Category: Review Page 7 of 8

This book is the second part of a projected trilogy by Drummond (also known as King Boy D of The KLF) and Manning (better known as Zodiac Mindwarp of the band Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction). The first book, ‘Bad Wisdom’, was published in 1996 or so.

Relevant flashback: as I was travelling on the tube one Friday morning in 1996 or so, I was reading ‘Bad Wisdom’. An Australian woman asked me what I was reading, and if it was any good. My reply was that it was kind of a travel book, but written by two authors, and one of them was totally unreliable, so you didn’t know how much to believe. This was true, but the reality of the situation was that the woman was friendly and pretty, and I didn’t want to alienate her by telling her the full truth, which is that Bad Wisdom was without a doubt one of the most insane and filthy books I’d ever read in my life.

And that’s the case with the follow-up too; as Drummond and Manning write of their journey up the Congo to perform a Punch and Judy show for the President in an attempt to win back their souls from the Devil (see, told you it was mad), pretty much every taboo is on show: racism, sexism, murder, homophobia, rape, cannibalism, paedophilia, and just about every scatological variation you could think of.

The two authors alternate their sections, though even that’s questionable, as it becomes clear partway through that Manning’s added fictionalised events under Drummond’s name. Drummond, on the whole, tries to give a linear version of events – or at least as linear as can be, given that we’re possibly dealing with a journey which may not have taken place in anything like the form depicted – whilst Manning’s sections are (at least I hope) utter fiction: depicting himself as a serial killer in league with a sexually depraved murderous BBC international reporter, sexual predator and alcoholic, Manning’s sections are at first fairly shocking, and then after a while amusing in so far as he does seem able to keep coming up with scenarios which are more and more designed to shock. It’s pretty obvious that he’s doing it for effect – though quite what effect he’s hoping to achieve, I’m at a bit of a loss to ascertain – and there’s a funny section where Drummond asks the reader why they think Manning writes the stuff he does. It almost suggests a degree of despair at his co-writer, as the gross imagery does tend to overwhelm the insights which lurk within Drummond’s sections.

The book’s about twice the length of its predecessor, and Drummond admits on the penultimate page that a reader would need to be pretty dedicated to have made it that far, and he’s not wrong, really; it feels a bit like a wade in every conceivable kind of filth, so it might be seen as something of an endurance test, but having finished it, I feel it was worthwhile, though I can’t quite tell you why. Whether it’s merely because I feel vaguely as if I’ve read something which could legitimately be classified as ‘obscene’, and have therefore put one over on ‘the man’, or whether I’ve just become so inured to the horror on show in the book and have effectively made myself slightly less sensitised, I couldn’t really say. But it felt worth reading, and I suspect that if the third volume ever sees print (I have some doubts – the first volume was published by Penguin, and the second by the smaller Creation Books, apparently on the grounds that the racism on display, however feigned, put Penguin off), I’ll be back to read that.

Despite some concern about what new obscenities Manning will once again commit to the page, and how much (or how little) they might startle me.

This film was written and directed by Terence Malick, who I understand was much-lauded for the film The Thin Red Line, but as I haven’t seen it, that’s just a point of reference and not any kind of comparison, as I did not like New World at all, for a variety of reasons.

Put simply, the film tells the story of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, who, as the words of the song ‘Fever’ tell us, had a very mad affair. Except in this film, they don’t really, because the pivotal love story utterly failed to convince me – Colin Farrell inevitably brings an Irish accent to the part, but little else, playing Smith as a doe-eyed simpleton whose wooing of a member of a complex and evolved tribe appears mainly to have been accomplished by flicking of leaves and water at her. Smooth.

The film features voice-overs from the characters at various points, apparently designed to inject some feeling of depth into their relationship, but it’s a simplistic, Hallmark-card kind of romance, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was an attempt to salvage the film in the edit; I can all too easily imagine the film-maker’s dismay on realising that what’s meant to be a compelling and believable love story consists mainly of people staring at each other with all the emotional depth of a Maestro transaction, and thus bringing the cast back in to add some voice-overs.

I’m guessing at that, but the film just didn’t work for me in other ways too; the pacing was askew – loads of shots of the happy couple making dopey eyes at each other, and then when the British send more settlers, we’re informed in a voice-over that ‘the British returned in force and soon won the battle’ (I paraphrase), which seems a pretty direct contravention of the old ‘show, don’t tell’ maxim about film-making. One of the people I saw it with remarked that ‘he does interesting things with pacing’ but I think that the example I just gave was more an example of budgetary constraints.

