TN2 Issue 5

Waltz with David Polonsky

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Josh Ritter Opeth Max Tundra Biographies E-books Trivium Swap shop Christmas drinks

25 November – 8 December, 2008

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Calendar of fun

tn2’s pick of the most exciting things to do in Dublin this coming fortnight

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

25 Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740-1808) – A Life in Pictures celebrates the artist’s bi-centenary.

The National Gallery until 15 February 2009

26 The Skriker by Caryl Churchill and The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh can both be seen in College ‘til Friday.

Samuel Beckett Theatre, 6 pm and 8 pm

27 Foals play tonight. They are ace live, oh yes.

Ambassador Theatre, 8 pm, €23

28 For those looking for a spot of quality alternative hip-hop (or whatever), Dälek should do the job nicely.

Andrew’s Lane Theatre, 8 pm

29 Their last record may have been slightly disappointing, but Wolf Parade are still rather good live.

Vicar Street, 8 pm, €17.45

30 Tonight’s your last chance to catch Waltz With Bashir at the IFI. Go on, the guy who drew the pictures is lovely as you’ll find on p. 12.

The Irish Film Institute

1 I was once in a production of The Plough and the Stars in school. I tell no lies.

The Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire, 8 pm, €12

2 Meat Puppets are in Whelans tonight before playing All Tomorrow’s Parties at the weekend.

How I wish I was going.

Whelans, 8 pm. €22

3 I was once told that A Place to Bury Strangers are the loudest band in the world. Surely there are legal restrictions on that kind of thing.

Andrew’s Lane Theatre, 8 pm

4 Working-class hero Billy Bragg plays tonight.

Expect lots of down-toearth banterousness.

Vicar Street, 8 pm, €28

5 Lakeview Terrace is out today. Why does Samuel L.Jackson only make movies that are pants nowadays? Prove me wrong, Sam. Cinemas nationwide

6 Quality Irish electronica from Chequerboard is to be found tonight on Rutland Place.

The Joy Gallery, 8 pm, €7

7 Regress into a child-like state with some Snow White puppet action.

Lambert Theatre, 3.30 pm, €11

8 Enda Walsh’s The Walforth Farce is in the Project until 20 December.

Project Arts Theatre, 8 pm, €18/24

xkcd.com

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25 November – 8 December, 2008

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Contents Lost in the blinding whiteness of the Tundra

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Josh Ritter

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Into the mouth of hell we interview Trivium

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Opeth’s Per Wiberg

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Elsa Zylberstein

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Chrimbo drinkery

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The grape guide gets bubbly

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Ui in review

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BAS final year productions

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Getting cosy with art director David Polonsky

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Issue

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Have you ever done that thing where you decide that you don’t like something, like a book or a piece of music, and when it’s made apparent that everyone else likes it, you start to question yourself? In my formative years, this happened quite a bit indeed, especially with music. For example, I spent manys an hour attempted to develop a love of Pearl Jam as a teenager, inspired by my older sister’s zealous admiration for the grunge-peddlers. One day, though, I decided I’d had enough, they were shit and that was the end of it. You see, it’s important to stick to your guns, otherwise you’ll find yourself grimacing through sub-par anthemic rock for the rest of your life.

Maeve Storey had a similarly awkward situation this issue when she interviewed Max Tundra after saying his new record is crap, despite the fact that the indie press were slobbering emphatically all over it. Ten points to her, though, she didn’t give in and delivered this week’s lovely feature interview without questioning her own integrity. I did, however, take exception to her comments about my beard, which may be slightly ginger, but is more luscious a facial growth than she’ll ever produce in her life.

This is the last issue before Christmas, so I hope you all have a delightful break and engage in all sorts of festive merry-making.

Ho ho ho,

Hugh Editor tn2@trinitynews.ie

Q: What’s better than seeing your favourite band live?

A: Why, seeing a tribute band play their songs at a significantly reduced price, of course! tn2 have tickets to give away to: The Stone Roses Experience The Academy 19 December The return of the Royal Hibernian Academy

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Northern Stars and Southern Lights at the National Gallery

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To e-book or not to e-book

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The lives of others

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A year in fashion

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Gossip Girl boys

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Swap shop

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Reviews

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25 November – 8 December, 2008

Hells Bells (AC/DC tribute) The Academy 5 December

Metallitia The Academy 7 March

To enter, e-mail tn2@trinitynews.ie with your name and a contact number 3

When the Tundra calls you A few issues back, Maeve Storey controversially declared that Max Tundra’s new record was rubbbish, so when the offer to interview him arose, she was a little hesitant – unfortunately for Maeve, everyone else in the office had mysteriously disappeared

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s a wannabe journo/hack/mudraker (maybe not)/Lois Lane style reporter (minus the obsession with super human powers and the 90s hair-do), I feel it is my job - no, my duty to accurately review the CDs that are sent to me by my lovely editors at the Trinity News offices. If an album is bad, I’m definitely going to say it’s bad and if it’s really bad, then I’m probably going to say it was the worst record I’ve ever heard. Some of my friends (what would they know anyway?) have pointed out that my writing is too reactionary, too I-just-listened–to-it-and-here-aremy-exact-emotions rather than actually saying anything about the music. It’s not easy though, when you hear an album that the online press blurbs and the band’s MySpace have told you is the next big thing and it ends up sounding like a remix of the Cheeky Girls by Peaches Geldof (back when she was fat - oh, and a DJ). It’s hard not to take out all your frustrations on some of the lesser mortals of the music industry by writing a really bad review. It’s just so easy to write something cutting rather than complimentary, and forget constructive criticism - my aim is to make it so cruel it could force a tear from even the most hardened, or, as is more likely in today’s celebrity world, botoxed of faces (see Danni Minogue on X-Factor every Saturday night). But the thing is that when you’re sitting in your darkened smoke-filled room at your creaky typewriter writing scathing reviews of bands/singers/someone you saw at karaoke just because you can, you forget that you’re actually writing about

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a human being, who is probably a nice person. You never think you’re going to have to come face to face with the person you’ve just shamelessly slagged off for five hundred words or if you’re lucky enough to be granted a whole page for your tasteless rant, maybe even a whole one thousand. Let’s face it, it’s fairly certain that he/she/they are never going to read your oh-so-ground-

I wanted to create something that you can’t really describe.

You’ll hear flashes of stuff that I’m into, but hopefully, it doesn’t sound too much like anything else breaking piece of music journalism in this world-renowned and highly esteemed publication. It’s like bitching about the geeky kid in your Popular Culture lecture who always asks the most obvious questions and causes even the ever-diplomatic lecturer to cringe - you enjoy it, relish it, revel in it and he, the unsuspecting victim, never finds out.

Today’s society absolutely loves the anonymous bitching session. If we didn’t all those celebrity magazines that point out Mischa

Barton’s cellulite wouldn’t sell the millions of copies each week that they do. It is, for most people and especially myself when it comes to writing, the Perfect Crime.

Or at least it was - until yesterday, when I got another of those mysterious text messages from an unknown source calling himself the Trinity News Music Editor. “Maeve”, it said, “can you interview Max Tundra tomorrow at five?” I took a deep breath. Max Tundra? I definitely knew that name. And then it hit me: Max Tundra a.k.a. Ben Jacobs, London based composer, producer, singersongwriter and the proud creative force behind the album Parallex Error Beheads You which I recently described using terms you wouldn’t even say to your worst enemy (if they released an album, that is) and now I had to interview him, in person, just me and him. Oh shit. When I relayed this problem back to mystery editor number one by text, he was unsympathetic. “Glad you get to meet your hero,” he replied wryly. Charming. Still though, I’m a professional (or at least that’s what I like to tell myself) and after all, there was no way he could have read it. Unless the production company that organises the interview sent him a copy of the paper so that he’d know who was interviewing him or unless he clicked on the Trinity News website.

But what were the chances? A bizarre concoction of elaborate ways in which he could have found out what I said about him, been deeply hurt, angered and/or emotionally scarred by it and now be seeking revenge, came flooding through my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I am not usually this self-centred

- I do not ever think that my articles, opinions or general off-the-cuff comments affect anyone even in the smallest way. I know that what I say has little effect on the public at large and probably even less on my closest friends. But when faced with the prospect of doing an interview with someone whose brand new six-long-years-in-the-making album I mercilessly ridiculed, I was filled with a wave of paranoia and remorse. Oh Ben, I thought, I’ve done you wrong.

Here are some things you should know about the man himself. As I said before his name is Ben Jacobs and he is indeed a full blown Cockney. He has been on the music scene now for ten years having released his first album in 1998 and since then has released five more on two different record labels. Why the name Max Tundra? His reply seemed a little rehearsed when I quizzed him on this during the interview but then again it was hardly a very original question.

By the slight grin of recognition on his face I could see he’d heard it a million times.

“Absolutely no reason behind it at all. I do like to make up a different story for everyone that asks me though.” With this he put his head in his hands and started to think of “a special answer” for me. I’m not a fan of silence at the best of times, especially not during an interview. That familiar wave of awkwardness began to wash over me. Looking around feeling very confused, I hoped and prayed that the moment would end.

Perhaps sensing this he lifted his head, grinning again. “Well,” he said with great pride, “I once murdered a man called Max Tundra 25 November – 8 December, 2008

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and stole his identity.” Oh Max, you are too funny. I contemplated asking him about the title of his new album (Parallax Errors Beheads You) which is named in an equally mysterious manner but I thought better of it, fearing another lengthy pause in dialogue. Later, I read in his press release that it has nothing to do with his music but rather for his album titles he tries to pick a “semipoetic but oblique phrase.” A parallax error, it seems , occurs when you take a photo on a camera that has a separate eyepiece and lens, so that when the picture is printed the actual image is slightly lower in the phrase than normal. Perhaps Ben got a thesaurus for Christmas?

Despite my (unnecessarily cruel) jokes, while talking to him, I did get a sense of the kind of artist he is. Music is definitely a huge passion for him and something he takes extremely seriously. Throughout the interview he talked articulately about the complexities of music and the painstaking processes involved in making it. The man really knows his stuff. When I asked him about Frank Zappa who was listed on his MySpace page as one of his influences, he points out the amazing technicalities of his music, “the strange time signatures” he uses. When I hear frank Zappa I hear his often crude lyrics as he belts out songs about paedophilia and makes fun of Catholic schoolgirls. I began to realise that I judged Ben too harshly.

His knowledge makes me look like a music philistine. He seems so dedicated to his work, treating it like an art form, working for months on end to create just one track. tn2

25 November – 8 December, 2008

“It’s like painting a beautiful picture. It takes time.” In fact, just a single track for Ben can take longer than it takes a lot of bands today to produce an album, release it, do a tour and be forgotten about. “It takes me three to six months at least and that could be for the words alone. If you listen to my new album there’s layers and layers of really complex music going on.” I can’t deny that he’s telling the truth. Although I found his album too chaotic, I can’t deny that there is a hell of a lot happening in it and according to Ben, that’s a very good thing indeed. “So much of this so-called cutting edge music is conformist and safe. People just don’t really take risks. Some styles of music are very limiting. I wouldn’t say that any of my songs are one style the whole way through.”

Perhaps that was my problem with the music, that I just couldn’t listen to all those sounds at once. Maybe I need my music to be a little simpler, or maybe I just need to open my mind to new things. After all, tn2 editor Hugh McCafferty has sworn to me on numerous occasions that Max Tundra’s last album was pure genius. But then again can you really trust a man with a beard?

So if his music is as he says not just a cacophony of high pitched sounds and repetitive drum beats, then what exactly is it? Well, even Ben doesn’t know. “I wanted to create something that you can’t really describe. I wanted to make something that exists for itself. So you’ll hear little flashes of stuff that I’m into, stuff that I’m listening to at the moment but hopefully it doesn’t sound too much like anything else.” In most of the re-

views I’ve read about him, his music is generally described in the electronic genre, but when I tell him this he disagrees. “I don’t consider myself an electronic musician but a lot of people that listen to me do. If you listen to the new Coldplay album, there’s a lot of technology on that but obviously it’s a very boring record so people don’t really notice. There are many songs on my record

If you listen to the new Coldplay album, there’s a lot of technology, but obviously it’s a very boring record, so people don’t really notice that I don’t use computers on at all, but because it’s just me recording in a bedroom studio set-up people think everything I do is computerised.” Making fun of Coldplay?

I knew then that I’d treated him badly - he did know what bad music was. Next when I asked him about the new electro-scene that has emerged in the last couple of years he replied with a chuckle “I never really understood what nu-rave was. It’s just people wearing day-glow.” I’m really starting to like

this man. Perhaps our opinions on music were not as different as I thought?

Regardless of the fact that his music is, as I previously stated in much harsher terms, not my cup of tea, I did leave the interview with a great respect for the man. For the last decade, he has dedicated his time to producing the music that he chose to completely on his own. Just one man, in a studio, painstakingly working on each individual track, going so far as to learn an instrument if he just needs a single note from them. He even learnt the cello for this new album, on top of the seemingly dozens of other instruments he has already mastered. Talent is not something the man is lacking. So what is a girl to do? Should I retract what I said, tell you all that his album is a masterpiece, that it is, indeed, an aural work of art? Having met him, liked him and even admired him, I can’t say that the temptation isn’t there to eat my words. But unfortunately, on listening once again to his album, I haven’t changed my mind. I still find myself confused and even annoyed after sitting through just one track.

