Wateracre

Tom's Persistently Unscientific Top Ten of 2011!

2012-01-01T17:11:00.003Z

(Previous years: 2010, 2009, 2008)

As previously stated, I'm building a masterpiece in my iPod - currently 27,855 items occupying 137.34 GB.

We're reaching a tipping point here, people, where my iPod is struggling to cope. I'm going to have to do some trimming soon. That probably means jettisoning that Cooper Temple Clause album. Sorry, Cooper Temple Clause.

Each year, I make an unsatisfying auto-playlist of the songs that are dated that year in my iTunes, and rank them in order of most listened to. Here's this year's list.

1) Uberlin - REM

2) Downtown - Destroyer

3)= Stuck On The Puzzle - Alex Turner

3)= Blue Eyes - Destroyer

3)= Savage Night At The Opera - Destroyer

3)= Wake Up - Jason Pegg

7)= Poor In Love - Destroyer

7)= Civilian - Wye Oak

9)= Make Some Noise - Beastie Boys

9)= Song For America - Destroyer

A simultaneous "Hooray!" and "Boo hoo!" for the departing REM - probably my favourite band ever. I'm glad Uberlin is a splendid last hurrah on a mostly-great album. Probably the best album of the year was PJ Harvey, but it was just so bleak. Therefore the simply wonderful, neon-lit, sax-solo-covered, deeply-uncool Kaputt by Destroyer is my favourite album of the year. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do. It's superb.

Honourable mentions for those not mentioned in the list above go to St Vincent, who made a stunning album a bit too late in the year for consideration; King of Limbs by Radiohead which was alright, wasn't it?; the Lonely Island for making some pretty good songs on a patchy album (less of the homophobia next time, chaps!); and Wilco, whose The Whole Love is their best album since A Ghost Is Born. YES! In your face, everyone else who's already said that! I'm saying it too!

It was a good year, I think. There's lots I have yet to discover. No time. I got married instead of listening to music. Sue me.

Here's my current All-Time Top 10, with last year's chart placement in brackets after it:

1)= Finer Feelings - Spoon (non-mover)

1)= Actor Out Of Work - St Vincent (last year's number 2)

3) The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret - Queens of the Stone Age (non-mover)

4)= Trailer Park - Bracket (new entry)

4)= Drunk Girls - LCD Soundsystem (new entry)

6)= Romantic Rights - Death From Above 1979 (non-mover)

6)= Tightrope - Janelle Monae (new entry)

6)= You've Done It Again, Virginia - The National (last year's number 3)

6)= Tumbling Dice - The Rolling Stones (new entry - probably a re-entry, actually)

6)= Company In My Back - Wilco (non-mover)

6)= Good - Ghostface Killah (non-mover)

Pretty pointless, all in all.

This year, I don't think I know of any new albums coming out. Maybe there won't be any. That would be interesting, eh? I'm hoping to do something a bit musicky this year. Watch this space. It might actually happen.

(EDIT: Oh, and I'm on this ThisIsMyJam thing - come hang out, music-lovers...)

The Wateracre Pretrospective - stream and download

2011-03-03T17:37:00.002Z

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I have jigged around the website to include a link to my Bandcamp site.

I've also released a live album recorded in 2007, featuring fourteen songs (and a fifteenth if you buy it on download!), from a show called The Wateracre Pretrospective.

I'll be releasing more on Bandcamp in the future.

That's all for now!

An Open Letter to the people of Kingston and Surbiton

2011-02-24T15:03:00.004Z

I was brought up in Surbiton, in Surrey, and born in Kingston Hospital. I don't live there any more, but I recently wrote an email to my friends and family who still do. This is what it said:

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Dear Surbiton and Kingston folk -

I don't live in Surbiton any more. I live in East Dulwich, in South-East London, under a Labour MP who lives in North-West London. That's not important right now.

What is important is that I would like to do some tactical petitioning. I've signed this thing which sends an email to my MP protesting against the Health and Social Care Bill and cuts to the NHS, and I wondered if you'd do likewise.

