Review: Richer Than God (David Conn)

David Conn's portrait of a club, city and sport transformed by money is required reading for any fan

When reading David Conn's odyssey as a fan of football and Manchester City on my flight out to Rome, I recalled an article I read almost by accident one freezing Saturday afternoon whilst Googling my stream of conscience. I'd suddenly realised I had no idea how my cat knew who I was. Or how any other animal knew what its family consisted of, and what it could mate with. The same day, I watched all 12 rounds of Joe Calzaghe vs Roy Jones Jr without really meaning to.

I didn't get a definitive answer, but I did stumble across an interesting New Scientist piece about kin recognition, which theoretically seeks to explain how a family of animals essentially recognise each other as their own, even if they have never met. There's some, largely inconclusive evidence that it definitely exists.

That faintly primal sensation struck a chord with me when reading the book. This is not the same as identifying with a Haruki Murakami character, in an intuitive, sensual way. It's like I was the person writing this book. Everything described about the club, its tumults, its highs and lows, its wild successes and unbelievable farces, of which there are many; I experienced everything in exactly the same way.

It's somewhat fitting that City started life at a church in Gorton under the direction of Anna Connell, both in spirit and form, as leaving aside the puerile contemporary 'cathedral' metaphors garnered by Sky Sports and the like, support does mean a community of people held fast by steadfast belief in one thing.

It also provides a neat jumping off point for analysing the slow disintegration of the more Corinthian aspects of the game. Conn's forays into the grimy world of early Premier League club policy, and their machinations to slip the grips of an amateurish, complacent Football Association to glean enormous profits for small groups of very wealthy men (and women in the case of Nina Bracewell-Smith) make for revelatory and deeply troubling reading.

Conn's forensic style is well tailored to the broader, less personal elements of the story; how a sport became a business, how whole demographics were priced out of a game they loved and grew up on. The lens pulls back for a wider picture of economic malaise in late 20th century Britain, and how its northern English cities were cut to ribbons by a Conservative government hellbent on implementing economic ideology over pragmatic, means-tested solutions to age old problems.

Walking through east Manchester on the way to the Etihad, newly named and spruced up with Arab money, Conn's nuanced points on wealth distribution jar. How does a local government win finance for a one-off sporting event, as Manchester did with the Commonwealth Games in 2002, and the funds to build an enormous stadium, but it cannot win the same funds to regenerate an area classed as the fifth poorest in the entire country?

Conn's bafflement at the impossibility of City winning the biggest every lottery resonates in every fan of the club, and its this sense of emotional contradiction that really made the book mine personally. Much derided, and infamously coined by that footballing blunderbuss Kevin Keegan, is the City fan's belief in their club's ever-present status as one of the movers and shakers; that, under the heaving weights of debt, inept administration and such essentials as a working gym (Conn's interviews show just bare the cupboard was before the coming of Mansour), a massive club was waiting to take its rightful place at the top table of the league.

In this way the story brings home a familial element; Conn's descriptions of his trips to see City destroy the genuinely great AC Milan and Manchester United 4-0 in the 1970s are stories I've heard from my dad, and thus the emotional connection is given form by bricks, cement, boots and mud.

To his great credit Conn does not tread lightly on history. Former players like Bell, Book and Summerbee are rightly held as the heroes City fans revere them as, but he decimates the myth of the latter-day Franny Lee, a darling in the Championship-winning Sixties but a ruthless corporate man come to oil City's wheels for the slippery rails of the London Stock Exchange in the Nineties. The interview with Lee feels like a watershed moment in Conn's, and the club's, life, and subsequently paints Lee's predecessor, the miserly, scrimping Peter Swales in slightly less darker hues than many fans held him in their hearts. Former owner Thaksin Shinawatra, the disgraced Thai Prime Minister, by turns appears a deeply cynical and perhaps dishonest individual, and becomes another nail in the coffin of Conn's unwavering belief.

To the modern day then, and perhaps Sheikh Mansour provided Conn with the last nudge he needed to annotate his odyssey in the shadow of his god football club. He is no less objective in assessing the merits of a man living thousands of miles, literally and figuratively, from the destitute slums of east Manchester.

And here Conn's assessment is again eerily close to that of thousands; four years in, with an FA Cup, a Premier League title, almost £1 billion spent on footballers, a wholesale renovation of a sagging administrative structure, the greatest irony is that this distant billionaire is both competent and caring of the history he has bought. It feels too good to be true and, given City's former laughable travails (given sharp form by the songs Conn relays - and fans still sing to a title-winning team - about love, death and nothing in between), the emotional schism is again laid bare; a massive club's continuous success should not be blinked at by its own fans, and yet it still is.

In the final pages Conn returns to the roots of football, and visits Andy Walsh of FC United, those disenfranchised, debased fans of City's greatest rivals, and the yardstick which the blue half beat itself half to death with in the darkest days. Walsh talks about the diminished role of fans in the modern game; the idea of shareholder power and a club owned by its fans (as is the case in Germany and Spain). Even with one of the world's oldest and best supported clubs, only 2,000 attended FC United's first meeting at the Manchester Apollo, more befitting of punk than prawn sandwiches.

In a circular fashion the game now returns to its roots; made by normal working people for those people, but with the skyline now dominated not by the factories of Victorian England but the skyscrapers and towers of a country weaned off manufacturing and onto financial services. Earlier in the book Conn makes the point that Germany, still an EU powerhouse, places manufacturing at the heart of its economy, with banks providing the oil to smooth the gears. Manchester, football and Britain now occupy the inverse position, with actual oil now helping turn the gears on a once-great football club with little left to give to its unwavering supporters.

'At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don't come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques,' said Bill Shankly, born a century ago. David Conn's book captures a culture that is older than the oldest club, that gives rise to ancient urges that ripple through Shankly's unflinching assessment, and answers with an admirable lack of grandeur, what happened to a game once described as 'beautiful'.

Picture courtesy of Without A Dream In Our Hearts

Review: Only God Forgives

Pouts, prostitutes and 'pornographic violence' abound in Ryan Gosling's vaguely interesting new film

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a favourite of film director Nicolas Winding Refn. In an interview with the Director's Guild of America, he described it as the definitive formative moment of his career, when he decided on his choice of role in the film industry. He describes the film itself as 'not a normal movie.'

As far as the 1970s go, it can be considered the great show-off movie. From the title right through to the brain-splattered ending, there's an almost tangible relish in it's unrelenting attitude, never more visible than in the shocking violence done to other people.

As the director of the Pusher trilogy, Bronson and Valhalla Rising, it's not really surprising to hear Refn's such a fan. In the same interview he describes how he railed against his parents love of French nouvelle vague. It seems he's been railing against that ever since by directing films that are heavy on violence of both the physical and emotional kind.

All those years of Street Fighter 2 were finally justified

Only God Forgives assumes a similarly unambiguous intent. The title calls on big themes: redemption, errors past and present and perhaps some sort of collision between good and evil. Say it out loud - it needs a movie trailer voice behind it. It belongs in the oeuvre of the western or samurai film. It is another example of Refn's very conspicuous sense of style.

And broadly it does trade on those themes, but this is a film heavy on atmosphere but little in the way of story, and even less character. It appears Refn wants to challenge himself first, then his audience, in making a film with no discernible development, only intimated through the above. It also appears there's a funny joke to be had about the rebellious son unconsciously turning into his parents.