It was a couple of hours long, but felt a lot longer to me; Christopher Plummer and Christian Bale are kind of watchable in it, but it feels as if they’re trying their best with a bad script (and some of the dialogue is very wonky indeed, and oddly hard to understand sometimes on an audibility level), and so I really can’t recommend it at all – the most interesting elements were the lengthy shots of the natural world (but nature documentaries do that much better), and the music, which I believe was by James Newton Howard, though it was frequently reminiscent of Wagner – to my untrained ear, parts of Gotterdammerung, though I could be wrong.

Anyway, I didn’t enjoy it at all. You might, but if you watch it and don’t like it, hey, I warned ya.

Whilst one might be sceptical about the praisesome quote on the front being derived from the Observer newspaper, and the author of this biography being the literary editor of that same newspaper, it has to be said that this is a very good biography.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve only discovered Wodehouse in the last few years, perhaps put off by the setting of the majority of his stories – as with Jane Austen’s work, I rather suspected that Wodehouse’s fans were partly taken by the setting, a setting which (as with Austen) I fear never truly existed. But I was very wrong indeed – it’s the tightness of the plots, the sharpness of the dialogue and the sheer before-its-timeness of Wodehouse that makes it so loved; he seems to have written pretty much every sitcom scenario decades before the sitcom was invented – mistaken identities, people being drunk at inappropriate times, lovers who are too timid to say anything about it, people under financial pressure being in the thrall of capricious bosses or relatives, innocent remarks being misunderstood, minor events spiralling out of control, and so on. The man wrote them all, and with a lightness of touch as to make them seem effortless.

But as McCrum’s book makes clear, it wasn’t effortless – or, at least, not initially – and one of the key factors behind Wodehouse’s success appears to have been how prolific he was (having discovered the greatness of his work, I find myself daunted by the sheer number of books he wrote, though let’s face it, this is one of the better things to be daunted by in life).McCrum explains the circumstances in which Wodehouse wrote his many works, and the ups and downs of his life, though the man himself appears to have been as generally unflappable as one of his most famous creations, and to have weathered his personal storms with the same degree of calm.

One of the biggest elements of the biography – and of Wodehouse’s life – is that of the broadcasts which Wodehouse made whilst interned during World War II. McCrum seems convinced that this was a combination of naïveté and poor judgment on Wodehouse’s part, the act of a man determined to make the best of, and if possible find humour in, even the worst of situations. It wasn’t seen this way at the time, though, and McCrum spends a large amount of time both detailing the events themselves and the public reaction, fairly clearly from an apologist stance; this wasn’t a failing as far as I could see, and he makes a good case, but if anything he dwells on this subject so much and provides so much evidence that I felt he may have been ‘defending too much’, as it were, and it certainly went beyond the stage where I needed any more convincing. However, I’m sure there are many people whose feelings towards Wodehouse are quite different from mine, and the sheer weight of evidence presented in this book may well be enough to change a few minds, which is no doubt what McCrum was aiming for.

Overall, a very readable, and interesting, portrait of a man whose effect on humour and comedy – and of course literature generally – should not be underestimated. Most definitely recommended.

Incredibly, this is the first football match I’ve ever attended. I know, I know, you’re wondering how someone who’s done so many remarkable things in his life can have got into his fourth decade on the planet without attending a football match. If pressed, I’d probably say it was because I moved to Sheffield when I was 10, whereupon if asked ‘which team?’ you stood a 1 in 2 chance of getting it wrong, and thus receiving abuse. But there may be other reasons.

Anyway, that’s the background nonsense: what of the experience? Well, it was at West Ham’s home ground, wonderfully close to my penthouse flat, and my attendance was kindly arranged by friends who felt it was appalling I live where I do and hadn’t seen West Ham play, so I doff my imaginary claret and blue bobble hat in thanks to Chris and Sarah.

If, like me, your idea of football supporters is predominantly drawn from news coverage, Robert Carlyle’s performance in ‘Cracker’, and Nick Hornby’s ‘Fever Pitch’, you’d get the idea that the Dr Martens Stand at Upton Park would be a sea of waving scarves, clenched teeth and curled fists, all lovingly drizzled in testosterone and rage. Not the case at all, I’m pleased to report – people were welcoming and shook my hand as I was introduced round, and even at the more tense moments of the game there was perspective; someone to one side of me suggested that one of the Birmingham players was one of the (PG version here) less savoury persons on the planet, and without hesitation someone to the other side of me suggested that honour instead belonged to an internationally-known terrorist, and the first chap cheerfully conceded the point.