Am I just too out of tune with the detailed composition of his music? Is there some glorious musical genius in there somewhere that I can’t hear?

All I can say is - you’ll have to see for yourself. If he almost managed to convince me that I liked his album just by talking to me, perhaps his music will be able to convince you. Plus, if he becomes famous, I can always say that I interviewed him. If not, at least I can say I thought he was shit before everyone else.

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A few words with Josh Ritter The singer spoke to Henna Kokko about expanding his live band, plans for his next record and the virtues of taking things easy

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osh Ritter assures me that he’s doing very well indeed when I ask him, and I can’t but believe him. Reached all the way from New York over a crackling phone line, his voice is just as warm and friendly as his songs. The Idaho-born singer tells about taking a walk in the autumn NY, hanging out around his house and making a cup of tea, and suddenly I’m convinced – the mundane everyday life can actually be quite sweet. Especially if you are pretty much the redeemer of the 21st century folk, that is.

He is definitely doing good – during the course of the past seven years, since the self-titled debut album in 2001, Josh Ritter has put out five full-length studio recordings, and gradually established an eager fanbase in Ireland as well as a warm welcome from the critics. After his highly praised album “The Historical Conquest of Josh Ritter” about a year ago, he has released a live recording, been on tour and popped in to play a gig in Electric Picnic. Now it’s finally time to relax. “I’ve had three months of no travelling and I have been able to hang out with the band - they are good guys. It’s been great,” he says and laughs, “just, you know, making your own food.” However, for Mr. Ritter, even the chill-out can be somewhat productive: he tells me that some of his relaxation time has been spent in the studio with his band, playing around with instruments, trying out different things and coming up with new material.

After five successful albums, of which the latest has been praised to be the most adventurous and inventive, it might be quite a task to come up with something life-changing once again. Ritter is only just starting to work on fresh ideas but I still dare to ask him if the new material is going to be very different and what the next album is going to be like in relation to the earlier ones. The answer is simple: ”Of course it’s going to be different.

The thing is that you are a different person than you were at the time of recording your earlier albums. I have to remind myself not to put pressure on myself – I’m not trying to make one of my old albums.” When we start talking about influences, Ritter tells me that he has lately been listening to jazz and soul, music that he hasn’t listened to before. It’s not clear, though, if his current playlist will affect the music he is making: “Sometimes you think you are influenced by something but then people don’t even hear that, and then sometimes they hear things

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you wouldn’t have heard yourself, things that you wouldn’t have noticed or realized that even influenced you. Like The Beatles always wanted only to play Chuck Berry, but they ended up playing The Beatles instead”, he says, and then swiftly continues asking me what kind of music I am listening to at the moment. So genuine and heartfelt is his interest that I’m left speechless for a while and then, after a moment of subconsciously deciding that he is the friendliest musician - no, actually the friendliest person - in the world, panickingly splutter out the words: “Mostly yours.” Josh Ritter really seems to appreciate his fans.

The singer-songwriter is coming to Dublin in December to play two already sold-out gigs, and is looking forward to it. “I’ve been playing gigs around the Christmas time for the last four years. People are always so nice during the holiday season. It’s beautiful.” He says that for him Dublin is a place always to go back to and, after a little prompting, admits that it almost feels like a second home.

However, Ritter will be bringing a new element with him to his “second home” gigs – he is going to play the concerts not only with his band but also with a full 24-piece orchestra. The orchestra played with him for the first time in Boston a few months ago, and Ritter tells me he enjoyed the experience. “It’s exciting hearing all the volume with your own songs,” he says, and when I ask him if they still, despite the new composition, feel like his own, familiar pieces, he goes on: “They are my songs, I claim ownership of them, but they do sound different teamed up with an orchestra.” Ritter says it is exciting to see how his music has grown and changed. “It’s like meeting an old friend and seeing how he’s changed, even though he’s still the same person.”

Speaking of old friends, let’s go back a couple of years, to those oh-so-sweet college days. Before his career in music, Ritter, a child of two neuroscientists, followed in his parents’ footsteps and attended university to study neuroscience for a couple of years. I ask him if there was any outside pressure put on him to go to college and he says that there definitely was, but not as much from his family as one might assume.

“It’s the whole

society, the things around you, your friends as much as your parents. When I started making music, I was making no money at all and had friends who were doing law and making the bucks. Sometimes I felt like a loser,” Ritter reveals, and in doing so, gives a whole amount of peer support to those with artistic tendencies. “There wasn’t a single moment of revelation that I’m going to become a musician but I remember when I picked up the guitar in high school, I knew instantly that this is what I will be doing forever. I just love it.”

As he doesn’t have a background of having a Von Trapp-like musical family, Ritter brings hope to all the burdened poets who every now and then pour their aching hearts out into a melancholic three-chord pop ballad or two. “Hold on to doing what you love and care about. You might not become famous, but if you stick with it, what needs to come, comes. You will have experiences that you could never have had, and you will meet people you wouldn’t have otherwise met. You don’t do it for the money. You do it because you love it,” he says, and again I’m convinced that he means every word he says.

When asked for a last piece of advice for the thousands of college kids roaming around Trinity campus trying to find themselves, Ritter gives a genial little pep-talk: “Enjoy it!

College is an amazing time. It is the chance to realize that you know nearly nothing and you have the whole world to learn about.”

Oh Josh, we will, and maybe when we grow up, we’ll be as nice and friendly as you are!

25 November – 8 December, 2008

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The fun factor S

ince their formation in 2000, Trivium have gone from strength to strength, certainly in the popularity stakes. Most recent album Shogun has cemented that popularity, marking a return to their thrashier, more shouty roots.

“Musically, it just happened,” bassist Paolo Gregoletto told me, “it was a very natural development. For the vocals, singing just didn’t have the effect we wanted and the screaming added cool dynamics that weren’t there without it. Fans were missing the screaming too.”

I spoke to Gregoletto a few days into the Unholy Alliance tour with Slayer and Mastodon that took place a few weeks ago. He

seemed pretty happy with how proceedings were coming along. “It’s been better than expected. The crowds have been killer so far and being able to play with Slayer is such an honour.” The appearance of Mastodon on the bill is interesting – a band who, it would seem, have achieved the unthinkable and become accepted by both metal fans and indie rock critics alike. I asked Gregoletto what he made of this turn of events.

“I don’t really know, to be honest. I don’t keep up with that. We’ve met them briefly, though, and they seem pretty cool. We’re all having a lot of fun on this tour. I guess they have odd musical passages, kooky kind of stuff that wouldn’t conform to the usual 4/4

Trivium bassist Paolo Gregoletto talked to Hugh McCafferty about new record Shogun and the joys of touring with Slayer

time signatures and stuff like that, which I guess would appeal to the alternative indie press.”

Whatever the case, the band are enjoying themselves and in light of the rather impressive list of bands they’ve toured with or supported, that’s saying a lot. I asked the bassist what the highlight of there touring career has been so far. “Definitely the Maiden tour, because, y’know, it’s Maiden. We won a lot of people over playing to those crowds and got to travel all over Europe. This tour is killer too. Everyone’s fun to hang out with and so far it’s rivalling the Maiden tour in terms of the –,” he pauses, trying to think of an apt word, “fun-factor, I guess” he fin-

ishes, seemingly regretting that he used the term “fun-factor.”

Of course, the band never forget to have fun and the previous week, front man Matt Heafy played against a number of fans in an online game of Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox.

“Yeah, Matt killed a lot of motherfuckers,” Gregoletto enthuses.

Trivium come to Ireland in December on the impossibly titled Into the Mouth of Hell We Tour, er, tour. And after that? More touring. “We’re gonna have a pretty busy year.

We wanna show people that we’re fuckin’ back and we’ve got an awesome record that people should fuckin’ listen to.” Indeed, and why not?

A watershed moment Hugh McCafferty wandered down to Vicar Street last week to talk to the very pleasant Per Wiberg of Swedish prog-metallers Opeth

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itting backstage in Vicar Street awaiting the arrival of Opeth’s keyboardist Per Wiberg, I hear the booming voice of lead man Mikael Åkerfeldt as he gives an interview in an adjoining room. I wonder how a voice that deep could deliver such hushed vocals.

Then again, Åkerfeldt is a man of two voices, one soft and articulate, the other, well, metal. For those of you who haven’t listened to Opeth, they are very much one of the most enduring and consistently brilliant progressive metal bands of the last twenty years or so. Actually, fuck it, they are one of the most enduring and consistently brilliant bands of the last twenty years. Too often are acts that veer too close to the loud side of the musical spectrum relegated to “good – as metal bands go” status.

Formed in Sweden in 1990, the outfit has gone through a number of line-up changes and Åkerfeldt is the only remaining original member.

Taking aspects from traditional death metal (meat grinder lyrics, double bass drum kicks), folk (acoustic interludes with hushed vocals), prog rock (King Crimson-y mellotron departures) and, most recently, jazz-funk (as evidenced on the frankly bizarre keyboard interlude of recent track “The Lotus Eaters”), Opeth are rarely predictable. In fact, there was talk of Åkerfeldt appearing

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25 November – 8 December, 2008

on a Scott Walker tribute album recently.

Swedish death metal vocalist does avantpop? Stranger things have happened on an Opeth record.

When he arrives, a whole minute late, Per, a very amiable man indeed, apologises affably for the hold-up, explaining that he had just been off getting some food.

A fair enough concession for a man who has been on tour a l -

most consistently since late April. “I like touring; I don’t have a problem with it. I’d be the last to whine and moan about being on the road too much because to me it’s very easy: if you don’t like it, stop doing it.

I’ve never understood how people would just sit there and moan about how boring or whatever it is. Of course, there’s an awful lot of waiting around, but there’s always things you can do, I mean, go for a walk or something,” he smiles.

Per has worked with the band since 2003 and has operated as a full member on their two most recent releases, 2005’s Ghost Reveries and this year’s Watershed.

The Watershed sessions were described as being a lot happier than previous recording stints on the band’s blog and Per reflects, “I think

we made that happen because we rehearsed a lot before we went into the studio, which gave us a lot more time in the studio to focus on details instead of trying to learn a song while in the studio, which is just a waste of money.” Indeed, Opeth are known to have gone into the studio a number of times having practiced new songs through only once or twice. Remarkable, judging by the quality of releases such as 2000’s Blackwater Park – the sessions for which were particularly traumatic.

Per is by no means a spring chicken, indeed, at this stage most of the band members are in their late thirties/early forties and with wives, kids and girlfriends, I asked the keyboardist what the future held for the band. “It’s really hard to say anything about, y’know, what we’re going to do in five years, but I think, especially since the album was released not too long ago, we’re going to take each few months at a time.

We’ve got a lot of touring coming up and we’ll just see where it goes from there.”

With their track record, don’t be surprised if they continue to go on to bigger and more interesting things.

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La femme de film Fresh from starring beside Kristin Scott Thomas in I’ve Loved You So Long, Elsa Zylberstein spoke to Conor Leahy at the IFI’s recent French Film Festival

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he pauses, thinking deeply about the question before giving her response. “It’s very mysterious what one has inside. In acting, I know that I can invade someone else’s mind, someone else’s soul – in character, to be revealed instead of revealing [someone else].” If nothing else, Elsa Zylberstein is a pervasively passionate woman. Recently seen on Irish screens in Philippe Claudel’s superlative French drama I’ve Loved You So Long, the Parisian actress has now established herself as a major figure in French cinema. This emergence is hardly a surprise, as through films such as Van Gogh, Mina Tannenbaum, Time Regained and Little Jerusalem she has slowly built up her reputation both in her homeland and European cinema.

Like many, Zylberstein’s life as an actress is grounded in unassuming beginnings. She studied classical dance throughout her adolescence, but ultimately chose to abandon it.

“As a child, I didn’t seem to want to do anything at all. I don’t know what drew me to acting. But my father encouraged me to go to drama school and, after one lesson, I told him that this would be my life.” She sips slowly from her white wine with fond recollection; “I was awfully shy as a child, but things happened inside me when I went on stage; there was a strangeness in my body. I knew it was meant for me.”

In 1994, Zylberstein achieved widespread acclaim for her role in Martine Dugowson’s Mina Tannenbaum, but it is only recently that international critics have once again taken notice of her talents.

Introducing her new film, The Feelings Factory, as part of the Irish Film Institute’s recent French Film Festival, Zylberstein drew a beguiled audience on the pretext of her stunning performance alongside Kristen Scott Thomas in I’ve Loved You So Long.

“It was a great experience and such a beautiful film,” says Zylberstein with genuine affection. “Philippe Claudel wrote my character especially for me, so I feel it has great honesty. “ I’ve Loved You So Long is a dense melodrama concerning the inescapable immediacy of the past. It focuses on the reunion of two estranged sisters and the haunting reconciliation of shared hardship, exploring themes of family estrangement and personal redemption. “It all runs very deeply on the screen,” says Zylberstein. “Philippe finds the right tone, the right balance, the right pace. Like much of French cinema, it’s not trying to be efficient; the film takes its time – its unique rhythm is its quality.”