Some of it works spectacularly well; the opening, a sweaty, pugilistic scene of intensely violent Muay Thai boxing, is set to thrumming percussion and a swelling bass which brings the heat and pressure to life better than any spoken word. Cliff Martinez, responsible for scoring the superior Drive, deserves lots of credit for an immersive auditory experience.

And Refn's use of colour and place is also exceptional. Ryan Gosling, playing Julian, one half of a drug-smuggling-sibling duo, resides in an apartment saturated in a hellish red with gods carven into grand furniture. Gosling's almost catatonic passivity throughout the majority of the film is amplified by this looming, macho environment.

The fun (my term) starts when Julian's brother Billy rapes and murders a young prostitute and is then murdered himself by the deceased's vengeful father. What follows is a domino-effect tale of revenge as characters are savagely disposed of to get to the film's rock-hard nub of a core.

The film teems with fascinating elements; Kristin Scott Thomas repulses as Crystal, a grief-stricken mother whose relationship with Julian's brother appears Oedipal. In one deeply surreal scene, Crystal infers to his partner that Julian has an inferiority complex based on the size of his brother's penis. Julian's one-man mission to avenge a brother he felt deserved to die suggests a similar Oedipal feeling in the younger brother.

The mainstay of Only God Forgives, and the reason it doesn't completely collapse in a mess of half-explored psychodramas, comes in the form of the 'Angel of Death' Lt Chang, played with insuperable hardness by Vithaya Pansringam. A looming, vaguely atavistic presence, Chang expounds brutal and clinical retribution on those he deems as sinners, regardless of guilt in the eyes of the law, which appears to be a useful enabler for his police officer role.

As is Refn's objective wont, there are no real good and bad guys throughout, only those who have forgotten their morals through violent compromise. Cops are blasted near in half; in one memorably unpleasant scene, an ally of Julian's is staked to his armchair by tongs, then has his eye and ear removed with unflinching efficacy.

And of course Julian himself is nearly pounded into mincemeat by Chang in a scene that, once it gets going, is thrillingly good to watch. Timeliness is a major issue with Only God Forgives; almost 50% of the film is completely silent and no one moves or indeed does anything at all.

As others better qualified have pointed out, there's a good chance that if David Lynch, say, had directed this, we may all be saying something quite different (but this would probably be a radically different film in execution too). And it has prompted some histrionic adjectives; 'sadistic and voyeuristic' from the Mail, 'pornographically violent, neon-dunked nightmare' from the Telegraph. Anything described so loudly is surely worth a look.

But when you can leave a newspaper open to suggesting 'that being a star means you don't have to act anymore, you can just stand there looking moody,' it doesn't really matter what anyone else says. You probably don't have a very good film on your hands. Perhaps they should have brought a chainsaw.

Picture courtesy of  The Daily Telegraph

The Prague Cemetery - Review

Umberto Eco returns to the scene of his crimes to charming (and exhausting) effect

In a typically brief foreword to his critically acclaimed first trio of short stories, the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges once claimed that 'it is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books - setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes.'

True to form, he never wrote in fiction anything longer than a short story, and some of these were bracingly quick reads - four or five pages. Often I'll read something and think of that quote, which is surely the ultimate litmus test of any serious writer, but it seems an uncanny critique of Umberto Eco's work - ironic, as his style strongly derives from him.

The Prague Cemetery is more than 400 pages, and was hailed as a return to form when it was first released. It quickly sold over a million copies in - guess what - South America and Europe. And I enjoyed it a lot, but probably for precisely the reasons a few have suggested it slightly flabby and supported by its sense of self-importance, rather than anything traditional like character.

Eco is a semiotician, and a world-renowned one at that, so you can expect some gymnastics in vocabulary, some loose unravelling of a thread that dangles pointlessly but prettily. It's a little unfortunate however that this story has already been told - by Eco himself, in a previous novel.

A tale of conspiracies abound in fin-de-siècle Europe, Eco weaves a charming tapestry of real-life characters around the fictional creation of Simone Simonini and his alter ego Abbe Dalla Piccola. Simonini is the grandson of the (real) Italian soldier and captain of the same name who becomes the spider at the centre of a pulsating web of intrigue, a master forger who sells his trade to Italian generals, French spies and Russians who use his gifts for fabrication to influence real life events.

And so we gallivant round Europe with young Simonini as he sinks fleets, helps imprison the elites and kills the innocent. Europe becomes a brothel with everyone screwing everyone, from the Freemasons to the Jesuits to the 19th century's favourite villain, the Jews. There is an exceptionally black mass that may be the high(low)light of the book, depending on your taste.

It's all in a day's work for an antihero but we've been here before. Eco's fascination with the invented influencing the everyday popped up in 1988 under the name Foucault's Pendulum, when a conspiracy theory propagated by three publishers infatuates the wrong sort of people, leading to murder and dizzying levels of mystery.

It's a shame that this isn't quite as good as that book but this is both a clever and educating read. Eco suggested in an interview in 2012 that people were 'bored' and 'wanted to be challenged' in their lives, hence the prevailing popularity of conspiracies.

For the same reasons, you can easily become bored with this book. If you're not a fan of late 19th century European history this will really drag, saturated as it is with both the events and characters of the time. It's occasionally difficult to discern what is relevant to the story and what isn't and some of the recipes propagated by characters like Alexandre Dumas have more flavour than the numerous villains who flit in and out of the shadows. Much like the corkscrew nature of the plot, you might have difficult keeping their names straight.

The Prague Cemetery is a lovely wind-up toy and, depending on your appreciation (I'm a fan) you'll indulge the author to keep winding long after the toy has run down its gears. It would certainly make a fascinating five minute conversation.

Picture courtesy of Non Modern Blog

Frances Ha: Review

Greta Gerwig is wonderful in a film that's tantalising and frustrating in equal measure

There's a great rolling scene in Frances Ha that offers a crystal clear insight into the ethos of both the character and by extension her film. It's the one where Frances, played by Baumbach's wife Greta Gerwig, careens down a New York street ahead of an approaching bus as David Bowie's Modern Love plays over everything.

Frances is smiling and certainly not running; that would imply an exertion that lacks from her existence, but neither is she lazy; rather, like Bowie's lonely, self-sufficient character, her determination to succeed on her own terms makes hers a lonely furrow to plough.

Greta Gerwig gives a standout performances in Frances Ha

The eponymous focal point of this chewy and slightly gooey film, Frances and her spunky backing group of young, hip New Yorkers chatter, eat, drink and are never discontent, despite her stasis in the ballet company she can't get into, her lack of living space and her spiky, loving friendship with publisher Sophie, a performance par excellence by Mickey Sumner.

The film is divided into a series of scenes framed by Frances' living space of choice; she begins by not moving in with her boyfriend and then leaving him, living with Sophie before Sophie moves in with boyf Patch, moving on to Lev and Benji, a charming pair of New York bohos with aspirations they can't quite catch hold of (Benji and Frances are a particularly cute fit as a result) and then, in moves increasingly forced by lack of income, into shared accommodation with a more successful colleague and finally returning to the school she studied at to complete a homecoming of sorts.

That vignette quality never quite goes away and as much as Gerwig creates a wonderfully deep character over the course of the film it's therefore quite difficult to escape from Baumbach's bittersweet concocted world. More so as the whole thing is shot in black and white.