As with many subjects, I don’t know much about football, but interestingly after about ten minutes, I found commentatoresque phrases springing to my mind, and then coming out of my mouth (though that lack of filter is not, in itself, unusual for me); terms like ‘he didn’t take the bounce off that ball’, ‘good hands’ and ‘looks a bit lively there’ were amongst the turns of phrase which I used. Now, I have no idea about the accuracy or appropriateness of these comments, but I wasn’t bothered, and I certainly didn’t feel the need to rein myself in.

West Ham had a 1-0 lead at half-time, and there was a brief intermission during which we were treated to a gospel rendition of ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ (the kids were trying hard, but it turned out to be as ropey an idea in practice as I felt it was in theory), and after that the Hammerettes, a group of young ladies wearing only slightly more in the way of fabric than the average Andrex puppy, danced for us. I know about as much about dancing as I do about football, really, so I couldn’t tell you if it was good or bad on a technical level, though it must say something about my advancing years that my main thought was ‘dear me, they must be cold dressed like that’.

The second half saw West Ham extend their lead to 3-0, despite some refereeing decisions which certainly went down badly with the people around me, but as the end approached, both teams seemed less into it and there was a bit of a feeling that they were both marking time until the end of the match. Which eventually came, and the West Ham fans went home happy, if perhaps slightly disappointed that the game had tailed off a bit – many had started to leave at around the 40 minute mark in the second half, presumably feeling the win was pretty much assured.

But I enjoyed myself, and the feeling that I’ve often had when I see bits of matches on TV – that it’s 90 minutes of which only 5 or so prove to be interesting – doesn’t prove to be true when you’re actually there. And the sense of community was enjoyable too – I’ve often thought that one of the great things about standing atop a mountain, or gazing out to sea or up at a night sky that’s painted with stars, is that sense of being reminded that you’re part of something larger, small and yet part of that greater entity. I think there’s something of that (in a social sense) in being a member of a football crowd, and I think I can see now why it appeals to so many people.

As ever, then, a new experience proved well worth doing, and if I have any regret at all about last night, it’s simply that I didn’t get the opportunity – or didn’t make the opportunity – to watch a football match much earlier in my life, as I now feel that I understand something which I’d previously been a bit too content to be rather dismissive of.

Yes, yes, I know, this has been out for decades, how can John have lived so long and not seen it ? Well, I think it’s due to a variety of factors, such as the length (it’s nearly three hours), the whole mythos surrounding it (it’s so hyped I felt I was better off not watching it for fear of being disappointed), and one main over-riding factor: I don’t really like gangster films.

It may be because I have a childish and simplified view of the way the audience should identify with the main character, but I rarely feel comfortable when watching films where I’m asked to emotionally invest in characters who are criminals, murderers, or gangsters. I don’t mind if the protagonists are troubled or unsure if they’re doing the right thing or have shades of darkness about them, but fundamentally I want them to be decent and well-meaning. Gangster films are rarely as pleasant as this, and so I tend not to bother watching them as I find myself being uninvolved: “Oh, so Fat Louie’s cutting off Big Tony’s heroin business in Chinatown? Well, aren’t they both drug dealers? Remind me why I should side with one over the other again, will you?”

But a friend lent me the film, so I gave it a go.

And I quite enjoyed it. Granted, it’s rather overshadowed by the fact that parts of it are now pop-cultural currency – the horse’s head, the puffed-out jowls, and some of the dialogue – but I thought it was a pretty decent film. It’s oddly paced, though – the first third or so is all hats and guns and talk of disrespect, and then when Michael legs it to Sicily it looks like a european arthouse film for a while, and then we’re back in the USA for the end again. This last bit didn’t hold my attention as much as the other sections, though this may well be for the reasons mentioned above, as we gradually see Michael becoming his father – if not surpassing his father in terms of scheming and double-crossing. Which is unlikely to be my cup of tea.

But it’s well directed and written, no question about it; the powerful opening scene comes back into play later in the film, I liked the way that Brando’s offscreen for much of the film but nonetheless looms over proceedings, the talk of family and respect was done in a way that seemed convincing, and the violence was suitably unpleasant. And the cast was an ongoing case of ‘wow, didn’t realise THEY were in this too’ for me, as well as providing solid performances.

So, a good film, and possibly a great gangster film, but to me that’s kind of like a ‘great western’ – it’s just not a genre I have a particular interest in – and I might even watch the first sequel (general consensus tends to be that the third one is to be missed at all costs). And who knows ? I might even do so before I’m 50.

I’ve enjoyed O’Farrell’s previous novels and appearances on various TV shows (haven’t read any of his non-fiction), and so thought this might be a fun read. And indeed it was.