Zylberstein admits that she is - above all - a method actress. She sees her work as her life. “I’m always swayed by deep emotion in a part. It takes time afterwards to go back to life when one is so moved by a role.

“I’m not interested in actors and actress-

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es that don’t get emotionally involved with characters. When I look at people like Meryl Streep or Sean Penn acting, I can see soul in their eyes; I can see life. I know they draw deeply and honestly from their bodies, and that’s all that interests me. I observe them, and it feeds me, it nourishes me. Everything feeds me - all life feeds me, but when

I watch a single scene over and over again featuring someone like Meryl Streep, it is inspiration, and I swim in it like the sea.”

In an industry that is dominated by English-language cinema, it is inevitable that Zylberstein must work in a very specific French context. The internal preconception towards “foreign language” film ultimately

detracts from her chance of global fame.

“My dream is to take more English-speaking roles,” she says, “and to work with the great directors of today: people like Mike Leigh, Jim Sheridan, Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s not that we don’t have great directors in France, but I feel I am variable and I love working with new directors - it’s like diving into someone else’s universe.”

Zylberstein’s new film with director Jean-Marc Moutout, The Feelings Factory, centres around the cultural curio of “speeddating” and is an ironic commentary on the superficiality of most human interaction.

Though less emotive than I’ve Loved You So Long, it is another outstanding vehicle for Zylberstein, who features in almost every frame. “I think The Feelings Factory offers a very cold perception,” suggests the actress, “but it bears true witness to the state of the world today. It shows the hard solitude of the heart, which is universal. It has such deep characterisation, such deep honesty.”

Since both I’ve Loved You So Long and The Feelings Factory were screened at the Berlin Film Festival this year, Zylberstein has been busy not only with promotional work, but also with an influx of new offers.

“These days, I have no spare time. What has always been hardest in the profession, is sharing a career with a personal life, but I’m obsessed with my work. I might rest in January, but probably not.” Most recently in France, she played the mother of directorial titan Ingmar Bergman in Enfances, a fragmentary film examining the formative years of six major world directors.

“Lately, I’ve also had to turn down a lot of stage roles because I’ve been so busy with films. I can’t wait to return to the stage, but I don’t see acting in the theatre and acting on screen as the same work at all. Sure, we still say lines that are not ours, but the projection is different. It’s harder physically, and any true emotion will really only affect the first four or five rows. Even if I’m passionate, the result will be diminished, because it’s all so distant. With film, it’s more intimate and direct.”

Zylberstein expresses no wish ever to direct; she is a woman completely devoted to her craft and utterly enamoured of its power. “Sometimes I’m astonished with what I have inside me and with what I can do,” she says slowly, after careful consideration.

“Sometimes it’s like another person. But ultimately, no matter how deep the emotion, it is always something coming from me alone. I believe that acting is always linked to the person you are, to what you have in your own character. Even if I’m not aware of what I have or what I have not got on the inside, I will always know there’s a whole market down there, waiting to be brought to life.”

25 November – 8 December, 2008

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In festive spirits Melanie O’Reilly considers some suitable libations for the Christmas season

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y, how time flies! It seems like it was only yesterday when we were telling you to whip out your LBDs, stripy shirts and jean, and now you have to up the ante and turn out show-stopping statement outfits night after night, in order to keep up with the festive season party regime! Do not expect anyone to feel sorry for you when you wake up the morning (afternoon) after, and lament the fact that you have another party to attend.

And, as we are sure you all have numerous dinner and house parties, club night outs, and a few more formal nights to attend over the festive season, we have decided in the spirit of all things festive to help you along the tricky path that is wining and dining. Mainly the wining - being a Christmas baby (you may all wish me a happy birthday) means that I get particularly excited at this time of year, which is surprising given four

years in retail constituting a fierce attempt to dampen my spirits (in a non-alcoholrelated way), but I am proud to admit that it has not succeeded, apart from the twitch I get once I hear the few first notes of “All I want for Christmas” (in particular, the Mariah Carey version).

So, in order to ensure that everyone else enjoys the vacation as much as I plan to (21 on the 21st), I have spent many an hour preparing cocktail recipes (and even one or two food recipes) and trying to create a party “pick’n’mix” that will get you as hyper as the candy variety did when you were younger.

There will also be recipes for different drinks appearing on the Trinity News blog until the end of Michaelmas term, so why not give the blog a quick once-over before you host your Christmas house party or to help you to impress your family over the Christmas vacation?

Now, I know Christmas drinks brings to

The grape guide

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hat time of year is here again when the staff parties begin and the Christmas spirit can be felt buzzing in the air. This year may have forced many to tighten the purse strings but why not party in style with some fine sparkling wine? Don’t fret! You don’t have to re-mortgage the house. Sparkling wine is made in most major wine producing countries and in countless lesser known regions making it virtually impossible to cover them all here! One benefit from this is that sparkling wine can be enjoyed cheaply these days and without losing any of that much sought after panache, even if it’s not Champagne.

First of all, we should dispel an old myth.

Sparkling wine isn’t carbonated like CocaCola or 7up. The wine goes through a second fermentation in the bottle. This creates a lot of carbon dioxide which dissolves in the wine under pressure, creating that crisp, long-lasting effervescence.

Champagne is quite undoubtedly the most renowned and best of sparkling wines.

The very name evokes up the snobbery in all of us. Sometimes, however, if the wine is lacking richness, it is sweetened. This often spoils the character of the wine and has had the effect of tarnishing Champagne’s sterling reputation over the last few years.

What often confuses people about Champagne is the seemingly endless list of terminology. Once you get your head around this then a simple glance at a label should tell you everything you need to know. tn2 25 November – 8 December, 2008

Most Champagne is a blend of two or more vintages (the year’s grape harvest) and is therefore called Non-Vintage. The quality of Non-Vintage Champagne has varied considerably and some released in 2005 was generally thought unacceptable. On a lot of the labels you will find ‘Brut’ which means the wine is dry. Extra-dry denotes, funnily enough, a style less dry than Brut.

Single vintage Champagne is generally only made in the best years (‘95, ‘96, ‘00, ‘01 and ‘02 are some worthy ones) but during the 1990s it was thought that too many were declared so don’t be surprised if you get a mediocre bottle!

S o m e Champagnes are Blanc de Blancs, which is an elegant and light style of Champagne and made solely from the Chardonnay grape.

Blanc de Noirs is Champagne made

mind champagne, cava, prosecco, or any spumante wines, but there are a good few other traditional option, including the ever faithful mulled wine, or cider, and eggnog.

These traditional festive drinks always go down a treat, but there will be a few other festive options available to our student body on the blog: the Rudolph cocktail, the veryeasy-to-make Bellini, a Christmas champagne cocktail, and cranberry punch. But before I dazzle you with my sophisticated recipes, it is high time I mention a few quick pre-party wine and bubbly purchases that will go down a treat no matter the event, and cater to the student purse strings.

Here are some suggestions of the light red variety: the Chivite Gran Feudo Navarra Crianza 2002, is a light and subtle Spanish red wine that goes down a treat with lamb, and at €9.99 there is no need to break open your piggy bank.

This wine is widely available, from Dunnes Stores to Carvill’s on Camden Street. Mission Saint Vincent Bordeaux 2001 is a snip at €7.99, and is available from Molloy’s Liquor Stores, and would be a handy little number for parties as it is quite nice on its own.

We’ll be posting more cocktail recipes on the TN2 blog at www.trinitynews. ie, but here’s the Rudoplh to get your noses glowing in the meantime.

INGREDIENTS 1 part vodka 4 parts cranberry juice 6 morello cherries, pitted(if possible) 1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar 1 orange wedge 1 clove (feel free to add a cinnamon stick or more cloves: this is a cosmopolitan take on mulled wine) Place all the ingredients in a saucepan, over a very low heat, stirring gently.

When it begins to steam, take off the heat and stand for a minute. Strain the contents to remove orange, clove and cherries into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a cocktail cherry or a cinnamon stick.

Another option is simply using a sparkling wine and adding grenadine or cranberry juice and serving in a flute.

Max Henderson

Shane Quinn sorts bubble from trouble in this tour of sparkling wines from around the world entirely from red grapes, either Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, or a combination of the two.

In Spain, the word for the traditional Champagne method is Cava (pronounced Caba, if you want to show off ). Although not exclusively, most Cava comes from Catalonia. The unheard-of grapes Parellada, Macabeo and Xarel-lo are used but often complimented with Chardonnay or Pinot Noir. Cava is the bargain that will save you a fortune this Christmas.

The youngest Cavas are the fruitiest and will con any unsuspecting guest at a house party!

Spumante (sparkling) or Frizzante (semi-sparkling) are Italian sparkling wines.

The word Spumante means ‘foaming’ and, contrary to popular belief, the French didn’t invent spark l i n g wine; the

Romans, more than two thousand years ago were drinking the world’s first ‘foaming’ wine! Spumante is made to sparkle either by the traditional French method or by the metodo charmat. i.e. not in the bottle but in the tank.

Lambrusco is an extremely popular red fizz in Italy and the Emilia-Romagna region is noted for producing this. It’s great with salami or buttery cheese sauces. Prosecco is a popular white grape, grown in Veneto and is often used to create soft, scented Spumante.

Australia produces blends using grapes from various areas but regional characters are beginning to emerge, most notably Tasmania. Some Australian fizz is made with Shiraz (or Syrah) which has a fascinating (and seductive) alcoholic edge to it.

In the USA, California has some rather good examples of how the traditional method can be used outside of Champagne. Oregon has also shown itself to be a worthy contender but in general the States aren’t a favourite of mine for fizz.

This Christmas try out the exemplary aperitif, Codorniu Reserva Raventos Cava.

This Non Vintage won’t be too sore on your wallet at 16.99 (O’Brien’s). The Non Vintage La Pieve Prosecco is even cheaper at 13.99 (O’Brien’s) but definitely superior coming from the world class winemaker, Mionetto.

Soft with peaches and pears, this is a great party drink. For the wealthier among us, Bauchet Selection Non Vintage Champagne at 24.99 (O’Brien’s) is still relatively cheap!

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Ui: An Epic Extravaganza After last issue’s interview with lead Tom Vaughan Lawlor, Kathy Clarke had a look atThe Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui at the Abbey and was rather pleased indeed

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recht is the love of my life - sorry, that just came out. My love in fact runs so deep that any production of his Excellency’s work is destined to fail when set against the backdrop of my enormous, insurmountable expectations.

At the close of The Abbey’s current version of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, therefore, I was left a shell of my former self, having been bludgeoned and bombarded by the sublime brilliance of this Brechtian extravaganza, which not only exceeded my wildest hopes, but blew them completely out of the water.

For those who don’t know the play, shame on you. Brecht’s finest play chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional ‘30s Chicago mobster, and his attempts to control the cauliflower trade by ruthlessly disposing of his opposition. Consciously satirical, the play is an allegory of Hitler in Nazi Germany, whose rise Brecht represented in parallel to that of Ui. All the characters and groups in the play had direct counterparts in real life, with Ui representing Hitler, his henchman Ernesto Roma representing Ernst Rohm, Dogsborough representing Paul Von Hindenburg (a pun on the German Hund and Burg), the fate of the town of Cicero standing for the Anschluss in Austria and so on. In addition, every scene in the play is based on a real event.

In accordance with the ideals of Brecht’s Epic Theatre, this production assumes that the purpose of a play, more than entertainment or the imitation of reality, is to present ideas and have the spectator make judgments on them. Characters are not intended to mimic real people, but to represent opposing sides of an argument, archetypes, or stereotypes. The audience should always be aware that it is watching a play, and should remain at an emotional distance from the action (no suspension of disbelief allowed).

It was like being a chocaholic at a Butlers’ free for all. The stage was set for a Brechtian masterpiece - exposed lighting, minimalist representational set, politically allusory backdrop in the form of an American flag: epic theatre at its finest. We didn’t need the flag however to draw our attention to the

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parallels with the contemporary political and economic climate: Brecht’s play is more relevant today than it has ever been (although I’m sure that’s been said a thousand times). The context of the play is so relevant that it’s almost shocking, an uncanny resonance between the current financial crisis (focused mainly on America) and what’s happening on stage. No analogy has been forced or tacked on; it all seems natural (or unnatural as the case may be).

Despite engaging and notable performances from supporting actors, the show doesn’t really begin until the infamous Ui arrives, with the ensemble staging designed to frame the gangster (played by Tom Vaughan Lawlor) as a sensitive, solitary figure who holds all the metaphorical cards. Lawlor establishes himself as a sensational character actor, his Ui referencing Shakespeare’s Richard III and of course Hitler. He writhes and contorts his seemingly fragile body to extreme dramatic effect, and those who say

he’s overdoing it are nut jobs with no understanding of the Brechtian aesthetic.

The most notable scene, though it is all but impossible to pick only one, surrounds Ui’s lesson with an image consultant: the ridiculous teacher gives him advice on walking, sitting and public speaking. Lawlor participates in something of a slapstick masterpiece, frolicking, flailing and prancing around the stage like an idiot doing the goosestep.

His facial features relax, his hunched frame unfurls and suddenly, without warning, he strikes a recognisable pose in the form of a salute - familiar yet bizarrely poignant and shocking, and the Irish audience is silenced (not that that makes a change: they wouldn’t miss a beat were Barrack Obama to swan onto the stage, so fixated they are on that proverbial fourth wall).