Superficial it ain't but the film's stylistic qualities ironically make it harder for it to seep into the viewer's conscience - whilst there's an immediately obvious Woody Allen reference in the monochrome style, it does very consciously turn in on itself, with the consequence of judging on a lesser set of characteristics.

I hugely enjoyed the performances, particularly Greta Gerwig who's able to convey a thousand disappointments in one brash defensive gesture. At a post-Christmas meal back in New York when, sat with a group of settled, successful lawyers and bankers, Frances quickly gets drunk and starts making the sort of jokes she enjoyed with her now-absent friend Sophie, you quickly and easily empathise with her gloom. Later Frances tries to capture the group's existence - a group she had not met before that night - with a rambling, woozy yet almost poetic speech. Baumbach conveys the audience's sense of pity and wonder perfectly.

Despite the actor and her husband director's best efforts though, this struggles to shake off the weight of the films it harks to. You'll enjoy it, but you might, as Frances does, want to dawdle and watch, rather than keep on running.

Picture courtesy of Mockingbird.com

Love/Hate: S1 Episode 2 Review

Very late thoughts on Episode 2. They're not all positive.

Undoubtedly an incidental fact but the show's title this week perhaps divided its viewers into the two eponymous camps. Admirably quick in getting down to business and setting up new relationships, including some between old flames, it nevertheless promised a great deal more than it delivered and some of the scenes were downright wonky. This week's episode then:

The Party.
Dear God. There's no way of filming this sort of thing successfully if you ask me. Parsing the embarrassment of watching grown men act like children and watching grown men act like grown men acting like children, is a difficult one at the best of times. This was fully like watching TV in the traditional sense, a non-acting hinterland where gurning people shamble around mock props. The blurred lens shots to reflect the coke usage was naff and although the soundtrack was probably dead on (who am I to say?) the whole thing felt deeply superficial.

The Shipment

Nidge: looks menacing, but he's actually called Nigel. Ooooh.

What promises to be the first of many collabs between John Boy and the younger hoods around him wasn't too badly executed, but the chat and camerawork gleamed with a veneer that the show would do well to shake off quickly. There was a great deal of histrionics - a particularly wince-inducing scene between Nigel and Trish was the epitome of the set piece - and again none of it felt particularly close to the bone. Welcome to soap opera territory.

Darren and Rosie
One of the better moments involved Robert Sheehan (again - he's quite interesting to watch) and his on-off partner Rosie (right), abandoned for his continental jaunt and now back within his doe-eyed orbit. This was probably the standout scene and the resumption of their relationship had that inimitable feel of realism. Stumpy, the sharp point of the triangle (way to ruin my metaphor 'Stumpy'), remains a refreshingly unknown quantity with equal displays of faux-gentlemanly behaviour, paranoid suspicion and, at the end, simmering menace.

The Hypnotherapy Guy
Deeply unfair of me but this was a scene The Sopranos could have done in its sleep, and the principal difference is the age gap. When lovely Darren threatens a famous psychic TV personality with extreme violence it's more difficult to believe he'll actually do anything than not, and I guess this is where the boy-band criticism hits home. Tony Sirico would have nailed this. Maybe Sheehan just needs some shell suits and wings in his hair.

 On A Positive Note...
There were some nicely realised character traits. Darren's violent rage at the mystery bin vandal following phone call was intelligent and reasoned, and the ironic scene of Nigel the drug mule accuse the clown hired for his child's birthday of ripping him off was just right. Aiden Gillen powered through the whole thing like he still had David Simon's words ringing in his ears - please don't kill him off! Proof that in small quantities Love/Hate works - but please, less gangster parties.

Pictures courtesy of Irish Independent and Channel 5

Love/Hate: Series One Episode One

The Wire in Eire. The Woire. OK, I'm all out of Wire gags. First episode of Love/Hate reviewed here.

Channel 5's had a distinctly hit and miss record when it comes to importing drama from other shores - for every Walking Dead there's been two Law and Order knock-offs (a show that's proliferated so quickly it could probably have its own channel). There's a long way to go but in Love/Hate, it looks like the buyers might have hit something big.

Latest and Greatest?
Let's get the hyperbole out of the way. Comparisons to The Wire appear a touch misjudged; Sopranos references are well wide of the mark, if only because the scale of The Sopranos was so huge by comparison to TV peers. The Sopranos could also call on genuine Hollywood names - the likes of Joe Pantoliano, Steve Buscemi and the sadly deceased James Gandolfini will not crop up in Love/Hate any time soon.

But..?
On first glance, it does look good. There's certainly a few Wire-esque influences; the bottom-up storytelling through low-level players that made the American show so compelling has been restyled for a modern Ireland here. The grimy views, mundane estates and ever-present gloom are all present and correct. It squints at institutions and mines a rich black vein of humour in moments of tragedy. And it does have one or two very good characters. Aiden Gillen, who plays gangster John Boy Power exudes just the right mix of charm and menace and Nidge could be a great comic foil. A bit of an Irvine Welsh character.

Just your friendly local gangster: Aiden Gillen's John Boy Power

Good Boy Gone Bad
There's a certain irony that Gillen, who played Councilman Tommy Carcetti in the American drama, is now on the other side of the law as John Boy Power, and as an aside it does at least show how versatile Gillen is - Idris Elba got most of the plaudits as Stringer Bell so I'm looking forward to seeing the Irishman in this. Assuming he survives the brutal Dublin environment of course...

Marathon Man
The Wire prided itself on ensuring no-one was off-limits - the murder of Stringer Bell in Season Three was shocking for viewers (Simon later cited it as one of his all-time favourite Wire moments precisely because it was so shocking) - it'll be interesting to see who survives Dublin's gangland ruckus. My early thoughts are Power making it through, given he's Aiden Gillen and all that. Not so sure about Tommy.


Techno File

This handsome chap might kill you. Love/Hate's Darren

TV shows that use current technology to deepen plot always run the gauntlet. But given the ubiquity of it anyway, it'd be ridiculous of writers not to. It can also be what makes the show work - witness Series 1 of The Wire, which involved a giant wiretap operation on budget mobile phones around Baltimore by the city police. And Nidge learning how to use a gun via YouTube does make for interesting character development. Surely that website will come back to haunt him though...

Gangsters, by Chanel
A few people have pointed out this is a good looking cast, considering it's about the Dublin
underworld. I agree. But is it Darren's fault he looks like Danny Cipriani? In the quest for realism in TV, should you pursue a certain type of face? Admittedly there's no one in Love/Hate with a mug like a bag of spuds. But being good looking was never a crime. Which is fortunate, because otherwise this show would be over before it got started.

Love/Hate is on Channel 5 on Wednesday nights at 10pm.

Photos courtesy of What's On TV and Tumblr

The Returned: Final Episode Preview

Series One comes to an end on Sunday, but will the writers of The Returned tie everything up - or keep everyone guessing?

A second series is a doubled edged sword at the best of times. Will the quality drop? Will your favourite character make the cut? Will the writers clearly run out of steam well before the end and settle for an infuriatingly mundane conclusion?

These three issues have cropped up in various shows at different points throughout the last decade and the worst news for me last week was the existence of a second series of The Returned, due to begin filming in early 2014.

They're coming, very slowly.

