi ssup and subsequent mashing session that make relationships worthwhile. The almighty guitar riff which dominates throughout ensures excellent jumping about opportunities, and really does kick ass. Gyrate your way down to the shops and buy it . You know you need it in your life.

Clare Butler

Charlatans:

A Man Needs to ...

From swaggering baggy Hammond organs to tinkling country pianos in only five albums, The Charlatans have at last embraced a decent new direction, and thoughtfplly released two good singles in a row. A Man Needs To Be Told is completely different to the pseudo-psychout Love Is The Key, but it still kicks arse, albeit in a sweet, quiet way. If you want a reference point, then the closest thing is, shockingly, alt.country messiahs Lambchop. A Man Needs To Be Told Is not as peep or sweepingly melancholic as the mighty 'Chop, but it's an engaging tale of misdirected youth and lost opportunities, with fuzzy late summer harmonies and guitars straight out of Nashville.

The song may not grab at your heart (or throat) the way someone like Ryan Adams does, but it's still a highly appealing way to spend four minutes of your life.

Tessa North

Eddy Grant:

Walking on Sunshine

Taken from the Greatest Hits album released in May , Walking On Sunshine gets reworked by producers of the moment, Stargate. Following successful transformations of tracks by Toploader and Maxee, this single is reminiscent of 5ive's If You're Getting Down. it's funky, but the line is drawn there.

Although there is little to dislike about this record, there is nothing that grabbed me about it either. Electric Avenue may have been the biggest track of the 2001 Miami Winter Music Conference, but this simply does not compare. This one should have been left in its original 1979 state, and not re-released courtesy of EastWest.

However, it starts brightly with a singing intra retouched by the vocoder, as used in Cher's Believe, which gives it an interesting introduction. Maybe the Joey Negro mix will breathe some life into an otherwise average track .

Mark Wheeler

Spiritualized:

Out Of Sight

First impressions are not good. But upon listening to it repeatedly my preconceptions of the blandness which I expected began to fade .

Suggestions of this being Jason Pierce 's going-straight record are undermined by lyrics such as "if I am good I could add some years to my life /I would rather add some life to my years.· Similar word play within the track gives the impression of a man not quite fully on the bandwagon.

The lyrics, whilst providing the meaning of the song, are only probably realised with the driving force of the music. Pierce has created a symphonic sound- the haunting seamless classical music with its crescendos gives the song its soul.

This is a satisfying single, perhaps a little whiny lyrically, but still a desirable acquisition.

Matthew Beavan

Depeche Mode:

Freelove

No, not the swinging 60s kind of easy communal love, but a heartfelt offer of some no strings attached one on one. Flood flavours his mix with brooding bass, subtle tweaking of knobs and cruising electronic atmospherics on CD one of two, and it makes for a far more chilled departure than from the Ibiza summer anthem that was I Feel Loved. A soft-plucked electric guitar and familiar synthesised keyboard playing do the rest.

Depeche Mode 's back catalogue still stands strong with the likes of your older sister, and stylistic changes on new records keep 'em interested. Over a decade on from the Violator LP, collaborations and re-workings are happening. Tori Amos has recently performed a stripped down cover of Enjoy the Silence, and some remixes by household name producers like Console, Bertrand and Atom will come out on vinyl on the 12/10. One for the 'chill-out' then?

Wes Finch

DIVA HAIR No 7 ST BENEDICTS ST

20% DENT DISCOUNT

1603 767854 Pictures (clockwise from top): 1. Muse; 2 . Charlatans; 3. Spiritualized; 4. Depeche Mode

Wednesday. November 14.

200~ .e·v,ent

•

16 Film

Ghost World â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘

Directed by Terry Zwigoff Starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson and Steve Buscemi

Easily a contender for film of the year. Ghost World's cult status is already assured main ly due to it's comic book heritage. Daniel Clowes bitingly satiric tale of urban teenage disaffection is perfectly realised by director Terry Zwi goff and geeky star Steve Buscemi Ghost World is movie about teenage angst and is based on a comic book. The combination of these factors shou ld, in theory, have created one of the worst films of all time. But Ghost World isn't interested in playing by the rules of its genres; Freddy Prinze Jr. is nowhere to be seen, and the only rubber mask on display is bought in a porn store. Instead, it is one of the most consistently entertaining and original re leases of the year, a timely reminder that t eens in films can be clue less rat her than Clueless.

Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson play Enid and Rebecca, highschool best friends having trouble adapting to the real world after graduation. Rebecca wants to follow through on their long held plan to get an apartment together. She gets a job at a coffee franchise (Starbucks in all but name} and begins to shop for reasonably priced vases. Enid doesn 't know what the hell she wants. Because she failed art at school she is forced to take a summer class in order to fully graduate, trapping her in a halfway existence between adolescence and adulthood . Devoid of responsibility, but without an excuse for not doing something useful , Enid roams the streets of her hometown, pestering old highschool crushes and mocking the bizarre collection of local residents.

One of these is Seymour (Steve Buscemi} , a shy record collector who she initially subjects to a cruel trick after reading his personal ad . But soon it becomes apparent that they share common ground as outsiders, and a quiet friendship/ romance begins to bui ld th at forms the center of the movie.

Ghost World is the feature debut of seminal documentary maker Terry Zwigoff (Crumb}. who also eo-wrote the script with the comic's creator Daniel Clowes. The pair clearly have a great understanding and affection for society 's oddballs. Few will be able to watch this film without recognizing either themselves or someone they know. Edna, Scarlett and Seymour are the people at school who didn 't try at P.E. and always had a snide remark for t hose that did . Th ey cou ld easi ly have become st ereotypical, pathetic characters. lt is a test ament to the skill of the filmmakers, and particularly the actors, that this is never the case. Birch and Johansson are perfect as best friends slowly coming to terms with rea lization that they aren 't as similar as they thought.