Special mention must be made of the set. Designed by Conor Murphy, it primarily consists of industrial recesses filled with

vegetable crates and random debris, meat hooks hanging from above, attached animal carcasses swaying in the light. The aesthetic appeal of this production is unrivalled by anything I’ve previously seen on the Abbey stage, with the space opening out into a warehouse for a shoot-out scene and rain effects making the atmosphere cold and detachedly foreboding.

Jimmy Fay’s vision is flawless (and I never say that, especially when it concerns Brecht). At a running time approaching three hours, the action never lets up or tires and the cast are a triumph right till curtain down. Quick paced and laden with hysterical momentum, the show will both amuse and haunt you for days. Tom Vaughan Lawlor is at the heart of what is great about it, and I hope to see him back on the Abbey stage in the near future. I’m sure it wouldn’t take too much persuasion from the administration. “Extinguish Ui” by all means but let’s hang on to Lawlor.

25 November – 8 December, 2008

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A scene from Caryl Churchill’s Hot Fudge. Photo: Muiris Woulfe

And for dessert...?

Bachelor of Acting Studies students’ presented their final year productions earlier on this month and Frances Beatty was there, front row

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he evening of 5 November didn’t feel like an evening for cynicism. It wasn’t the evening to have a newfound optimism pricked by the relentless nastiness of Caryl Churchill’s social critique. Churchill doesn’t like Americans very much.

Ice Cream with Hot Fudge, as the English writer calls her pair of one-act black comedies written in 1989, is a scathing, livid attack on citizens of the Thatcher-Reagan 1980s on both sides of the Atlantic. Ice Cream, the hour-long main event, and Hot Fudge, its twenty minute curtain raiser comprise a series of unexplained, snapshot vignettes of acidic verbal wit and obliquely referred to events. The large dramatic twists – a body count of three (cut to two in this production) in Ice Cream alone – are confined to the shadows offstage. The “drama” is understated to the extent that it becomes a prop to enable the progression of the dialogue.

Churchill makes a concerted effort to focus the audience’s attention on sound.

This is unsurprising for a playwright who started her professional career writing short plays for BBC radio and who has been praised for her parallels to Pinter’s linguistic style. Churchill’s Pinter-esque use of word, rhythm and gesture are innate features of her dramatic language and were highlighted brilliantly in this production by Annabelle Comyn’s direction. The use of a jaunty beat during the regular scene changes gave a rhythmic echo to the dialogue and pace of the scene itself.

The essence of the characters and the

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25 November – 8 December, 2008

dramatic situation is reflected through Churchill’s verbal trickery. Punctuation, pauses and overlapping lines are all intended to communicate meaning, emotion and action to audience alike. Although the director appreciated this, the actors of Hot Fudge didn’t. The dialogue was rushed and punctuation was merely pause for breath.

Churchill’s theatrical bile and black humour was not given the space it needed to elicit the gut reaction that it aims for.

In one particular scene that highlights Churchill’s rage at the rampant greed and consumerism of the 80s, even the once romantic calling of travel agents can now be calculated in brutal business terms. Everyone in the world is either “a potential customer” or, as part of the holiday destination’s ambience, “a potential commodity.” Of course, the actors could not exploit this scene to make a significant political moment. The whole point is that to the characters, this is their everyday reality.

However, the dialogue should not race to the next scene change. Racing to the next scene change acted not only to undermine the scene itself but also the shift in tone and setting from the economic, boastful, public arena to the private world where the wage slaves actually live. The play’s final scene, set in a living room, exposes the sadness of the individual who has to shoulder the pressures of compulsory mercenary success.

The tragedy of Ruby and Colin’s psychological destruction failed to move because not enough had been invested in their characters in previous scenes.

The actors of Hot Fudge were brilliant at creating a striking visual scene, especially given the wealth of scene changes and the rapidity of the scenes themselves. In many respects they had a more difficult task than the cast of Ice Cream who had a much longer running length in order to explore their characters.

Not only this, but Ice Cream’s actors had far more obvious ways in which to create an identity for their characters. John Currivan and Kathryn O’Hart, who play the American leads, nailed the American accent. Having achieved this, the task of playing stereotypical Americans abroad seemed to follow naturally. Furthermore, the humour also worked on a superficial, less vicious, level than that of Hot Fudge. The very title of the play, Ice Cream, is a joke on its characters’ linguistic and cultural differences. The different levels of humour seemed more successful at engaging the audience and worked to give the black humour a greater resonance.

The Americans-abroad set-up lends itself to classic situation comedy. Jack and Vera are middle-aged Anglophiles searching for familial roots in the British countryside.

They find these roots in a chance encounter with brother and sister Phil and Jaq, Lance’s two English third cousins. Phil and Jaq are alienated punks living in the dark underbelly of Thatcher’s economic boom. The situation rapidly melts into farce with a Hitchcockian twist (reminiscent of The Man Who Knew Too Much).

Ice Cream was superbly acted and di-

rected but the play itself is predictable. The American horrors that Jaq and Vera are subjected to are about as original as a teen horror flick. The lecherous men and doomsday-obsessed evangelicals are caricatures of an obsolete and quaint Middle America, cardboard cut-outs rather than the result of direct observation.

The final play of the evening, Three More Sleepless Nights, was the highlight for this critic. The actors accomplished Churchill’s linguistic style of overlapping dialogue. It seemed that they learnt exactly what words of the previous line that sparked their response. The result was extraordinarily natural dialogue that not only highlighted the class differences between the first two couples but also demonstrated two different types of arguments, the one where you say nothing at all and the one where you can’t stop talking.

Particular credit for Sleepless Nights goes to the lighting designer, Ciarán O’Melia.

Diegetic lighting, using bedside lamps, combined with evocative stage lighting to reflect the intimacy of the relationships but also their self-destructive nature.

I left wondering what the three plays had in common that gave them all the same mood and allowed them to share a two and a half hour performance without jarring. The only answer I can come up with is that they share the idea of things failing to live up to expectations. However, I have a feeling that if Caryl Churchill had been watching tonight’s performance she’d have found her plays more than a little dated.

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Moving pictures drawings, so you escape out of your daily ally very vague. So we focused on his pursuit With the acclaimed Waltz With Bashir coming to ing political reality. But then it comes up again. of stories from other people. Naturally we was crazy, as part of my job was collecting were more committed to conveying their the IFI this month, Michael Armstrong caught Itreferences, and I knew these buildings and stories as exactly as possible, as Ari is still these places and here they were again being trying to make sense of what he remembers up with the film’s art director David Polonsky. bombed on TV. It was a very claustrophobic and what he doesn’t remember, so a lot of

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hrough films such as Syriana and The Kingdom, we’re often shown Hollywood’s version of the conflicts in the Middle East. Only very rarely in Ireland do we have the opportunity to get the perspective of those who have lived through war and chaos, and have the scars to prove it. When Ari Folman, director of Waltz With Bashir, set out on a personal journey to remember his experience of the 1982 Israel-Lebanon War, he was faced with the problem of how to combine the talking head documentary footage he had compiled with his own surreal memories of the events.

His unorthodox solution was to animate both the documentary footage and the fantastical recollections of the war described by his comrades. The result was a stunning work of cinema, and a contender for the Palme D’or at this year’s Cannes film festival. All this was made possible, however, by the work of illustrator David Polonsky. On his first ever trip to Dublin, I had a chat with the film’s art director. A friendly and intelligent man, I recommended a few of the city’s better pubs, and we began by talking about what first attracted him to the project.

“I found the possibility of bringing to life other people’s memories and hallucinations a very juicy topic. To be frank, the opportunity just to make an animated feature was also a consideration, as in a small scene like there is in Israel, it comes only once in 40 years.”

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Jumping at the chance to give his illustrations are bigger audience, Polonsky began the long process by which Folman’s investigation could be transformed by his vivid imagination.

“The whole film existed as a straightforward talking heads documentary before we started animating. We had the sound as a basis, but we animated the interviews based on the video. Not drawing on the video, but looking at it and trying to catch the character, so that the film wouldn’t consist of two different realities.

“There were two teams, I was the head of the illustration team, and Yoni Goodman the head of the animation team. The technique of the animation is cut-out animation, which means animators don’t draw each frame anew, they manipulate existing drawings which are broken into hundreds of little pieces, and then move them about. So the drawings are as they are when the originals were produced. I practically drew physically most of the drawings, around 80%, which as you can imagine was hundreds and hundreds.”

Unsurprisingly then, the project took over four years to complete, and halfway through the process life imitated art in the most tragic way, with a new war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006.

“That was just a crazy moment, as regardless of the topic you are working on, you kind of get absorbed in the work. Even if you are drawing images of war, you’re still just mak-

feeling, seeing the same stupidity repeating itself.”

I asked if he believed the new war gave added pathos to the movie, much in the way that thinking of the current war in Iraq is unavoidable in films such as Jarhead, but Polonsky believed the Israel-Lebanon conflict to be even more tragic: “You know the saying of history repeating itself, but what do

Regardless of the topic you are working on, you get absorbed in the work. Even if you are drawing images of war, you’re still just making drawings you call it when it’s the third time around?

How long can you go on when it’s becoming more and more absurd?”

Thankfully, the team kept going throughout the war, but the creative process was far from easy. The differences between the 2005 original pitch and the finished film depended as much on the frailty of Folman’s memory as they did on artistic licence.

“His recollections of the period are re-

his input was shifted about during the process of the film.

“The first half or two thirds of the film are concerned with Ari’s personal experience.

Then everything gives way to something that is trying to be a hardcore documentary, as much as that can be acheived.”

In fact the film climaxes with real documentary footage of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, a decision that was taken as early as the script stage. Throughout the film however what stands out are the moments of imagination and surrealism in the tales of the Isreali veterans, and I asked how he settled on the eerie and beautiful look of the film.

“For me the interesting thing always is to come up with a new mechanism of visual narration for each project, for the text. Here, however, it was pulling in two different directions. One was extreme artistic expression, and that was the way Ari was pushing, trying to make it as expressive as possible. I was trying to pull it in a more impressionistic direction, trying to keep it as real as possible, to have as much compassion as we could in the film.”

This compassion stemmed from his personal understanding of the peoples and cultures of the region. Born in Kiev in 1973, Polonsky emigrated aged 8 from what was then the USSR, starting a new life like many Jewish people in Israel. I asked how this affected his development as an artist, but he found it hard to pinpoint exactly where his passion for drawing came from.

25 November – 8 December, 2008

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“It’s kind of like asking ‘what if?’ I’d say the immigration itself had much more of an effect on me on a personal level, I have no recollection of the war even taking place because I was busy in my own little world with the kids at school, with this new world to play in. My experience is always of the personal, not the political, but it’s very hard to look at yourself from the outside and say how ideological indoctrination affects you as an adult. It’s a big issue, and as you come to terms with it you form a sense of greater responsibility for how you live your life. This is an interesting time for Israeli culture right now, as we have to deal with pressing issues.

In order to be a good artist you have to be honest, and in Israel you can’t be honest if you’re disregarding the politics of the situation. So that’s always in the background, and sometimes it makes for better art, as it prevents you from focusing on form.

“For me, going to art school, I always learned from the West, learning from European and American illustrators, and often it’s always focused on the form. But when I come to make a drawing for an article, I feel compelled to relate to my immediate environment, to the conflicts in my culture.

Truth be told, there are no conflict free cultures. The difference in Ireland is your possibility to avoid the pressing issues, or the complications. It’s an economic question, as if your market is big enough, and there’s enough prosperity, you can do nice drawings and spend your life that way. But when the market is smaller, eventually you’re going to run into something difficult.”

I made the point that Ireland isn’t exactly facing economic prosperity anymore, and has a history that can hardly be described as conflict-free, but Polonsky saw the problems in the Middle East as much more difficult to solve.

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25 November – 8 December, 2008

“Unlike here, where the Troubles lasted at most 50-70 years, in the Middle East it’s more like 500. The people there have existed side by side for a very, very long time. The history of Israel is only 100 years old, so you can see the introduction of what might be called the Jewish people to the Middle East is very new, and very controversial.

“I think that we are living with all our past conflicts, maybe even too much. I’m not advocating forgetfulness or whatever

don’t think there is a strong distinction between personal and political, I think I’m a bit Marxist that way. Of course the only solution that there will be will be political, but the deeper issues, what lies behind the tensions, will require much more, and it’s hard to imagine how they will be resolved.”

Polonsky didn’t care to speculate more on what solution he would propose, but as a teacher of both animation and illustration at both the Shenkar School of Design and

We’re living in a time where things are changing, the old dogmas are obviously not holding on, but there’s both hope and conflict. The best we can hope is that this is the darkest hour David Polonsky on his visit to Dublin. before dawn Photo: Michael Armstrong

but I think that what I take away from making the film is realising how important it is to try to reach the personal level. For one scene, trying to draw some Palestinian kids in an orchard, I had to dress them right. Because it’s 1982, one would have a Star Wars T-shirt, another would have fake Adidas shoes. When you’re feeling compassion for what you do, you realise that if there is any hope it is on that personal level.