Not (just) because I want answers. God, do I. But also because the show risks grubbing up its opaque narratives through another eight episodes. It's difficult to argue that the show's numerous mysteries will all be successfully resolved by 10.05pm on Sunday 28th July. But it's equally difficult to differentiate which can 'wait' and which need an answer now.


Nonetheless I do think quite a lot will be explained, particularly after last week's sharp veer into the distinctly supernatural. The return of Simon (again) would be frankly tiresome and would spoil the tone, so he should be explained (did he really commit suicide and why does he keep returning to life?)
 
Simon's relationship with Adele, and her descent into depression and attempted suicide surely can't survive the leap from Series One to Two, particularly after Sunday's shocking images. Expect a tying off there. And what to expect of Serge, mysteriously pulled under the water as he and brother Toni attempted to cross the lake? Possibly the last we've seen... until a shock return next season.

Elsewhere, the mystery of Lucy Clarsen and her psychic sex sessions with the men of the village is coming to its natural conclusion (really, no pun intended) and her presence may well be a big key to the story behind the village and her interesting appeal to the opposite sex. And other more natural elements are revealing things; the water, still draining away and flooding the power station, has uncovered the remnants of a deserted town along with hundreds of dead animals. 



Charming, rugged, kills people: Les Revenants' Serge

Some characters feel set up for the long haul. Victor and Pierre, both deeply unusual people, feel as though they are reaching the top of their character arcs - Victor has awakened from near-catatonic silence in recent weeks to discuss his weird new ability to rekindle horrible memories in physical form. Pierre meanwhile is fast becoming a sort of David Koresh-type figure as he leads the confused population towards 'a new beginning... it will be wonderful.' He is definitely sticking around for series two - expect him to get weirder still.

There are still many more loose ends to be tied up, not least the tenuous, slowly re-blossoming relationship between Julie and Laure, the fractured family unit of Jerome, Claire, Lena and Camille, and of course the true nature of the large group of returned glimpsed at the end of the penultimate episode.

But these should all survive well into the second series. Assuming of course the town makes it to the second series. Wouldn't that be an interesting ending?

Images courtesy of Den of Geek and Between Screens

Les Revenants, Episode Four (Victor)

My thoughts, 24 hours late. Thanks Blogger.

Mostly a really satisfying episode. It's pretty much about the details now I think. Here's what I'm thinking.

Splashing around
The water. You should never put your eggs in one basket, but hey. I'm going to do just that. Here's what's going on: I think I heard from the two dam boffins that this has happened before. There's another charming French town down there. Maybe a bit like this one. Geddit?

Creep roll call
Creep number one trying to outrun a former life (or not): Pierre. Almost omniscient in how he can control the most mundane of circumstances to lure the risen dead to the Helping Hand. Could be a script defect. Almost definitely isn't...

Creep number two: Thomas, who begins the programme as a nice, sensitive guy, gets odder by the episode. Also kind of a jerk to his subordinates. And what of the revelation that Simon may not have died in an 'accident'? Is he a liar too, desperate to keep a family together through his deceit? 



Victor: sinister kid with predilection for horrible drawings.

Poor Victor (sort of).
His absolute lack of speech is explained. He was trying to be quiet 35 years ago when he was murdered by two burglars, one of whom tries to save his life by suggesting he 'sing a song in his head'...

Which he hears again after being taken to the Helping Hand by police who may or may not be complicit in something much bigger. Plus: I must admit I didn't figure Pierre for a burglar.
Nice touch.

Gore department
Lena's horrible incision down her spine is getting grimmer by the episode. Courtesy of creep number three: Jerome, who appears to be getting his end away with a clairvoyant hooker (see Lucy Clarsen WTF) She also appears to share a telekinetic relationship with Camille, her sister (did I miss something here?). And of course the murder from Episode 3. More suspects than a Cluedo convention for that one.

Where the real men at

As of this week's episode, this image just got a lot creepier

I can't even say Claire is a spectacularly bad judge of character here as both men in her life are straight from an Agatha Christie novel. In fact the majority of men in the town are horrible weirdos. Including Serge, who I didn't even mention here.

Bad religion
I'm beginning to think that priest is exceptionally pious. His patronising putdown of Thomas's inquiry into belief in a second life suggested he's well aware of what's coming and is sort of looking forward to it. Git.

Lucy Clarsen WTF
The story I really want to know more about: Lucy Clarsen, contacting the dead, during sex with men. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat. Is she the centrepiece to the whole mystery? 

Excited for next week.

Pics from The Guardian and Channel 4.com

This Film Is Brought To You By DHL.

World War Z offers more evidence Hollywood should leave the project managers to Barclays and Coca-Cola

Vanity Fair recently ran a piece on tortured zombie thriller World War Z. Refreshingly free of tabloid metaphor, it shone the light on a movie which had turned out to be spectacularly difficult to create, which resulted in some high up people decided meant that it would arrive at cinemas much like its subject. Cue rewrites, a recut ending and a meeting between actor/backer Brad Pitt and scriptwriter/gun-for-hire Damon Lindelof in a faintly Lynchian sequence.

The main thrust of the article gave precedence to 'budget', 'location' and 'different motivations' as explanatory reasons for the failure of WWZ to successfully coalesce as one piece. A rationale that seems a little out of place for a film and more in keeping with, say, a logistics company, or a multinational media conglomerate.

'Wales? No way am I shooting in Wales!'

Not to be trusted with money by themselves it seems, directors are handed consultant-type figures to refer to in monetary matters. Because of the new 'virgin' talent walking into the industry, often directing films with massive budgets after one or two successful (much smaller) films, their effective handlers keep an eye on times, finances and other such things. One such figures was touted as the man 'who brought Michael Bay in on time and under budget.' You have to wonder what Bay's job is if it isn't splashing enormous sums of cash on special effects (I thought that was his raison d'etre, to be honest) because he's certainly pretty negligent at the directing stuff based on films like Transformers 2.

Why does a film require a project manager? Why do 'budget and logistics' hobble a movie before it has got going? It's pretty much one thing: perception of what its audience wants.

Attempts to create an Eiffel Tower out of people were going well.

It seems that boredom is the ever-present core of movies like World War Z. You can hear marketing, cinematographers and special effects co-ordinators triangulating in on the oversaturated consciousness of the moviegoer. Bored? Look at this! Still bored? We've got more of it, in a different country. Ah, that's perked you up. How about this?

None of this solves a terrible script, and guess what? World War Z hasn't fared well, critically.
Like the 'Z' of the title, it shambles into areas it has no previous experience of and feels patched up - probably because it was written by at least two different people.

But commercially it's done fine - well done to all you second-line departments who came together when the script turned out to be a turkey. And WWZ won't be the last big-budget film ($210-$250 million according to Slate's sources) to swim on its less artistic merits.

Demand v supply is a chicken and egg argument at its heart, but the effect of thousands of extras running up a hill like ants attacking a dead animal in Malta (above) is not necessarily rabid demand for more of the same. But it does involve some difficult decisions being made about who's really making a movie.

Pictures courtesy of io9.com and justjared.com

Les Revenants/ The Returned Ep 3: Julie.

Subtitles distract me from the fact I'm watching adverts. They add a veneer of class. Plus: what I thought of this week's Les Revenants (oooh, c'est tres mysterieux!)

My first thoughts were 'This is probably going to be better than World War Z.' So far, that's held out. They're not zombies, but they are the living dead. So the comparison's fair, in my eyes.