Edna in particular is a classic creation who changes her appearance as often as her mind.

However, the film belongs to Buscemi. After spending a decade as Hol lywood's favourite supporting weirdo, here he final ly gets to show what he's capable of. Seymour is a man trapped by his own obsessions. He doesn't like having destroyed his personal life for records , but he did it by choice. The combination of love and loathing that drives him is both hilarious and heartbreaking to watch. it 's the kind of performance you 'll remember for years. it 's nothing big or spectacular, just somehow completely right and perfectly pitched- bit like Ghost World in general, really.

Jlm Whal/ey

9/10

Wednesday, November 14, 2001

Fi 1m 17

The Piano Teacher:

Dire et ed by Mi crae 1 Ha neke Starring: Isabelle Hupper+-, Beno'it Mdgime, dnd A

'P"'';-

{'..;..,.

Three times prize wi nner at this year's Cannes. Mi eh ea l Haneke's coldly brilliant tale of repression and sexual desire premieres at Cinema City this month.

"Michael Haneke is a director who asks the right questions.

What can be shown in a movie? What can't be shown? You can't make a great film if you don't ask yourself questions about cinema." That's how lsabelle Huppert, the unquestionable star of The Piano Teacher, sums up her director's controversial career. it's a sentiment that was echoed at Cannes this year when the Austrian director's latest creation romped home with three awards, the Grand prix de jury Prize, best Actress and best Actor. However, as with all films that push the envelope in such an astounding way, The Piano Teacher has had it's fair share of detractors too. Like the previous year's winner, Dancer in the Dark, the film was met with as much furious booing as wild applause on the French Riviera. And with the British release the audiences' love/hate relationship with The Piano Teacher looks set to continue. lt would be easy to focus on the scandalous moments in this film, of which there are many, but if you go to see this film simply because it contains moments of explicit se'xual frankness and you expect to be titillated you will be sev+ely disappointed.

Mlchael Haneke's film tells the story of Erika Kohut, an outwardly stern piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. This cold exterior however, only functions to hide the turmoil of her inner life. Repressed externally by the demands of her mother and internally by a tireless dedication to music and her self imposed championing of intellect over emotions, Erika is a grown woman who has never allowed her emotions to mature.

Like trying to hold a fist full of water, the tighter the grip she places on her desires, the more they trickle and squirt away, often through the most bizarre and destructive avenues. it's in this way that we learn of her stunted sex life - unable to enjoy adult pleasures normally she is forced into voyeurism and periodical viewings of hardcore porn videos. Masochism and selfmutilation too, become the frightening and graphic ways in which this trapped women vents her bottled up sexuality. Nor does music offer her the traditional salvation. Bound by the rigours of practice and perfection, her musical career is represented as one of the heaviest and most constrictive binds. Her

mother's dissatisfaction with her daughter is fed by Erika's failure to reach the professional heights that her mother claims she made so many sacrifices for. Erika'a own dogged focus on her music is hence driven by her need for the affection and love that her mother withholds from her.

Music however, does allow her to meet a young student, Waiter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel) and it's through his amorous and sexual advances that Erika's emotional floodgates are breached. Unfortunately, like an obstructed tidal flow Erika's pent up inner life furiously surges into the real world exposing her immaturity with shocking consequences.

The secret of this film's power is the way Haneke and Huppert

Kiss of the Dragon:

ensure that while Erika is capable of extreme evil, the character manages to retain the audience's sympathy throughout. This is very much due to Haneke's mature handling of his subject matter. While his earlier film Funny Games was a precise exercise in shock tactics, it lacked the existential humanism that makes The Piano Teacher so fascinating. Fully deserving of its praise at Cannes, this is the must-see film this autumn. The Piano Teacher pushes the limits of the medium and proposes questions you never even thought of asking. Just don't expect to be given the answers too.

Merek Cooper V/

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Jet Li teams up with Luc Besson and Mark Kamen for his writing debut. The most surprising thing about this film is that even with three people working on the script there is no discernable plot.

Let me start by saying that I have nothing against martial arts films. I like to see the bad guy getting the crap kicked out of him in new and exciting ways as much as the next person.

Unfortunately there is nothing new in this film, and very little that excites.

Firstly the plot- I'll try to be as level headed as I can, but the

people who made this film just wasted ninety-eight minutes of my life - virtuous visiting Chinese cop ( Li) versus flagrantly crooked and preposterously evil Parisian police inspector (Tcheky Karyo). I'm sorry I just can't do it. The writing is so inept that the movie never once even alludes to the rogue cop's motives. He kills a Chinese businessman and frames Li to get

the ball rolling. He sends a handful of super-buff henchmen to kill Li when he escapes. He runs a heroin ring and has apparently kidnapped- I'm not making this up- a "farmer's daughter from North Dakota" (Bridget Fonda) and forced her to become a prostitute by threatening to kill her daughter. Oh , and every now and again he forces her to shoot up some heroine just in case his constant shouting hadn't convinced us of his wickedness.

But why is he doing all this? What's his goal? Who, for example, was the Chinese businessman and what does killing him do for the cop?

