The event issue 156 05 11 2003

THE . ..

EVENT

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05/11/03

Martin Amis Interviewed The Thrills Interviewed Film Trilogies Examined FAN Festival In Depth

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CONTENTS: 05.11.03 ..

IS ...

Concrete Editor-in-Chief Jim Whalley

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03 INCITE & BLAGGERY

The Sainbury Centre 's latest e xhibition g e ts the onceove r from our crack te am of analysts.

Event Editor Nathan Dixon Arts Editor Katharine Clemow

INCOMMUNICADO

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Film Editor Philip Sainty

Norwich's recent and highly acclaimed animation fe slival gets a retrospective rub-down. Fanfriggintastic FAN1mation for animation fans.

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Assistant Film Editor Dean Bowman Listings Editor Rich Simm Music Editors Matt Sargeson & Sarah Edwardes

US vs UK TV We've all heard that US TV 1s a great heap of b uffalo dung, but is it true? And is UK TV rea lly any bette r?

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FILM TRILOGIES Dean Bowman completes a hat-trick of features and probably fails his degree in the process.

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TV Editors Tim Barker & Kate Bryant Proofing Jeff Clayton

ANIMATION FESTIVAL

T' T'RILLS How thrilling are The Thrills? ... A Thrilling interview ...

The Event is thrilled to introduce etc. etc ...

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Contributors (in order of appearance): Luke Roberts • Joe Espiner • Paul Case • Paul Wade • Edward Mooney • Rebecca Lawrence• Harriet Brooks • Lawrence Perlmutter • Ally Gipps • Daniel Chandler • Ben Patashnik • Rob Lavine • Suzanne Rickenback • Amy Hewitt • Matthew Stratton • Jon Warren • Christo McCracken • Aidan Whitelaw

MARTIN AMIS Amis takes time to talk to us. Honestly, we're not joking- you think that front cover was for nothing? He 's really quite a nice guy. Not for anyone called Toby, Je d or Ned.

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DanAntopolski: p. 7, Super Furry Animals: p. 17 .

Not r e ally sure why w e keep putting this here , it's only just ove r the r e ...

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CINEFILE Kin g of Com edy

12 CREATIVE WRITING Poetry for poe try fans, which should be everyone.

13 FILM/DVD In America, Claybird, Biker Boys and Sea Biscuit

15 ARTS Minotaur the atre: reviewed, Exhibition Favourite Book, Book Launch .

review,

16 MUSIC Underworld, Liberty X, Something Corporate, jan e 's Addiction, Iron Maiden, Delta Goodrum.

18 TV Watch Gardener's World, Miss Trisha, Best of the rest.

19 LISTINGS Eve nts , in a list.

The Event is published fortn ightly by Concrete:

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Post: PO Box 410, Norwich, NR4 7TB Tel: 01603 250558 Fax : 01603 506822 E-mail: su.concrete@uea.ac.uk Printed by : Archant Newspapers, St Andrew's Business Park, Norwich I promise to buy a pint for the first person to get the Thunder caption joke on the next page . Please , don' t all ruch at once. God bless Pot Noodles.

N.D.

Literature Condensed A Bluffer's Guide.

We 've all been there ... it 's five minutes before the seminar begins and we haven't read a single bloody word of the book for that week. Wouldn't it be handy to have a quick, easily disgestible guide to the Western World's greatest literary works with which to bluff one's way through an otherwise red-faced couple of hours? Yes it would, don't argue.

-STORM[GLOUCESTER] I spy, with my little eye ...

This week ... King Lear

[FOOL) (Assorted nuggets of wisdom)

[LEAR] Who's the daddy?! Who war.ts a piece of my land?

[LEAR] (Wibble)

[GONERIL) You's the daddy!

[READER) Wow, so ironic.

[REGAN] You's the daddy!

-WAR-

[CORDELIA] Not telling ...

[CORDELIA) Sorry dad

[LEAR) Get lost Cordelia, you damned ingrate.

[LEAR) It's ok love.

-CORDELIA banished-

[CORDELIA] (Dies)

[GONERIL and REGAN] Get lost, old man.

[LEAR) (Dies)

[LEAR) Oh bugger.

THE EVENT

Competition winner The stack of CDs was won by a cheekily half-eaten packet of dates measuring 22.6cm brought in by Ash Fantourt. And very tasty they were too . There's the photo below for all doubting Thomases .

Next Issue Next fortnight will see: Luis D e Berniers: Interviewed DVD Extras : Investigated Drugs on Film: Examined

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Bl~ggery

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WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN

lt's ... B/aggery Corner!

We at Concrete and The Event are lovely p ople. most to a fault. Full of faith hope and charity we have a brimming bucket full of gubbins to hurl emphatically in your direction. Just answer the relevant questions or perform a random task and drop us a line at su.concrete@uea.ac.uk and these wonderful gifts could be yours to grasp, squeeze or sell on eBay, which is illegal sometimes, so don't, you mercenary gimp.

Coral NCJ5 li!;ten up, ac~oaLI~;;:tters. First off this

Corafs single artwork. A representation of which you

mop up your saliva and pay attention.

To win one, all you have to do is bring a piece of artwork from your own greasy mitts to the office. The picture must be of either a piece of Coral, a Corral or a Carol singer. And it must be drawn by your weaker hand (that's the left hand if you're right-handed and your right hand if you're left-handed, obviously, you fool). Get scribbling and one could be yours, to decorate the bare, bleak walls of your grotty room.

FREE Tl

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given to us to just give away. that weren't proof enough of w at wonderful people they are, they are en going to throw in two copies of their most recent album, you lucky devils.

In my day, you had to work for reward, hard graft- that's what got you places. Not like youngsters these days. You have it easy. Bring back ua.JLLy•uy ... Erm, just answer the folquestion, send it to the usual llollo:On::.,rtnT<><zc:: and the above could be

QUESTION: The name of Thuder's new album is a) Shooting at the Moon b) Shooting at the Sun or c) Shooting at the Stars.

They're damn good live and if you liked The Darkne~s. you'll love these classic rock class acts. In fact, they're a bit better really.

Those of a more egalitarian bent, kindly look the other way... Rant on. nother idiotic list and another serialised, ill-informed celebrity touting of favourites. The Big Read - Big Deal.

Why all these ·diculous polls?

Well, the nation's one hundred/tWenty/ten favourite 'this and that's' encourages the manufacturer/publisher's favouritf:! increased sales. It also abets the BBC exec's favourite - ratings and creative ways of supplementing the licence fee, in this case through phone line poll charges. The worst aspect? It is again to be voted for by 'us', the 'general public' .. The BBC clearly didn't learn their lesson the first time. 'We' are, remember, the same general public that buys the Sun more than every other newspaper and the same public that keeps the Pop Idol ratings high. No doubt it is also the same brainless public that will read Rowling religiously and possibly even the very same flabby bevy that will happily vegetate for prolonged periods of time (some continuously) in front of sectioned narcissistic lunatic fame-hounds in a secure asylum regularly televised on Channel Four. Was no guidance taken from the BBC's Top Ten Britons? Winston Churchill first? Diana second? - 'we' are clearly not to be trusted.

Who made up the informative panel the other Saturday? Clive Anderson, a bunch of random entertainers (a few of whom might have had something to say but steadfastly refused to) no real 'authorities' on writing and Robert Winston?! This man is truly hungry for a camera lens. He said virtually nothing all night. He just sat there, nodding and laughing every now and then - why?

What did he bring? Apart from prodigious hairiness, it's probable he read a book once. Oh, and wrote one. And he's on telly

Why are we expected to find the revelation of what we know we already think so endlessly fascinating? We are already sickeningly aware of which the favourites are looking at the sales figures for the last few years will tell us. These programmes and lists are therefore simply receipts, from the British publishing industry, read out in tedious detail for our 'enjoyment'.

In other words, the problem with this show is that, when the surface is scratched, there is virtually no notion of worth or validity attached to the endeavour other than sales numbers - as those voting are likely to have bought it already - and 'mass appeal'. There are also far too many people who don't know what they're on about involved in the selection process. True, a 'panel of judges' (read: some jaded TV back-roomers in a pub on Friday) have vetoed the possibility of fanatics securing a Rowling, Pratchett and Dahl one, two, three, four, five and six as too embarrassing (if that were possible). They've stipulated that only one book from each author can make the top twenty-one. But they can only go on what 'we've' presented already- none of the above should be on a respectable list in first place. And if I hear the excuse "it brings out the child in all of us" ONE more time . .. You mean the incapable, unaware and under-developed adult; and that's a good thing?

The problem is 'we're' clearly ignorant.

'We' need help and should accept this.

