Twenty fourteen (2014) will be EXCITING. If you want it to be. I want it to be. Here's what I'm excited about.

Lord of the Flies - in ballet

 

That's right. Matthew Bourne, him of the winningly solid pudgeface (not a word but it ought to be) and sixth form gelled fringe brings Golding's societal piece to the stage. I know almost nothing about ballet, besides watching a very impressive Natalie Portman performance in the very impressive Black Swan back in 2011, but I've caught snippets of Bourne's version of that (check out the trailer here) which I wish I'd seen live as it looks excellent.

Equally LotF was never one of the books I got to read at school but I've since atoned for that criminal gap in my formal education and am 'intrigued' to say the least what he will do with characters like Piggy. Extra incentive, if needed: it starts round the corner from me at the Lowry Theatre in Salford.

The Premier League

 

Being a Manchester City fan, I've enormously enjoyed the first half of this English season, watching a renascent side destroy opposition defences (my highlights, since you asked, were the 6-3 v Arsenal, the 3-2 v Bayern away, and of course that first Davey Moyes derby) at home.

But it's no real wonder the Premier League managed to blow even its own astonishing rights deals out of the water when there is finally some sporting drama on Saturdays again. Who's going down? Who will win the league? Will Levy keep Sherwood? What is going on with Mata? Will Thud go to the World Cup? And will Luis Suarez ever just bundle one in off his arse? The quality's great, but the stories are many, varied and seemingly endless. We might not see another one like it for a bit, so catch it if you can.

Dave Eggers does Bill Bryson

One of my favourite ever books a historical collection of food writing, in all of its literary forms, in The New Yorker magazine. Composed of pieces by writers, not cooks or chefs, I quickly realised that you don't need to know your subject as much as needing to know how to write - but some subject knowledge is important.

I'm guessing 'some' is precisely the right amount for Dave Eggers. The novelist formally collects his memoirs of his trips to Thailand, the Sudan and the northeastern states of America amongst many, many others into Visitations, a piece of work I will presume to contain more than its fair share of breezy metaphysical rhetoric slung around  'some' interesting perspectives on, say, mini shrines on the street corners of Bangkok.

Obviously Eggers is known for his forays into parts of the world untouched by much of the professional writing class, and his sharp eye and goofy wit will undoubtedly bring to life much of a planet still perused through the 'World' section of broadsheet newspapers.

Visitations is out in November 2014

The Men Are Back In Town

 

To misquote Thin Lizzy, but it sort of feels like they never left. The hardest woikin' band 'n sho'bidness has got to be these guys right now, who are on for their fifth album in as many years in between tours. Anybody can knock an album together in under a fortnight - several bands made it sound like a skill in the early noughties - but The Men's range has broadened in parallel with their ever-longer tours, and New Moon is a soulful echo of Neil Young's early years, without losing their belt and braces steely punk sound around the fringes. For a band that appears hellbent on challenging normal concepts of time, the record's title - Tomorrow's Hits - feels entirely appropriate.

*!* Tomorrow's Hits is released on Sacred Bones Records *!*

An Oscars Worthy of an Academy Award

 

For those complaining that the Academy Awards is getting carried away with populism, the decision to drop the aforementioned name last year and replace it with the catchier and more vacuous 'Oscars' was the proverbial red rag. OK so: I enjoyed Silver Linings and Bradley Cooper is deceptively good at this acting stuff. I admit it.

Anyone still out there?

Anyway, onto the American mantel goes Oscar next to buddies Tony and Emmy (what's up with a Golden Lion guy?) and does the debate over whether this is an awards or an entertainment product intensify? Who knows and it's probably a silly argument anyway - the irony won't be lost on anyone when the inevitable drama ensues from some no-hoper claiming the Oscars 'has lost its allure'. All except the Americans of course, who we all know have never understood irony, as long as Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld have lived. 

But! What is this garbage, I hear you mumble. Fair point. And now I'll come to it: this year, more than any I can ever remember, I'm sort of excited. Alright, another David O. Russell film (see above for my swooning heart). BUT. What about Steve McQueen, riding into the postmodern American West, hat not on head, cardie round shoulders, shorts above knees, with a film so deserving of superlatives that you can actually use them without fear of unintentional hilarity. Tremendous. Magnificent. Etc. 12 Years A Slave looks rich with promise - and who doesn't want to hear a Steve McQueen acceptance speech?