These aren't questions that I'd ask if this was a film that allowed its audience to leave their brains at the door and enjoy some quality action, but it even fails on this count. Director Chris Nahon saw it necessary to add a completely superfluous love interest between Li and Fonda, which seriously hinders the pace of the film and, in their many dialogues, highlights Li's dearth of acting skills. When the fight scenes do come around they break the golden rule of Kung-Fu movies. They are badly shot and edited with weapons and parts of the set obscuring the camera's view. If this wasn't bad enough the scenes themselves are generic to the point of parody. My favourite was when li, running through a police station, bursts into a room full of thirty policemen in Karate suits (with the obligatory black belts) holding big sticks. They look at him ... He looks at them (can you feel the tension?) ... Someone says fight and Li proceeds to leave every last one groaning on the floor before getting out of the room just before their back-up arrives.

I suppose I should mention the one thing about this film that really did entertain me, and once again I promise you that I'm not making this up. Li has a secret weapon which, when all hope seems gone, gets him out of the tightest of scrapes. He is expert at one oriental practice- Tae-Kwon-Do? No. Kick boxing?

No. Karate? No. He kills people with acupuncture. At its best this film is laughably camp, at its worst, insulting to the audience's intelligence.

So, a final paragraph to sum it all up. You need to see this film as much as Bill Gates needs to win the lottery. Save your money for something more fun, like getting your legs waxed.

Tom Hlnes

3/10 Wednesday, November 14, 2001

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18 Video/DVD

Pearl Harbor:

Directed by Mi chael Bay Starring: Ben Affle ck, Ka t e Beckinsa l e.

Josh Hartnett and Cuba Goading Jnr

Ben Affleck flicks his hair and Kate Beckinsale overglosse s he r li ps fo r the most exp ensive gla mour shoot cum car advert in the history of cinema.

Fifty years from now the re will be a movie released concerning the events of September 11. It ' ll feature forty minutes of the most visual ly impressive and red undant spec ial effects in history , surrounded by a two hours of a love story of stunning banality . It 'll feature a lot of people dying . There' ll be plenty of explosions.

But don 't worry: it'l l all have a happy ending.

Because, after all , despite the fact it was a single event and not an actual conflict : America manages to win . Somehow. All in all, makes you slightly sick, doesn 't it? But why is that? Aft er all , exactly t he same movie has already been made twice in the past five years: firstly in Titanic and now in Pearl Harbor. And you all went to see at least one of them, didn't you? Yes, we can now all pat ourselves collective ly on the back for mak ing the exploitat ion of human tragedy t he bigge st money spinner in Hol lywood since Star Wars. Doesn't that just make you all warm and fuzzy inside?

Pearl Harbor is a story about two lovers, Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale, a few other completely forgettable characters and a lot of sinking ships. All set alongside a background of nostalgia and glaring historical inaccuracies. In what I must laugh ingly refer to as 'plot', Affleck and Beckinsale conduct a love affair on glamorous Hawaii (along with Josh Hartnett to mix things up a bit) which is 'trag ically ' interrupted by the surprise attack by the Japanese.

Muc h tragedy occu rs, many peopl e die but unfortunately enough of the leads survive to convince us that , apparently, love conquers all.

Even the Japanese air force. Yes, folks , it's like Titanic only more so . Heck, it even boasts a vomit enducing 'love 路 song over the end credits.

And yet Pearl Harbor manages, incredibly, to be even more bana l than Titanic. At least in Titanic the carnage and destruction was tenuously linked to the love story . In Pearl Harbor the bombi ng is a com pl ete ly pointless forty minute destruct ion-a-than which resembles , at best, a tradit ional nineties car advert. And , at worst , a trad itional nineties car advert . lt doesn't even succeed in t he most basic of aims: making war seem brutal and ung lamorous because, in Pearl Harbor's world, the violence lacks any sense of rea lity .

Compare, fo r example, the underwater deaths here wit h t hose in Sa ving Private Ryan .

Where's the blood? Where 's the shocking realisation that people are actually dyi ng? This is not, I should say, a cry for war films to soak the walls in gore. However, if we are going to be treat ed to t he horror of war then we need to see something a litt le more reali stic than a line of ships exploding in perfect format ion and Ben Affleck single handily defeating the Japanese air force . Unless, of course, t he true horror of war is that our hopes lie in the hands of men like Ben Affleck. In which case, point taken .

Did I mention that I didn't really enj oy the film?

Phi/ Colvin

1/10

UEA Careers Centre presents a

.-

CUlTURAl ORTS fAIR an information fair for anyone interested in careers in museums, ga lleries, arts administration, music, etc

exhibitors include: City College Norwich (Museum Education Course) ; APU ; East England Arts ; National Film and Te levision Schoo l; The National Trust; NSAD; Picture Research Association, Tiebreak Theatre

Talks: In addition there w ill be a senes of talks in the afternoon which will include speakers from the Festival

and

the

organist

at

Westminster CathedraL There will be talks about arts adm inistration and marketing, careers in archaeology and historic buildings to name but a few. A final, detailed programme will be ava ilable from the Careers Centre from 19 November.

.,.

event路'Wednesday ,

November 14 , 2001

Direc t ed by Chuck Parello St arring:Steve Railsback. Carr i e Snodgres s and Carol Mansell

This DVD celebrates a real life killer.

But never has a film featuring a human skin suit been so di sappointing.

Monday 26 November, 1030-1300, Sainsbury Centre Conservatory

Aldeburgh

Ed Gein:

At last, say the director and writer of Ed Gein , the true story whi ch inspired so many c lassic films has a movie telling of its own .