'We' don't know what's good for us. Why else would the febrile-minded drivel that Rowling vomits out regularly be lapped up with such edacious relish? And why else would all her bloody books be on the longlist? As we all should know, just because a thing is popular does not, necessarily, make it worthy or valid. Remember - shell suits were popular once. And public hangings.

~~~~~~·ifilfllllllt!liflll!j~,..jlllots. An expert, then.

Nathan Dixon

H1, er... um, I, er... actually, oh buggery bollocks, Hugh Grant here. I would be much obliged if you would enter this lovely competition brought to you by The Daily Telegraph. It's for, urn, my new film, which is actually quite good actually, called Love, Actually. It promises to be terribly British and rather a good wheeze and what not. So, er do please enter it. In the words of Victor Meldrew, "I don't believe it". Ho ho, yes, urn ...

QUESTION: What is the name of the film again?

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TH E Ev ENT

eat

lncommun路cado y and how do

e c o mmunic ate? why a n d

when does communication fail? The Sainsbury Centre is running an exhibition sponsored by the Hayward Gallery this semester entitled Incommunicado.

Fifteen artists explore the nature of communication and its breakdown.

On the outside wall of the main gallery is pioneering artist Lawrence Weiner's Statement of Intent in two foot high letters. It was first presented in 1969. Setting the tone for the exhibition as a whole, it reads: " I. THE ARTIST MAY CONSTRUCT THE WORK 2. THE WORK MAY BE FABRICATED 3. THE WORK NEED NOT BE BUILT EACH BEING EQUAL AND CONSISTENT WITH THE INTENT OF THE ARTIST THE DECISION AS TO CONDITION RESTS WITH THE RECEIVER UPON THE OCCASION OF RECEIVERSHIP".

This recognition for the fallibility of communication is cogent throughout.

The intent of the communicator and the interpretation of the receiver may not necessarily be the same thing. In a series of video installations, visual puns, and written symbols, the artists have separated out different forms of communication and investigated it from many angles, allowing analysis of the different forms in the abstract.

For example in the Lower Gallery Christian Marclay looks at the relationship between words and sound. In Telephones, clips from various telephone conversations have been spliced together from Hollywood movies to form a new dialogue.

Erika Tan overloads the senses by bombarding the viewer with information.

In one of three white-washed rooms containing video installations in the main gallery upstairs , is her piece PIDGIN. Two different films are projected onto the wall. Two computer screens in front of a table with chairs show written text. For the viewer it is near to impossible to take it all in.

' There is a vein of humour running throughout .. .; many of the pieces possess a certain playfulness Erika Tan is interested in portraying the overload of communication resulting from technological d evelopments. All the equipment used for her installation is highly specialist. But the ensuing confusion of images, text and sound could be seen as a parody. The installation begs the question as to the worth and communicative effectiveness of the co ntinual stream of information to which we are daily subjected by televisions , radios, mobile phones and other technological devices.

Also in the main gallery is Comedie, Samuel Beckett's collaborative film with Marin Karmitz. Comedie is a thirtyminute piece featuring three characters (two female, one male), arguing in French. The dialogue is speeded up .

The figures are static and enclosed in tall vase-like structures. The piece is disori-

05.11.03

entating. The cuts jolt. A light illuminates characters only when they speak.

The meaning is elusive, but seems suggestive of a love triangle. The characters struggle against an environment of miscommunication. However, the lumbering, cranky nature of the cutting and jilted speech patterns, gives the piece a comic feel.

There is a vein of humour throughout the exhibiiion. Standing outside you hear a mixture of peculiar sounds seeping out, trying to communicate with the outside world. The exhibition is an interactive one. The curator Margot Helier is trying to encourage the public to join in on discussions of what it means to communicate. For instance on the 15th October there was a panel discussion between various artists, writers and the exhibition curator called 'Beyond Communication.'

Active participation is also encouraged in the exhibition and so there are thought-provoking exercises to participate in. For instance a typewriter and paper have been left out for anyone who wants to write something. The resulting collaborative piece will be published.

our media saturated environment it explores issues and problems of communication from a distinctly modern stance.

Many of the pieces have a certain playfulness, continuing the Modernist period's serious minded suspicion of meaning and truth with a gleeful nihilism that is a core aspect of Postmodernism.

However, other exhibits reject the frivolities of Postmodernism for a strong political agenda indicative of our post-colonial world, one in which communication has been further problematised by issues of diaspora, immigration and the neoimperialism of Globalisatwn. Thus Incommunicado seems to hold the con-

twine like a crude toy phone, "acts as a cipher for communication deadlock on the worlds stage."

Whilst some works reject a political engagement with a focus on the absurdity of human communication and relationships such as Beckett's Comedie, others, such as CNN Concatenated by Israeli artist Omer Fast, seem to strike a balance between the comical and serious. Fast has spliced together individual words from CNN broadcasts to create a humorously abusive tirade projected at the viewer: "you are so hypocitical, self-absorbed and pathetic that I wonder sometimes just what it takes to move you, godamrnit?" One of the most satirical aspects of this richly

tradictory positions of the serious and the humorous in an uneasy relationship.

Given the theme of the exhibition it is p erhaps no surprise that many of the works are by artists from the third world or minority communities, finding in art the means of expression and communication that they are denied in society. Mona Hatoum, herself an immigrant, is clearly concerned with exploring this experience of the marginalized. In her piece So Much I Want to Say the title is repeated like a mantra over the e vocative image of her face gagged by anonymous hands.

There is also an acute awareness of current political events in the e xhibits , for example Mona Hatoum 's Set in Stone, which consists of two porcelain cups marked 'East' and 'West ' in Arabic and are connected by a piece of

structured work is the way in which it takes value laden terms out of their original context and places them within a fabri cated discourse , a fictitious relationship between the newsreader and the viewer who seem to become recast in the roles of arguing lovers. This creates a jarring effect that undermines the ascribed meaning of those words. For example words associated with the terrorist threat are reused in the sentence "there are no news of terrorist cells operating inside you." This exhibit captures the experience of the exhibition as a whole, which is both e xhilarating and disorientating, funny and tragic, like standing in front of the CNN newsreaders as they hurl abuse a t you and not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

Luke Roberts ncommunicado, which is showing at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts this term, is an exhibition about miscommunication and so it m ay b e n oted with irony h ow few stud ents make use of this excellent gallery, despite the fact that access is free to UEA students. Even the cafe, without a doubt the best place to hang out on campus, is usually underused.

W e are fortunate to have such a quality gallery as the Sainsbury Centre on our doorstep and there is no doubt a lot of students could gain from this particular exhib ition, esp e cially English Literature students who will find many interes ting parallels between Incommunicado and their course.

This dynamic and insightful exhibition is, as all good art should be, .deeply reflective of the contemporary world.

Both a symptom and an exploration of

I

D ean Bowznan

â&#x20AC;˘ 1;-,pfe ~',.tef"" a4Jarcl no/'l);"ee

Animated Response he Inte rn a tiona l Animatio n Fe stival, which too k place during the 23rd to the 26th of Octob e r at Cinema City was e xtraordinary , a nd a great success. Bob G o dfrey , c r e at or of such cla ssic s a s Henry's Cat and Roobarb and C ustard, h as bee n trustee of the fe stival run by Film Arts Norwich (FAN) since its beginnings in 2000 and called this years fe stival " the best so far " commenting on the "high standard in competiti on ."

The Jury, c omprising of Ruth Lingford from the UK; Pritt Te nde r fr om Estonia; Eduard Nazarov from Russia ; Alison Reiko Loade r from C a n a d a and La rs Christianson from Denmark - all establishe d and ve ry talente d a nima tors - h a d a diffic ult task choosing the winning programme fr om the six categorie s tha t made up the co mpetiti on.

The Stude nt co mp e titi on Inte rn a ti on a l seemed to have the strongest b ody of work, with twelve films in dive rs e style s fr om e ight co untries . This c ate g ory re p r e se nt e d the young talents of the future and was indi cative of the growing streng th of animation as a g loabl art form.

Eduard Nazarov commen ted "animation seems to be getting younger all the time" and the festival's structure, paying equal attention to students and established animators, both expresses and stimulates this creative freshness .

... you felt y ou had gen uinely l earnt something, and gain ed a new appreciation of this exciting m edium.

The winn e r of the Intern ational Student category wa s Tirn Torn, a wond e rfully inventive CGI h omage to Tex Avery fea turing two ch arac ters w ith note p ads for h eads . An audience favourite seem e d to b e Th e Stork, in whi ch a Sparrow hilariously a ttempts to e xplain to a Stork the facts of!ife. The film sub tly works on a se cond level as a m e taphor for the clash of artis tic idealism (the Stork) an d scie ntific ra tionalism (the Sparrow), th e former winning the day in an unexpected twist.

The quality and quantity of e ntries from the UK was also impressive, g arn e r ing se ven awar d s altoge the r. Very e ncouraging , e spe cially c onside ring our , fr ankly , d ull film indus try. Indee d , Bob Godfrey m ad e the p oint tha t p eople in the film in dustry would d o well to a ttend animation fes tivals and see the quality and innovation of the work the re. Sadly, the two industries seem fix e d in isola tion.

Est a blished British animator and m e ntor of th e highly pre stigious Channel 4 Art ist in Residence sch eme , Chris Shepard, won the Ind e p e nde nt cate g ory with his film D ad 's D ea d . It is a disturbing tale of a y oung psychopath told in a tech nically seamless c ombinatio n of live action an d animation . Me anwhile, Will Becher won the UK Student cate gory with Boxe d In , an amusing battle of w its b e twee n an old man and a m ouse in a style simila r to Aardrnan. G e mma Carrington , a forme r s tude n t of the Norwich School of Art an d Design , won the C inewornan Award with h e r wond er-

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ful study of history, m e m ory and old age Com i ng Home. estivals such a s this one se rve a vit al fun ction in the s truggle for animation to grow and b ecom e accep ted as an art form .

As Chris Sheper d s tate d whe n h e collec ted his award: "without festivals like these, films like mine wo uld never get seen ." What makes this particular festival all the more impressive IS the scale it has grown to over the last few years under a relatively small but dedicated team supported by volunteers. In particular , credit must go to Festival Director Rose Hanna and Festival Administrator Emma Curtis who have worked flat out to put the event together and to publicise it. It is the latterlask that has proven most challenging to FAN, as Rose commented "it's difficult because you have to appeal to two audiences ... you have to make it intelligen t enough for the animators without alienating the p ub lic." Chris Martin of Studio Soup, the Norwich b ased corn-

F

ace, 0 6 3 61498!5

p any who d es igne d the fes tival 's publici ty , b elieves that the " public ' s awarene ss of animation is e xpanding."

There is no doubt that a large p ote ntial audience e xists for anima tion , especially after a ye ar in which the banal and simplistic formula film m aking of Disney has b een signific antly challenged by animated films such as Belleville Rendezvous. It is just a case of raising awarene ss, which is perhaps a festival 's most important role .

Fe stivals also cr eate a forum in which animators from all over the world and of every generation c an meet, share e xperience and discuss ideas. It was no surprise that , outside of the three ve ry succe ssful s e mina r s on issues surrounding animation and the industry, the re was gene rally a stimulating buzz of debate so you fe lt you ha d genuinely le arnt something , and gained a n e w appreciation of this e xciting m e dium.

It is, perhaps , not surprising tha t on e of the m ain issue s tha t con cerne d all the anima tors present was the financial structure s in which the y must work an d to what e xtent this imposes stricture s on cr eativity. Eduard Nazar ov summe d this up nicely in his speech agains t the emerge nce of expensive private ani m ation schools in Russia, which have replaced the state funded schools of the communist era: "Talent and money, they are in different pockets - even different peoples pockets. " Pritt Tender made the interesting point that because Estonian animation is completely state funded there is no need to make creative concessions in order to gain audien<;es, hence its uruque , bizarrely surreal style.

UK jury member Ruth Lingford was perhaps the most inspiring speaker, despite the dark nature of her work , claiming animation to b e the "most limitless form of expression." De spite this, she believes animators , herself in clud-

e d , te nd to impo se containing structures upon their w ork "b ecause there is a kind of ve rtigo that come s fr om unlimite d p ossibility." She also commented on how "anima tion should b e ab out m etamorph os is .. . turning one thing to anothe r in abs tra ct, poe tic and surprising ways". This is certainly reflecte d in her own work in which ima ges mutate with astonishing fluidity, oft e n in a striking b lack and white lino cut style. She also believes that every artis t is obsessed with certain themes that run through their work. Her own work, for example, is very obviously and explicitly preoccupied Wlth the themes of death , war and sex, challenging the assump tion that animation is 'just for kids' head on.

On the whole there was a great deal of optimism about the future of the festival and the irrepressible Rose Hanna is already planning some one-day events to lead up to the next m ajor festival in 2005. It seems animation has a bright future ahead of 1t and, rather excitingly, Norwich is to be an integral part of that future.

..........................~................................... Features 07

TV Nations

Interview Dan Antopolski

It's a true.

Everyone owns one (apart from a few thirdworlders and that strange-looking kid you knew at school who wore clogs).

The popularity of it alone causes some concerns.

Shouldn't the people of Britain be reading and talking instead of spending their time between the miser~le antics of Phi! Mitchell and seeing who's not having sex with whom on Big Brother? Is it a worry that children would be able to name the six principle actors of Friends more easily than any six previous Prime Ministers?

The worries, however, are normally dismissed by the thought that "at least we're not as bad as the Americans", with their bland quantity-not-quality cable, and adverts every other minute. We should thank our lucky stars that we're not like those fat channel-hopping saps, right? At least we have Auntie Beeb holding the fort. We can sit back on our sofas and feel pretty good about our four channels of greatness (five, if you're lucky and live on a hill) .

There is a certain amount of proof to suggest that much of U.S.A. television writing lacks spark. This is why they are often remaking British programs. There is a long history of this, such as the production in the 1970s of Sanford and Son, an "African American" show that was a copy of Steptoe and Son (do these yanks have no shame?). In a similar style, our "beloved" bigot Alf Garnet! became Archie Bunker, Cracker became Fitz,