Everyone in the world knows Batman's not a real superhero, it seems. Good work scriptwriters.

Creepy children will be creepy. It doesn't seem to matter how many you see of them, and I saw a lot of J-horror between 2002-2005. Like them, Victor also seems to possess vaguely supernatural powers, but no one is really sure. He does like biscuits, and drawing.

What's that thing on Lena's back?

Sisters Lena and Camille. One of them is dead. It's the one on the right.

Even commonplace devices in supernatural dramas like mirrors are used sparingly here, and in a very matter-of-fact way. Not to say the thing isn't stylish, but it's not explicitly a TV programme you're watching, which is nice considering the faintly baffling subject matter.

How the hell does Thomas have access to all those security cameras? Shouldn't he have a reason for watching this stuff, rather than just snooping on his wife?

There's an implicit sexuality in voyeurism.

Simon is quite a boring dead guy. I preferred the goofy bassist. How come he doesn't have any scars, like Julie? Wasn't he hit by a car?

That priest is a bit too chipper for my liking. Always smiling, even at funerals.

Stop doing that Batman. You're still not a superhero.

This was the episode that became momentarily cinematic, albeit ever-so-subtly. The scene in the hallway of the flats where Julie lives was wonderfully creepy. I even said 'not again' when the hooded guy appeared. Incidentally will the others suffer similar post-trauma flashbacks? That would be interesting.

The final scene: bravo. Camera slowly peeking round corner at the deceased neighbour was horrible yet delicately handled and a clever, sour contrast to the previous three scenes of punchy emotion. Question marks over the perpetrator.

The cockroach. Filed this one alongside the lake's receding waters under 'weird abstract motif'. Don't get it yet, but these snippets are one of the main reasons I keep coming back.

Pictures courtesy of The Daily Telegraph and... erm, The Daily Telegraph.

Deeply Personal.

Some thoughts I had whilst away in Portugal:

1. A holiday is a great way to fish through the waste disposal unit of your personality. I found myself staring into it a few times. There was some junk in there, I won't lie.
2. Categorizing things isn't always the most amenable option to your consciousness (got that joke out of the way early. Does poor timing, explicitly stated, = good timing?)
3. Random Access Memories IS a good record. But not as good as it ought to have been.
4. Expanding a little, the shuffle facility works best when walking through a place you've been many times. For a different atmosphere, select an album prior to every new experience.
5. If Teju Cole thinks cooking is good for the spirit (my term), I'm really happy with that. And I'll be cooking more, better stuff very soon. I might even blog about it.
6. Reading everything is better than reading nothing. My two reads last week: Orhan Pamuk's The New Life and Nancy Jo Sales' The Bling Ring. I enjoyed both enormously, for different reasons.
7. Make a point of turning on yourself regularly. Thoughts get crazy without you there.
8. When holidays make you think of more holidays you know you're in a good place. I made a list. San Francisco, India, Florence and Sydney (again) are on my list. Plus many more.
9. Mexican food is absolutely incredible.
10. Writing less is both good for the spirit - you always finish ahead of time - and forces you (me) to think harder to get what you want out of you. That's rewarding.

Thoughts on Orhan Pamuk

A really fascinating guy to chew over when you've got absolutely nothing else to be concerned about.

The Complete Stories by Truman Capote: A Review

I nearly called this The Truman Show. I just couldn't go through with it. Sorry everyone.
 
Reynolds Price's introduction to the Modern Classic version of Truman Capote's Complete stories thrusts the diminutive Southern gentleman alongside the globetrotting bar-room aficionado and occasional war correspondent Ernest Hemingway. When I think of what I know about Hemingway and how busy he seemed, all the damn time, Capote is not a comparative figure in my mind's eye. He's just a very intelligent guy who had a fine eye for detail and character and spun woozily evocative yarns around his upbringing and New York living.

And yet I hugely prefer his careful, refined style, not effete as such but deeply interested in a feminine way for me. Capote's style seems perverse in streaks; never asexual but capable of occupying both genders in back to back tales.

The cover is a charmer; a precious young Truman stares intensely into a camera, wispy fringe combed across freckled brow and his clear blue eyes fix you in your place as a cigarette stub dangles from fingers that it feels insulting to describe as lithe, because it's a lazy term and this man would never appreciate slothliness in word or wit.

Twenty vignettes set all over America make up this collection, ranging as far south as Texas and as far north as New York. He's a writer I've always seen in New York thanks to his toothy personality, a fetish for etiquette and an alleged amphetamine habit that would stop Hemingway's bull in Pamplona. And indeed most of my favourite tales, including the exquisitely sinister Miriam and the famous Headless Hawk, are set in that snowflaked city.

As a Southerner, his taste and touch for gothic is refined and seems to possess an ancient wisdom. Elmore Leonard once advised aspiring writers never to describe the weather 'just because it's there': sound advice, and Capote's landscapes creep around their subjects almost tenderly. He has a particular talent for the night. 'Tall trees, misty, painted pale by malicious moonshine towered steep on either side without a break or clearing', make for an oppressive backdrop in A Tree Of Night, a sinister story of a lonely young woman travelling alongside a freak show compere and her savant partner, (relationship never clarified).

Like the sticky Southern heat Capote grew up in, the writing is regularly uncomfortably close to the skin. A surgical knife seems to hovers over each character, trimming and distilling a cast of dozens with a few short, sharp strokes. His brutal treatment of Walter Ranney in Shut A Final Door would be shocking if it weren't so unconcerned with itself, instead annotating his pain with merciless aestheticism via a silent hand. And it seems no background, age or indeed culture is beyond his tender grip. The writing feels amazingly tactile, like it had shook hands with its creations and perhaps sat down for coffee before committing their existence to paper.

Preacher's Legend depicts a decrepit Negro in semi-glorious senility, having finally made his peace with his unseen God in the woods near his shack home. Capote's forensic style lifts the tale off the page here - -it's commonplace to point out the inherent hazards involved with a creation of this broadness and contemporary whims would doubtless cause a younger writer to ironically stretch further than Capote probably did in his depiction. Instead what's captured is almost bitterly honest and gently funny in its exposure of loneliness and the beliefs that gather, like dust, in the spaces between living.

What really stands out is his almost tender appraisal of the most subtle of emotional changes in his characters throughout - I imagined him combing his delicate fingers through that fine hair as he stripped and planed for the depth and dimension that's so insistent in his style. The omniscient position he assumed at the hub of East Coast society in the Fifties and Sixties no doubt played into the development of his style and there's equally no doubt of the relationship each held throughout the author's professional life.

But the most fascinating aspect of all of this was considering where the man drew his abilities from; paradoxically his social nature, his known propensity for gossip and discussion of those around him enabled him to draw on deep wells of understanding of human character that a more reserved individual would never have access to. That alone is not a talent, but these stories feel as fresh today as they did fifty years ago. The man himself would surely tell you that that is a price worth paying.


Pictures courtesy of Penguin.com

The Grand National

They chose their name because it was 'bland and means nothing'. For more and more people, The National's music is anything but.

Not every band gets ten pages in the New York Times. Not even Rihanna gets ten pages in the New York Times. But The National appear to get everything an artist could want without, well, wanting it, at least outwardly. OK so that's part of the appeal. But if modesty and a certain sort of introspective nature were benchmarks of talent it'd take a month to read one issue.