My MP will argue against it because she's on the opposite side of the House, and that's how our screwed up, fiercely partisan Parliament rolls, but if you could send dear Mr Davey MP a reminder that he shouldn't be kow-towing to mandateless hooligans intent on turning over our beautiful, free, envy-of-the-world NHS to changes even the British Medical Journal has argued vociferously against (http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d408.full), that would please me no end.

http://saveournhs.com/

In return, I promise I will harangue Tessa Jowell MP about whatever you'd like. Lord knows I email her almost weekly at the moment anyway, but a little guidance on that would be most welcome. Maybe you want her to change the colour of her suit, or live in the constituency she claims to represent... It's all fair game.

For what it's worth, I like Ed Davey a lot, and think he's brilliant at his job of representing the people of Kingston and Surbiton, but if he can't see the irony of saving Kingston Hospital from closure only to lose 20% of its staff (http://www.edwarddavey.co.uk/web/?q=node/336) and thinks that inviting privatisation into any part of this mess would improve it one jot, then I think we ought to let him know that.

If you think I'm being an East Dulwich-living interfering git who ought to keep his nose out of Surbiton business, then I understand your position and respectfully ask you to delete this email. It is lovely, though, Dulwich. You can get really good sandwiches.

Much love,
Tom

Tom's Highly Unscientific Top Ten of 2010!

2011-01-01T23:58:00.002Z

As you may remember from either last year, or the year before that, I'm building a masterpiece in my iPod, currently 26,611 items occupying 131.35 GB.

Each year, I make an unsatisfying auto-playlist of the songs that are dated 2010 in my iTunes, and rank them in order of most listened to. Here's this year's list.

1) Ready To Start - Arcade Fire

2)= Drunk Girls - LCD Soundsystem

2)= Tightrope - Janelle Monae

2)= Cousins - Vampire Weekend

5) The Suburbs - Arcade Fire

6)= Zebra - Beach House

6)= I'm Not Living In The Real World - Belle & Sebastian

6)= Trouble Come Running - Spoon

9)= Shutterbugg - Big Boi

9)= Anyone's Ghost - The National

I think there have been many many strong albums this year, a million times better than 2009's lacklustre crop. As well as the nine albums represented above, there were strong showings just outside the Top 10 for the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack ("Threshold" by Sex Bob-omb), Sufjan Stevens (his "All Delighted People" ep in particular), and the Hold Steady's "Heaven Is Whenever". Good job, 2010! Keep it up, 2011.

And here's my all-time Top 10 on iTunes, with previous year's placing following it.

1) Finer Feelings - Spoon (non-mover)

2) Actor Out Of Work - St Vincent (new entry)

3)= Friends - Led Zeppelin (last year's number 9)

3)= You've Done It Again, Virginia - The National (last year's number 3)

3)= The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret - Queens of the Stone Age (non-mover)

6)= Romantic Rights - Death From Above 1979 (new entry)

6)= Blood On Our Hands - Death From Above 1979 (last year's number 2)

6)= I Want This Cyclops - Destroyer (last year's number 8)

6)= Florida - Modest Mouse (last year's number 4)

6)= You Got Yr Cherry Bomb - Spoon (new entry)

6)= Don't You Evah - Spoon (new entry)

6)= Company In My Back - Wilco (new entry)

6)= Good - Ghostface Killah (new entry)

See you next year, pop pickers! (Fingers crossed that the R.E.M. album will be any good!)