long film on T.V., say the Godfather or the Deer Hunter (although knowing the T.V. execs, it's most likely Forrest Gump), expect to sit there for about four hours. A 1Y. hour feature is usually scheduled for 2 hours. Often, if a company sponsors a film, it will have little segments at every break, almost a program-within-a-program. For example, an episode of ER can be interspersed with DIY tips from Black 'n' Decker. In between gunshot wounds and transfusions, you can be treated with tips on how to properly fix loft insulation. It's also usual to have presenters pop up in between adverts, especially in films.

They are usually very beautiful blonde women with some utterly banal and obvious comment ("Jim Carrey gets into some crazy scrapes, doesn't he?") followed by some equally pointless "insider knowledge" ("They shot part of this film in Patterson, New Jersey!").

fu film, with the lips very rarely corresponding to the audio. erhaps the biggest crime on American television is the treatment of the news.

Although CNN and BBC World News 24 show a fairly varied roster of global events, the network news on the usual stations (i.e. what nearly everybody will watch) is hopelessly unbalanced. Stories very rarely leave the state, let alone the country. For example, an hour of Fox News on Moriday, October 13th, had one story outside the U.S.A. about a suicide bomber in Iraq. The other stories were a wide variety of subjects. Politics: A Schwarzenegger piece reported from a town called Amold, Califorrua. Science: Monkeys use thoughts to control robotic arms in North Carolina, and a space-age devise that's wired directly to the obese

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"Is it a worry that children would be able to name the six principle actors of Friends more easily than any six previous Prime Ministers?"

Will & Grace: Truly dreadful. and so on. Recently Queer As Folk and Coupling have been remade (why, I don't know).

America can produce quality programs. Band of Brothers, The West Wing, 24, Seinfeld and many others have all been well received by audiences and critics alike around the world. Also, Saturday Night Live has been providing a springboard to nearly every American (and Canadian) comedic film actor there is.

So why has T.V. in America got such a bad reputation? Well, perhaps a major contributing factor is the breaks for adverts. If you're sat down to watch a

The other important factor contributing to the 'blah blah blah' nature of U.S. T.V. is editing. Due to the lack of a watershed because of internal time differences (for example, although you could show Taxi Driver in New York at a safe llpm, it would be simultaneously broadcast at 8pm in San Francisco), the networks usually produce one "clean cut" that can be shown anytime. This means that one can turn on the T.V. at midday or midnight, and will at both times see a sanitised version of a film.

Although violence is usually allowed anytime, sex and swearing get an awful mauling. Whole scenes are cut completely, swearing dubbed over or sometimes blanked (have you ever tried watching Scarface with the swearing blanked out? Hardly anyone speaks for three hours). On the day of writing this article, Casino was shown at 4pm, and although the censors decreed that a scene in which a character gets his hand repeatedly smashed with a hammer should go uncut, a typical Joe Pesci sentence was now: "Every freakin' wise guy (blank) around'll take a piece of your freakin Jew act! Then where you gonna go? You're flippin' warned! Don't ever go over my freaking head again! You mother (blank), you!" This also means that the whole film looks like a 70s kung

patient's stomach, and tricks them into thinking they're full. Important stories, obviously. It seems that the adage of watching the American news and seeing all other countries disappear is fairly apt.

However, Britain shouldn't feel any more superior. Maybe our news is less insular and sensationalist than our American cousins, but it's still limited.

When was the last time you saw an article about Australia, or the rainforest problem?

They're both still there, apparently. Also, although we Brits like to concentrate on the good programs we've produced: Blackadder, The Office, Fawlty Towers etc. There is, like in the U.S.A, an abundance of crap. Last of the Summer Wine? Hi-Di-HJ? The list goes on. Also, although we don't remake American programming, we just import it wholesale. Perhaps it is because of the choices made by Channel 4, who gets the lion's share of the sit-coms, that are estimation of U.S television is so low.

Will And Grace and Sex and the City are hardly beacons of originality or wit. We are getting i:nore advert breaks, the rise of digital and cable T.V. means a larger number get 'specialised' channels.

Lowest common denominator reigns supreme. British T.V., like any T.V., is nothing to feel smug about.

peaking to Dan Antopolski over the phone, when only his unperturbed and melodic speech can be heard, is relaxing and easing to say the least. Having never met Dan personally, I could obviously only judge what a face-to-face conversation with him would be like from the PR photo that is seen on every website and poster that has any kind of association with the world of professional hilarity.

He answered the phone. "Hi Dan, it's great to meet you," was my opener. I don't usually get star struck, but Dan is a star and a half of Cravendale in a bar of the craziest chocolate you've ever eaten. Indeed, if you have any kind of interest in comedy then you will probably know that Dan is the on his way to the top . Not that it has happened over night. Since 1998, he has graced the comedy circuit with his witty and cherished presence. After performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, he went on tour with the Comedy Network and managed to rack up over 200 appearances in his first year. Between then and now, Dan has been on BBC! , BBC2, presented a show called 'Cherry Pop' on UK Play, journeyed around Australia on the World Comedy Tour, and was in New York last month, just for a laugh. He even holds three Perrier Award nominations to his name. But despite his success, Dan came across as a modest fellow.

I asked him if being in his position made him more attractive to the opposite sex, to which he sharply declined and declared the subject academic and somewhat sensitive. I cautiously withdrew, with the uncertain assumption that he was only joking. It is true that Dan Antopolski has a reputation for bizarre and off-the-wall humour. I quizzed him on this; Dan explained how his form didn't fit its critique. "I try not to classify my own style. I leave that to the journalists. If I had to describe it I would say that my humour is surprising and unexpected."

Woops! Have I unintentionally just revealed to you what to expect when Dan performs here on lOth November? Well no. Look at this multilaterally. If you expect the unexpected, then Dan is always going to have the advantage, because he can simply hit you with what you would normally expect from a comedian, which you weren't expecting. So therefore, the expected becomes the unexpected, and in turn surprising and entertaining. In my view, this is how comedy should be. This is why Dan has been so successful. His humour is not only intelligent and hilarious, but also tactical and devisive. Oh, and if you want any jokes to tell down the Union then you'll have to go and see the show. He was reluctant to even give me a little "why did the chicken cross the road?"

S

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Ah ha! Something happy to light up my miserable , blighted existence on this forsaken rock of doom ...

Er, not really .. . The King Of Comedy is hyste r ically funny , but it 's so in tense and disturbing that it really would be difficult to attach the term 'comedy' to. Basically, it's a satire (n ot e ntirely unlike a proto Alan Partridge) on the trappings of the concept of celebrity and how the attainment of it has completely consumed one individual, namely the wonderfully named Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro, in his most realised p e rformance). This is a man entirely obse ssed with gaining a spot on Jerry Langford's (a brilliantly cold Jerry Lewis) comedy show, to the p oint of being intent on stalking him.

Sounds creepy ...

It gets more so when you discover that the

only person with whom he has even established a close relationship with is fellow stalke r (Sandra Bernhard), who is hell bent on having sex with Langford. Also , the insight into Pupkin's fantasy world - in which talking to cardboard cut-outs in his basement while his mother shouts that his dinner is ready, is the norm - and an incredibly disturbing scene in which he imagines a perfectly slick conversation over dinner with Langford. The King of Comedy, similarly to Taxi Driver, delves into the mind of someone totally deluded and it skilfully opens up the distorted logic behind obsession and its progression to other crimes, while intelligently linking this into the ideas and ideals of fame.

How?

Well, this links into the ultimately b leak and scathing e nding, which closes the film's argument. Scorsese makes the incredibly important point that , with the right edge, you can make anything a hit. Even if it is from the mind of a complete sociopath.

Three's a Crowd

ucas Belvaux's La Trilogie, which premiered at the 57th Edin bu rgh nternational Film estival this year, is n ambit iou s and - - - - - -路g roundbreaking work that d e constructs our very experience of vie wing a film. The films are all set in the claustrophobically shot city of Grenoble, symbolically hemmed in by mountains , ove r the same time frame and using the same characters. The formal unity this set up suggests is smashed by the fac t that each film is

Paul Case

05.1 1.03

fundity, is about a boy who searches for his friend in order to give back his school exercise book so that he may avoid punishment. The next film And Life Goes On has a documentary quality and is set after a real life earthquake devastated the region of Koker where the first film was set. As Kiarostami could not possibly have anticipated the earthquake that occurred between the first and second films this indicates an interestingly unplanned , spontaneous quality to his trilogy. And Life Goes On is a dramatisation of the director's real life search for his a ctor, not this time to cast him but to see if he is alive, giving the film a shocking authenticity that is common in Iranian cinema.

The third part of the trilogy , Through the Olive Trees, is about the director a ttempting to reconstruct a scene that occurs in And Life Goes On, in which a newly wedded couple are determined to carry on with their lives despite the earthquake. These exceptional films use the trilogy format, like Le Trilogie, to explore issues of film making; in this case the complex relationship between reality and artifice, through a highly wrought narrative that not could not be developed in one film .

"Scenes that previously occurred behind closed doors or, as Belvaux comments "in between cuts", now unfurl in front of the camera changing our perception of things. " filme d in an e ntire ly different genre.

Individually viewed each film provide s a great e xample of a particular type of film making. But this trilogy is m ore than simply the sum of its parts so , if they are viewe d all together, the three films pick one another apart, each new film changing our experience of the one that preceded it in surprising and innovative ways.

The first film , On the Run is a violent crime thriller telling the story of Bruno le Roux (played by Belvaux himself), an out of date left wing ideologue and terrorist. He escapes from prison and is hidden by the morphine addicted wife , Agnes (Dominique Blanc), of the very cop assigned to pursue him. The atmosphere of Film Noir is evoked through use of shadows; sinister camera angles; low lighting and the film's subject mat-

cine ma. In Goddard's Le We ek end for example he exaggerates cinematic cliches that are associated with Hollywood to show how commercial films manipulate the audience, drawing them into a contained artificial world.

Although Le Trilogie breaks down the film's artifice in a similar manner to Goddard, Be lvuax's films are far more accessible and, as a result, subtler in their a ims . For example , each film seems to b e imbedded in a tradition of French genre filmmaking , placing the viewer in a familiar and safe world. This becomes a false security perhaps making our act of self-realisation even more shocking than in Goddard ' s films, which are overtly subversive and surreal from the start. Belvuax's films will no doubt appeal to a wider audience. erhaps Le Trilogie is most comparable to The Three Colours Trilogy by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski. Like Belvuax, k ieslowski subtly links his films .

However his linking is less pronounced than in Belvuax's intricate plotting and the characters from the three films are brought together at the end by an abstract force of destiny, as the y are the only survivors of a ferry disaster. It seems that the two directors have very different aims. Whilst Kieslowski suggests that we are all bound up together in intricate and inexplicable ways, Belvuax's film concerns itself with experimenting with the fundamental aspects of narrative filmmaking . In both cases the trilogy form is used in an expressive and innovative way.

The Koker Trilogy by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami is also an elaborate e xperime nt. The First film Where is my Friend's House, a tale of simple pro-

P

Can't believe Scorsese did something like this. This isn't his usual bag ...

Maybe not, but it still beats with the same heart that runs Raging Bull and Taxi Drivera cute obse rvations on the mental processes of individuals that have implications on the wider concerns in society. In fact , with its vivid visual m e taphors of Pup kin waiting what seems like forever in a waiting room sapped of colour, it m ore anticipates a slightly surreal edge on social commentary, which most notable in the work of the Coens. Th e King of Comedy is not for everyone; it doesn't flinch at exploring almost every facet of Pupkin's twisted psyche, and results in some scenes of almost unbearable social discomfort. Painful; but brilliant.

Roux turns up as a seemingly bumbling and harmless character, whilst the hard noised cop , Pascal (Gilbert Melki), from the first film takes on: the new role of incompetent private detective for the suspi cious wife . An atmosphere of unease undercuts the farce , which derives from the experience of watching the previous film. We know Le Roux is a psychopath so his presence in a comic farce is disturbing, making it a tainted genre.

The third film , Afterlife, an emotionally d e vastating m e lodrama, is perhaps the most interesting formally. Scenes from the previous two films are completely re-shot, with great technic al virtuosity, in a different style and from different perspectives and then are recontextualised to give them a completely different meaning. Scenes that previously occurred behind closed doors or, as Be!vuax comme nts "in between cuts ", now unfurl in front of the camera changing our perception of things.

There is much in Le Trilogie to recall the work of Jean-Luc Goddard whose films are primarily concerned with breaking down the artifi ce between viewer and film and questioning the way in which we experience

ter , demonstrating that Belvuax has a spectacular grasp of filmic conventions.

The second film , An Amazing Couple, is in the tradition of a marital farce, a hypochondriac husband and his wife suspect one another of having an affair. A hilarious comedy of misunderstanding ensues with comic character studies and absurd situations. This film couldn' t be more different the n the first, so it is a shock when Bruno Le

The trilogy should b e considered a different artistic form to the stand-alone feature . The feature presents us with a self-contained world, an artifice that is expressed as coherent even though in real life things like cause and effect chains are never that simple. The trilogy, like a triptych of paintings, potentially provides a format in which the filmmaker can subvert or deconstruct that artifice . In these cases the films are in a dynamic relationship to one another, each one defining or altering the meaning of the other two.

The problem with most Hollywood, commercial trilogies in comparison is the fact that the trilogy is treated not a s distinct form but as either an exte nde d feature, in which the narrative simply fl ows through the three films like episodes in a soap opera, such as in The Lord of the Rings, ot as three individual feature films set in the same world and featuring the same characters, such as in Indiana Jones. The latte r use of the trilogy format psychologically appeals to the human desire for familiarity . It is also easier and cheaper to film and publicise a series of films as opposed to each individually. The act of staggering the release of each film over an extended period, for example Th e Matrix, also pays financial dividends as the films beco me eagerly awaited 'events'.