There's something very popular, something rings very true with many people about the Cincinnati band now based in Brooklyn. And there's a temptation to tag that interest under the new narcissism that's crept into much of modern living off the back of social media - narcissism being the apposite term although the negative qualities it connotes are a bit heavier than intended.

But if it were all about transferring sob stories from vinyl to your studio apartment, their success would not be so resounding, so massive. That NYT article is the tip of a huge iceberg. The band have toured some of the world's biggest festivals as well as occupying high spots on critic after critic's end of year best of lists. In short it goes deeper than that, and inevitably there's a certain sense of traditionalism to their work that makes it so completely fascinating.

A life is a polished thing in this century, a highly fussed-over object that brings as many earthly delights as spiritual lows. Whilst pointing out the obvious, The National seem to be a bunch of guys that recognise poverty comes in many different forms and all are worth raking over and combing through in a search for peace, solace and respite. They're also intelligent to recognise the inherent conflict that doing so will create.

And a band that seems so familiar with conflict is bound to be a band that strikes a chord in the hearts of millions, although their grace in the face of difficulties is an almost aspirational quality, and befits their apparently resoundingly sensible outlook. It's a kind of stoicism for the 21st century. It's apparent, in varying amounts, in all of their back catalogue, and will doubtless surface in their new album, Trouble Will Find Me, due out May 20th/21st.

Obviously this isn't the sort of philosophy practised by Diogenes and his buddies. and that outlook has changed markedly since the turn of the century. The early dot-com boom (which some of the band's members worked through whilst playing shows on New York's Lower East Side - hipster credentials complete) and more recent global economic events have seen to that.

But tensions necessarily create toughness, deepening of reserves of willpower and occasionally a more willing attitude to consider the whole picture. The best bit about The National is that not all of their characters fit that ideal mould.



A really good picture of Matt Berninger

Their stories are extolled knowingly, filled with fully drawn characters that have rolled with life's punches and avoid clichés with the contemporary toughness tightly defined. If class was a factor, their troupe are upwardly mobile in aspiration, yet spiritually unconvinced of their direction. Here is a world where actions cause concern and inaction makes for uneasy emotional truces and stasis, sometimes all inside one head.

In other words, they make for tremendous and accurate portrayals of contemporary living and it's no wonder that their fan base has grown so dramatically in the last part of the noughties. Their biggest hit to date, the simple, folksy Fake Empire, has been given real and imagined weight in both a US election campaign (the band are fully signed-up Democrats) and shows like Grey's Anatomy, and is a striking example of their biggest talents; an unassuming piano line ambling along to Matt Berninger's bar-room baritone, drums tiptoeing along before almost incidentally rolling into a gentle yet spine-tingling crescendo of percussion, brass and piano before drifting off just as quietly.

Only once have they tried for a sense of showmanship and on Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks the narrative feels almost forced; sharp lines poke through the story and the protrusions are strange to see. Otherwise the comments that seem commonplace in almost every 'new album' press story feel almost vital to the group's existence.

 And that's even before we get to their credentials. Impeccable, although you already knew that. Their first band was a Pavement tribute and their latest tour partners are Dave Longstreth's Dirty Projectors. They regularly play gigs for great causes (Dark Was The Night is the biggie although there are others) and they're politically 'tuned in' as aforementioned, lending their pulling power to worthy and powerful causes.

As with their craft, the accolades are worn lightly and their demeanour suggests a group of men focused on more personal levels of self-improvement, a journey they are making in public because they want to for more than just a single reason. Their tour diary Mistaken for Strangers, named after a song from Boxer, has recently been presented at Tribeca Festival and the highlights trailer shows shadows of the characters that haunt the band's songs, although there's no sense that you're hearing real tensions being played out. Indeed although it's almost obligatory to mention it when writing about the group, the fact the band has two sets of brothers surely gives certain ingredients their flavour.

I wrote this after being inspired by a short story by Truman Capote named The Headless Hawk, a slim tale portraying Vincent, a character of deftness with a self-deceiving heart who finally unravels in New York rain, burnt out and exhausted by an obsessive and inquisitive savant whom he sleeps with and makes his own.

Vincent feels like a character who could walk straight into a National song and considering the author who created him, I'd like to think that's a fair old compliment. But I can already see what the response would be, and that's what I like the most.

Pictures courtesy of ifthemusicsloudenough.com and chartattack.com

Seize The Day (Tomorrow)

There'll be a subheader here in a bit but I'm going to watch TV first. That show that I like is on.

This weekend's 'suggestion' from Marina Hyde: ban all meetings. Number Ten have apparently resized their negotiating table so even more spads (abb: special advisers) can chivvy around it. Living standards and therefore people's general happiness will not improve with more people having their tuppence, suggests Hyde, as it's a clear example of professional procrastination/ urinating contest. Plus a reason for the UKIPs of the world to weedle out of the woodwork. You've got my vote Marina.

The other thing that caught my eye from that paper was Will.I.Am, a man who to my mind should be a giant, benevolent god of partying; a 21st century Dionysus if you like. His Q&A consisted of questions so generic no wonder the responses are near-monosyllabic and sound catatonic to your ear.

Example 1: What did he "deplore" about himself? 'I can procrastinate a little bit', he drawled (my adverb). I admit the response shocked me a bit. 'When does he do that?!', I thought as I waited for YouTube videos to load.

Procrastination comes in many forms. Multimillionaires do it apparently. Ironically, sometimes it comes in blog form (but the author might not know it so best keep it to yourself eh dear reader?) but often it'll appear in tasks so middling, chores so yawnsome, it's apparent what's going on well before the pencils are all sharp, let alone the same size.

Monk, my go-to TV show of
choice when procrastinating.

The rules aren't hard and fast when considering who'll miss a deadline. How much a person drinks for example, or whether their formative environment was a relaxed or disciplined one. The answers feel off-kilter - procrastinators statistically drink more but also come from more controlling parents. They are honest but tend to self-deceive whilst also being an extremely optimistic group. You'd have to be when leaving that essay until the night before.

Surely the most fascinating part is why people procrastinate. There are the indecisive (no brainer there), the avoiders (yup) but interestingly, some people actually get a rush from pressure. The downside to all that down time? Your health suffers. One college found that students who procrastinated the most got more cold and flu viruses and suffered from insomnia more than other groups (no prizes for guessing why).

So procrastination looks like a term describing a set of behaviours basically not conducive to what's unconsciously agreed upon as successful living. But did it exist a century ago? To me it feels contemporary, a symptom of something else much bigger. A phenomenon that's metastasized in a body of culture many now want out of.

I don't think this is about cash or a lack of it; that's another branch of the same tree. It's a natural side effect of choices we made six decades ago in a near-bankrupt nation exhausted from conflict. That people could twiddle their thumbs in the face of unprecedented ruin is unthinkable, but maybe the very industry that brought about a country we know today equally provided seedling of a different type.

The tyranny of choice.

Basically it's hard to continuously create without people falling into other modes of thinking. Creating is hard core stuff. I mean the act, not the end product. And yet I think that comment earlier nicely represents a terrible, painful paradox; we can continue trying to inspire ourselves and inspire others because the alternative has physical and emotionally unpleasant symptoms of decay, stasis.

Whilst stretching the argument rather thin, the fear of standing still - of doing nothing- could actually promote less healthy behaviour. Businesses, democracies have diagnosed a lack of choice as the heart of the matter. But giving people more choices does not necessarily empower them, and plenty of smarter people than I can elucidate on why that is. Check out Barry Schwartz's brilliantly straightforward take on a profoundly complex problem. His TED talk's here.