“Having said what I said before I really

Bezalel Academy, he gave his professional advice to any young artists at Trinity: “Don’t look for personal style. It’s a must to copy. The idea is not about drawings themselves, but to draw people and places, or ideas and situations, and not be bothered about the motivation to make something new. The only way you can innovate is if you go to places that really bother you or move you, and that can never be achieved through stylistic means. There’s no point trying to

draw a character in a different way, because there are no different ways. The story is what is changing.”

From our brief discussion, I got the sense that the story of Polonsky’s career may only be at the beginning. After years working on Waltz With Bashir, there are several authors waiting patiently for him to illustrate their novels. Most interestingly however, he is currently in talks with Ari Folman about another animated collaboration, this time taking on one of the science fiction stories of Stanislaw Lem. The work of the Solaris author would be a complete change of tone from Waltz With Bashir, but there are similar themes to explore, notably the idea of hallucination. Polonsky has also been working on a graphic novel adaptation of the film, reusing and editing the same frames in a different form.

“It’s a very interesting experiment, as you learn much about the two storytelling mediums, especially the importance of sound, or the lack of it. In cinema you own the audience, but with books it’s completely reversed, you are at their mercy, constantly trying to recapture the reader’s attention.”

Polonsky seemed confident that his talent for creating provocative images will help with his new projects, however different they may be, and is also relatively optimistic about the future of the world, despite how bleak things may seem.

“We’re living in a time where things are changing, the old dogmas obviously are not holding on, but there’s both hope and conflict. The best we can hope is that it is the darkest hour before dawn. But it’s still dark, you know?”

A fair point, but if artists such as he can continue to be creative in the most difficult of circumstances, it may not be long before we’re all a little bit more enlightened.

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RHA renaissance

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he Royal Hibernian Academy has finally reopened its doors to the public after a year of refurbishments, and much has changed in the gallery on Ely Place. Bigger and better than ever before, the R.H.A has re-launched itself, getting underway with its 178th Annual Exhibition showing a staggering 550 works from a mixture of established and up-andcoming artists of all disciplines.

The R.H.A has been an integral part of the Irish arts for many years. It is an organisation run by artists from a wide range of specialities, including Painting, Sculpture, Photography, and even Architecture, for the promotion and education of budding and established Irish artists, giving them a platform to exhibit their work to the public. As well as this the R.H.A tries to introduce international artists to the Irish Art scene.

The Academy has come a long way since its establishment in 1823. After its Lower Abbey St premises burned down in the Easter Rising the gallery was left homeless until 1939, when it moved to its present location at 15 Ely Place. Plans to renovate the ill-suited spot had been trying to get of the ground since the 1970’s and after many false starts it has finally been achieved.

When compared to the dull and outdated building that was there before, the overhaul is even more impressive than expected. The new exterior is fresh and clean,

clad with smooth white Portuguese limestone with The Royal Hibernian Academy’s name standing out against a panel of green glass. A glass porch houses a small unassuming bookshop and a new café run by the renowned Unicorn restaurant.

The asymmetrical entrance hall leads into a bright two storey atrium space in the centre of the building. Natural light floods in from a double height window wall, and a stairway descends from the first floor down to the atrium. This large airy space leading off into the Ashford gallery is a far cry from the disjointed and badly laid out interior of the former building. In the vast Charles Gallagher gallery on the first floor the removal of the old main staircase has opened it up into a vibrant space, blank and white; ready to display anything from the smallest painting to the biggest installation.

The new renovation uses a range of materials – stone, glass, steel, concrete and timber all seen coming together harmoniously in the atrium. This diversity of materials mirrors the variety of artists and mediums that are brought together for the Academy’s Annual Exhibition now in its 178th year and boasting the biggest collection to date. The Annual Exhibition was the foundation of the R.H.A and still takes pride of place as its most important show of the year. Usually held in the spring, it was pushed to November this year so it could be the opening ex-

Siobhán Power on the re-opening of the Royal Hibernian Academy on Ely Place hibition of the new building. Running until the 13th of December, the exhibition fills all the wall space in the gallery right up to the ceiling with many forms of art on display together side by side. From photography to glass sculpture to plasticine and even little plastic men, there is something for everybody in this exhibition whatever your taste.

There are no prevailing themes or ideas running through the exhibition and yet all the works merge together to make one coherent display.

Familiar names in Irish art such as Pauline Bewicke, Geraldine O’Neill, Martin Gale, John Behan and Dorothy Cross can be seen among lesser known (for now) artists such as Darren Murphy, whose work merges elements of Japanese print and landscape, or Stephen Forbes, whose canvas is buzzing with activity and colour.

In no other exhibition in Ireland is it possible to see such a comprehensive collection of contemporary Irish art all in the same place.

Upcoming exhibitions in the R.H.A include “Between Us” by Eileen Neff, an American photographer, beginning on the 8th of January. Neff explores the transition from camera to computer in photography through her landscapes inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau. Another exhibition starting on the same day and running until the 15th of Febru-

ary is that of Ciarán Lennon, an important Irish artist who has pieces in the Hugh Lane Gallery and has had solo exhibitions in the IMMA and numerous galleries all over the world. Through his painting Lennon looks at painted objects and their relation to the real and the material. Lennon plans to create a unique installation of his work for the new gallery space.

Stephen McKenna, president of the R.H.A. foresees that its new look will be a turning point for the Academy, hoping that “the building in its new form will enable the Academy to realise all of its potential as a positive force in the visual arts in Ireland.”

A new hub of Irish art has been created, now more accessible and welcoming to all manner of visitors and indispensable to Irish artists who can make use of the numerous new rooftop studios that have been built as part of the R.H.A school which will be fully operational in 2011.

Already a great place to spend an idle hour wandering around if in town, the planned auditorium will attract even more visitors, offering public lectures on concurrent exhibitions as well Irish art in general.

The significance of the renovation of the R.H.A may not be fully realised at once, but it will hopefully go further than ever before in encouraging artists to produce and exhibit art; and the viewing public in seeing it in its dynamic new surroundings.

Photo: Siobhán Power

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From Fratricide - Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1897); Ateneum Art Museum Central Art Archives / Jukka Romu

A land of myth and mountains Caroline O’Leary visited Northern Stars and Southern Lights: The Golden Age of Finnish Art at the National Gallery of Ireland

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or many people, the word “Finland” evokes images of rolling Nordic landscapes and snow topped mountains. Finnish art may seem like an unusual choice for the newest exhibition in the National Gallery of Ireland “Northern Stars and Southern Lights: The Golden Age of Finnish Art 1870-1920”. Unlike last year’s Polish art exhibition, Finland has few cultural or population based connections to Ireland and the country itself did not fully come into its own until it achieved independence from the Grand Duchy of Russia in 1917. However, like Ireland’s own history, Finland’s late independence caused them to strive for a national identity of their own, combining their people, landscape and mythology within art to create an image and style that is unique to their country.

The exhibition focuses on the various sections that evolved within Finnish art between 1870 and 1920 – the Finnish “Golden Age”. Much of the work that emerged was influenced and inspired by the Paris art movement of the time, where the Realism movement had inspired artists to venture outside the studios into the natural world and paint en plein air, which quickly led to the development of the Impressionist movement. The influence of these various styles can particularly be seen in the Naturalism room, the first room of the exhibition. In keeping with the idea of en plein air production, most of the works focus on the Finnish countryside and the large peasant class that inhabited it. The room is laid out beginning with the Realism-based works, which are a striking depiction of the harshness of peasant life at the time, as the untn2

25 November – 8 December, 2008

flatteringly honest depiction of both figures and the surroundings strike a cord with the viewer. Particularly moving is the painting Orphan by Albert Gebhard, a desolate portrait of an abandoned child in a dark room who peers out through the gloom at the viewer with her striking yet unfathomably deep blue eyes, and Eero Jarnefelt’s Under the Yoke which depicts soot and ash covered peasants burning scrubland for farming.

This haunting painting combines naturalism and realism in its depiction of the foreground figures but suggests Impressionist influence in the coloured background as the scorched earth fades to reds, blues and purples.

The exhibition as a whole rests heavily on the works of two of Finland’s most renowned artists: Albert Edelfelt and Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Both artists came from different backgrounds and focused on different themes in their painting, yet both were instrumental in establishing Finnish art in their own country and abroad, especially in Paris. Edelfelt came from an aristocratic background and spent much of his career in Paris. He painted in the style of Realism and was acclaimed in the Paris salons, winning numerous awards. Edelfelt was a prolific portrait painter and nearly the entire second room of this exhibition is dedicated to his renditions of French and Finnish high society figures. Particularly striking is the portrait Virginie, a Parisian actress rumoured to have been Edelfelt’s mistress and mother to his two children, who seems to glow with happiness as she languishes over the back of a chair. The whole scene is one of relaxation and contentment, from the opulent materi-

als and furnishing in the room behind to the figure’s large liquid brown eyes that gaze serenely out from the canvas. Critics have suggested that due to Edelfelt’s aristocratic background he was never able to truly identify with the peasant figures in his naturalist work, yet in his portraits and also his landscape work he is very much at home and the true beauty of the figures and landscapes shines out.

In contrast in Edelfelt, Gallen-Kallela came from a peasant background and remained proud of his roots, presenting a less idealised version of peasant life than many of his contemporaries. Though his paintings included naturalistic and landscape work, Gallen-Kallela’s most famous works are large-scale paintings depicting the Kalevala, an epic poetic work of Finnish mythology, and the paintings featured are the first real insight into Finnish cultural history. The most famous work on show is Aino, a huge triptych that illustrates scenes from the story of Aino, a young girl who drowns herself rather than marry an old man. Most of these realism-based paintings are beautifully rendered in shining oil paints but the most interesting works in the room are several scenes painted in tempura paint – mineral based earth paints that add a flatness and illustrative character to the work. These are a stark contrast to realistic oil works that surround them, and offer a totally different perspective on both the mythology and the viewer’s perception of it.

The final room in the exhibition represents modernist Finnish painting to 1920 and is a disappointment after the previously viewed works. The information provided on Verner Thome’s In the Borely Park comments that the first modernist works were created in reaction to an unfavourable review of a Paris salon show, accusing Finnish painting as being stale and unprogressive.

This rather uninspired beginning seems to be evident in the works which rely a little

too much the influence of Cézanne and the Fauvist movement. It’s a disappointment that given the obvious talent of the Finnish artists, they could not branch out develop more of their own style than continuing to follow popular Parisian trends.

Surprisingly it seems that the most interesting part of the exhibition could be easily missed, located in the hallway across from the mythological room. This is a collection of etchings by Gallen-Kallela and watercolour paintings by his protégé Hugo Simberg, who was inspired by his master’s mythological works to create his own fantastical images of Finnish life. His works combine peasant life with devils or images of death, but instead of images of fear and dread his paintings are whimsical scenes of bright colours. They vary from humorous scenes of The Farmer’s Wife and the Poor Devil where a devil down on his luck appeals for help, to more moving scenes like Death Listens where the spectral image of death stands listening to a young boy play the violin as an old woman lies in the background, possibly waiting for the end of the song and her life. These images are unique and imaginative, combining Finnish mythology with unique illustrative techniques to create work that is truly original and provides Finland with a style that is all their own.

This exhibition has plenty to admire, and showcases the talents of Finnish artists of the time. Finland itself is beautifully represented by landscapes and the poignancy of its people. The Finnish artists were undoubtedly accomplished and created some wonderful and striking works. However so dominant is the Parisian influence on the work that, except for the works by GallenKallela and Simberg, we see nothing of a unique Finnish style. The ultimate goal of the “Golden Era” never seems to materialise, a shame considering the tantalising suggestion of real innovation peers out from the work, just out of reach.

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Photo: Chris Howard

The digital divide Saviour of time or the murderer of an art form?

Rebecca Long and Jean Morley debate over the pros and cons of the e-book

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e’re on the verge of a literary revolution. Forget post-modernism, postcolonialism and, definitely post-feminism, are we soon going to be post-books? Thanks to the concept of the E-Book reader, the major change won’t be what we read, but how we go about it. Judging by the rapidity at which major publishing houses are converting their books to digital format, and the anticipation of the Sony E-Reader on this side of the water, digital books appear to be coming into force. Sci-fi writer Robert J Sawyer best summed up the post-paper fervour, predicting the disappearance of paper-books “except as an art-form”. From HomeEconomics workbooks to Ikea instruction manuals, who knows what we’ll decide to frame for our walls.

Of course, the rise of the E-Book may be grossly exaggerated. To Sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury, the E-Book smells like “burnt fuel”. Despite the advance of the E-Book being predicted in 1990s, it has failed to permeate public consciousness in the same way as the i-pod. Instead of defining a hip generation, E-Books are the preserve of academics and science journal enthusiasts. So are they merely a shortlived fad, or the inescapable fate of our future lives? TN2 staffers go head-to-head to debate the technology.

In Praise of the E-Book (Jean Morley) From people cursing the concept of writing, and believing that there were demons in the printing press, to current university lecturers’ detesting the online Blackboard sys-

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tem. The idea of a word changing its form never fails to sour public opinion. Given our human propensity to rate tradition over invention and beauty over necessity, it’s easy to understand the ambivalence toward the E-Book. But from an ethical, practical and cultural point of view, the electronic device far exceeds its paperback cousin.