Metro Tartan, the distributors of Le Trilogie, are releasing all three parts over the next few months. The rough release dates are as follows : On the Run : 14th November, An Amazing Couple: 28th November, Afterlife : 5th December. They should be making an appearance at cinema city soon and they are well worth looking out fo r .

............................................................• Features 09

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stays fugitive and plans his escape with the Thrills' frontman Conor Deasy interpreting suggestions of California's and just sat on the beach I think we'd role in the album as not so much core- have come back with a postcard version material, but rather distant memory. of California," reflects Conor, "But I . "The lyrics on the record, if you know it's fucked up. One night we were look at them, they're all quite down. there and this NFL quarterback was shot They reflect how we were feeling the dead outside our apartment by the cops year after in Dublin. We came back and who'd mixed up a robbery report with signed a deal and then got dropped which was a really shitty period for the year between America and the album.

We had to work really hard to get peoples' attention again. We stuck at it; and that's w:here most of the songs are from.

All the nerves are about that year, and we threw the town names in (e .g . Santa Cruz) to distract us from the situation, that's really what they're about. The songs all came together when we go t back home to Ireland."

Conor really does speak with love and affection for the band's time in the rootin' tootin' U.S. of A. He also speaks with a charming laconic Irish brogue, the poor guy. In one night we saw all the enough to make any broad swoon with terrible sides of American culture; the lusty, four-leaf clovers of sexual excite- gun problems, accusations of racism ment. "Yowsers!" you may think, and against the LAPD, TV vans turning up on you'd be right; he's Irish, he's a musi- the spot to sensation;ilize it, and in the cian, he's annoyingly handsome and space of half an hour it really left a bad yes, ladies, he's single. Huzzah! taste in our mouths."

"We didn't go to California espeThat is a cool story, no doubt. cially," continues Conor, resting back Cooler is yet to come. For it wasn't just in his chair, trying to encapsulate what · some dingy old A&R man up to his sounds like some of the most inspira- armpits in cash-money backhanders tional and enjoyable months of his life. and child pornography that came to the "We just wanted to be by the beach and Thrills' aid in their darke~t days; rather in San Diego that's just about every- it was Morissey who pledged support where. We took our guitars and sat on for the cause. Yep, Morissey, from the the beach but there wasn't a master Smiths. The self-same who sang " Now I plan. It was more about just hanging out know how ]oan of Arc felt/ as the flames than it was about songwriting." rose to her Roman nose/ and her "I still find a sense of adventure in Walkman started to melt. "Ace. America, opportunity and a sense of "He's a really lovely guy. I think exploring. H you're young, you can people who describe him as miserable make good money on a run-of-the-mill just don' t get his sense of humor. The job. H you work in a bar or a shop in guy just cracked us up, anytime we California you make twice the amount were with him I'd laugh my ass off. you would in Dublin and then all of a Admittedly, you'd say something and sudden you can afford to rent a car, go he'd cut you down with a really dry down the coast, go to Santa Cruz or over comment but to me it's not serious, he's the border to Mexico, there's so much to just very witty and charming. He talked do." about Kirsty Maccoll and her accident. It "H we'd have gone for two weeks turned out that she died in that boating accident in Mexico after he'd advised her to go up there in the first place and check it out."

Creepy. But just because Morissey advises you to see the Thrills shouldn't make you fear for your life by checking them out. In truth, they're tantalizing, wonderful, and a whole bunch of other hyperbole too cringe worthy for me to print here. Gentleman on and off the stage, Conor loves his music, his band, his inspiration (the lush just Travelling Through was played in front of a projected montage of images from favorite movie, The Virgin Suicides) and playin.g to growing crowds; the wealth of whom utterly reciprocate, singing along to every word of the album' s catchier tracks. Hence hoarse throats at the end of Santa Cruz, Big Sur and Steal Our Sun, and we were even treated to new track Spit On Your Idol that promises a more sweeping, evergreen style to future songs.

"Y'know, last time we played here, people were just walking around not paying much attention," the front man drawled to an adoring and sweaty capacity audience, "it means a lot to us that you're all here now." In my imagination, he also added "But keep your hands off me Lucky Charms." It's good being me.

"One night we were there and this NFL quarterback was shot dead outside our apartment by the cops"

orses running through council estates, toothless simpletons, people with eyebrows on their cheeks, badly tarmaced drives- in this country, men in platform shoes being arrested for bombings, lots of rocks .. .and Beamish."

This is Alan Partridge's summary of everything he perceives as being quintessentially 'Oirish'. These observations, combined with pervy priests, Leprechauns and U2, serve only to set back the Emerald Isle's tourist board efforts weeks, maybe even months.

Musically, the Commitments were enough to have you reaching for the anti-freeze; lest we forget, Mustang SaJJy has been vetoed by the very nerdiest of pencil-pushers at NASA to be blasted into space at the earliest of opportunities never to be heard again, silently wailing 'Ride Sally Ride' as it tears into the Sun creating a solar fart thanldully too distant to reach the human ear. And Ash eh? Fucking Ash? I cast ye out.

Move to 2003 then, and the Thrill's mercury-nominated debut So Much For The City. Just as the Doves and Elbow have expanded Dn Manchester's dreary city streets with the most provocative and epic of sounds, so have the Thrills taken Dublin, slapped some California O.J. into it' s Guinness-drenched chops, and made an album so wonderfully comfortable and uplifting that you want to jump around in it like it was your new favorite fluffy coat, with room for mittens in the arms and everything. If you haven't shoplifted it yet, heed my words that there is not one duff track in it's spacious, 11-track set-list, not one wistful banjo melody not worked to an easy, Strokes-like perfection, and not one vocal that doesn't glide down like a warm glass of Baileys. And now, after

my third and final reference to a beverage in one paragraph alone, I shall

"The time we spent in Aznerica was made almost mythical in our minds, so [this album] was something we really needed to put out there. " endeavor to elaborate on my brief encounter with front man Conor Deasy backstage at the LCR before the last night of their sell-out tour.

Well, I say backstage. We're in a toilet. But a toilet with chairs, oh yes, and a plinth for my dictaphone which failed to pick up a good 58.4% of our conversation. Through flu, endless streams of ever-bending essays and the early morning distractions of a newly instated bedside Aguilera poster, I have overcome. Through all this, and more, I have overcome. One in the eye, technical failure! [that's nothing, believe me - ED] ''We had to get this record out of our system," says Conor thoughtfully.

"After we spent a lot of time in America . . . it was such an amazing time that when we got back to Dublin we somehow knew that if we let our band go ·underground we' d always stay put there. The time we spent in America was made almost mythical in our minds, so [this album] was something we really needed to put out there."

Conor is talking of a four month vacation taken by the band to California just under two years ago, an event cited by many critics as the certain inspiration for So Much For The City's sun kissed, Beach Boys-esque. sound.

Conversely, it proved a ti.m e Conor sees very differently from the critics, re-

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There's a little quadrangle up there: the flirtatious flight engineer, the rather devoted first officer, the very ordered and sober captain, and this frenzied corpse - i.e. dead ideas - in the hold. I should perhaps have stressed it more, but there are certain traditionally male qualities, like decisiveness and calm under pressure and training, that we would very much value were we on that plane."

Later, in the car back to university, when asked about what's in the pipeline, he suggests that his next work might be a return to autobiography. He feels as though "he's been away from himself a while". There were also rumours that he wrote a script for Mars Attacks, is this true? "Yes, but none of my jokes got in. I got a decent short story out of it, though. My Martians were in fact big Capitalist businessmen who came to Earth for its renowned narcotics - doing deals and trading cancer cures etc." It sounds slightly more involved than the shallow-but-fun version that actually made it to the cinema. It is, in fact, a rather fitting example of what Amis is currently preoccupied with, and what he fears: the de~line or 'dumbing down' to popular marketability that seems to be infecting virtually eve.r y area of art and entertainment. Amis predicts, rather bleakly, that the literary novel, like poetry, will

Is Someth 1n Am is? that, semi-ideological." At this point there is the appearanpe of a mysterious, slightly persecutory pronoun: "They don't like a distance between writers and reader, it seems. I mean it's hard to tell; I'm just guessing, really. It seems as though they want a more man-to-man or manto-woman kind of relationship. More like a sort of bar-room or coffee-shop conversation where it's just, you know, "I'm ok, you're ok... " ·more egalitarian.

That is the great push in society at the moment. My stuff to them, to these Matts and Tobys and Jeds and Neds... you know, I can see them coming just by their Christian names, which are so generational ... " Chris?

century that American democracy wouid become so flabby and touchy and 'equal' that 'no-one would dar~ open their mouths any more for fear of offending somebody."

A form of entropy?

"Yes, very much ... a form of democratic entropy." At this point Amis frowns. Perhaps he doesn't like the phrase after all. "In such a world there is no place for humour either, because all jokes are politically incorrect at some level. All assume a 'butt' of the joke. In a joke, someone gets it in the neck. And that's very much against the tenor of the culture. So, I don't envy them their future, if they achieve it, of non-divisiveness, non-humour; an end to a world of differences."

" I think ]on Updike was right when he said 'it's not simple morality that determines whether we enjoy reading about the character. What we like is life. "

fter arranging to meet in the bar, Amis enters in a white shirt, black waistcoat, jeans and cowboy-style boots. As we start the interview he begins rolling the first of a few cigarettes. He is vaguely reminiscent of some sort of 'controversial' snooker player, an erudite Alex Higgins, if such a thing were possible. He pointedly eschews flippancy, talking carefully, steadily - as if examining each phrase from different angles before taking his shot. He is clearly used to people grabbing statements and running, rather too eagerly, away with them.

"You're the student paper, right?"

Scrabbling about with Dictaphones and chaotic notes: "Yes, how can you tell?"

Amis laughs. He's no~g like the monstrous image that some seem to want to construct around him. In fact he's personable, generous [he buys a round of drinks for everybody present half way through the interview] and slightly - only slightly -di.s hevelled. It's hard to imagine what has encouraged the negative pictures; perhaps as a result of them, he appears a little defensive at first. He is confident and, it's true, perhaps even a little arrogant (the normal complaint) when on the subject of his writing. But it is carefully moderated. Either way, it's justified - Amis is an important writer; more important than most. As Professor Bigsby was to remark later in the evening: . at points his prose is so good he could 'probably sell some of his sentences individually'.

A certain self-assurance or self-confidence on the subject seems allowable therefore; any arrogance on the matter is justified, although the envious halftalents who currently have their blunt knives out for him would disagree.

Most notable among the recent vitriols are those that appeared in The Times and The Independent. Both papers broke the bounds of constructive criticism and entered the messy area of personal attack. How does he account for this?

"Well, I'm well used to accounting for it" he begins, with a wry smile. "It's complicated. Part of it, and this is peculiar, is to do with the fact that at some level people think that 1 was born i:n 1922, when my father was born, and that I'm now eighty-one, published Lucky Jim'when I was seven and will go on tormenting them for an entire century.

That's the personal thing that you were talking about. That's the way it's evolved. But I think, definitely, that it's much more interesting to think about it in terms of the culture and in terms of a generational 'swit~h'. The kind of novel that I write ... " He changes tack: "Well, if you look at what's happened to poetry in the last generation you can see that it's lost its constituency. Poetry is no longer part of the air we breathe. It's not because we lack the poets, it's because we lack the readers. Poets slow things

" ... at some level people think that I'm now eighty-one, published Lucky ]im when l was seven and will go on tormenting them for an entire century. " down. They slow a moment down to almost a halt and then examine it. The literary novel does that too. It's as if the culture's so fast-moving that it's resisting being slowed down." Almost as if it 'hasn't the time' ...

"Yes, it doesn't have the time, almost literally. But it's also a bit more

"(smirking] no Chris would be alright, it's these slightly Huck Finn type names. To them I sound like a sort of drone of superiority. It's ... the subject matter [of his novels] maybe low, but the style is high-ish. And there are literary allusions. It reminds them, on every page, of how thick they are and how half-educated. And, instead of enjoying that - because that's why I read; to feel thick and. numb and smug and to be shown things - instead of enjoying it any kind of humility of that sort is a sort· of disgrace these days, you know ... " If a reader sees a word he/she doesn't know why not take it with a bit of humility and look it up and learn something...

"Yes, absolutely ... Instead it's 'fuck you - usin' these poncey words .. .' But there is a more healthy end of it all too.

The sympathetic part of 'PC' is that nobody's better than anybody else. No one should have to feel ashamed of where they come from, which is right. But, as we see, there are problems.

For example: there was a marvellous quote somebody showed me the other day in an interview .

Somebody was saying he was hoping his son would read classics.

He was asked: 'don't you think that would be a bit divisive'?

'Divisive' rather than 'elitist' (which is obviously the natural · word) I mean 'divisive'! To have any sort of pecking order is 'divisive'! It was predicted in the mid-nineteenth

Yellow Dog, Amis' most recent book, has received mixed responses so far. Some have levelled fair criticisms at it, some have enjoyed it and some, again, have used the opportunity of appraising the novel to launch scathing diatribes that have less to do with literary journalism than petty rivalries or jealousies. The book is about violence, the problematic state of relationships between the sexes, the break down of language and grubby gutter journalists.

Amis mentions later that The Information was written under "cloudy skies" referring, perhaps, to his feud with Julian Barnes - but, for this novel, the skies were very much "clearer"; writing it was a far more enjoyable experience. .What inspired the work? How did . it come into being?

"Inspiration for a novel" says Amis, rolling another cigarette "can be some-

thing that sounds derisory in retrospect.