Here's my possibly controversial conclusion: creation is harder than ever to stimulate and not because of the usual excuses like time constraints (last fascinating fact: procrastinators can also be excellent at managing their time. Weird right?). Creation is hard because everyone is trying harder than ever to be good at it, and as more people are sucked into a semi-professional state at all stages of existence, creation no longer represents what we want most: happiness.

Photos from MonkMania and guardian.co.uk

Picture Perfect

The success of Rear Window hinges on the everyman qualities of Jimmy Stewart

When questioned once about his approach to acting, Jimmy Stewart suggested one of the most important things was 'to try not to make the acting show.' At first glance the prosaic nature of the remark's only unusual when considering the undoubted depth of the man who said it.

But it's misleading to take at face value. A man who nearly avoided movies altogether to complete a masters in architecture at Princeton would have understood the importance of form and structure, and why an edifice owes as much to the ground it was founded upon as the more subtler aspects.

For a long time I thought this guy represented the quintessential icon of American popular culture; a post war icon, encapsulating family, small town patriotism and conservatism with a small c that was conscientious enough to listen to the liberal voice in its ear. I've been pleasantly surprised to find the evidence to this superficial perspective has sat on my rapidly crumbling shelf (never buy MDF folks. Life lesson right there).

Stewart, kind of appalled, kind of fascinated at once

Although I've owned his films for over a decade, it's fair to say I've only recently become a Jimmy Stewart fan. When I say recently, I really mean in the last week. The film that did the trick was Hitchcock's Rear Window, one of numerous films I own by the rotund Essex gentleman who by everyone's estimate was decades ahead of his contemporaries in understanding the psychology of film (more there shortly). I'm not the first nor best qualified to claim it as a masterpiece, but there you go - there's no sense in disputing it, certainly from these quarters.

Stewart seems an interesting guy full stop. He did Frank Capra's films - many of which I also own (including that one) but before dismissing his work as dreamy sentimentalism, watch them again. Anyone who's a bit of a Capra enthusiast understands the inferences - he knows, as well as his audience, that something fundamental is being lost as the film is being watched; that it's impossible to exist in the nigh-blissful scenes that his characters do and consequently that these films will remain films forever more. I don't believe Frank Capra wasn't really interested in capturing reality - his sniffier supporters might suggest he was better than that. I prefer to think he saw enough reality in real life.

Back to the subject. Stewart is the archetypal Capra protagonist - not naïve but big-hearted, straightforward yet not cruel towards men, and seeming to exist within a moral code miraculously unspoken throughout. These elements are almost believable in his acting, amongst the best I've seen. But Hitchcock made him into something a little different.

Rear Window's a clever piece of work and a more cynical perspective of community life within a major city - witness the emotional outpouring in the dead dog scene for confirmation of Hitchcock's rejection of the Capra code. But Stewart really nails the picture as an everyman with an eye for the narrative thanks to a time and life-consuming job as a magazine photographer. Slowly Stewart sloughs off the shell of disinterested citizen, becoming the recorder and narrator of blithe and unassuming community existing together in a steamy apartment block. Fascination's the seed of the carapace that grows apparently organically over the mundaneness of his lonely wheelchair-bound existence.

Between takes in Stewart's Greenwich apartment

But what prompted the fascination to grow? David Thomson writes really engagingly about a subconscious awakening in American pop culture upon the release of Psycho, the undertones of sexuality, gender and violence providing nourishment to a blooming voyeurism planted by an increasingly pervasive media, mainly thanks to TV. That film was released six years after Rear Window, but you can see the tendrils slowly yet inexorably enfeebling Stewart's perspective to be replaced by one which is created, prescribed and received as gospel.

In spite of that I guess what I most enjoy about this is the general vibe of relentlessness with which Stewart sets Jefferies up in every aspect of his confined life. There's a real element of self-preservation inherent in Stewart which naturally comes from his day job (nb as you'd expect the attention to detail in every aspect of Vertigo is fantastic) but he too is a product of his environment; his class-dominated perspective is a metaphorical straitjacket for him to both defend himself with and attack from. That broken leg is more than broken bones - a literal symbol of L.B's postwar attitude to life, both comfortable with and railing against a society fracturing with every passing world event (detail!)

Grace Kelly, the syrupy-voiced faux-celebrity girlfriend is absolutely brilliant at adapting to his stoic attitude and puncturing holes in his bullish demeanour - more than once it seems there's a boxing match going on between a heavyweight fighter and a quicker, nimbler counterpart who weaves in between the crushing blows. Her opening scene recounting her 'working day' - and Stewart's bored reaction - is hilarious. Both parties seek to concoct stories for L.B's neighbours, L.B in particular appearing almost pathologically addicted to narrative and coherence.

Of course the interest lies in whether his stories bear out the truth or crumble, and it's interesting to observe the camera watch its protagonists. And therein lies the second point, neatly wrapped up by Kelly just when it appears (spoiler!) the villain of the piece will escape unpunished. "Whatever happened to that old saying, 'Love thy neighbour'?" she quips as the corpse of L.B's neighbour's dog is ceremoniously withdrawn into the apartment amid wailing and recriminations. Hitchcock couldn't have guessed how television would make fleeting stars out of the everyday people in his flats and apartments but the draping of fictitious narrative over a real life is amazing to watch - this film is nearly 60 years old but feels as contemporary as ever.

A brief word on the camerawork- it's been covered in more expansive and frankly better detail elsewhere but this is one of the only films I've ever seen that makes it explicitly clear that everything you are watching is being manipulated. The protagonist is a photographer. Many of the film's scenes include views from his binoculars/ camera lens.

But even outside that, Hitchcock achieves a sort of free indirect style with his camerawork, strongly inferring that the visuals reflect Stewart's own interests rather than his. For me that's the distinguishing mark of a masterpiece over merely very good. But even more, it's a demonstration of the talents of a man who understood - whether it was in film or architecture - never let the joins show. Maybe I'll take that on board when I buy my next shelving unit.

Pictures courtesy of The Lightning Bug's Lair and HHHHound.com

The Rise and Rise of the Living Dead

Why an empty vessel makes a brilliant metaphor. Too blasé?

Hordes of people are mindlessly grazing all over the planet. In New York, in the Midwest, in fictional towns in the north of England. And those hordes of people are being watched by other hordes of people, mindlessly grazing, all over the planet.

Zombies (of course!) have always had a particularly strong bond with their human brethren. In the age of phablets, multi-purpose televisions and '3D' films (now you don't have to use your eyes' ability to perceive depth!) we're arguably closer than ever to becoming the walking dead.

But that's enough Romero chat. Why the popularity? The Walking Dead, one of the most successful non-cable shows ever in the US, attracts so many viewers Barack Obama's electoral boffs placed ads before, during and after it (could be a very tongue-in-cheek statement by Democrats but I doubt that). World War Z, Hollywood's filming of the exceptionally popular Max Brooks novel has almost twenty million views on YouTube. And in the space recently vacated by Being Human BBC3 recently aired In The Flesh, a rather creepy bit of work examining a small northern town's reaction to the homecoming of a 'cured' zombie teenager to his doting parents and sort-of militant, mostly confused sister.