The true story in question is that of Wisconsin killer Gein, who murdered two women in the fifties, and was also keen on graverobbing, mutilation and lampshades made out of human sk in. The classic films in question include Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of t he Lambs, and if you've seen any of them - even if you haven 't - there's no need to bother with th is film. Ed Gein may be more true to the facts , and it may boast a fairly solid performance from Steve Railsback in the t itle role, but it 's also a far less accomplished piece of work than the other three .

This is partly the point - an attempt to make a non-glossy version of events - but in showing the more mundane aspects of Gein's li fe , it 's frankly dull. Even if you didn't know the whole plot. it's stil l vastly predictable . The flat script doesn 't help , and neither does Carrie Snodgress chew ing the scenery as Gein's demented mother. In not going for the admittedl y obvious gore, the film robs itself of any interest and shock value it might have had .

The only thing that just about keeps you engaged is the cast of minor cha racters: the t ow nsfolk may be less than exciting , but they 're mildly eccentri c and pretty wat c hable. Unlike Ed himself, who ( be sure to t ic k

off the cliches) has an obse ssion wit h his dead religious-nut mother, as well as an unhealthy fixation with cannibalism and Nazism .

Maybe it 's unfair to criticise the fi lm for being c liched when it's te ll ing a t rue story . If Psycho et al had never been produced , and so not made Ed Gein 's plot points so fami liar, then it might hold some kind of fascinat ion, but the other fi lms are so far superior that it's hard to care . Ed Gein might have been an interesting fail ure, but unfort unately it 's not even interesting.

Tessa North

5/ 10

...

TV/Radio 19 Essential TVOl· Rofib i e Williams Live at the Albert H~ll BBCl November 17 9.QOpm Where were you at lOam on Wednesday September 12? If you weren't in the computer centre desperately trying to log-on to www .robbiewilliams.com to further deplete your student loan you will have missed out on the live event of this year - Robbie Williams Live at the Albert Hall. But never fear, not content with brightening up our dreary lives with such gems as Eastenders and Home Front, the lovely Beeb filmed the entire event and are previewing it for your viewing pleasure on November 17. Coincidentally, two days before the release of Rob 's new album.

Attended by a gl ittering array of dolled-up celebs including Cat Deeley, Nicole Kidman and , er, Dani Behr, the black tie event was held at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall and was worth every penny of the ticket prices which ranged from £25 (restricted view) to £2,000 (for a table within hip-thrusti ng range of the delectable Robbie) . I know , because I was there.

After an hour spent celeb-spotting through borrowed binoculars ( " is that Geri?", " No Gemma, that 's a man in a dress" ) the show kicked-off in typical Robbie style with the man himself sliding down a pole which extended from the centre of a 20ft glittering 'R' . The opening number, Have you met Miss Jones was the song that inspired Robbie to start work on his soon to be released album Swing When You're Winning after he recorded it for the soundtrack of Bridget Jones ' Diary last year, and was performed in his usual give-it-all-you've-got style, complete

el

with cheeky winks at the audience and his new finger-clicking swagger.

For TV purposes, the event was compered by Rupert Everett (who also collaborated with Robbie on the album) camping it up superbly with constant references to his desire to discover just how "well-swung " Robbie is. Other guest performers were Jane Horrocks (duetting with Robbie on Things). Jon Lovitz of Saturday Night Live fame singing Did you Evah?, and the iron ically hilarious Jonathan Wilkes who joined Robbie on stage to sing Me and my Shadow. Apart from Robbie looking mighty fine in his black suit and glittery tie, Me and my Shadow was the highlight of the show with the chemistry between the two reducing everyone to dribbling wrecks. Other highlights included Robbie 's constant mentions of his mum who was sitting in the audience, and his duet with the ghost of Frank Sinatra. Yes, you did read that correctly. After recording in the studio used by Sinatra and the rat-pack, Robbie was given permission to use a recording of the swing legend's yocals on his version of A Very Good Year and when performing it at the Royal Albert Hall he had tears in his eyes. Bless.

Anyone doubting Robbie 's singing abilities, dismissing him as an ex -TakeThat fame-hungry phenomenon aimed at the lowest common denominator will be proved unequivocally wrong when faced with this TV special which shows him at his show-stopping best . £/In Jones

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Contestant Appeal

Tasty Becky and Emma

Do you think you could be the next Brian or nasty Nick?

From the makers of Big Brother and Cruel Summer, Cruel Winter takes twelve contestants to a secret location for four weeks and films their ups and downs as they are put through mental and physical challenges with a chance of winning £10, 000.

Through telephone polls and Web participation, the contestants are given tasks and are voted out by the programmes viewers.

The production company are looking for larger than life contestants who think they can cope with the challenge of surviving Cruel Winter and, as a student , you are perfectly prepared for a hard slog.

By the end of your t ime here, you will have learnt how to dodge a minger with wandering hands, cry on demand in front of your tutor when a deadline has been overlooked, and nothing can be worse than living in a freezing cold, smelly house with a bunch of people you hate now , can it?

Cruel Winter slots in perfectly with the Christmas holiday, save for a week here and there, but what 's a week when you are making your television debut? So if you were dreading putting those value baked beans back on the shelves, then this is probably a good cop out, and if you win, the prize definitely amounts to more than four pounds an hour.

And don't worry, Grandma probably doesn't have cable, or her friend Iris so there is no danger of her seeing you make utter poop of yourself on national TV .

If you or any of your mates fit the bill and you are between 18 and 22 years old, available between the 28th of December and the 26th January and could do with at least £10, 000, then call the audition phone line now on 09066 800800 or e mail cruelwinter@brighter.co.uk . NOW !I

Tasty? What's all that . about?

Becky: Basically LCR cheese . Our mission is to push cheese around the campus.