My inspiration for Money, for instance, was the thought that ' this fat guy is in New York trying to make a film' . And then you get going and it's there, in some ghostly way it's there. For this [Yellow Dog] I had ... the hit on the head was The King and Clint Smoker as a sort of mix, and then a bit later the aeroplane. It's the kind of novel where you get three or four different stories early in the novel and you think 'well, how is he going to bring these together? How do they connect?' And I didn't really know how they would. I had some ideas but that was ... it came more piecemeal than usual." lint Smoker, one of the novel's main protagonists, is a sexually inadequate writer for the Daily Sport-style tabloid, The Morning Lark. A compulsive onanist himself, Clint - and the rest of the staff - refer to their readership as 'wankers'. Clint's main preoccupations are wanking and ranting, when he's not fretting over the dimensions of his meagre member. The temptation to ask whether or not he had anyone in the press inparticular·in mind when writing the character is resisted. However, Amis does seem to write repulsive characters regularly; why is this?

"Well I don't think they are. They aren't to me. Clint is pretty disgraceful in all kinds of ways, but the ... what's the

C

"I don't envy them their future, if they achieve it, of non- divisiveness, nonhumour; an end to a world of differences. " measure for a disgusting character?

What's the measure for a character we like to read about? I think Jon Updike was right when he said 'it's not simple morality that determines whether we enjoy reading about the character.

What we like is life.' If they're alive, in

the novelist s~nse, then we like them.

So, my attraction to them is just that they suit my sense of humour, which is to do with exaggeration and to do with extremes."

And it is this 'humour of extremes' that has probably caused him so many problems in today's touchy-feely times.

It is at odds with what Amis identifies later in the evening as a "tide of populism" - the massed hordes of 'Tobys and Jeds and Neds'· rattling and shouting at the gates. When this populist tide, Amis argues, comes up against art it doesn't understand it simply rides on over it. It refuses or is incapable of learning anything from it and it carries on, reassuring itself all the while that it's 'just as good'. This, combined with the bleak Utopian vision of pandemic egalitarianism and its entropic effect on humour, is a frightening picture that Ami.s i~ painting. There can be no jokes, because jokes need a butt. But there can be no butts in outright egalitarianism.

There can be no form of challenging art either, in case it makes anyone feel one iota inferior. Amis can already see comedy 'no go' areas developing; soon, if we are not care-ful, nobody will be able to say anything of any significance, for fear of offending someb

0

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way up, are in danger of becoming power crazed. Dllring the process there is a lack of clear direction. It is something that many people probably don't really want to hear which has translated, recently, into a lack of appreciation for one of Yellow Dog's most convincing motifs - the metaphor of the crashing aircraft.

"Yes, people don't seem to have got this," says Amis when asked what exactly he was using the plummeting aircraft for. "Well, one reas.on was that it is just a feeling at the moment. As Xan Meo says in the first chapter - he sees an aeroplane in the first bit of the first chapter and rerr.arlcs that the world seems to be 'flying blind'. And what if you're in an aeroplane and you have no control over it? It also adds to the argument about men and women.

My Martians were in fact big Capitalist businessmen who came to Earth for its renowned coJrttu\ue to fall in favour and pereventually into complete obscurity. We should all cross . our fingers and hope this will not prove to be the case, as we •••••• w;ould all be much the poorer l for it. Perhaps we each might have the odd thing to learn? Even if our generation' s massed ranks of 'Tobys and Jeds and Neds' disagree, let's hope Amis doesn't give up altogether on all of us.

y

Egalitarianism , taken too far, becomes stifling.

One more thing that may cause Amis difficulties with some is his refusal to accept that the 'male/female problem' is resolved. Equality has been declared but, argues Amis, this is not the case.

Many problems remain, Men, on the way down, face a depression; women, on the

05.11.03

12 Creative Writing liiiRBi~i'liiiliiil1l~:B'fl~---11!111!1!'lollili!i\!!!lll~=-~la.I'CI~IIilliliiiOlli'~~-IIIIB=-::Diliialill\lll-~!ll!lii'I!I!!J!

Writing. ••

Please send submissions to lizziebrien@yahoo. co. uk: for initial consideration

Rio C uale Old Ladies Cascading from the jungle.

I push old ladies in lakes in my dreams.

I don't know why I do this. I ~ike old ladies.

But in my dreams I find myself, again and again Pushing old ladies in lakes, delighted when they scream.

I push old ladies in lakes in my dreams.

It is a mystery why I should do· this. My Nan Is an old lady. I could understand it if I pushed .

Old men in lakes because they are smelly and mean.

I push old ladies in lakes in my dreams .

My doctor says it is normal. He too finds His sleep is haunted with images of pushing Old ladies into lakes as they demand pills and creams.

I push old ladies in lakes in my dreams.

The joy, the lakes and the ladies get more and more diverse But last night, to my horror, the roles reversed; I was an old lady drowning little boys in streams.

Chris Freer COlOUR/ C-41135MM PROCESSING

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Crafting great cracked clods Of earth, crashing into .

Churning doldrums. Rocks, Harshly fashioned by tumultuous Thundering walls of water, Slippery with the slime of Spreading algae.

Gouging through crevices Finding the inevitable pc;tth.

Then rushing and spitting over Foaming falls. Picking up pace With the unstoppable weight Of a locomotive train.

Regretfully The river separates ~tself from the cold, clear pools, To continue its exodus towards the sea.

Silt turns in the current.

Dragonflies dance, defying physics with their Hypnotic, wheeling, Intricate courtship.

The shades become dappled, a pause for reflection.

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Satisfied with its progress, the river has time To look long and wonderingly at its Banks bursting with life. It ·shares .

Its cool waters with a large, lapping creatlire With a tongue like Ve~cro. The creature's yellow and black coat Is replicated in the form of the river. The dark brown, Sluggish liquid oozes towards a town.

Many miles down stream, a man waits.

His mask, snorkel and hunched, fumbling form confuses Passing tourists into devoting sceptical atteption.

Gathering reserved energies, the waters brush rapidly Through his grasping fingers, mixing with a New flavour, abrupt and tangy, so far not exp·e rienced.

Luke Roberts

------------------------------Film 13 Sea biscuit Director: Gary Ross Starring: Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper The American

De~resslon

Is

Seabiscuit tells the simple stories of an entrepreneur, horse tamer and oversized jo_c key who are all brought together by the undersized racehorse called ... Seabiscuit.

Set against the backdrop of the Depression this little racehorse's victories, against the odds, lift the spirits of many Americans. It is based on a true story and novel by Laura Hillenbrand which picked up the William Hill Sports Book of the Year.

By Hollywood standards, the storytelling is positively innovative. The drama of many of the key races is portrayed using stills of fatnilies vying for Seabiscuit, with radio commentary of the event dubbed over the top. This technique and others, build up the tension of the race track expertly. The camera is rarely still during the film and leaps between different perspectives, angles and points of view during the races.

Toby Maguire is a good lead and is also one of three Executive Producers for the film. He's obviously learnt a few tricks about the industry from his acrobatics in Spiderman. He does look rather comical on a horse with jockey's goggles on; but, then,

who doesn't? Jeff Bridges is convincing as the benevolent entrepreneur Charles Howard. Chris Cooper plays the down-toearth, horse whispering type, with enough gruff olde American wisdom to separate the role from Robert Redford's infamous brush with horses. But William H. Macy is the star of the show as a lively million-word-aminute radio pundit, in marked contrast to his路 usual repertoire.

The plot has one or two incongruous moments. It cannot shake the habit of sketching out a storyline and then jumping forward in years to the conclusion. When Charles Howard meets Annie at the races in Tijuana they are shown horse riding and talking intimately together, followed by an immediate cut straight to the marriage scenes of them leaving a church. It leaves you fe~ling a little disconnected; cheated even.

There's plenty in here for anyone with even a vague interest in American history.

The succession of one mode of transport, one technology to another, is affected beau-

tifully. The final showdown between the Admiral and Seabiscuit, however, has plenty of pomp. Some of Howard's speech-making about Seabiscuit being the horse of the people is pretty funny stuff, dripping with tackiness. Even if based on a true story, in a contemporary context he sounds like a politician or salesman churning out the standard empty jingoisms.

Aside from the odd narrative jump and corny moment, the 140 minutes of this film are mostly entertaining. Only two watch checks were required towards the end of the second hour to see if Seabiscuit was as long as it seemed to be. A strong cast, fascinating montages of historical photos from the depression era and a feel good outcome make it a worthy bet.

Luke Roberts

In America

l

!

Director: Jim Sheridan Starring: Samantha Morton, Paddy Considi e, Djimon Honso An emotionallly

res~onslve

tale of Irish Immigrants that , avoids bleak cliches "BeJesus, Mary mudder and Joseph, not another fekkin film about Irish immigrants in America" you think, as In America begins with an Irish family's illegal border crossing into the United States with no money, no jobs and having lost a child to cancer. This is closely followed by the usual arrival in Manhattan: all big

smiles, waving, "oohs", "ahs" and 11 WOws"

at the big buildings, flashing lights and energetic ambiance. This is all to a sound of Lovin' Spoonful's Do You Believe in Magic? Director, Jim Sheridan, whose previous works include My Left Foot and In tl}e Name of the Father, has received accolades at Cannes, Edinburgh and Toronto film f~s颅 tivals for a film that, in the beginning, seems to be going one of two ways: grim, self-pitying narrative that makes you want to kill yourself; or saccharine sweet, trite shite that just makes you want to kill.

It soon becomes evident that it seems to want to go both ways with the characters struggling along but trying to make the best of it. Surely the likes of Angela's Ashes have been there and done this 'yeah it's depressing, but heart warming because of the unconquerable human spirit' Irish story before? And that danger contributes to the unnerving potential that this is going to be a very uninteresting two hours. Yet, within 20 minutes it's engrossing. The fear that things are going to go bad for Christy and her family"is balanced by the hope that the opposite will occur. Consequently, it must be more than simply a present day version of the over romanticised immigrant saga but, at the same time, this is, essentially, all it is.

The sentimentality is made enjoyable.

Admittedly, this is a film not to be watched when in cynical git mode, but this is not to

say it requires a fluffy, optimistic euphoria.

As is usual with Sheridan films there's

enough- for want of a better phrase- 'gritty realjsm' to balance its heartfelt moments effectively. Indeed, In America is most successful in the emotional reaction it provokes, even making the winning of a fairground game an incredibly apprehensive cinematic moment. This is largely due to excellent performances from Morton, Considine, Sarah and Emma Bolger, but especially Hounsou (best known for his role in Gladiator) as the family's enigmatic neighbour.

In America is a semi-autobiographical work, written by Sheridan and his two daughters about their own arrival in NYC which serves as the source of its best and worst aspects. Worst, because the characters seem to have an unrealistic, almost artificial, naive concept of America - discovering trick or treating, and that Autumn is called Fall. It is an ignorance that may be forgiven when Sheridan immigrated but is

absurd now, when America is present in some shape or form everywhere.

Nevertheless, this is greatly outweighed because it helps the film with its authenticity.

The film contains an almost confusing interspersion of the material with the spiritual; harsh reality with humour; grief with joy; the good side of Hell's Kitchen with its bad. However, these maintain equilibrium.

The film is not trying to come down on either side in order to say something; it is simply trying to tell a story about life.

First impressions are often proved wrong and when they are it serves to make opinion all the more positive. This is the case with In America. It is a film that, in treading the fine line between over-sentimental bullshit, and realistic, emotive cinema, emerges just on the latter side, and is all the better for it.

Richard Simm

EEEE

----------------------------------05.1 .03

::r-HE

EVENT

..

The Clay Bird Tareque Masud's first feature film is a beautifully humane and compassionate work focusing on the political and religious turmoil that surrounded the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan. Drawing on his childhood experiences without being self indulgent, Masud paints a powerful portrait of a divided community. It is scarred by the conflict between the Muslim and Hindu population, between religious orthodoxy and political radicalism , and between the nationalists and the violent determination of the Pakistani government to maintain control of the region.

However , these wider historic events unfold in the background whilst the film 's main focus is of one family's struggle against the march of history. This method of setting a very personal story against epic national events recalls the work of legendary Indian director Satyajit Ray and in particular his master piece Farther Panchali. The film therefore falls into a rich traditi on of post colonial story telling whilst also maintaining its own highly personal voice.

In the film the family becomes a complex microcosm for the wider social events. Kazi, the father, has renounced his western influenced past and has embraced orthodox Islam, be coming austere and drifting away from his wife and children. Arm, his son, seems to embody a childhood state of inno cence which will be tempered by his experi-

ences . Kazi 's brother Milon is a liberal intellectual who campaigns for Bangladesh's independence and the film sets the two men in contrast, symbolising the wider split in the society. Kazi fears Anu is being subverted by Milon, who takes his nephew on forbidden trips to the colourful Hindu boat festival and to see wandering Sufi troupes who sing songs of love and freedom, and so sends Anu to Madrassah, a fiercely dogmatic religious school. Despite the school's austerities Anu strikes up a touching friendship with a fellow victim of the age , an insecure dreamer named Rokon.

The film bristles with acts of kindness and symbols of liberation and hope that seem to resist the tragic realities of the age.

For example, the eponymous clay bird is a gift given by Anu to his ailing younger sister, Asma, who will sadly become a casualty of Kazi's rejection of western medicine.

Likewise scenes such as the Hindu boat festival and the Sufi performers provide astonishing set pieces that juxtapose with the rest of the film 's portrayal of conflict. They seem to be showing a potential way of living happily by rejecting dogma and prejudice and they lend the film an uplifting tone in the face of chaos.

Despite its subtlety The Clay Bird was banned in Bangladesh until recently because of its criticism of orthodox Islam.

Yet its calm, empathetic tone is a welcome tonic to the sensationalist and paranoid view of the Muslim world that has been prevalent in the western media since September 11th.

Quite the most extraordinary aspect of the film is the way sympathy is maintained for all of the characters. In the final scene,

"It is a bird. It is Made of clay.

That is all you need to know."

Kazi stands shocked in the burnt out shell of his former home as his family abandon him to the advancing Pakistani army whom he had naively supported. It is a testament to the film~ compassionate consistency, and is surely one of the most extraordinarily moving scenes in any film this year.

The Clay Bird is being shown at Cinema City between Tuesday 4th and Thursday 6th of November.

Dean Bowntan

ting around a film set does not make you the next Al Pacino; it makes you a twat.