The book is told from the perspective of Alice, a rather harassed suburban mother who’s so concerned to make sure her daughter gets into an ultra-competitive school that she and her husband decide to take the entrance exam for her. Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of a dodgy plot premise, but really it’s all just a hook for some very astute satire of modern parenting – the general social background and the specifics, such as the unspoken competition between parents.

O’Farrell’s writing style is very straightforward and likeable, and the book zips along well. I’m no judge of these things really, but I think he does a pretty good job of writing from a female point of view without any patronising or obvious stuff slipping in. Granted, there are little moments where an idea is expanded upon in the way a stand- up comedian might extrapolate, but as these are frequently funny, this is forgivable.

O’Farrell also does a pretty decent job of making Alice an essentially sympathetic character, which is no mean feat as she’s often acting in a frankly unhinged or shameless fashion. In all honesty, as more of my friends have kids and I see them justifying their own neurotic behaviour by pretending it’s actually out of concern for their children, I can see how the Alice character rings true (if that observation seems unkind, just ignore it – I’m just jealous, obviously, my biological clock’s ticking and all that).

The book’s currently out in hardback (once again, I say hurrah for my local library), but I’d imagine that it’ll be out in paperback in a few months. Certainly worth a look if you want to read some light modern fiction, but want more of a satirical edge to it.

(Caution: may contain spoilers)

I often feel that Jodie Foster ends up in films which aren’t really worthy of her – as if, as for Denzel Washington, there just aren’t enough decent scripts being offered as possible projects. And so ho-hum ones end up getting accepted for whatever reason.

Which brings me to Flightplan. A bit of an airborne version of Panic Room (mother and daughter are in peril in an enclosed environment), this really is a curate’s egg of a film. The first third is interesting, with civil engineer Kyle Pratt (Foster) and her daughter boarding a flight from Berlin to the USA, with the coffin containing her recently-deceased husband in the hold. This section of the film is quite watchable, as there are various fades in and out as we see Pratt reeling from her husband’s death, and there’s a quite well-established sense of uncertainty as to exactly what’s real.

Onboard the plane, things take a strange twist when the daughter vanishes while her mother’s sleeping, and yet no-one on the plane seems to have seen her at all, with the evidence suggesting she was never on board. Pratt’s frantic attempts to search the plane are met with increasing disbelief, including a frankly rather odd performance from an onboard therapist who tries to convince Pratt that she’s delusional – I say it’s odd because it looks like every therapy cliché you could possibly think of; glasses removed thoughtfully, calming voice, that kind of thing.

As you’ll probably have guessed, it’s all a huge plot (though writing this a day or two later, I forget exactly why they needed to abduct the daughter to go through with it), and the revelation that this is so moves us into the second bit of the film, with a frankly terrible gearchange; almost every scene up until this point has featured or revolved around Pratt, as she acts as our ‘viewpoint character’, but at this stage one of the other characters walks away from Pratt, the camera follows, and the music takes on a menacing tone. This, you know, is the film’s baddie, and the way in which this is revealed is a real mis-step. As is the expository dialogue between the conspirators, which is often on the lines of “You know the plan, we’ve been through this a thousand times…” and then they tell each other things they already know, purely for the benefit of the audience’s understanding.

And the third bit of the film is when Pratt realises what’s going on, and starts to fight back; at least this is semi-foreshadowed in her allotted job, as she needs to know where she can run around and hide. This last portion of the film is really at odds with the slow opening sequences, as if the interesting direction has been jetissoned in favour of a more straightforward action film approach. Fine in itself, but it makes the film feel like a patchwork, which means the joins are going to be visible…

The performances are perfectly adequate – Foster does what she can with some thin material, and Sean Bean as the captain is pretty decent, though I’m increasingly thinking he and Sean Pertwee are one and the same person – but after the attention-holding opening section, the premise needs to be explained and resolved, and it all feels like an inevitable slide towards the end titles, with some chasing and explosions on the way, and one or two horribly cheesey lines en route. And I’ve mentioned the therapist bit, which really is misjudged.

Flightplan’s the kind of film you could rent and think ‘that was okay’, or you might even catch it on TV, in which case you’ll probably be drawn in by the opening third or so, and then stick around to see how it pays off as you’ve watched that far.But I can’t really suggest you bother with a trip to the cinema to see it. I paid half price for my ticket, but I still felt vaguely ripped off, which probably gives you an idea of how lukewarm my reaction is.

Yes, that’s right, I was out seeing live music last night – a school night, no less – while you were just sitting around at home. Envy me? Of course you do.