Supporters of the E-Book have the ultimate twenty-first century ethical argument on our side. With the rise of deadly carbon emissions, we can’t afford to keep chopping down the lungs of the Earth. Books have surpassed Christmas trees as symbols of destructive decadence as thousands of forests get churned into pages. Ironically, the same books extolling the virtues of nature are sucking the life out of its leaves. We all knew Wordsworth was a murdering fiend.

People worry that the digital word will reduce the integrity of the idea of a book, but who first demanded that books be a mass of bound paper? Most likely, a monk in some hut on the Skelligs. For the same reason we have made the transition from pony trap to automobile, our conception of literature needs to progress. In an age of electronic empowerment, the E-book makes sense.

The replacement of books with electronic displays will excite even the wariest readers. A book can become an ever-expanding dialogue far more exciting than a stinky yellow tome. Confused about Russian politics?

Discussion forums, encyclopaedia entries and recommended books will be one button-push away. Bored by Dostoevsky? Just click centre screen for some puzzles and games. The E-Book will be the ultimate aid

to procrastination, and I can’t wait.

Most importantly the E-Book will revolutionise people’s perception of reading.

Literary classics will be lifted from coffee tables, instead being pulled out on the bus as items of pop-culture. The i-pod made it cool to love esoteric music – having a penchant for West Hungarian Polka Music has become socially acceptable. Imagine offering your friends the text of the Odyssey. Being proud to say you’ve got 150 books in your bag. I can’t either. But wait for the advent of the E-Book reader.

The Incontrovertible Disadvantages of the Electronic Book (Rebecca Long) In order to read some E-Books you’ll find you have to shell out a fair quantity of your hard-earned - okay, earned anyway – cash; not only for the purchase of an electronic device but possibly also the peripheral software on which to display it. It is certainly more than you’d spend for your average book, for the set-up alone.

So let’s say you’ve purchased the aforementioned electronic device and you’re set up in front of your little digital screen with a cup of tea and a biccie. Your battery is fully charged, or so you think, and you become completely engrossed in your newest EBook saga. Then out of nowhere your battery dies and you lose your place. Only it’s not quite so easy as flicking back through the last few pages until you find the sentence you were in the middle of with the E-Book, is it?. You have to get up, find your charger thingy, come back, plug it in, etc. and then you realise your tea has gone cold. Not quite

the relaxing read you had in mind hmm?

Or even worse! Your hard disk drive fails!

Now I freely admit I’m not exactly technologically savvy but that sounds pretty bad to me. How easy do you think it’s going to be to find someone that can fix that little beauty?

Okay here’s another scenario. You’re a careless person - like me - and you leave your latest paperback book in Starbucks.

Hours later you rush back, hoping against hope that some evil person with a chai tea latte obsession hasn’t spirited it away because you actually have to know what happens in that climatic final chapter. Odds are it’s still there. Now let’s try that scenario again, only this time you’ve left your uber expensive electronic reader device thingy behind. Do you really think it will be there when you get back?

What about the smell and feel of a new book? The action of physically turning the pages? Or the character and charm of second-hand book? Curling up with a good book on a rainy night is a most exquisite pleasure, and one that just doesn’t translate to the idea of sitting down in front of a good computer.

Okay, I’ve done enough preaching about the sanctity of the paperback and the travesty that is the E-Book. I’ll leave you instead with what one website gleefully informed me. Apparently I can now, with the appropriate and of course suitably expensive technology, create “amazing 3-D page turning Ebooks in minutes with new software, such as Desktop Author.” Oh, Please. That’s what’s known as a real book, thank you very much.

25 November – 8 December, 2008

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The lives of others What makes biographies so very interesting?

Looking at some popular examples, Jean Morley, Kara Furr and Liz Farrelly attempt to find out

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hat cosmetic procedures has Jordan undergone? What brand of milk does Parkinson use on his cornflakes?

What makes one time ex-factor judge Sharon Osborne tick? We need answers to these questions, and fast. So fast, the biography section of most bookshops cannot cope with the amount of publications coming their way. A recent visit to Hodges Figgis exposed a biography section nine shelves long by five shelves high; at least 20m worth of confessional ramblings.

But what makes biography such a popular form? That’s easy. We need to see the ordinary man mythologised. We need to believe that Mr Joe Soap can invent the Model T Ford, buy Man United, marry Angelina Jolie and own a Labrador dog. Maybe we want to learn from others’ experiences; through a complex analysis of stars’ lives to date, we realise what we should, or most definitely should not be doing. Maybe we just want to laugh as we flick to photo insets, of the gaptoothed toddlers to the dodgiest mullets.

Given our fascination with the form, we had a lot of fun reviewing biographies and autobiographies this week. What do Barack Obama, Russell Brand and Jeff Buckley have in common? They’re all available and cheap; about €12.95, at a bookshop near you.

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Crown Publishing, 2006 Okay, I may as well admit now that, being overjoyed to call Barack Obama my next President, I may be a bit biased when it comes to his autobiography. I was quite excited, on being asked to review it, at the prospect of curling up with Barack Obama (now, now, let’s bring our minds out of the gutter, shall we?). Having read it, I was pleased, but not surprised, to discover that it was quite good! This autobiography is far from traditional; rather than accounting his own life, he uses the book as a forum for discussion about the issues he sees in the political system and society of America, using examples of his experiences to illustrate his point. Using a highly conversational tone, Obama considers the strengths as well as the pit-falls of politics in the US, casting a critical eye over even the dealings of his own party.

The book contains chapters on, among others, politics, the US Constitution, faith, race, and one especially interesting chapter entitled “Values”. The theme that is brought up continually through these many chapters is what Obama sees as the dangerous divide between Democrat and Republican, “conservative” and “liberal”, which pervades both the politics and everyday life of Americans. He sees this as threatening the historitn2

25 November – 8 December, 2008

cal ideals of what he has always emphasized as the United States of America. The man’s intelligence and dedication to his dream of America are apparent in his detailed writings on how to mend this rift.

Perhaps this is not a book for every reader, but if you find yourself interested in the thoughts of the next President of the United States on the direction his country needs to take, The Audacity of Hope is an honest and thought-provoking account. Kara Furr My Booky Wook: The Autobiography of Russell Brand, Hodder & Stoughton, 2007 Poor, poor Russell.

What with the recent spate of anti-Brand sentiments flying about the place, I felt a certain pressure when asked to review his autobiography, My Booky Wook. As an unapologetic fan of Brand and his antics, I knew I could not let this influence what should be an objective view of the autobiography. However, by the same token, I vowed not to hop on the media bandwagon by criticising Brand for doing exactly what the public have spent near on a decade encouraging him to do: act up. Over the last few weeks, Brand has become a manifestation of everything that’s awful about life in the public eye. He has spent his entire life pandering to the base whims of the masses, and created his entire persona out of the attention they’ve given him, positive or otherwise. Brand’s disgrace (which was not his first, and certainly will not be his last) has served to highlight the capricious nature of his viewing public more than his own indiscretions.

Though I digress, the central point is that when dealing with autobiographical material, the reader’s attitude to the author can often be the essence of the reading. Is My Booky Wook a good autobiography? That completely depends on you. At times, his book can be truly disturbing. There is no point in pretending that his descriptions of his experience with hard drugs are not outrageous, regardless of the length at which he discusses them. Some issues are dealt with in a surprisingly poignant manner, taking into account Brand’s self-fashioning as a contemporary village idiot. However, for the most part, it sounds like a best-of collection from the most debauched confessionals around the country. Brand’s incessant use of pseudo-dadaist writing techniques can be tedious, but is perfectly representative of his exhausting but relentlessly entertaining self. As a piece of literature, My Booky Wook is trifling and inconsequential, but as an autobiography of Russell Brand, it couldn’t be more appropriate. The book is rewarding, but only if you are patient. It can also be hilarious, but only if you understand

Brand. The essence of My Booky Wook can best be summed up in the title itself. If you find it endearing or even vaguely amusing, go for it. If you see it as a meaningless piece of whimsy or have completely missed the cinematic reference, then Brand’s peculiar piece of verbose, indulgent writing probably wasn’t for you to begin with. Elizabeth Farrelly Dream Brother, Fourth Estate 2001 Who was Jeff Buckley? Reading Dream Brothe, David Brown’s portrayal of the young soul legend, won’t answer this question. As with any post-humus biography, we will never be able to gauge the accuracy of the identity recounted. However, going

by Brown’s book, Jeff Buckley was a knotty bundle of contradictions; a man who, even in his most lucid moments, could not attempt to truly know himself.

Most of us know the sketchy facts. Jeff Buckley, born in California, was famous for his five-octave spanning voice and the release of the near-perfect album, Grace, in 1994. Of course he’s just as famous for being the son of Tim Buckley, the ill-fated young crooner, who died in his twenties of an accidental overdose. Jeff is usually discussed as an echo of his father; set to reach musical heights with his album, Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunkard, he was killed in a drowning accident in the Mississippi.

But Brown supplies us with what we probably didn’t realise; Jeff ’s complete disjunction from his father. Having been the product of an accidental teenage pregnancy, he was abandoned by Tim and grew up on the other side of the States. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jeff sought to sever ties with his father’s memory, announcing complete apathy towards the man and his music.

Given Brown’s recognition of Jeff ’s antipathy towards his father, it’s quite ironic that he insists on paralleling the two men’s lives. The book constantly interweaves episodes of Tim’s life with Jeff ’s life story, making them into a larger master narrative.

Even the happiest moments of Jeff ’s life are squished into the “ill-fated life of a sensitive artist”.

Of course, depictions of Jeff ’s vulnerability are undoubtedly alluring. From his ‘haunted, wounded deer-look in his eyes’ to his gaunt cheekbones and thrift-shop clothes, Brown makes us want to believe in Jeff, the gentle bohemian. But even the most devoted Jeffites would have their doubts.

After all, Jeff managed to secure a one-million dollar deal with Columbia records and was famous for hiring and firing bandmates with a brutal efficiency. But seeing as we will never fully know the truth, we can clutch at this gorgeous, sepia-tinged legend. Jean Morley

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2008: a style odyssey Ana Kinsella evaluates the fashion highs and lows of the past twelve months and wonders how they’ll be remembered in years to come

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s the days get shorter, the nights get darker and another year draws to a close, it’s time to take a look back at the past year and try to determine how this year will be remembered in the annals of sartorial history.

The high fashion industry spent the year in the shadows of two major ethical debates: size zero and the role of black models. This, combined with an incoming recession which will hit the abundance of high-end brands, as well as up-and-coming designers, might lead one to think that there would be few risks taken in such a tense atmosphere.

But designers are often reluctant to play it safe – this is fashion as Art, remember - and so we saw feisty upstarts in London show eye-catching and sensational collections, like Gareth Pugh’s hard-edged and dark industrial designs, or the gaudy neon-meetsplaid mess of House of Holland. Down the line It’s likely that these designers will become quite representative of 2008’s catwalk stylings, overshadowing the pretty, elegant and above all wearable collections from the likes of young designers like Zac Posen and Phillip Lim. Established high-end fashion houses like Yves St Laurent and Balenciaga put out collections seeped in references to futurism whilst retaining the kind of simple, clean and flattering tailoring for which they have become revered. Referential ideas in a collection is high fashion’s favourite way to be cautious in a tumultuous market, and this was seen too in Chanel’s Autumn/Winter ‘08 collection, with Karl Lagerfeld’s continuing reinvention of Coco’s classic looks and motifs, using them to reflect modernday sensibilities and trends.

Gucci hedged its bets in its Autumn 2008 and Spring 2009 collections by appealing directly to the recession-proof, with the kind of showy, glossy, hippie-luxe dresses and bags that are so favoured by the jet-setting wives of Kensington financiers and Russian oligarchs.

Away from the catwalks, 2008 will be remembered as the year that style went to the streets – street style blogs exploded, resulting in random people on the streets taking the places of Hollywood actresses or pop stars as modern-day style icons.

Trends emerged not from clever celebrity red-carpet product placement but from the creative minds of art students in east London or teenagers in downtown LA, captured on blogs like theSartorialist.com or Facehunter. It’s because of this that we’ve seen trends as unexpected as 1990s revival bloom this year. Denim jackets, grungey plaid shirts, tube skirts and tight body-con dresses ruled the music festivals and clubs this summer, along with straw hats and the now-ubiquitous Ray-Bans. In terms of accessories, 2004’s boho chic got revamped

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and updated with a more modern edge in the form of over-the-knee stockings, headbands, statement necklaces and gladiator sandals.

Over the past few years, shops such as Penneys have been lauded for the ability of their products to be blended with high fashion and vintage accessories to create a unique look. 2008 saw the likes of American Apparel and Uniqlo take the place of Penneys at the forefront of hip, with their clean cuts, simple colours and good quality material used to form excellent foundations for

experimenting with edgy separates or accessories to create a look that stands out.

Other high street favourites like Topshop and H&M continue to push their own limitations and, in turn, our own as high-street consumers, with H&M releasing a new capsule line from bonkers Japanese radicals Commes des Garçons this month, while Topshop continue to pilfer almost scarily directly from the catwalks of Chanel and Chloe in print dresses and chiffony shapes.