Fishburne obviously trained heavily for the role, being on a strict diet of pies since he finished filming the matrix sequels. The purple vest he wears doesn't m a ke him look any good either; rather like a Fray Bentos, in fact. He sleepwalks through the part of Smoke. Derek Luke who plays Kid , the main character, is awful. If he were portraying a fish, his emotional range would be considered worthy, but h e' s n o t; so it isn' t. Lisa Bonnet is barely in the film . When she is, she might as well not be .

The special features on the DVD are only one step above interactive menus. A dull documentary informs of bugger all and introduces characters who appear on screen for five minutes. It isn ' t worth the

time it takes to watch. Nor are deleted scenes of any use from a film in which the retained scenes have proved completely pointless.

Biker Boyz contains nothing but boring motor bike races and a brain-numbing script that has the emotional depth of a puddle. Some people may like it, but only because they are so medicated that their complaints sound like compliance .

This is a truly awful film. Look for it at the nea rest HMV; at the bottom of the bargain bin.

Biker Boyz

Sometimes , when nothing is heard about a film , the lack of preconception can make it a worthw hile watch. Sometimes, watching something about which only bad things have been heard can be a fruitful experience. Common opinion about Biker Boys amounted to complaints and criticisms of what was supposed to be a motorbike wreck of a movie (pun intended) . As such, there is a hint of trepidation and maybe a little bit of hope that it could be an entertaining but dumb movie, hiding qualities that others have missed. Disappointingly,

05.11.03

all the rumours were true.

It really is hard to work out where to begin when attempting to define a film that is so bad that dysentery appears to be a more pleasant way of passing the time. This is one of those films that has you looking at your w a tch every five minutes wondering how much of this turgid, melodramatic shit you still have to wade through until you reach the safety of the end credits. It is a bad, bad film .

The story, which isn' t really worth talking about , concerns Kid and his attempt to take the crown of 'The King of Cali'. The king is Smoke , the undisputed greatest rider on the east coast. Kid's father used to be Smoke's mechanic but due to a incredibly stupid accident is killed by a flying motorcycle and Kid decides he wants his revenge against Smoke.

The film has so many flaws that it's hard to say anything good about it. The script and the story are awful. Based on a newspaper article about biker clubs, the plot goes nowhere because the director can't seem to decide if he is shooting a high octane music video or high butane paint stripping. The pace of the movie is so uncomfortably contrived that the motorbike races are slow and dull , while the unnecessary - dream sequences and plot expositi on flies by at 200mph.

Laurence Fishburne really should know better. As soon as h e heard Kid Rock was going to be in the same film as him he should have pulled out. Musicians are not actors and somebody really needs to tell Kid Rock that. Looking grumpy and strut-

Paul Wade

s 15

Theatre Review

..

August Strindberg's The Stronger and David Campton's Split Down the Middle were the two pieces performed by the Minotaur theatre group from Wednesday 29th to Ftiday 31st of October. Both pieces, though different in plot and content, share similar themes strength, weakness, difference, the longing for affection and envy.

Director Chad Mason informed the audience in the programme that The Stronger 'held a real mystery for [them] to unravel.' He assured us that it was acceptable to feel confused. Indeed, the ambiguous nature of the play thrusts the audience into an inunediate quandary as to which is the stronger of the two central characters. Is it the silent Mademoiselle Y played by Sophie Lumb, the object of Madame X' s unseen husband's desire; or is it Madame X, the stoic wife who uses hyperactive conversation and excessive material items to hide her hatred of what she has become?

Both actors gave convincing performances that further compounded the convolution. Sophie Lumb made skilful use of body language to show her characTer's cool exterior capitulate to reveal the lonely and tortured woman beneath; her bottle of drink half empty and never turning the page of her magazine symbolised perfectly her isolation and sadness. Rebecca Keane was equally impressive; instead of silence she used petty chitchat to malik her pain. Her breakdown was all the more convincing due to the way it contrasted with her earlier anecdotes on theatre.

A woman degraded by suffusing her own identity to become what her husband wants her to be; a cheap pawn forced to imitate the woman sitting opposite her.

The second piece, Split down the middle, beginning with The Velvlettes' 'Needle in a haystack,' was not as strong as the first. That said, the scene was equally well acted and directed, and presented in an enjoyable and thought provoking way. It too dealt in strength and variation; explored by Campton by placing two divergent women in an isolated scenario: a boat on the sea that they believe is slowly sinking.

Sophie Steer and Jennie Kraus gave consummate performances and the power struggles and continually changing emotions were explored with delicacy and skill. The scene did lose a little of its strength towards the end, but Tom Bidwell's Boatkeeper lightened the mood, and ended a pleasant evening at the theatre for all.

Norwich Castle, like other county museums, has its share of the dusty and dreary.

Any random old stuff that once adorned the walls of any stately home anywhereâ&#x20AC;˘ between Wisbech and Gorleston finds its way into this Norman keep. Yet exhibitions of Norwich school paintings, an abundance of teapots and an inspired choice of temporary exhibits and tollfi?g shows makes a trip worthwhile, even for those with a phobia of suits of armour.

On show until the 29th of February next year is A Period Eye: Photography Then and Now, an exhibition which juxtaposes the works of the nineteenth century Norfolk pioneers of photography and modem works by Richard Billingham, Comford and Cross and Sarah Jones. Many of the nineteenth century exhibits have never been exhibited let alone published, indicating the level of hard work that went into compiling the exhibition. The contemporary artists, not ones known for conventionality, have been encouraged to follow the pioneering and experimental spirit of their forbears and have come up with some challenging exhibits to place in dialogue with the sepia displays.

Most exceptional was a series of whitewashed glass panels. Whitewash- hiding the truth, creating a bland uniformity, rustic decoration, wanton obliteration - Comford + Cross hired four photos from a photograph library for a month; only four photos in this, the largest library in the world, related directly to East Anglia. The exhibition, though, lasts six months. At the end of the contractual month, image rights are returned to the library. On the 27th of October the artists proceeded to whitewash over the images. The white spaces, imageless, the very negation of creation, serve to provide a new creation. The bland stock images created for monetary gain, postcard aesthetics, are destroyed and the canvas is left clear for the freshness of new perception. We, the cc;'nsumers, become the artists and performers. Our own imagination is freed to discover once again the beauty of the image, of the photographic image.

For those of you who can't cope with the avant-garde agenda, there is plenty more to see and the whole museum as well. It's cheap -take your campus card to get in for ÂŁ2.70and take a break from the books this reading week.

In the Skin of a Lion, by Michael Ondaatje, is, like poetry, packed with submerged recurrent imagery, and fragments of story. My copy is full of biro underlinings where I've found a sensuous word or a beautifully constructed sentence. It is a novel of voices.

Written language is a voice without sound, and Ondaatje takes us into a world of warmth as we explore intimate personal relations.

Yet at the same time we hear the historical voice telling us about the changes in Canada in the 1920s. The novel is concerned with the act of story telling itself. We are being told the story Patrick tells Hana, the daughter of his lover, Alice, as they drive to Marmora, but we never know the outcome of the journey, for that is another story. "Each person had their moment ~hen they assumed the skins of wild animals, when they took responsibility for the story, " and as each character speaks, we see that a person's life story involves many other people. No-one lives in their story alone. Ondaatje speaks for the marginalised builders of Toronto, who are not included in official history, but were essential to the building of the city. Ondaatje questions what history is, and to whom it belongs. Patrick, the main character, is searching for his identity, but Ondaatje shows us that this is what we are all doing in this novel of silences, and absences, which the reader must piece together to find the book's identity. We explore how we are built into what we become. The story begins with the childhood memories of Patrick Lewis in the Canadian wilderness. He moves to Toronto in the 1920s and inunerses himself in the lives of various people, who all interconnect, " strangers kiss softly as moths." He falls in love with Clara, and then with her friend Alice, who draws him into an underground fight against the capitalist centre. The cultural history and the personal is entwined, "he loved the eroticism of her history," and the story is eventually told in flickers of memory. The characters may already seem familiar if you have read Ondaatje's The English Patient. We meet Caravaggio, the Italian thief, and hear another section of his "exotic" past, and we see Hana, the loyal nurse in The English Patient, as a little girl, listening to a story, in which she plays such a large role. This is a book which merges everything; history and life, prose _and poetry, voices and silence. It takes you deep into language and form itself, and leaves you breathless with its visual power.

Laarence Guyzner

Edward Mooney

Rebecca Lawrence

Making Art Work: The Mike Smith Studio is published on 31st October, and highlights the evolving relationship between 'the assistant' and 'the artist' over the past decade. More specifically, that of Mike Smith, and his team of 16 full time staff, in his studio on the Old Kent Road in London. You would be forgiven for thinking that Mike is an artist but according to him you would be wrong. Mike and his team are instead technicians or 'facilitators' for the YBA's (Young British Artists) of the contemporary art scene. Although many of these guys are artists themselves, most fresh out of Goldsmiths not unlike Hirst and the other big names, their job is the fabrication of other people's ideas. They are artists with enough expertise in engineering, construction and spatial awareness to make other artists wildest dreams a reality. Darnien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, Mark Wallinger, Darren Almond and Jake and Dinos Chapman are just a few of the names to have called on Mike's services among his extensive 400 strong clientele.

Whether you want a huge, clear, resin plinth entitled Monument to be positioned in Trafalgar Square or a lOft white framed fish tank strong enough to hold a dead shark and gallons of formaldehyde, Mike is your manthe problem solver. Artists go to Mike when a work is physically beyond their capabilities, when they have neither the equipment, space nor skills to realise their creative vision. This book is significant in its revealing invitation to see what goes on behind the scenes of the art world. It destroys the allusive trap that we all fall into; believing that the art works we see in the SAATCHI Gallery and elsewhere have all fundarne_ntally been constructed by the artist.

Similarly in its step-by-step photographs, detailing projects that have taken months, some even years to realise down to every last nut and bolt, the book challenges our ideas as to how we see art. Within the conceptual world today, Mike argues that you are missing the point of conceptual art if you think that an artist must construct their work independently for it to be truly theirs. The artist's come up with the ideas and guidelines, the studio discusses what's physically possible and what's not. In a talk on contemporary studio practice prior to the launch of the book, the artist Sue Webster commented on how artists appreciate and see the necessity for a helping hand whereby works are becoming more industrial and much bigger in sc<ÂĽe. She thinks the aesthetic is most important and argues 'Who cares who made it?' Patsy Craig, Mike Smith's wife, painter and editor of this publication maintains that its always the artists place to work through ideas and explained how the studio makes works possible where an artist has become frustrated in the past. This book raises these controversial issues and is an invaluable read for anyone interested in contemporary art practice.

Barriet Brooks.

05.11.03

..

1992-2002 Another autumn comes arou nd, and we feel a bit older, as the bands that amplified our youth hit middle age and release retrospectives. So the uncertainty. Is this it for Underworld, who blazed a dark trail through the nineties, only to lose key member Darren Emerson to his own devices , and produce the largely inconsequential One Hundred Days Off in the aftermath? As testimonial to the strength of Underworld's vision, this album gives us ample cause to hope not.

Of all the major darice groups of the last decade and a half, Underworld persist as both the most appealing and the least compromising. While Leftfield and Massive Attack smoked themselves into oblivion, The Prodigy descended into self parody, and O r b ital forgot h ow to dance, but Underworld remained in focus .

Drawing on cut up fiction and his own alcoholism, Karl Hyde provides us with a sharp and honest picture of ourselves in the ch!bs, in the mirror and in love. He continues to recognise that the difference between the sublime and the ridiculous was only perspective. Likewise, the Underworld of the nineties , epitomised in tracks like jumbo and especially Born Slippy, managed the feat of simultaneously being totally central as influential music makers , while remaining detached enough to chronicle astutely and accurately, unaffected by the appealing fictions of "C ool Britannia" and "Common People".

Birth Of A Prince Rza (a.k.a. The Razor, a.k.a. Bobby Digital, a.k.a. Prince Rakeem) is an m .c. , producer and founder of the WuTang Clan. His lazy, spit-drenched rapping swaggers and meanders in combination with precision b eats and sampled soul as he concocts trademark songs for TheW and their associates.

e ver heard, not even the best Rza album. But it is still a solid hour of intricate, melodic , grimy, arrogant hip-hop with one of the cockiest sounding m .c.s around . Good guest appearances from the obvious candidates lift but don't overrun the album, and The Rza's take on the brutality and joys of life can be intelligent and amusing . The whole thing will make you want to nod your head, whilst the variety in production skills will quietly surprise you.

Darkness.. . with something lighter Norwegian death metal perhaps, or a bit of Holy Bible-era Manics - is worth fighting. Uneasy listening indeed, but if existential angst is your thing then Lamb are truly wonderful.

Sarah Edwardes

The music on these COs remains hard and lean, managing to marry the functionalistic minimalism of Detroit techno with the emotional impact and mass appeal of prime-time house . It is done with a humour and playfulness lacking in contempo. raries. Witness the overtly synthetic trumpets in Two Months Off juxtaposed with the heartfelt and authentically powerful refrain "you bring light in ... you bring light in ... " Or the instrumental " ... and dance" passage in Dirty Epic, a song which simultaneously manages to be the best song that Depeche Mode never wrote, while lampooning their pomposity in lines like "here comes Christ on crutches". Yet Underworld's selfawareness never becomes cynical or calculating; rather, it allows them to refine and intensify.

If tracks like Bigmouth and 8 ball seem superfluous to an otherwise perfect selection, it must be remembered that this is a retrospective and thus has a duty to tell a story, whereas a greatest hits compilation does not. This is an album that everyone who lived in the nineties should own. It is the soundtrack to our lives even though we may not have realised that we were dancing like that at the time.

jonathan Perlnt utter

Probably one of this year's bette r p op albums, but would have benefited from a shorter running time and a more thoughtful track order. Fans are likely to e nj oy the disc and a few standout tracks lift the album, but singles-wise we've probably heard the b e st already.