Emma: Yeah , generally light hearted tunes depending on what mood we are in.

So on a bad day, out comes Boyzone's Father and Son then?

Emma: If we are pissed off, it definitely shows in the songs we play Becky: We select the saddest songs from our rather small cd collection What Is your all time favourite choon then?

Emma: Stand by Me by Ben E King, it brings tears to my eyes every time ...

Becky : it has to be 'I want you back' by the Jackson Five, but generally any boy band . Preferably on a plate .

A-ha, a boy band fan , quite a rarity amongst the lndle loving UEA students.

Becky: ' Fraid so. There is definitely too much resistance to S club around campus at the moment. I'd say Emma probably has more credible music tastes than me, she is more 60's and 70's cheese.

Words of wisdom

Becky : Don't fight the cheese.

• Tasty: Every Friday 10am-12pm

Essential Soaps: God-damnit, what is it with all the 'whose chi ld is whose?' business that's being going down in Albert Square lately? lt was only a couple of months ago that the Kat was let out of the bag about Zoe, and then last week we heard Lisa tell Sharon that "the baby ain't Mark's, iss Fills" . What next? Roy turning around to Barry and saying "Listen Baz, I've got a confession to make. You're not really my son, I found you in a McDonalds skip, which is how you're here today "? Okay maybe not , but at least it would fit into the general pattern of things, and speaking of which, this week sees Mel return to the Square.

Apparently , she's been away cooking up ideas about how to get revenge on her dodgy husband Mr Owen, but we all know that the real reason she has been off our screens was to rake in some more cash by filming something else for the BBC , the cheeky money grabber. This time though, she's got a business plan up her sleeve and a new man up her skirt', all in the hopes of showing Steve that she's not a doormat . lt turns out that Mel 's not the only one putting on a brave face, as the foulmaaaved, man-eating Kat that we all know and love decides to blow the dust off her Collection 2000 lip gloss and slap on her shortest sk irt , in a bid to get back to some sort of orange-faced normal ity . Clearly the poor old gal can't be all there in the head

just yet, because no sooner than she does all that, she's trying to get into Gary 's pants which wouldn 't make Lynne a very happy bunny now, would it? M ay be Kat should go to Laura for some advice, after all , she's in the firing line too this week after Mrs Davis goes to Ian with 'proof' of her husband 's affair. Oops.

The mystery child thing 's caught on in Ramsey Street too, where Lou is facing a dilemma about whether to take Lolly to meet her real dad or not . This is quite a big thing in Neighbours, considering the usual 'bombshells' involve Harold playing the trumpet too loudly or Fl ick getting a detention. So off Lou trundles to seek advice from Tad, who persuades him to tell Lolly.

You've got to give it to the man for not shovelling it under the carpet and nicking off with her to Darwin like any other Ramsey Street inhabitant would do.

In Hol/yoaks, we finally kiss goodbye to Lew is when his mum plucks up the courage to take one last look through his belongings - with Laura 'piggy · Burns. Frankly, there 's something suspicious with the way she's sticking her oar in lately .

Unfortunately , this being TV's Slowest Moving SoaprM, we probabl y won 't find out for at least another nine months. On the good side of t hings though, Jodie gets a j ob with the lad's fivea-si de foot 1e team. At least someone's happy! Kate Hemlngton

Wednesday, November 14, 2001

@vent:r

20 Arts

DiverS iFy

Theatre Review:

UEA Drama Studio

Extracts from the Brewery Police

By Pete Sorel-Camero n (UEA Student) The piece invited the audience to 20 mmutes of conscious humour, reminiscent of elements from Beyond the Fringe. The dynamics of the leading characters, resembled the dialogues of Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller, thus consol idating the premise that th is was an extended sketc h rather than a short play. l ames Brown

In Fashion

By Miranda Gold <UEA Student) Miranda Gold writes with the subtlety that has really developed the full scope of a one-act play. Th e style was metered and conceptu ali sed within a series of monologues, which concerned pri vate anguish; a simple satire underpinned by the poetic voices of the characters. Gold allowed a picture to be painted from a third person perspective. a picture that was researched. well written and at no point vague. The success of the work, the elan. was the real beauty, in which personal agony was wrestled to the stage without cl1che.

JB

A Kind of Alaska By

arC'ld Pin er

Pinter is almost alone in the ability to parody h1s own work, unable to assimilate the strength of his earlier plays he, alone. infuriates with High School pseudo-intellectuality. Loosely based upon Sach's Awakenings. the voice of the central character, Deborah. is purely Edwardian and suggests Pinter writes in approximation of the class that he was to marry into, rather than t he class into which he was born. The direction and the acting - Sophie Mullins standing out as the suitably cast lead JB single-handedly saved the play.

Extremities By

Wi'll i am Mastros i mone

The short play by Mastrosimone stood shoulders above the other contemporary pieces by established playwrights . The initial scene was similar to the subtle satire of Sam Shepard. and qui ckly developed 1nto a comp lex array of subtext and intrigue .

The overarching ambition of this play was simply stunning. and at no point did one feel the accustomed denouement associated w1th ci11Y1atic drama .

JB

Inertia

By T1m Loudon

'UIA Student'

The play was written within an isolated backdrop of dislocation bringing forth a youthful appearance of Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon. Many dramatic themes and techniques were explored and each conveyed w1thout being predictable , truly indicative of a well-written and crafted play. Loudon used a style that emphasises the ro le of the word . almost subordmating act ion to the causal whims of rhetoric, contradiction and sophistry.