The style icons of the year often represent what is considered cool by the average

culturally-aware young person, and this can be seen in the choices of girls on the street in 2008.

The likes of Alexa Chung, the girls of Gossip Girl, Pixie and Peaches Geldof, Kirsten Dunst, Lauren Conrad and, perennial favourites, the Olsen twins are frequently cited the girls that regular girls want to dress like. All of these girls mix a variety of different styles to look on trend and laidback at the same time.

However, a quick straw poll of my own male friends did little to shed light on a possible male style icon of the year. While names like Barack Obama, Daniel Craig, Casey Affleck and Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl all got bandied around, there was no unifying man whose style was admired by guys this year.

In terms of fashion in general, young men in this part of the world have grown more confident in choosing varying styles of jeans or hoodies, although outside of that there has been, predictably, little more experimentation. The trend for guys wearing super-skinny girls jeans has, thankfully, died, with a looser, slouchy straight-cut style gaining in popularity.

Menswear, like womenswear, has been adopting a 1990s slant, with plaid shirts and parkas heralding an end to the oversize hip-hop stylings – think huge white tees and baggy jeans - of the earlier years of this decade, and it will be interesting to see if this is a trend that will develop next year.

The 2000s will undoubtedly be remembered as a mash-up of different styles, and in 2008 that can be seen as the democratization of style, as high fashion has begun to leak down to the masses in a way never before seen. People are less afraid to push boundaries and to think outside the box – girls who shuddered at the thought of a leather biker jacket two years ago are now never seen without them.

However, the flipside of this is that we’ve seen massive missteps and faux pas that’ll be making us cringe at photographs in twenty years’ time.

Personally, I have definitely secondguessed myself when latching on to this year’s trends. Coloured skinny jeans? Headbands? Shoe-boots? Metallic leggings? 25 years down the line, will my children be pointing at pictures of me and saying “God, Mum, you look ridiculous!”.

While this is something to keep in mind when diving head-first into something you’ve only seen work on the pages of magazines or street style blogs, I think that ultimately these years will be remembered as an exciting, fun and (probably) just-a-littlebit-crazy era, and so to play it safe with what you wear would be a waste of these inspiring times.

25 November – 8 December, 2008

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The kids in America Gossip Girl is by no means just for ladies – boys could take some fashion tips too as Cillian O’Connor explains

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ot only is each and every one immensely wealthy, immeasurably privileged and well - go ahead guys, you too can admit it - inordinately handsome, they also sport astounding style. Suave and sophisticated’ couldn’t possibly suffice to describe the aesthetic of Gossip Girl trust-fund triumvirate: Dan (Penn Badgely), Nate (Chace Crawford) and Chuck (Ed Westwick). Initially acclaimed for the sartorial styling of its female leads’ ‘It Girl’ Serena (Blake Lively), ‘Queen Bee’ Blair (Leighton Meester) and ‘Li’l J’ Jenny (Taylor Momsen) the exceptionally successful TV show Gossip Girl is now considered an authority on menswear.

And rightfully so. This show - often referred to as The OC’s sexier, wealthier sister - has bagged the best stylists around and if you considered the guys from Mad Men sharp, then you’ve not seen anything yet. Chuck Bass, for example, well knows the difference between his Helmut Lang and Tom Ford. Devoting the vast majority of his waking hours to the sexual predation of the Upper East Side’s hottest girls, Bass is a busy man (when he’s not attempting to quell his insatiable desire he’s establishing Gentleman’s clubs) yet turns out immaculately, always.

His truly idiosyncratic style is composed of the bare basics - well-cut trousers and

I’ll swap ya

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K, so being the fashion editor and, let’s not lie, a law student, I occasionally feel the need to put on some airs and graces – the kind that would fit right in on The Devil Wears Prada/Amanda of Ugly Betty. Things that cause me to drop the cool, sophisticated, somewhat cynical and occasionally downright cold façade include (useful) free gifts with magazines I regularly buy anyway, MAC limited edition ranges, American Apparel’s unisex circular scarf and a swapshop in Dublin.

Now that the formalities are over with, can we get back to how excited I am?

I’ve already registered for my ticket at roughgempresents@gmail.com, I can’t wait to pay my €5 and raid my wardrobe for five items in good, clean, wearable condition. tn2

25 November – 8 December, 2008

I’m already imagining turning up at Powerscourt and having the lovely girls take my old stuff away and give me tokens for bright, shiny, new old stuff. There will be bartering and rummaging for the type of things you see on other people and wonder where does one buy things like that?

As if that’s not enough (!) the lovely people at roughgem are providing cakes and punch! There will be a make-up artist! Not to mention a DJ, but more importantly; a photo booth – to take photos of this excitement in action! (I am aware of my over-use of exclamation marks, but really, if you were looking at me right this second, you would know I’m actually toning it down.) There will be a stall stacked high with vintage and handmade clothing and accessories – and I have been solemnly promised that not one

blazers in neutral tones, the slightly ostentatious - a scarlet red morning coat and an ivory tux with ink-black piping, as well as the downright individual - an abundance of crazily patterned silk cravats and bow ties.

Camp, you say? Not in the least - well, a tad but the sheer number of ladies he beds may disprove any theories you’ve already formulated.

Then there’s “lonely boy” Dan, the token cynic who - in a vain attemp to provoke laughter - blabbers profusely, and supposedly wittily, on matters such as writer’s block and the advantages of the affluent as well as relentlessly brooding over the equally infuriating Serena.

However, his whining is marginally easier to ignore when he steps out - in true manabout-town style - in an array of razor-sharp suits in deep black and dapper waistcoatshirt combos. Dan typifies NY casual cool, often donning lightweight jumpers, plaid shirts and military-style jackets in earthy

hues. He may be a touch goofy and undeniably head-wrecking at times but admiring his smart choice of grungy, laid-back clothing makes the perpetual sarcasm and cynicismthat bit more bearable.

And finally, Nate. You may have heard of this one before - girlfriends, sisters, mothers even are often more than infatuated with this rich kid so reminiscent of the 90s boy band stereotype.

His usual dress, however, doesn’t exactly correlate: you’ll find no bombers or pudding-bowl cuts here. The Archibald really belongs in a Ralph Lauren advertisement.

In conservatively styled blazers, golf attire and flawless formalwear in - what could be deemed - ‘business-meeting’ blues he’s the epitome of Americana.

Yes, the characters can prove irksome but where else do you find the sufficient degree of preppy pomp blended so seamlessly with understated masculine elegance? Eh, not One Tree Hill anyway.

Patrice Murphy wandered down to last week’s swap shop in the Powerscourt Centre item on this stall shall cost more than a mere €10!

In case you all don’t know/are in denial, there have been a few rumours circulating that we’re in a credit crunch, a financial pickle, ie, the shit has hit the economic fan.

Also, it seems that we are, in fact, the generation of the future, and are supposed to be all “environmental”, “eco-friendly”, and generally “green”.

Combine this with the fact that apparently everywhere from Penneys to our beloved Topshop uses child labour, consider that Lindsay Lohan was using her popularity(?) for the greater good this summer - to promote Visa Swap Shop in Covent Garden - it seems that swap-shopping is not only unbelievably inexpensive, but guilt-free and ethical. And, clearly, all the

cool kids are doing it.

If you want an example of such cool kids, see bluebirdsaresonatural.wordpress.com; it’s the blog of the two lovely lovely ladies who masterminded and organised and single-handedly (excepting the hands of their many friends) the Dublin swapshop.

Fall a little bit in love with both Katie and Ailbhe and their musings on fashion, music, Dublin and occasionally even life in general.

And if you didn’t manage to make it to the swapshop, have a look on there on the third Saturday of every month – where the girls put a few items up for grabs on the website and all you have to do is get there first, claim it and find something to send to them in return.

Aren’t they nice?

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After many a high brow and pretentious exchange with a vegetarian friend about the relevant merits of living a life minus the flesh of our fellow creatures, I decided to eat ‘healthy’ for a change in a highly recommended purveyor of vegetarian food. Govindas is located at 4 Aungier Street and is owned and managed by a Hare Krishna devotee. The name Govinda means ‘protector of the cows’ to all you citizens of morondom out there. Guffaw!

Indeed vegetarianism is a natural outgrowth of the Hare Krishna philosophy of life, bluntly summarized as “friendliness to all living entities”. Dispense dear diners with any fancy notions of pigeon meat burgers, deep-fried panda spring rolls or ostrich egg soufflè. Throw off the cold, cynical, narrow mindedness of a meat eater and get some greens into you.

The sort of crowd that frequents Govindas are the standard ‘cool types’ that include students, bearded men, hippies, and guys that work in the Laser a few doors down. The layout is basic enough with uniform tables and chairs giving a very definite canteen feel about the place. Even with vulgar blue paint on one wall, religious iconography on another, it detracts little from the overall simple and pleasing aesthetics of the place.

The á la Carte menu lists the day’s offerings that include Moussaka, Veg ‘au’ Gratin, and Gauranga potatoes. I simply

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recommend the following: a bit of everything, ideally on the same small plate.

There is something perversely satisfying about piling food high. Arming yourself with only a fork to get it in you as you cling desperately to the last screed of human dignity, it’s satisfying to know that it’s the cheapest main course option at €6.95.

Water is offered free of charge with every serving. Score! For those to whom water isn’t fancy enough, Govindas also has a rather nice selection of yogurt smoothies if liquidation and intermingling of yogurt and fruit is your bag.

All dishes are caffeine, garlic and mushroom free, stamping out any chance of hyper-activity, passion and ignorance. Take that mushrooms! Zany dietary injunctions aside, each recipe is simple in its parts and presentation but big on taste.

There is a positive effusion of flavour garnered from traditional eastern and western ingredients that juxtapose each other to create dishes that leave a lasting satisfaction. If you’re intent on subjecting your body to more masochistic punishment, ask the friendly lady behind the counter to lob some Samosas (fried pastries with spicy pea filling) into the behemoth of culinary delights. Govindas serves simple and tasty vegetarian food at reasonable prices, plus its quick service makes it an ideal lunchtime spot for those students and hippies with very busy lives. Conor Henry

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Fast becoming one of the hottest spots in Dublin, L’Gueuleton is the restaurant à la mode. Certainly, it’s up there with the best, and what makes it so superior is that unlike the majority of Dublin’s most established eateries, it doesn’t try: it is a French restaurant that serves simple, well executed dishes inspired by provençal cuisine. It is its simplicity that makes it so glorious - from the décor to the dishes; it never tries to be too clever, and accordingly the focus is on the most important part: the gueuleton (nosh up), which is by all means exceptional.

Décor-wise, it is what you could call bistro-chic. The red and white stripped awning outside give it that French feel, as do the blackboard menus and closely set wooden tables and chairs. For dinner, low lighting and tea lamps scattered among the tables set the mood.

Walking past you might not even notice that such an enterprise existed if it wasn’t for the enormous queue snaking around the block. This is because L’Gueuleton employs a no booking policy, meaning that in order to get a table you have to come at 6 o’clock and put your name and number on a list with your preferred time of dining.

Then, depending on when the tables become free, you get a call. Invariably, this means that you cannot ensure exactly what time you will get a table, but it does mean that if you queue early enough you will always get one. And it is definitely worth the wait.

The menu boasts a varied selection of both rustic and more polished French dishes, teamed with a well chosen, if rather pricey, wine list. To start, I chose French onion soup, a classic, but definitely not one for a first date, or indeed, a second, third, or thirtieth. In fact, not even marriage could really excuse what happens once that spoon unknowingly delves into the bowl of sweet oniony delight, discovers a plateau of gruyere-soaked crouton and naively tries to transfer it to one’s mouth. There is no fathomable way to bring spoon to mouth without cheese being strung around everything and everybody in reaching distance. (In fact, the only way to maintain that your fellow diner does

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not desert you for a less embarrassing dining companion is if they turn away whilst you attempt to strategically stuff the entire stringy content of your bowl in one greedy mouthful.) Or you could opt for the warm wood pigeon salad with poached pears and toasted almonds- a far more sociable, and equally delicious choice. Both starters were without fault, the former big enough to have just as a main whereas the latter was a perfect and subtle introduction into our delectable dinner.

For the main course, I chose steak and chips. Already a match made in heaven, but once it is teamed with a béarnaise sauce and caramelised onion relish, it transcends to a whole other level. Otherworldly you might say, and arguably the best steak and chips this side of Paris. We also had a grilled hake fillet with pinto beans, chorizo and baby spinach which was by all means a success- although the chorizo slightly overpowered the delicateness of the fish, which was cooked to perfection. The beans were the perfect accompaniment, helping to balance the dish and exonerate any real complaints. To drink, we chose a Beaujolais blanc to start that was light, dry and exceptionally good, followed by a bottle of Simon Joseph, a more tannic carignan from Languedoc.

The dessert menu is relatively short, but by all means complete. Feeling rather rotund by this point, we went for what seemed like the lightest option- the crème caramel with biscotti and apricot vodka compote. The biscotti verge on life-changing thanks to the combination of cherries, grapes and pistachio nuts, whereas the crème caramel was good but needed to be a tad sweeter.