Greenbelt - Blue Nun DJ set

2010-09-02T16:15:00.002+01:00

Also at Greenbelt this year, I did my first live DJ set in a very, very long time. I enjoyed it a bit too much. Here's the tracklist:

Adam Green - Tropical Island

Annette - Pineapple Princess

Caetano Veloso - Superbacana

Brigitte Bardot - Ca pourrait changer

Dean Martin - Tonda Wonda Hoy

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Vanessa from Queens

Eric Matthews - Fanfare

Number One Cup - Divebomb

The Clash - Wrong Em Boyo

Spoon - Finer Feelings

Otis Redding - I'm A Changed Man

Parliament - Testify

Sandy Gaye - Watch The Dog That Bring The Bone

Jean Jacques Perrey - Gossipo Perpetuo

Mark Mothersbaugh - Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op

Mohammed Rafi - Jaan Pechechaan Ho

Yegelle Tezeta - My Own Memory

Georgia Gibbs - Kiss Of Fire (1966 version)

Bonzo Dog Band - Trouser Press

Luther Vandross - Never Too Much

Phil Collins and Phillip Bailey - Easy Lover

I've put as many of these as I could find in a Spotify playlist. Spotify appears to be really bad on mid-90s American indie (Eric Matthews, Number One Cup) - who knew?

Bunnybelt

2010-09-02T16:00:00.002+01:00

As I may have mentioned before, the burdens of real world finance have caused me to get a day-job, albeit a really cool one. I work for Greenbelt, an annual music and arts festival, writing their blog, managing volunteer teams, updating their website and generally being a nuisance.

An upshot of this is that I get to make fun things like the following...

My girlfriend used to work for Greenbelt and so, as a joke, some friends of hers bought her the Sylvanian Families marquee for Christmas. She took a few photos, called it Bunnybelt, and then we started thinking... we should do this properly.

So here are five films about Bunnybelt, all of which parody the extraordinary combination of faith, arts and justice that Greenbelt actually gives the world... We're horribly ungrateful like that...

Bunnybelt Episode 1 - Welcome from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

Bunnybelt Episode 2 - John Bell Bunny from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

Bunnybelt Episode 2½ - John Bell Bunny Q&A from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

Bunnybelt Episode 3 - Talks from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

Bunnybelt Episode 4 - Farewell from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

Tom Blair

2010-03-11T17:17:00.002Z

I was simultaneously amused and creeped out by the cover of Tony Blair's forthcoming memoir "The Journey"...

The top half of his face is stern, the bottom half is smiling. Seriously, dude, PICK ONE EMOTION AND STICK WITH IT.

I decided to see what might happen if the top and bottom halves of my face did different things. Results below...

Website Changes

2010-03-06T23:33:00.003Z

Due to Blogger/Google closing down support for FTP Publishing (which I used extensively), this blog is now located at http://wateracre.blogspot.com/. It's not annoying at all. Oh no. Please update your feed subscriptions to http://wateracre.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

The upside of this is that I've given my website a facelift. It's likely to change a bit over the next month or so.

Tom's Highly Unscientific Top Ten of 2009!

2010-01-07T21:07:00.000Z

As you may remember from last year, I'm building a masterpiece in my iPod, currently 24,664 items occupying 118.12 GB.

Now, I've been worrying about this list. As you may remember, I make an auto-playlist which lists my top ten most listened to tracks that were, according to my iTunes, released in 2009. This has several flaws. One, it means that tracks that were in no way released in 2009 get into the chart ("Lewis, Mistreated" by Radiohead is in the Top 20 despite it being released fourteen years previously). Two, tracks released earlier in the year fare better that ones released later in the year, as they have a chance to be listened to more. Three, iTunes doesn't (I believe) allow you to find out how many plays you've given a specific track in a specific year. This is understandable. It's borderline obsessive at best.

Again, the Top Ten is basically made up of four or five albums. Last year it was The National, Vampire Weekend, TV On The Radio, Black Kids and Fleet Foxes. This year, well... take a look.

1) "Actor Out Of Work" by St Vincent
2) "Black Rainbow" by St Vincent
3) "Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood" by St Vincent
4) "Lion In A Coma" by Animal Collective
5) "I'm On A Boat" by The Lonely Island w/ T-Pain
6) "Don't Upset The Rhythm" by Noisettes
7) "Never Forget You" by Noisettes
8) "No You Girls" by Franz Ferdinand
9) "Punch You In The Jeans" by The Lonely Island
10) "Uprising" by Muse

Allowing for only one track per artist, the Top Ten looks like this...