Throughout the work one was constantl y drawn to the stage for fear of missing an extremely important piece of the larger puzzle, an intellectual puzzle that dispenses with the definitive bas1s of a play.

JB

Performance Poetry By

members of Aisle 16

Fresh from the ir success at the Norwich Fringe Festival, the performance poets made an appearance in the drama festival. was lucky enough to see Luke Wright, who entertained the audience w 1t h scath ing attac ks on annoymg celebnties like Vi c toria Bec kham . Lu ke seems t o effort lessly articulat e thoughts about modern culture that we have all thought of at some point. C'mon w ouldn't we all love to t ell posh to ' stop right now. thank you very muc h' ? One thing was for sure . thi S was not the sentiment of the aud ience to Luke Wright who del1vered a c aptivating performan ce.

Liz Hutchinson

Easy Li ving

Sexual Perversity in Chicago

l n

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rf

Easy Living follow ed the lives of a large . mal e dom1nated fam1l y

wh o seemed t o like usmg the f w ord. An f-mg lot. The action cen tred around a large t able. and the va rious.argu ment s and heated debat es t hat took pl ace the re wou ld not have been out of pl ace m an average ep1sode of Eastenders. Paul Joyce played the geezer father t o great effect whilst Joe Mi nahane de li vered a strong performance as Len. h1s prodigal son. The ovemd mg 1dea of fam 1ly loyal t y was brought out t hrough 1ts cont rast w 1t h fami ly dece1 t and t hi s was well ex pl ored . How ever, th e pl ay became very hard to foll ow, lead 1ng me to read t he programme more t1mes than is st nctly necessary and causing much f1dget mg amongst the aud1ence . Desp1te a fev. context ual inaccura c1es t he play t1ad the foundat ions of an 1ntngu1ng plot but this. the ta lented cast and often inspired directmg were sadly over LH shadow ed by long wmded sentiment.

'

'

\loverr,ber 14.

By Nicole Subik Rock/and Institute for the Mentally Ill, sounding a bit like a Yogi Bear national park, was the home of the two characters in Time in the Hand who. through rambling conve rsations. explored the idea of reality and fantasy. show ing how the power of thought can somehow distort and falsify the memory. it soon became clear that the two girls were quite frankly . madder than your average bag lady . espec1ally since Eleanor had these freaky hand movements. pulled out her hair and kept rock ing m the corner. Rachel Grundy and Tasmin Steele both gave strong performances to ensure that the tension between the two girls and their own personal conflicts were brought out.

LH

E

event Wednesday.

Time in the Hand

1

001

By

Dav d Mamet

The bare flesh flaunted around campus by the cast (on posters of course) truly set the tone for this comic performanc e. The pl ay was consistently en te rtam ing. and all four c ast members seem to t 1me the1 r scenes t o perfec tion. Sexual Pervers1ty in Ch1c ago explored miscommu nic at1on between t he sexe s and showed how men have a hab1t of t ell mg tall st ori es. The open ing scene featuring Dan (M ark Jac kson ) and Berni e (Ben Boyerm as) chattmg on a sofa would not be out of place on a Budw eiser commercial. with Berni e sl1owing off about his latest sex ual ex ploit. The girl s. played exc ellently by Courtn ey Hopf and Amy Cl me, came back <~t thiS w1th Sex 111 t he City type meet mgs m bars. Despit e the obv1ous st agi ng diff1 cult 1es posed by the sc ript . wh ic h was essent ially a seri es of sketc hes. the direction was spot oo wit t he many scene changes serving to highlight the mix ed s1gnals between tl1e sexes.

LH

Arts 21 •

Book rev1ews: The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan Edited by John Lahr

The Wizard's Den Edited by Peter Haining

lt is imp_ossible to categorise Kenneth Tynan as a writer.

Adjectives such as eccentric, sophisticated, literate and above all aesthetic flow into the melting pot that became his enigmat· ic persona. Tynan was the crux of a new wave of drama criti· cism that hit the capital in the immediate post war period, becoming a corner stone of the theatrical world between 1950 · 1963. Unique in style, his own leitmotif 'Rouse tempers, goad and lacerate, raise whirlwinds ' underpinned not only the work, but also Ken Tynan; he was entirely sui generis. The electrifying words that flowed from Tynan's pen caught the enthusiasm of the public on both sides of the Atlantic , although was more familiar to the British as an established writer on the Observer, before joining Laurence Olivier as in-house critic at the National in 1963.

The diaries, edited by John Lahr, cover the declining years of Tynan's life, or more precisely, the wilderness years. Dogged by ill health, dying from emphysema in 1980 and the waning of the bright star that he, himself, never considered passing the 30. year mark . The period is inhabited by Tynan the person , a stream of consciousness that is both engaging and intimate, a psyche that has absorbed his own mortality to the point of carelessness.

Each page documents reminiscences and sexual endeavours that may inform the reader of Tennessee Williams' drug antics in one instance, and of an aborted attempt to find a spanking partner in Berlin in another. The book is much more than the trivial · it is commentary, a commentary on the theatrical world that Tynan had become disenfranchised from since retiring from the National in 1973. Events, both socially and culturally , are analysed alongside personal writings in a style that is both highly touching and highly introspective, a style that is entirely Kenneth Tynan . lames Brown

Lately it seems that everyone is j umping on the bandwagon , eager to capitalise on the success of Harry Potter and the th irst of young children for more tales of the fantastic. But how refreshing for a book to finally admit to this, and do so with such blatant honesty . Peter Haining , who edited The Wizard 's Den confesses in the book "the growing popularity of w1zards owes much to Harry Potter and his friends at Hogwarts." However, the book does contain a wide range of short stories from a plethora of successful writers, including Philip Pullman , Jacqueline Wilson and Humphrey Carpenter.