On the whole, I can not really fault a single thing- the service was efficient and the food consistently excellent. And due to popular demand, the restaurant has now doubled in size, ensuring that there will always be space to indulge any insatiable appetites. Furthermore, the newly established bar next door, rather conspicuously called “the bar with no name”, is quite possibly the best bar in Dublin with stripped wooden floors dotted with sofas. Why go anywhere else?

Jo Monk

11 November – 24 November, 2008

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Film reviews

Barry Levinson

starring

Robert DeNiro, Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci

running time

104 minutes

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11 November – 24 November, 2008

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There seems to be a trend in Hollywood at the minute for introspective films, taking a look at the people behind the industry. But while Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder took comic potshots at those in his own line of work, there is a gut-level sadness to What Just Happened that all the characters feel. Watch hard enough and you feel it too. Some of the characters cry, but most of them don’t. It’s the wise ones who cry.

Robert De Niro plays Ben, a struggling Hollywood producer whose new movie, it is known with terrifying certainty, is about to bomb.

The director is Jeremy Brunel (Michael Wincott), who has in effect made a gangster film to make up for that film Guy Ritchie has always promised us, a lost masterpiece. Brunel is a Cockney druggie moviemaker, and the fact that his film is scheduled to fail is one of the few comforting realities in this story.

A preview audience walks out in disgust at Brunel’s film, in which Sean Penn and his dog are brutally shot. Of course, Brunel’s film, in itself, is a piece of ineffectual hijinks - the shooting bits are supposed to be “the good bits.” But its relation to What Just Happened is pretty artful; it’s not just a McGuffin to get the story rolling.

It is said that for true tragedy you need both pity and terror. Between the two of

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them you get catharsis, which while harrowing, offers an opening for future events.

Well, Brunel’s film is all terror, and the rest of What Just Happened is all pity. It’s as if things like the gangster film are needed to provide real jolts of pure sensation in the sad world of What Just Happened, where in fact nothing – or at least nothing truly cathartic - happens.

Instead Ben bombs around Los Angeles conducting Hollywood business from his jeep, dropping the kids off to school, and getting in tangles with his ex-wife and soon-to-be-ex-wife. We see all the accoutrements of contemporary American and European upper-middle-class life; the angular “modern” mahogany furniture, the dinky little personal coffee machine in the morning, and so on. Ben argues in a foolish sentimental way about his current wife’s re-upholstery of a chair. It becomes a standard contemporary “eye-catching” red.

It’s partly because of all this junk that there can be no real terror; life goes on comfortably enough despite Hollywood squabbles and family troubles.

Stylistically, the film attains to a bleached-out elegance, but aspires to the beauty of David Lynch’s view of Los Angeles in Mulholland Drive, all lights at night and grand highways. But there is none of the weirdness that genuinely changes

things in Lynch’s films.

There is, though, a moment of lucky sublimity at one point of the film. Ben is bombing along in the jeep again. And Nina Simone’s lovely “Mr Bojangles” comes on.

This is a real opening – a clear demonstration of the divide between the spiritual poverty of Ben’s everyday struggles and something better. One of the people at the preview of Brunel’s film patronisingly says the film’s music was great. But I don’t mean it as a backhanded compliment when I say that this piece of music was the best thing in What Just Happened.

It reminded me of an even better moment in The Shawshank Redemption when a recording of a duet from The Marriage of Figaro is played by Tim Robbins. Morgan Freeman, whose commentary we hear, says he doesn’t know what the women are singing about, and perhaps it’s better that he doesn’t know, but that all the prisoners listening there were, for a brief moment, free.

As that moment shows, the standard notion about artistic beauty being a false escape from the constraints of reality isn’t the full story. The sadness of What Just Happened is that the music takes up just a brief few moments on the road. The great thing in The Shawshank Redemption is that the moment of beauty is related to some-

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thing else, the beyond that Robbins and Freeman reach at the end of the film.

The other points of happiness in this film are equally chancy, but within the realm of normal Hollywood business.

Brunel re-cuts the film so that it has an inoffensive ending. And everybody is over the moon. It turns out to be dependent on Brunel’s taking massive amounts of a drug called Placidium. But everybody’s still over the moon. (It’s a nice name, but not as good as Don DeLillo’s comment that psychiatric drugs are named after the gods of science fiction: Seroxat, Zyprexa…)

Bruce Willis, playing “himself,” refuses to cut off his beard for a new role, protesting: “I’m not cutting off my beard! What about my artistic integrity!” There’s other good stuff like this, as good as the producer John Self in Martin Amis’s Money explaining to Spunk Davis why his name might not go down so well in England. (“It’d be okay if you were working with an English actor called, I don’t know, Jizz Jenkins or something…”).

There is lots of good stuff in this smoothly done film, but the problem is that it doesn’t centre around an event, happy or disastrous, that shapes things to come. It would be better called (along with most ordinary life), Stuff That Happened. Rory O’Connor

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Ever since the ultra-realist approach of Saving Private Ryan, movies about war have run the risk of presenting such graphic images that they de-sensitize their audience, diminishing their impact. Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir avoids this trap by telling the true-story of the director’s experience of the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war through animation.

Using this device, the unique documentary explores the fragile nature of our memory, and seeks to provide an honest account of the Israeli troop’s involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which occurred shortly after the fall of Beirut.

At the beginning of the film Folman is talking with an old friend in a bar about a recurring dream his friend keeps having, tied to his memories of the war. The conversation sparks an interest in the filmmaker to explore why he cannot remember much of his own wartime experience, and so he sets off on a trip to interview old comrades and piece together his past.

Part of what makes Waltz With Bashir so effective is that, because these people and events are real, there is no possibility of the archetypal characters often present in war movies. That is not to say the figures interviewed are unrecognisable, as the movie presents the psychology of young men with a rare depth and honesty. The potent mix of sexual desire, boyish fears and the pressure to prove one’s masculinity explains the actions of the young men, while also showing their lack of understanding towards the conflict. They play air guitar with their

Fernando Meirelles

starring

Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover

running time

120 minutes

rifles and sing songs of their exploits, while at all times the threat of death and destruction hangs over them.

Part of the credit for achieving this complexity must go to art director and illustrator David Polonsky, who creates a visually arresting world that pulls you into the story. The animation is on a par with films such as A Scanner Darkly and Persepolis, an impressive achievement given the lack of any source material to work from. The beauty and detail of the images are often enough to keep you entertained, in particular the flare-lit flashback sequence that recurs throughout the film and is instrumental in Folman’s desire to remember the past.

Indeed at some points the images are a little too stunning and intellectually stimulating, neglecting the emotions involved. This could be because it iss not about the conflict itself, but the psychological consequences that traumatic events have on us. It wouldn’t suit the project of the film to try and tug on emotional heartstrings, as the focus here is on our memory, not on objective truth or any political standpoint.

In fact, just at the point where there is a risk of becoming numb to the rich imagery on display, the film switches to real footage of the massacre, underlining the seriousness of the subject matter. This change of mediums also provides a resolution to the film, subtly demonstrating that both the soldier and filmmaker in Ari Folman have come to terms with the massacre. This personal progress provides the perfect ending to a truly engaging work of cinema. Patrick Gray

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Blindness

There should be a rule against film adaptations of great literary works.

They never seem to live up to expectations. Surely having such source material should yield likewise quality films, yet this is rarely the case. In 1974, with a screenplay penned by Francis Ford Coppola, The Great Gatsby was brought to the big screen with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, and Bruce Dern as the lead actors. Sounds good on paper, but the final product, while not a bad film, failed in comparison to the classic novel.

The trend in filmmaking today seems to be the desire to continually look backwards. Half the movies made nowadays are remakes, sequels, or book adaptations. Outside of a few interesting directors, mainstream cinema seems to be stuck in a maelstrom of mediocrity with no end in sight. With Blindness, Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener) adapts Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago’s 1995 novel of the same name and the resulting product, like 1974’s The Great Gatsby, is not a bad film, but rather bland and lacklustre when compared to the original text.

The opening of the film is oddly presented through gross overacting as we are introduced to a mysterious epidemic, a “white blindness”, which is passed through contact with infected individuals. As you can imagine, the few cases of blindness quickly become a total outbreak before the government reacts by containing all infected persons in an abandoned mental institution. The film focuses on the unnamed “Doctor” (Mark Ruffalo), who loses sight after

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examining a contaminated patient, and his wife (Julianne Moore), who, for an unexplained reason, is immune to the epidemic. They are the first to be transported to the containment area, and as the film spends most of its time inside the institution, we witness the deterioration of morality and civilisation as more infected individuals arrive, with the loss of sight correlating to a loss of identity. A rivalry within the institution is sparked by the violent actions of the Ward Three inmates (led by Gael Garcia Bernal), who, after stealing all the food, demands jewellery and women from the other wards. This back and forth between good and bad continues turgidly until it is revealed that the gates to the outside are open. The Doctor, his wife, and a small group of others make their way through the now apocalyptic city until reaching their house, where, after a few days, one man – the first to lose his sight – regains it, thus suggesting hope for the rest.

Blindness wants to be thought provoking, but how can it be when the film doesn’t ask the audience any questions?

All the film really does is make the viewer ask when it will be over. Other than that, the film plods along and loses the quality that made Saramago’s novel brilliant. Blindness feels much longer than its two-hour running time suggests. Perhaps this is because of the plot’s predictability: from almost the first scene you can anticipate what is to come. And, if this can be any sort of consolation to the viewer, you will most likely be right with your guesses. Christopher Kelly

11 November – 24 November, 2008

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CD Reviews Los Campesinos!

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We are beautiful, we are doomed

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Wichita Recordings

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11 November – 24 November, 2008

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Airbourne. Like Metallica but not successful. This heavy rock band, whose sound is cited on Wikipedia as “pub rock”, seem to have carefully constructed themselves in Metallica’s image. The band’s logo is suspiciously Metallicalike, as is their appearance and music.

It seems impossible to envisage how anyone but sweaty, paunchy, middleaged men who wanted to be rock stars back in the 1980’s could ever listen to this music. I am presumably one of the few people on this planet who has had the aural misfortune to listen to Runnin’ Wild in its entirety. Every track sounds exactly the same, they are the same tone, usually in the same key, use the same monotonous riffs and all feature mindless and repetitive drum-bashing.

The only marginally entertaining feature of this album are the lyrics, and by extension, the song titles. They veer from the unintentionally ironic: “Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast”, to the inappropriately abbreviated: “What’s Eatin’ You” to my favourite: “Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women”. If a mem-

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crash-bang-wallop of brutalised bass and guitar. It’s about as far a cry from ‘Death To Los Campesinos!’ as you can get, a song whose excessive chirpiness made me concur oh so loudly with its title. They don’t sacrifice melody entirely, though. ‘Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time’ is all sumptuous drifts of strings, ambient effects and perfectlychosen piano notes. It’s a moment so grown-up musically that you could be listening to Sparklehorse. But the shrill, the manic and the chaotic is what Los Campesinos! are all about on this LP. Time-signatures fight amongst themselves, harmonies jabber like seagulls, and the lyrical punchline (‘Your parents/Your disgusting parents’) are all worthy of The Young Knives at their most acerbic. Closer ‘All Your Kayfabe Friends’ disrupts the tone of the album by trying to revisit the happier territory of their debut, but We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is too assured a follow-up for this to ruin proceedings. Given that the sessions that spawned this LP were meant to be for B-sides, album number three should be a real killer. And, at the rate they’re going, it’ll probably come out next week. Tim Smyth

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Every bit as hyperactive as their fondness for shouting and glockenspielbashing would suggest, the Cardiff septet lash back with a second LP a mere eight months after their debut.

But if Hold On Now, Youngster… was all Enid Blyton-y frolics (‘Seven Get Overexcited In The Studio’), then this one is more like ‘Seven Ease to Lead Singer’s Love-Related Lamentations’. If that was all there was to it, though, Gareth Los Campesinos! might just be a betterfringed Brian Molko. A first glance seems to bear that out: songs have titles like ‘Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1’, and the album’s opening couplet runs ‘I think it’s fair to say I chose hopelessness/And inflicted it on the rest of us’. But in fact, he has become an altogether more Hamlety and interesting character over the last few months. In place of tales of mischief is a disturbing fixation on blood, vomit and the revolting bodiliness of being.

Musically, too, things have gotten far more compelling. They’ve developed a new love of rupturing the sort of smooth, bright textures they were so fond of on their debut. ‘Ways To Make It Through The Wall’ opens with a

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ber of Airbourne wanted to pay for sex, I would imagine that he would find it impossible to get someone to sleep with him for less than the price of a cheap bottle of wine. This logic seems beyond Airbourne, who energetically scream out this phrase over and over again, lost in the dream of rock ‘n’ roll excess that died out circa 1986 and survives today solely in the form of Steve Coogan’s Saxondale box set.

After listening to the entire of Runnin’ Wild, the average listener might have had enough torture to content themselves. But Airbourne are evidently concerned that 34.40 minutes of unoriginal heavy metal may not be enough, so they include a special bonus DVD as well.

Seeing as well as hearing is even worse.

Stick to the CD if you must at all. This is the sort of music that they must use for torture in Guantanemo Bay. It is mindless, outdated and utterly unoriginal. It is rare to describe an album as torturous, but if ever there was one, this is it. If you like this, there is something seriously wrong with you. Catriona Gray

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