Elsewhere another of my favourite guys - Alfonso Cuaron - might win something for Gravity (and Sandra Bullock could win another Oscar. Yeah.) And what of films like Blue Is The Warmest Colour, Blue Jasmine, and All Is Lost? Not to mention interesting curios like Upstream Color and Only God Forgives. You can probably count the last two out, sadly. Nevertheless there is - finally - justification for that furious Monday morning scowl and four espressos from your local café after an all nighter getting passionate, alone, with Mr Oscar. About damn time.

Pix thanx to Douban, Style Weekly, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and Sky Sports.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Upon seeing The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, here and forever known as Mitty, It seems as though I broadly disagreed with my favourite source of film trivia and news. But I don't think I'm in the minority here, although I do feel like Peter Bradshaw was excessively mean-spirited towards my birthday - sorry, the film. Which I saw on my birthday.

And of course that explains the general hurt anyone feels when someone or something they respect and have faith in turns on them, however misplaced those sensations are. For Walter Mitty, the titular protagonist, this represents a moment to get on a skateboard and walk out of an office to Arcade Fire. A touch harsh? Well maybe.

This Mitty, the second on screen following Danny Kaye's 1947 version, is played by a Ben Stiller who I will describe as handsome and mild-mannered, neither of which are qualities that particularly stand out in films I really enjoy watching over again.

Mitty is a 21st century version of the character from writer James Thurber's whimsical, sentiment-free short story. He is the sad and logical end of the man who began the start of the 20th century dreaming of conquering the Nazis (as the original Mitty does) and begins the 21st agonising over whether to wink at a pretty lady on a dating site; eHarmony, which is a real thing. The film's got more where that came from - Papa John's also play a big role as Mitty's employer in an earlier, more miserable life. Kickstarter's not for everyone it seems.

The lady, Cheryl, is played by Bridesmaids' Kristen Wiig, and prompts numerous fantasy elements to be introduced to the viewer as Mitty dives into buildings, rescues kittens, walks out of the Antarctic with a weird Latin accent and a parrot and various other bemusing moments.

But the really interesting parts are not the humorous bits. Adam Scott plays Ted, a brand junkie, management-speak-extraordinaire who exudes horrible from every pore as the man come to wreck Mitty's life following the closure of Life the magazine and the opening of Life the website, with the commensurate number of jobs to be shed in the name of 'cost effectiveness'.

Scott is a disgusting guy and the scenes he is in are a delight to watch - for me it also included the best fantasy as Mitty beats the crap out of Ted whilst both are waiting in the lift. The bone of contention? A Stretch Armstrong toy. It betrayed a goofiness in Stiller's direction that I always liked about his other films and just because it is something he has excelled in previously, I don't think it's a good enough reason to try something else.

Other highlights include the floor huddle where the unfortunate Life staff are informed of their doom - think The Office with added awkward as hand signals and weird emphasis on stuff make for richly satisfying viewing and a charming short scene where Mitty demonstrates incredible skills with a skateboard in the background as the woman he dreams of chats to her ex-husband. I think the stunt double for that scene is Rodney Mullen, incidentally.

The rest of the film follows Mitty as he traverses around northern Europe and the Middle East in search of the aptly named Sean O'Connell, a Life freelance photographer who kicked the whole shebang off back in America with a missing photo, the last to ever grace the Life cover and one that each party within the film is quite interested in. Ted's interested because he'll get shouted at if he doesn't get it. Cheryl is because she needs something to keep talking to Mitty about, and Mitty - well, Mitty because he hasn't really been anywhere but Phoenix, as he tells eHarmony's customer services team, and he basically needs to get the hell on with his life.

The cinematography is absolutely great, there's a lovely scene where Stiller skateboards down the side of a volcano, a very well filmed oceangoing scene with what may be a porpoise or a shark, and a moment with Sean Penn, a good fit for the rugged photographer who Mitty sets out to reach for the accursed photo number 25, which is totally predictable and so easy for Penn he practically sleepwalks his way through, but it's nice to watch two actors doing their own thing.

The film's moments of naturalism blow away the more absurd, intricately concocted elements and I particularly enjoyed the scenes that are not really integral to the story. There's truth in Stiller's work when he does not force the pace, and a lot of this bears the look of a guy forcing it as a fairly green director.

That might feel a little unfair, but it seems as though much of the heart of the original is held up to a clever-clever 21st century perspective that just doesn't possess the same throwaway intellect as its predecessor. A shame, particularly as I'm only 29 once.

Photo: The Guardian

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