A Heavy Night With ...

Being Somebody

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The Rza has just released another volume into the seemingly endless C.D. rack of Wu-Tang endorsed solo and spin-off projects. Almost all of the m have bee n produced and born through Rza: the music , image and references all bearing his hallmark. His new solo album, Birth of a Prince, is no departure from this . The wailing samples, cuts and beats are (at times) as good as some of his best. He is one of the most prolific and long running knob-twiddlers the hip-hop fraternity has, as well as one of the most respected, and this shows in the quality and range of production .

The W have their drawbacks though. Their gang violence and kung-fu influenced style is aggressive, and affects both the ir attitude and albums . Often, their intelligence can be blocked from the listeners' ears by macho posturing and misogyny. Also, the massive volume of listening material available from them has a t times seemed like talent spread too thin, patchy C .D.s can destroy a bands reputation. However, the critical acclaim for some of the Rza's best work (like Wu -Tang: Enter The 36 Chambers, Iron Flag, The Ghost Dog OST or Bobby Digital) means that TheW still ride high in the ranks of hip-hop, and clearly do enough of the right things to stay noticeable.

Birth of a Prince is one of those things that The Rza does correctly. It is not the best hip-hop album you have

There was a French philosopher called Montaigne who so liked the feeling of falling asleep that he persuade d his local vicar to ring the church b e lls in the middle of every night, just so that he could once more experience the pleasure of teetering on the brink of unconsciousness.

Between Darkness and Wonder is that sensation magnified and intensified, a duvet of anodyne, hypnotic beats. It is the sound of an industrial dose of tranquillise rs flowing through your blood and shutting down every sensation one by one. " Go under, go under' ', urges a childlike voice on Wonder, and it would take a strong will to resist.

This is an album vulnerable to the shadows, inhabiting a world that is held together by chance and could be smashed apart at any second. It is Mogwai accosting Portishead in a subway and running away with their selfpity. Yet somewhere in here there is a glint of optimism: Learn is a p otent reminder of the most inconsequential of life's lessons, while closing track Hearts and Flowers draws us back kicking and screaming into the waking w orld.

The te mptation to re place Between

Ratings

Rising from the Dead

The Jesus-ometer:

05 .11.0 3

Ben Patashnik

D aniel Chandler

AllyGipps

Between Darkness and Wonder

with no urgency or passion. If you cloned it you still wouldn't be able to muster a p air of balls from it.

Embarrassingly mundane.

Fresh from winning both a Brit and Ivor Nove lle award, Liberty X return to the music scene with their second album Being Somebody. The question on everyone's lips is can this new album cement their p osition as a credible UK mixed-sex pop group?

Being somebody continues where Thinking It Over left off. The super-pro-

duced uber-catchy pop dance beats make several appearances , as well as the familiar acoustic-sounding love ditties that the Xers do so well. Highlights include dance floor favourites Being Nobody & jumpin ' and the strippeddown, lovely Th e Poet and impossible.

Special mention needs to go to Watcha Doin ' Tonight which seems to fall squarely between the good and the b ad - with a 'left, left ... left, right, left' beat which is both stompin' and totally naff, all at the same time .

As an album, Being Somebody ' is simply too long. With 16 tracks, 15 of which are full-length, you may well find yourself switching off your stereo well before the 60-minute mark; some tracks suffer from an unusual sounding beat that overshadows the melody.

Aside from that, the lyrical choices are sometimes less inspire d than those of S Club 8 - "Pick me up on every innu endo, p lay m e like the new Nintendo" from the musical mishmash 1 just Wann a. On the flip side, whe n the Xers

get serious the boys' fal se tto may cause hysterics.

Walking on Water

North To paraphrase the press release accompanying this g lorified coaster, North is apparently a conscious move away from twee songs about girls.

Great, I thought, something different and exciting. Like fuck it is - it's a selfindulgent paean to all things mushy.

The fact that SoCo incorporate a piano into their music has the pote ntial to expand the ir sound - witness f erry Builfs innovative use of keyboards : please note I am not writing SoCo off but the net result is that every song sounds like it was written for Dawson's 'Sodding' Creek, plodding along like the vapid title track or trying in vain to sound anthernic in Space, which is so predictable and bland that it could be the most annoying song ever.

To be fair , The Runaway has some pleasantly melodic moments (if you disregard the excruciatingly cliched lyrics) and Miss America veers slightly towards a marriage between strength of conviction and a genuinely affecting vocal line, but that's really it to be honest.

Re laxed Muscle are, apparently, the sound of young Doncaster. If this is the case, after a few listens of the band's debut album, you might conclude something has gone horribly wrong with the city's pare nting. A H eavy Night With .. . pre sents 12 squelching, electronic tracks , full of distortion and badly sampled animal noises, and a frontrnan with only sex and drugs on his mind.

But don't call social services just yet , because all is not what it seems.

Relaxed Muscle is the first major postPulp project for Jarvis Cocker and, if it's the sound of anything, it's of a middleaged pop star messing around. Not that this is bad thing; in the guise of Doncaster reprobate Darren Spooner, C ocker is free to experiment with dance and punk influences that had previously been hidden away on Pulp B-sides and his DJ sets. He also gets to be as hilariously crude as he wants, packing the songs with such profound lyrics as "Baby 1 fee/lucky with you in my bed/ And I fee/like getting mucky with a thoroughbred. "

It's dull music for dull people that goes nowhere and never moves away from the sense that it's simply a collection of lazy chord changes that could roll over the credits for any crap remcorn and you'd have even less desire to stick around. It tries so hard to be serious that it's just ends up as trite rubbish

Water into Wine

In the end, it's all probably too close to a joke to reach the kind of audience that that other, simian influenced Britpop spin off enjoys, but if you like your music fun, catchy and ironically contrived, Relaxed Muscle are out there , waiting.

Falling not in to Temptation

Jim Whalley

Impartial Advice

......................................................... s·

Single Choice

~es17

Super Furry Animals

Jane's Addiction True Nature This time twelve years ago, I was stuck m a classroom wondenng how knowing that James Hargreaves invented the Spmning Jenny m 1764 would ever come m handy for my future career as an astronaut. Jane's AddiCtion, meanwhile, spent 1991 deC1ding that it was tune to gwe up the1r absurdly glitzy rock-star lifestyle m favour of something more sedentary- hke rehab.

Fast-forward to 2003: I shll haven't made 1t to the moon, but Jane's Addict10n have finally returned to the1r natural habitat. A party of hedorusts holding a jamboree in a bucket, True Nature is vmtage Jane's Addichon. Think Been Caught Stealmg bemg bundled into a police car and driven to the end of the world.

All feather boas and cowboy hats, Perry Farrell1s the frontman Justm Hawkins Wlshes he was, while Dave Navarro seems to have spent his time away negohatmg a deal Wlth the deVll for the tunes ]1mmy Page didn't get.

This 1s The Darkness Wlthout the 1rony, The Strokes Wlthout the cool· dirty, tense, and so caught up m 1ts own blistering pomposity it hasn't even nohced that this kind of thing iS fashionable.

Fortysomething sleaze-rockers shouldn't sound this good.

suits and .speak to Wales ! ·f inest

1

Sarah Edwardes

Erasure

Iron Maiden

Thrice

Oh L'Amour

Ralnmaker

All That's Left

Oh L~oui was never one of the great Erasure singles, but it had its charms in a cute, 80s way. Unfortunately, they've taken out the bleepy synths and put in boring MOR guitar instead, which makes it sound even more dated than its wirnpy lyrics made it already.

For their last Best Of ten years ago, Erasure released a remix of an old single and it did okay, but pitting this lame duck against the likes of Kylie and Beyonce is like abandoning your family pet in the wilds of Africa with only a new collar to defend itself with.

VVriting about music, as an astute individual once noted, is like dancing about architecture. So the task of reviewing the new Iron Maiden single is at best futile, and at worst the written equivalent of trying to embody the gates of hell in a collage made out of milk bottle tops and leftover wrapping paper. As an example of what might happen if the Kings of Leon forget to trim their beards and end up rocking out with ZZ Top in an old people's home off Route 66, Rainmaker is second to none.

As a piece of music it is indescribable.

You know when your friends go on about how you should listen to a band and when you actually do, it's just disappointing? Enthusiastic at first, this starts with driving guitars setting the pace for the song, however nothing else happens: it's all the same. I like melodic hardcore, but diversity is needed or it all sounds the same. And this does. It's not bad at all, it's just too nondescript and after listening to the song, it leaves no mark or emotion. A case ofN.O.- 'nonidentityisas', not fatal but could be remedied.

RobLavine

Sarah Edwardes

Suzanne Rickenback

Delta Goodrem Not Me, Not I Taken from her debut album Innocent Eyes, this single is

pretty typical of the ballad style that has propelled yet another Neighbours cast member into the charts.

Unlike her predecessors, Delta actually has talent and has written/co,rnposed her own songs. The Aussie capable of keeping her clothes on has produced a song far less corny than Born to Try, but which lacks some of the edginessoflnnocentEye~ VVriting from her own experiences Not Me, Not I seems a sincere a,nd non-cheesy break up song. If you like easy listening/epic ballads this single is for you, or possibly your mum.

AmyBewitt

Hot Hot Heat Talk To Me ..• Hot Heat reckon themselves players in the punk funk revival and so it is unsurprising that this sounds like The Rapture's House ofjealous Lovers, but fails to reproduce its bite and tension, instead

whittering on about lost girlfriends. HHH sound more comfortable on correctly spelt b-side Oh Gaddamnit when they reproduce a punk pop sound which they were probably quite happy with before they saw the bandwagon passing.

Jonathan Perlmutter

Kid Symphony Hands on the Money It is not often that on the first hearing you love a single, but" Hands on the Money is the exception. Chris Langdon and Pete Denton have produced a track that is just as much rock as it is melodic. Meant to be about a girl who has everything but does not appreciate it, this is about as deep as Kid Symphony get, and is a welcome relief from deep and meaningful drivel flooding the market. The track is vaguely reminiscent of early Feeder and could have as much chart success as it can satisfy moshers while remaining catchy and uplifting.

AmyBewitt

The Veils Lavlnla I know for a fact that the Veils are not a bad band. They actually have a few really nice upbeat poppy numbers. Unfortunately, this isn't one of them. Even as just a word, 'Lavinia' is difficult to say without any expression of whinging or whining, which pretty much sums this song up. Boring, slow, whining, grating, sub Starsailor style b~ads. It's really not what you expect from musicians these days.

It's far too uninspiring and it's really not worth getting out of its record sleeve again.

Few bands put on such an impressive live show as the Super Furry Animals, with visualisation&, surround sound and improvised endings and interludes. The LCR stage is adorned with trademark Pete Fowler cartoon creations, giant horses flank the stage backed up by evil-eyed volcanoes, and the place reeks of the Super Furry Animals.

Backstage, The Event asks Super Furries singer and guitarist Gruff Rhys about Phantom Power, the band's sixth album, for which they purpose-built a studio at Cardiff Bay. They are no strangers to technological wizardry, pushing the boundaries using computers, synths and stylophones. So what does he think of The VVhite Stripes' approach to music, and the fact that Jack VVhite will only record on vintage analogue equipment?

"That's for him. VVe've never been precious about the past or the future. VVe record on tape because we like the way it sounds not because that's the way the Beatles did it."

Fresh back from their American tour, during which they headlined with Grandaddy, the band seem more experienced and professional when they play the LCR. The set is heavy on new material, but interspersed with classic songs.

Recent single Golden Retriever provide~ a crowd-pleasing highlight, as do the rarely played Herman Loves Pauline and a frantic Do or Die. The show comes to a close with Bill Hicks uttering the words: "All politicians are liars and crooks". This is looped as the faces of Bush and Blair appear over a stonking, footstamping The Man Don't Give a Fuck, and the majority of the band leaves the stage. Twenty minutes later they return, clad in their signature yeti uniforms, to rock out to the last chorus.

New album Phantom Power sounds on first listen to be relatively light-hearted. Opener and new single Hello Sunshine is a beautiful acoustic song. But Gruff admits: "It's got a bit of a dark undertone to it actually'. Indeed the album is darker lyrically than their other offerings. Gruff puts this down to "recent world events. Over the last couple of years the news has been particularly bleak. (The album reflects] a sense of frustration and anger. Some seriously nasty shit is going on at the moment, sinister things happening, it's not nice."

The Super Furry Animals have never really enjoyed massive success, but Gruff feels this has been to their advantage: "If we had huge Oasis-style success we wouldn't have been able to put as many records out, as we'd have had to tour.

VVe'd probably be richer and lazier."

The band have always had a cult following, reinforced by their zany antics such as the Furry Tank which set them back ten grand and still provides a talking point even though they sold it to Don Henley of the Eagles. VVith all the craziness surrounding the band, it can be hard to take them s""eriously sometimes. But Gruff explains: "There's a definite element of fun in what we do, but we're serious about what we do and we believe in what we do."

Finally, the question we're all thinking: VVhat do the Super Furries think of Norwich?

"Obviously it's got a lot of bad press from Alan Partridge.

It's certainly not unpleasant. VVe play here all the time and get good gigs so there's nothing wrong with Norwich!"

Their quirky psychedelia may not be to everybody's taste, but the Super Furry Animals go down well at the LCR, taking in the eclectic influences of pop, rock, techno and lush electronica as only they can.

-------------------------------05.1 .03 Matthew Stratton

]on Warren, Cluisto Mc:Crac.lten, Aidan Wllitelaw

18

Best of Essential TV: the Rest

Gardeners' World

Here are a few of the indispensible things in life all available on your TV. The re should be something to tickle you all , in one way or another, so sit back and love your TV.

01 Red Dwarf Sunday 's llpm, BBC2 Now seen as one of those shows (like Seinfeld) that the BBC can boot around the sche dules to plug any embarrassing gaps, the Red Dwarf repeats are now working their way through the supurb third season.

It 's as good now as it ever was and there isn't a sci-fi/ comedy show that can b e at it.

02 V Graham Norton Weekdays l Opm, C4

..

Admittedly, this isn 't a show for e veryone and it probably isn 't as funny a s it use d to b e, m ainly a s a re sult of C4 trying to squeeze eve ry penny out of their m ost p op ular tv star, b ut it d oes h ave som e g ood gue sts a nd s ome funny gags. That and it really d oes show th at the British public are a filthy bunch .

03 Monkey Dust Tuesday 9pm FIVE W e' re throwing this on e in for those of you that actually have access to any of the Beeb's digital ch annels, for the rest of us we will have to wait a little longer to see this bizarre little goblin of an animation show. Monkey Dust is a real pick'n'mix of ideas, attacking everything from the public's attitude to paedophilia to Hollywood b lockbusters . Some of it is very funny , som e of it is terrible, but you usually end up with a better feeling in your stomach than a worse one.