Among the greatest, though , is Roald Dahl, who should receive the cred it for bringing fantasy into ch ildren 's bedrooms but is now rarely mentioned.

Also included in the line-up is E. Nesbit , who wrote her stories in the 1900s to 1930s and whom J K Rowling highlighted as the main inspiration behind her writing: "I identify with Nesbit more than any other writer. She said that, by some lucky chance, she remembered exactly how she felt and thought as a ch ild. · The book not only contains short stories but also a history of the authors and their most famous works. Haining has also thought to inc lude a brief summary of the history of wizards (the first book about wizards was written in 1652). focusing mainly on Merlin and his issues with Wales.

When beginning to read the book, it may appear that it is a lit· tie oddly structured , and it 's actually most useful as a refer· ence to further reading by the authors.

I do have to wonder, however, if Haining is aware that Harry Potter and all those before and after him are actually fictional.

The passion with which he writes suggests he thinks they're real, but then maybe he knows something that the rest of us don 't .

Charlotte Ronalds

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If you are a graduate, who thinks they can make the most of these opportunities, please send your CV with a covering letter to: Miss ]oss Rutherford, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, HR Dept U71, Beechwood House, Depot Road, Newmarket, Suffolk, CBB OAL. Em ail jrutherford@erac.com Recruiting for locations across the East England area. www.erac.com.

•

$j) 3;l&i~U,.-ij rent-a -car

We are an equal opportunity employer.

Wednesday, November 14, . 2001

event

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22

•

•

lS 1n Film: Campus All films start at 8.30 pm and are shown m Lecture Theatre One at Tiffany' s Thursday November 15

Jeepers Creepers Ster Century Fri-Th u UCI Fn-Thu

Saturdays Herbert Spllfflngton Allstars Norw 1c h Arts Centre 17 November £81 £ 6 concessions

Jurasslc Park 2 UCI Sat-Sun Kiss of the Dragon UCI Fri-Thu

Dele Sosimi & the Afrobeat Orchestra Norwich Arts Cent re 24 November £91£7.50 concessions

Legally Blonde Ster Cent ury Fri-Thu UC I Fn -Thu

Breakfa~t

Planet of the Apes Fnday November 16 Tlmecode Tuesday N9vember 20

Sundays

Moulin Rouge Ster Century Fri-Thu UC I Fri-Thu The Man Who Wasn 't There UC I Mon-Fri (not Tue}

Swordfish (9pm start} Thursday November 22

The Others Ster Century Fri -Thu UC\ Fri·Thu

Rnal Fantasy: The Spirits Within Friday November 23

The Pledge Cmema C1ty 14111 5.45,15/11 2 .30, 5.45

Sennen Stable Will V 4 Vendetta Luma Lane Leaf The H1ve 18 November £2 CMS members £3 non-members

101 Reykjavik Tuesday November 27

City A Knight 's Tale UCI Fn- Thu Animal Ster Century Fri -Thu UCI Fn Thu Amelie Cinema C1ty 14111 8.15.

15 11 8.15, 16111 8.15, 171115.45, 19111 8.15. 20111 5.45, 21111 2.30 5.45, 22111 2.30 5.45 UCI Fn-Thu American Pie 2 Ster Century Fr1-Thu UCI Fn-Thu America 's Sweethearts Ster Century Mon-Fn UCI Fn-Thu Atlantls Ster Century Mon-Fri UCI Fri·Thu

Music: Gigs

Marvel 1 Gas Station The Loft Hip llop, fu nk £ 3 b4 11pm, £4 after.

Students Only Liquid Commerc ial dance and pop £1 b4 10pm

DJ Jam Hys Charts and Dance £1

Gorgeous M anhatt ans Hardhouse and Trance £5 b4 llpm

Life T1me Commercial dance £1 (NUS}

Rockin ' Sheep Ikon Charts and Cheese £2 b4 11pm

Elegance Mojos

WeRK Manhattans

Thursdays 70s Night Hys Retro £2 (NUS}

Mondays

Wednesdays

Isotonic Kafe Da Progressive trance and house Free Spank T1me House £1 b4 11pm (NUS} Value for Money Liquid House £2 b4 11pm

Jazz, Funk and Blues Jam Norwich Arts Centre 21 November £2

Thursdays Ed Harcourt Waterfront 15 November £7.50

Medication + Culprit Arts Centre 26 November £8.50

Clubs Wednesdays Sputnik's Down Oil Red 0 Sennen Chrlsta The lan Alexander Whatever Ferryboat 15 November £3.50

'4

Superfly Mojos Funk and h1p-hop £3 Meltin ' Pot The Alibi Jazz. funk and soul

Saturdays Meltdown The Waterfront lnd1e

Satisfaction Hys House and Swing Status The Concept Chart and retro £3 b4 11pm, £3.50 after.

Refresh Ikon £5 b4 11pm Saturday Rewind Chart. dance, garage

MOjOS

R'n'B and h1p hop

The LCR disco LCR (duh) £3

The Human League LCR 26 November £16.50

Parkside Po Na Na House Free b4 9pm, £ 3 after.

Arts: Theatre The Homecoming Maddermarket Thu Nov 22-Sat Dec 1 7.30pm

A Christmas Carol Theatre Royal Wed Nov 14- Sat Dec 17 Mats Wed. Thurs and Sat 7.30pm, mats 2.30pm Grease Theatre Royal Mon Nov 19 Sat Nov 24 7.30 (Fri & Sat 5.30 and 8.45)

MOJOS

Twisted Skunk I Bottom Heavy Po Na Na D1scoflde Breakbeat I funky breaks and beats and Latin grooves.