Steve Ovett: great in everything. Watch him everyone!

The last of these shows presented an interesting picture of a town suffering under the indifference of a London government predominantly concerned with the nation's towns and cities, with its citizens clubbing together to form poorly-armed bands of guerrilla fighters in an effort to protect them from the undead.

For anybody that saw it, there was plenty of interesting 'metaphorical action' here but my favourite part was the more social element. Roarton was obviously based on towns in the north of Britain and readers of the likes of John Harris will be particularly interested in the clear allusion to towns and cities like Bradford, Burnley and Sunderland, who have been on the receiving end of, essentially, experiments in cuts in public sector employment alongside private regeneration, as well as new migrants coming to work (or occasionally not) from mainland Europe in recent years.
But the bigger efforts gnawed a different nerve - fears that many are understandably afraid to confront. Romero's Living Dead series was mainly concerned with (hold your breath, long archaic terms ahead) globalised capitalist society, able to get whatever it wanted whenever and subsequently falling into a dazed stupor (breathe).
World War Z is much more interested in more everyday concerns that tap into deep, unrealised fears about government complacency and general competency to do the right things well for their populations. Relationships between nations on lots of levels - diplomatic, economic and military are examples of things that author Max Brooks chews over. It feels contemporary and the zombie saturation provides a great conduit for terrible dangers through relentless demonstrations of mindless and chaotic behaviour.

It's obvious why World War Z is attracting so much interest when you look at the underlying themes and compare to real life. Looking at political engagement for example tells a story. In the UK voting habits have changed dramatically as many voters from all walks of life become disengaged from a crust of society that is perceived as both self-interested and satisfied. There's also less votes recorded year on year relative to population growth. That's the sort of comment Brooks etched deeply into Z.



One of the scariest endings you'll ever see on film.

But that's enough of the boring stuff. It's unsurprising that it's sold almost a million copies but the satisfaction's derived from an inquisitive tone that's dare I say... sensible. Which is weird really, when every other zombie effort falls into straight horror/gore or non-too-subtle grabs for an intellectualism for saps. Sadly, the film looks like being a Brad Pitt disaster movie. Take some sunglasses - messages concerning themes of the above are likely to be delivered 'with bombast'. 

I'm sure many other genre buffs lament over similar points, but the sheer puerility of much of what's delivered in contemporary horror is dispiriting. Which is why I'm (tentatively) excited about the recent streak of entertainment based around zombies. OK so prosthetics have got better, but that's not really why it's so exciting. The original Rec (above right), although now nearly five years old, presents a brilliant dissection of a bitter, isolated group of people in contemporary Spanish society who rely on hearsay and gossip all delivered through the medium of reality TV. A lovely piece of work and subtly smart.
Of course there's a great chance I'll be making the same point in another five years, except this time with... what? Meyer has successfully eviscerated vampirism, presenting their fractured selves in public as ancient versions of contemporary society. And we had ghosts for a bit (oh hi Takashi Shimizu, got any re-remakes coming up?) which were very scary when done in a particular way (Japanese, poorly conditioned hair, female) Forget their tiresome supernatural forebears - I want zombies to take over the world. You might enjoy it.

 

McCONAUGHEY?

How Dazed and Confused taught me to appreciate the talents of Matthew McConaughey, actor and bongo extraordinaire

To think it started with a house arrest, bongo drums and nudity. And, inevitably, Wikipedia. My gradual reappraisal of Matthew McConaughey finally completed a full 180 last night upon witnessing his glorious turn in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, but I remember a more cynical time.

A time, admittedly, when I wore gym vests beneath polo shirts because I saw a guy do it in a hip-hop video and a time when I spent 45 minutes in video shops looking at their new releases and smirking knowingly at the film playing (Blockbuster Sidcup I mourn your passing. If I'd had money I'd have helped you out).

The film was the sports-betting sort-of-thriller Two For The Money, involving a very buff McConaughey outgruffing ultimate gruff-voiced shouty guy Al Pacino over American football stats. This was following on from SJP fronted rom-com Failure To Launch (which exec took a punt on that title, I hear you ask). The year was 2007, I was a peaky graduate and owned an armchair, a bed, a laptop, a cardboard box of homeware and a carload of books and music. Life was terrible.

McConaughey staring down Weird Al in less cool times

Naturally McConaughey was gonna get it. Classic Southern gentleman I thought - smouldering looks, a linebacker's physique and hair from a Vidal Sassoon ad. And that voice. Was he weaned on Bullett Bourbon? And just look at those films he was in. The two above were enough for me to convict in the court of cool. I was judge, jury and executioner. Young men are terrible people. But was McConaughey actually a douche? In 2007, in my Bench track jacket, gym vest and polo shirt combo (you could see the gym vest underneath hanging over my jeans - I was that bad) my unwavering response would be a smirking 'Are you serious?'

As you might have noticed I have a thing for re-evaluating my preconceptions. It's the price you pay for what I  like to think of as compassion and what my friends, family and workmates appreciate as an almost childlike naivety about life. There's a famous quote about adults preferring themselves as children that I can't be bothered Googling, but it's there and it's no doubt true.

Case in point: I recently saw Ben Affleck win a Best Picture for his 1970s set hostage art/reality thriller Argo (and suggested he was a shoo-in 24 hours earlier here) which capped my reappraisal of a guy I used to assume was also classic Hollywood douche, whatever that is. A lot of my preconceptions are based on what I read on blogs and in magazines. Do you get that?

Anyway, that opening line. Good isn't it? And it's true - my preconceptions did change once I read of McConaughey getting busted for being blazed to his eyeballs on pot hammering the hell out of bongos in the middle of the night. In the buff. I loved every aspect of his story, and what had led me to reconsider his talents? The trailer for Killer Joe of course.

I never saw Friedkin's deep-fried slice of queasy Americana, starring a distinctly creepy-eyed M.M as a hitman with unholy desires for his client's sister, but it interested me. What was a guy like this doing in a film like that?

So watching Dazed and Confused last night was akin to discovering a priest's hole in a stately home that led back to a chapel in the middle of nowhere. I suddenly understood how the man responsible for toecurlers like Ghost of Girlfriends Past and We Are Marshall had got to Killer Joe - a connection not immediately visible but definitely a permanent part of the architecture.

Beat that bowl cut/ moustache combo. Fact: you can't.

Of course there's a broader point here of recognising change in yourself and a natural broadening of perspective as you're exposed to more of the world blah blah etc etc but you all knew that anyway. The important element is the blonde mop the man sports (right) whilst wearing rolled up t-shirt, red trousers and a frankly excellent pair of boots that need to make a comeback in 2013, never mind 1976.

This guy's a revelation. I've no idea who Marjorie Baumgarten is but her take on his performance is spot on: "He is a character we're all too familiar with in the movies but McConaughey nails this guy without a hint of condescension or whimsy, claiming this character for all time as his own." As succinct an appraisal as you'll find, but a perfect description of the sincerity of his performance.

Condescension, I guess, is an emotion an actor can't feel if they want to know success (there's a clear parallel with the intro I constructed up there if you're interested) and his portrait of a jock delighted with his lot and a tangible sense of hedonism is brilliant. Incidentally Affleck also shows up, but as the bullying senior who flunked, he's still a bit of a loser at that stage. Different career arc for him, clearly.

Pictures courtesy of www.scoutlondon.com and screenrush.co.uk