04 Hunting Chris Ryan Thursday's 9pm, BBC l Here's one for the boys, a 'really tou·gh and skilled ex-SAS' soldier proves how really tough and skilled h e is, whilst also serving as an advert for 'don't do this at home.' In the last programme he got hypothermia and worried the film crew enough to send out a search for him. _Rather pointless but mildly intriguing male bravado.

05 Have I Got News For You Friday 9.30pm, BBCl A great and funny show that everyone should t_a ke pains to watch is about all the description this great comedy quiz show needs.

Tim Barker

THE

EVENT 05.11.03

Friday 8.30pm, BBC 2 I know what you 're thinking as s oon as I mention anything to do with garde ning on TV. Alan Titchmarsh, slowly pace d , bland commentary, Charlie, Charlies' nipple s , and where the bloody hell has the remote got to . Well you're wrong . I am about to utter the terrible words that the BBC were trying to make me say , "It 's not the same as it use d to b e, it's n e wer, better, more funky and relevant to a wider age ra nge ." Now this m ay n ot b e entirely the cas e but it certainly isn 't w h at it use d to b e.

For example I live in th e golden triangle with a tiny strip of gard en out back w hich amounts to a li ttle bit of grass and earth. The amazing thing is tha t Garden ers' W orld actually has some relevance to this tiny forg otten c orn er of Norfolk and they have given me some tips that I didn't screw up and now my g arden is thriving an d the whole neighbourhood is try-

ing to get in to have afternoon tea with me.

Okay a slight exaggeration perhaps, but I have planted some things that didn 't die , (yet - I misse d the programme where they tell you how to g e t the m through winter) , and it looks almost respectable. Now I know what you're going to say to that: ''I'm in a rented house and the most I am willing to do is go out and have a lo ok at all the b loody wee ds that I'm supposed to keep down for my landlord, and eve n looking at this sad little scrap of grass/ earth is as much e nergy as I'm going to expend on it, so d on ' t eve n m e ntion watching a programme about it, I've got ess ays and the pub to go to and Eastenders to miss and ... " (continua tion of r ant that ends either in the top -up fees deb a te, anti-US sentiment or comments on how b loody cold the weather is) .

Okay so y ou might not h ave the time or the energy but it is still nice to watch wh at you could do if you ha d the tim e, energy, mone y and large garden of your own. At least I think it is, althou gh p hrasing it like that m akes me

Miss This •• Weekdays 9.25, ITVl You've got a seminar at 11 and just so you feel really good about yourself you're going to sit and eat a proper, healthy breakfast before you start walking! Bleary eyed with toast in hand you reach for the remote and flick over to the warm, inviting, sweet, sweet melody of the Trisha theme tune. The pastel glow fills the room as the minutes slip by unheeded.

Vicariously you experience love, lust, hate, suspicion, and life changing makeovers - the whole spectrum of human emotion. All this under the watchful gaze of Auntie Trisha, therapeutic fountain of wisdom and self-crowned queen of chat.

You munch away at your leisure and ease into the contours of the sofa, eager to know the results of the impending DNA test. The advert break gives you just enough time to become aware that you are not alone and that two other figures in bathrobes hav:e materialised clutching coffee cups, sporting what can only be described as coiffure du lit . But there's no time for that now, the mother-in-law is coming out from backstage and she doesn't look best pleased with the baseball capped youth across the stage from her. They burst into a primal

sound bitter and The gardening twisted about havgallery of love ing not won anything on the lottery for the umpteenth time in a row, and why can it magically happen to Mr Useless up the road and not kind and deserving me .. . (heavy breathing ensues as I try to restrain myself)? So maybe it's a programme for people who just like gardens and would love one of their own with a not-naff w ater feature , a ve getable patch and a little patio w here you can relax on a warm summer's evening .

(Plus it's got Monty Don and his kind and thou ghtful voice sounds more like the one g ood lecture r that everyone has or wishes they had , s oothing you into thinking that y ou can unde rstand w hat he's talking about). If any of this is the case the n you 're as gangrene d fing ere d a garden fancier as me, so tune in on Friday 's a t 8 .30, (it's not like there 's anything b etter on anyway), sit b a ck and dream ...

Tim Barker

Trisha

rage and bark unintelligible p ut-downs and cliches at one another, rising from their seats threateningly, ominously. Much to the relief of all involved (even you, you are involved) Trisha, the microphoned messiah of mid-mornings descends the stairs from the audience and diffuses the anger. Her tone is knowing and soothing as she carefully points out the unquestionably correct course of action for the problem at hand. Advice dispensed, she absorbs the applause and retreats into the audience to allow the public their piece of the action. The slate is wiped clean and the guests disappear.

Adverts.

As you consider the merit of a no strings attached personal loan, and worry that you really aren't getting all you could out of your current washing powder, you glance at the clock. You decide to scrap the idea of walking onto campus in favour of grabbing the less time consuming number 25. That way you can catch the next fifteen minutes and still be in LTl for five to. After all, it makes economic sense to support local produce and good old (young) Trisha is as local as they come, living and working here in lovely Norwich . Next chance you get you could even be p art of the audience, then you'd really get to h ave your say .

Plus it's free. Trisha's a Uni-wid e ins titution, an LCR of the scree n - if you h aven't done it then you haven 't been to UEA. The new wave of guests are seated, a couple this time, and the lie detector results are in. He's a downright dirty cheate r , you knew h e was , but Trisha salvages their re lationship -and p acks them off through the s ame door (Trisha's patented symbol of true love) and your faith in humankind is restored for th e day.

Casually y ou check y our watch - to your confusion and h orror its coming up to ten to .

You're dead. There's no two ways about it, a huge chunk of your life has slipped through your hands and there isn't a thing you can do about it but p ray someone blessed with a car will take pity on y ou. They won't of course because Trisha is on and they want to stay and watch it. You have fallen foul of what can only be called 'The Trisha Trap', an evil force slowly gaining power over hundreds of young adults. So children, be warned. You may think you can watch just a little bit of Trisha as you leave in the mornings, but I for one advise extreme caution. She has powers of distraction we can only imagine .

Kate Bryant

list1ngs 19

Wed

5/11 Club: Student Night @ Ikon hits from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Drinks £2 all night. £2 b4 llpm, £3 after.

Club: Superfly @ Lightbar - funk, ska, soul, hip-hop. 10pm-2am. No dress code. £3.50.

Gig: Jazz, Funk & Blues Jam @ Norwich Arts Centre. The East Coast Jazz Festival continues with Norwich's hottest Jam, burning rhythm section. £2 (free to musicians).

Fri

Sat

Sun

7/11

8/11

9/11

Union Film: Nine Queens Argentinian thriller about two small time conrnen who get embroiled in a big time swindle.

Leading to numerous cons and counter-cons. Twisting. Starts 8.30pm. £2.75.

Union Film: American History X Edward Norton stars as a reformed white supremacist just out of prison trying to save his younger brother, played by Edward Furlong, from going down the same road as him.

Intense. Starts 8.30pm. £2 .75.

Comedy: Dave Spikey @ Norwich Playhouse. Fans of Phoenix Nights will recognise Spikey as Jerry St Clair from Peter Kay's award winning comedy, which he also eowrote. On this evidence his observational stand-up sounds promising. £12/10 NUS.

Cinema: Double Bill @ Cinema City Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 The Man Who Knew Too Much with James Stewart and Doris Day, Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street with Edward G. Robincson and Joan Bennet.

Two plot driven, suspence filled master pieces.

Jazz: Mark Latimer Trio @

Norwich Arts Centre (NAC) Blend of classic, improvisational and original tunes. £817

Gig: Lee "Scratch" Perry + The Mad Professor @ LCR. Dub Legends with support from Rebel Lion untill.30am. £14Adv.

Clubnight: Tirn Westwood@ Waterfront - Radio l'a hip-hop DJ. 'Wicked.' £10/8 NUS

Clubnight: The Thatcher Years@ Waterfront. 80s tunes 10-2am. £4.50/3.50 NUS.

Club: Drurn'n'Bass awards tour with Radio 1 Xtra DJS Bailey and Teebee 8- lam. £4.

Gig: Asere @ NAC. Postponed from May, Asere from Cuba provide a bend of soulful son and dance rhythms. £12110

Clubnight: Meltdown /Rawkus @ Waterfront.Pop, Alt, Rock, lndie with Nu-Metal Punk, Ska-Core in the studio 10-2am. £4.50\3.50

Club: Optic - Chart, retro, R'n'B. Drinks 2 for 1. Free b4 lOpm, £3 after.

Thur 6/11

Club: Boyz & Girlz @ Time- popular dance, r 'n'b and chart £4.50/£3.50 NUS

.

Club: Disco Sucks and The Underground @ Light Bar- real 70s, with indie downstairs Free b4 10.30, £2 after.

M on

10/11 Comedy: Dan Antolpolski @ LCR 'One step beyond the best of the mainstream' -The Times. Three time Perrier award nominee will provide an evening of intelligent, observational comedy. £10/SNUS.

Cinema: The Mother @ Cinema City. Film preview of the latest work from director Roger Mitchell, writer Hanif Kureish and producer Kevin Loader, the team behind The Buddha of Suburbia. A film about cross generational relationships, growing old and grief.

Tue 11/11 Union Film: Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines. Ami returns to blow-up stuff before running off to become the Governor of California. Starts 8.30pm. £2.75.

Opera: Glyndebourne on Tour. Up to the 15th of this Month, the Theatre Royal hosts GoT featuring 3 operas, one performed each night. Tonight - Mozart's ldomeneo 7pm £5-42.5

Club: Liquid - Chart and Party £4/£2 Club: Bootylicious @ Lightbar Hip-Hop and R'n 'B 9pm-2am. Free b4 10.30pm, £4 after.

Wed

12/11 Gig: Voodoo Glowskulls@ Waterfront The Casillas Brothers fuse punk, ska, metal, & latino to create their own unique style.

Support comes from the British ska punk bands King Prawn and the 4ft Fingers. £8Adv.

Club: Vibe@ The Bank- cheese, chart & party 7 .30pm until 1am.

Free.

Club: Disco Sucks and The Underground @ Light Bar. Real 70s, indie downstairs. Free b4 10.30 £2 after.

Club: Party Night @ Mercy. Smart casual dress code. 9-2am. £2 b4 llpm £5 after.

Club: Life@Tirne - student night 9.30pm-2am £4/3 NUS

Play: A Street Car Named Desire @ Playhouse.

Club: Lock Stock. Hip-Hop with electric beats until 2am. £4.

Gig: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club @ LCR. San-Francisco trio BRMC take 60s rock & roll give it a 21st Centuty spin of their own. £15Adv.

14/11

Club: Boyz & Girlz @ Time - popular dance, r'n'b and chart £4.50/ £3.50 NUS.

Opera: Handel's Theodora @ Theatre Royal.

Play: A Street Car Named Desire @ Playhouse. Ovation theatre present Tennessee William's classic play drama of life in deep south USA. Performances starts at 7.30pm. £8/SNUS. Opera: Verdi's La Traviata @ Theatre Royal ..

Club: Brannigans' - Anthems and good time hits 8-12.30am.

Free.

Fri

Thur 13/11

Club: Salsa lessons @ Po Na Na from 7pm. £4/3 NUS for lessons, free without.

•

Union Film: Respiro - Rustic life on a small island life with both its charm and cruelty is depicted in this French film which won both the Critics and Audience awards at the Cannes film festival. Starts 8.30pm. £2.75.

•

Union Film: Identity - John Cusack stars in a cleverer-than-most thriller about 10 strangers stranded in a motel being murdered oneby-one. Starts 8.30pm £2.75 Gig: Anti-Blood Sports benefit gig @ NAC with Goober Patrol, Terminal City Ricochet, Active Slaughter £5Adv/6Door.

Clubnight: BIG @ LCR- Fergie + Jonh Kelly, Big Ben with 2 Funky in the Hive £9.9517.95NUS Clubnight: Rumble@ Waterfront Drurn'n'Bass all-nighter (well, until 4am) featuring Mampi Swift, Bassline Smith, Ray Keith, Shibadee, IC3 (£12/lONUS) Opera: Mozart's Idomeneo @ Theatre Royal.

Club: Liquid- Chart and Party £4/£2

Club: Mukky Duck @ Brannigansstudent night until 1.30am Free b4 9, £3/2 NUS after.

Club: Student Night @ Ikon hits from the 70s. 80s and 90s. Drinks £2 all night. £2 b4 11, £3 after.

Club: Bootylicious @ Lightbar Hip-Hop and R'n'B 9pm-2am Free b4 10.30pm, £4 after.

Club: Karaoke @ The Bank until lam. Free

Club: Superfly @ Lightbar - funk, ska, soul, hip-hop. 10pm-2am. No dress code. £3.50.

Play: A Street Car Named Desire @ Playhouse.

05.11.03 TH E

E VE NT

-

••

20 L·srngs - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Gig: Herbert Spliffington Ails tars @ NAC. Vocalist and precussionist Satch Dixon provides a blend of ska, reggae and jazz. £8/'1.

..

Clubnight: Meltdown I Britpoppin' @ Wa terfron t. Pop, alternative rock, in die in main auditorium with guitar bands of th e 90s played in the studio. 10-2am £4.50/ £3.50 NUS Clubnight: Ministry of Sound @ LCR. MoS present Smoove feat.

Artful Dodger, Dodg e D-Lu.x (no dress code). £10/ 8 NUS.

G ig : The All Day Gig @ LCR. From llam-llpm Deviant Soc present 14 b ands for your ear b leedin g pleasure. All welcom e, fo r m ore info visit http:// www.deviantsoc.org/allday gig/ £5/ 3 for Deviant Soc. Cinema: Film double b ill @ C inema City. This week, classic Fr e nch cinema is the theme with Clouzot's thriller Les Diaboliques and Tati's comic Jour d e Fete.

Literary Festival : David Gutterson Author of Snow Falling on Cedars and Our Lady of the Forest. £5/3NUS Gig: The Cooper Temple Clause @ Waterfront - Indie rockers return after th e recent release of th eir album which has enjoyed countless hours of air-play over the last few months. £11Adv

Clubnight: Meltdown /Rawkus @ W aterfront.Pop, Alt, Rock, !Ndie with Nu-Metal Punk, Ska Core in the studio 10-2am. £4.50\ 3.50NUS

Play: The Constant Wife @Theatre Royal . Production of the Somerset Maugham comed y which enjoy ed massive popularity when it p layed in London this summer. Starring Liza Goddard, Susan Penhaligon, Sara Crewe and Michael Praed Starts at 7.30pm (+2.30 Wed/Sat) £4-16 .50.

Club: Vibe @ The Bank- ch eese , ch art & party 7.30pm until l am Free .

Club: Mukky Duck@ Brannigans'stude nt night until 1.30am. Free b 4 9, £3/ 2 NUS after.

Opera: Verdi's La Traviata@ Theatre Roy al.

Club : Karaoke @The Bank until lam. Free.

•

•

Club: Optic - Chart, retro , R'n' B. Drinks 2 for 1. Free b4 !Opm, £3 after.

Gig: Thunder @ LCR. Classic guitar rock from the band most will remember from the early 90s, but have recently reformed due to popular demand. £13.50.

Exhibition: Incommunicardo @ Sainsbury Centre. Film, installation, video, sculpture, photography and text are used to explore the concepts of communications breakdown. It includes a recently discovered film by Samuel Becket and French film maker Martin Arrnitz. Runs until 14 December.

Union Film: Pirates of the C arrib ean. J ohnny De pp an d Orlan do Bloom have prob lem s with a black pearL Swashbuckling. £2 .75

Club: Salsa lessons @ Po Na Na from 7pm. £4/3 NUS for lessons, free without.

Club: Life@Time - student night 9.30pm-2am. £4/3 NUS. Club: Lock Stock Hip-Hop with electric beats until 2am. £4.

Play: The Constant Wife @ Theatre Royal.

Exh ibition: A Period Eye: Photography: Then and Now@ Norwich C astle Museum & Art gallery. Historic photographs from th e 1840s and 50s are juxtapose d with photographs from conte mp orary artists . En d s Feb 29. Opening Time s : Mon-Fri 10-4.30pm, Sat 10Spm, Sun 1-Spm. £3/£2 .70C onc.

UCI - Bad Boys 2 1 Cabin Fever 1 Cale nde r Girls 1 Down with Love 1 Finding Nem o 1 Hole s 1 Intole r able C ruelty I Kill Bill vol 1 I Mys tic River I Pirates of th e Carribean I Rugra ts Go Wild 1 Secondhan d Lions 1 Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1 The Italian Job (2003) 1 The Leag ue of Extraordinary Gentleme n I Whale Ride r I In America I Scary Movie 3 I Wilbur I (from 7/ll-] Ma trix Rev olutions 1 (From 14/ 11-] Octane 1 Sea Biscuit 1 The Fighting Temptations 1 Showing times can be found a t www.uci-cinem as .co.uk or by phoning 08700 102030. STER CENTURY - Matrix Revolutions 1 Bad Boys 2 1 C abin Fever 1 Calender Girls 1 Down with Love I Finding Nemo I Holes I Intolerable Cruelty I Kill Bill vol 1 I Piglet's Big Movie I [From 7/ 11-] Sea Biscuit. Showing times can be fo und at www.stercentury.co.uk or by phoning 01603 221900 Cinema City - Bright Young Things 5-?111 I The Clay Bird 5- 6/1 1 I Spellbound 713/ll W inged Migration 10-13/ll 1 In the Cut 14-20/ 11 1 Monsieur Hulot 's Holiday 17-201111 Showing times can be found www.cinemacity.co.uk Box Office- (01603) 622047.

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