Free b4 10pm, £2 after.

lan McNabb - Icicle Works Waterfront 21 November £11

R n' B

£41 £3

Bassment

Cats and Dogs Ster Century Sat-sun UCI Sat-Sun

Enigma Ster Century Mon-Fn UCI MonFri

The Bohemlans (Queen Tribute} Waterfront 25 November £10 The Counterfeit Stones Theatre Royal 25 November

Brotherhood of the wolf C1nema C1ty 23111 5 .45, 24111 5.30. 26111 2.30.5.30, 27111 8.15. 28111 8.15 UCI Fn Thu

Centre of the World Cmema C1ty 16111 5.45, 171118.15, 191112.30, 5.45 20/11 2.30. 8.15, 21/11 8.15, 22/11 8.15

Graham Bonnet;Don AireyRalnbow Waterfront 18 November £12

Jitterbug I Jam Po Na Na Funky drum'n 'bass 1 house Free b4 10pm, £ 2 after

Charty Handbaggy The Loft Gay night DJs Bedfords Crypt Deep tech tribal house Free entry

Fridays Delirium The Concept House. garage and R n' B. Hy Times Hys Dance anthems £3 Hot Ikon Pop and commencal dance £4 1)4 11pm lt's the Business Liquid £2 b4 11pm

Butter Me Up 1 Underdog Po Na Na Funky house I jazz beat s £3 after 9pm

Sundays Sunday Service Manhattans £2.50

Mondays Flockin ' Sheep Ikon Charts and commerc 1al dance £2 b4 11pm Funky Jam Carwash LIQUid Retro £2

Talking Heads by Alan Bennett Eastbound Touring Theatre Co .

Norwich Playhouse Thurs November 22 and Fn November 23 7:30pm (Matinee 2:30pm} £81£6 Concessions

Mise.

Margaret Drabble Weds Nov 14 UEA LT1

?pm £2 .50 (NUS}

Underground MOJOS

Lo-f1 and non-commerical lndie £2 .50 (NUS} Play Po Na Na Disco. funk Free

Tuesdays

Muriel Spark Thurs Nov 22 UEA LTl

?pm Funk Friction Owens cafe Bar Slinky Hys Club anthems Free 1\oltll student ID.

£2.50 (NUS} Edinburgh and Beyond FHM Comedy Tour Saturday 17 November S·OOpm £10

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Li vewi ~re

Schedulet Monday: 8-lOam: The 8 foot Pigeon Show lOam - 12pm: Monday Brunch 12-2pm: The Lunchbox 2-4pm: Perrito Caliente 4-6pm: The lan & Joe Show 6-8pm: B.E.A.T.S. 8-lOpm: Shadow Cabinet 10pm - 12am: D 'n' B

Tuesday: 8-lOam: The Little Chicken lOam - 12pm: The Outsiders 12-2pm: Steven Rolfe 2-4pm: Ben and Jonny's Radio Show 4-6pm: Welcome to 12 Monkeys 6-8pm: At Large ... with Dan and Craig 8-lOpm: Daydream Nation 10pm - 12am: Flying Home

Wednesday: 8-lOam: The Little Chicken lOam - 12pm: Choose or Diel 12-2pm: Milk and Cookies 2-4pm: The 路untitled Show 4-6pm: The Good B.J. Guide 6-7pm: The Creeper 'n Mama 9-lOpm: Evening Please (Evening ... ) 10pm - 12am: Tea with the Vicar

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Thursday: 8-lOam: Col's Show lOam - 12pm: Cheese!

12-2pm: The Magical Mystery Tour 2-4pm: Ally B in the Afternoon 4-6pm: Vanishing Point 6-8pm: The Mental Institute 8-lOpm: Rebel Lion Roots 10pm-12am: Poetic License

Friday: 8-10am: The 8 foot Pigeon Show 10am-12pm: The Narch Buffet 12-2pm: Tasti 2-4pm: The Musical Excursions 4-6pm: James 6-8pm: The Rock Show 8-lOpm: Fusion Latina 10pm-12am: Underground Sessions 10pm-12am: Mr. Meaner

Saturday: 9-llam: Mark Boutros 11am-1pm: Dancing Round the Borders of the Curfew 1-3pm: The Jam Norman Show 3-5pm: The Groove Bus 5-7pm: Sports Frenzy 9pm-12am: T_S_N Drum and Bass

Sunday: 9-llam: Madge and Julia Go Shopping 11am-1pm: Good to You, Good for You 1-3pm: Sunday Review 3-5pm: Not Simon Mayo 5-7pm: New Music 9pm-12am: Turntable Society

The Directory:

-..,

ABC Ta.xi s All Star Taxis Beeline Taxis Bettacar Taxis Five Star Taxis Loyal Taxis

01603 01603 01603 01603 01603 01603

Canary Cue Club Cinema City Hy's Ikon Liquid Maddermarket Theatre Mojo's Manhattans Norwich Arts Centre Norwich Playhouse Po Na Na 's Ster Century Theatre Royal The Loft The Waterfront Tourist Information Time UEA Studio UCI UEA Union Ents

01603 627478 01603 622047 01603 621155 01603 621541 01603 611113 01603 620917 01603 622533 01603 629060 01603 660352 01603 766466 01603 619961 01603 221900 01603 630000 01603 623559 01603 632717 01603 666071 0870 6078463 01603 592272 0870 0102030 01603 508050

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