Anyway, full disclosure up front: Ian, the lead singer of Kyro, is a friend of mine, and an all-round good sort, but thankfully he – and the rest of the band – are very good indeed, so this review doesn’t need to be overshadowed by that personal connection.

It’s quite hard to categorise Kyro’s style of music – it’s rock with a pop aspect; the melodies are strong and almost feel somehow familiar (in the best way), and that reminded me at first listen of Teenage Fanclub, though the newer songs they played last night (Killer, You Say and Rockstar) had a harder rock edge to them, and put me more in mind of of the Foo Fighters. Which is definitely a good thing. Rockstar, in particular, has a number of really good guitar riffs which build up to a great rock-y climax.

They played about six songs in total, and the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. Damned fine show.

If there’s any justice, Kyro will get a goodly amount of success and recognition, as they’re seriously talented and eminently listenable – in fact, you can hear for yourself by logging onto Napster, where tracks from ‘The Kyro EP’ are available to download. I think there’s talk of them being available on iTunes soon (if they’re not already) too. They also have a webpage at http://www.kyromusic.com/, where the pictures are of a far higher quality than the one hovering above and left of these words.

Summary: Kyro rock. Good stuff. Go listen.

Ellis, author of American Psycho, veers into the metafictional and post-modernist realm, in this purportedly true story of the novelist Bret Easton Ellis finding himself and his family facing a variety of seemingly supernatural and formerly-fictional threats. The writer seems to be aiming for the ‘peril in the suburban home’ angle here, with interesting touches such as a man who may or may not be the embodiment of various characters from his earlier novels.

All quite ripe and interesting ideas, but in all honesty it just didn’t gel for me, and I gave up just over halfway through; the ‘author’ comes over as a pretty hopeless case, popping pills and drinking constantly whilst trying to cheat on his wife, and the sense of mounting danger as Ellis finds elements of his past and his writings stalking him is frankly lacking – often the narrative talks about a sense of dread which I, the reader, simply didn’t share. The back cover (well, of the hardback anyway) displays a single statement that it all actually happened, but it rings as true as the similar paragraph at the start of Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’ – ie not at all.

If you want to read a story about an author being haunted by his own inventions, you could do much worse than read Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Half’, which does this so much better. In all honesty, and working purely on memory, I think that the film ‘Wes Craven’s New Nightmare’ deals with this idea better as well, and I didn’t feel that film really hit all its targets.

On a more positive note, the author’s comments about his own previous writings are interesting (even if they might be just as untrue as the rest of the book), and there’s some good commentary on suburbia, with all the kids at the local school having various forms of therapy and popping Ritalin tablets as if they’re Smarties. At least, I hope this aspect of it is satire, if it’s an accurate depiction of life in the USA’s suburban areas, that’s far more frightening than anything else in the book.

So, I didn’t care for it, and gave up on it (moderately rare for me with a book, but I realised I didn’t care, and that the idea of reading something else was very appealing). You might well feel differently, but I’m glad this was a library copy.

DC Comics continue their new line designed to appeal to people who want to read comics about iconic characters but don’t want to get bogged down in decades of continuity. The all-Scot team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely certainly fulfil this aspect of their brief, spending just one page (four panels, and a total of eight words) summarising Superman’s origin, and then they get on with the action, which is as big-scale mad-science as you’d expect from Morrison. The art’s the usual high-quality Quitely – clear linework and good composition, and there are moments where the choreography of the panels is quite remarkable – an example would be page 19, where Clark Kent stumbles into Perry White’s office; a variety of slapstick business is depicted, but it’s always absolutely clear what’s going on. Overall, this debut issue sets up a number of interesting ideas, and I’ll certainly be picking up the next issue.

Though I have some reservations about DC’s thinking on the All Star line as an idea; granted, their competitors Marvel have had a lot of success with their ‘Ultimate’ line, taking exactly the same more-accessible approach with characters such as Spider-Man and the X-Men, but both these lines strike me as likely to have a broader appeal within the existing readership, rather than tackling the well-established problem of a dwindling number of new readers coming in. As I understand it, there’s no notable push beyond the usual markets for these titles – getting them distributed in Wal-Mart or similar, for example – and so really we’re looking at titles which may sell well, but predominantly within the limited Direct Sales market.

DC may well rush-release collected volumes of the All Star titles for bookshop distribution, but that’s ‘after the fact’, effectively fragmenting the potential readership into those who’ll actively seek out their comic shop to buy the monthly issues, and people who might come across the trade paperback in a bookshop. Whereas, if the comics were on newsstands across the country, I think it’s fair to say more casual purchasers might take a chance on the comic, and that would actively expand the audience, which I’m led to believe is the intention behind the All Star and Ultimate lines alike.