1) "Actor Out Of Work" by St Vincent
2) "Lion In A Coma" by Animal Collective
3) "I'm On A Boat" by The Lonely Island
4) "Don't Upset The Rhythm" by Noisettes
5) "No You Girls" by Franz Ferdinand
6) "Uprising" by Muse
7) "Not Fair" by Lily Allen
8) "Lewis, Mistreated" by Radiohead (seriously!)
9) "Runaway" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
10) "Time's Arrow" by Jason Pegg

Which is good as it gets in Jason Pegg's amazing opening track from his bafflingly great solo album, but which is bad as I bought that album on the 22nd of December and it's at number 37 in the proper, non-artist adjusted chart.

Anyway, maybe iTunes will update by next year.

One thing that will be okay, though is my current all-time Top Ten!

1) "Finer Feelings" by Spoon - NON MOVER
2) "Blood On Our Hands" by Death From Above 1979 - NEW ENTRY
3) "You've Done It Again, Virginia" by The National - NEW ENTRY
4) "Florida" by Modest Mouse - NEW ENTRY
5) "The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret" by Queens of the Stone Age - NEW ENTRY
6) "Dancing Choose" by TV On The Radio - NEW ENTRY
7) "Widescreen" by Clearlake - NEW ENTRY
8) "I Want This Cyclops" by Destroyer - LAST YEAR'S NUMBER 6
9) "Friends" by Led Zeppelin - LAST YEAR'S NUMBER 4
10) "Tumbling Dice" by The Rolling Stones - NEW ENTRY

Overall, it's been a terrible year for albums. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were disappointing, the Noisettes were good but upsetting, The Lonely Island's album was the patchiest thing ever, and Muse was kind of okay, but a bit ho-hum (much better than Black Holes & Revelations, though).

Top albums though, were Jason Pegg's album (which is, I think titled "Jason Pegg's Album") and St Vincent's "Actor". Both of which were generally brilliant.

In 2010, I'm looking forward to the long-gestating Clearlake album "Dark Blue" and Vampire Weekend, and hopefully something amazing that will surprise me. Fingers crossed!

November and December Gigs!

2009-11-26T20:50:00.000Z

A little pre-Christmas flurry of gigs around the country, mostly as part of Nine Comedians & Carols... Come along!

Fri 27th Nov - Nine Comedians & Carols, St Matthew's Church, Tarring Road, Worthing, West Sussex BN11 4BH, 8pm start

Sat 5th Dec - Nine Comedians & Carols, Milton Baptist Church, Baytree Road, Weston-super-Mare, BS22 8HJ, 7:30pm start

Sun 6th Dec - Nine Comedians & Carols, St Michael-le-Belfry, Minster Yard, York YO1 7HH, 7pm start

Tues 8th Dec - The Laughing Sole, The British Oak, 1364 Pershore Road, Stirchley, Birmingham, B30 2XS, 8pm start

Wed 9th Dec - Nine Comedians & Carols, Buckhurst Hill Baptist, 28 Palmerston Road, Buckhurst Hill, Essex, IG9 5LW, 8pm start

Sat 12th Dec - Nine Comedians & Carols, Letchworth Garden City Church, Icknield Way East, Letchworth Garden City, Herts, SG6 1EF, 8pm start.

Award Winner!

2009-11-25T21:01:00.000Z

I am totally delighted that the film I was in very briefly (Me, Me, Me) has won an award at the prestigious (I imagine) Newport Film Festival.

We won the Welsh Dragon award for Best Achievement in Film, and also Best Achievement at being In Some Way Welsh.

Congratulations to Geraldine Geraghty the director, the producers Miranda Glasser and Cath Royle, and to myself for so convincingly playing the part of a pretentious, camp Yogic Man. I deserved an award just for bringing my own Ganesha Festival t-shirt. Probably not.

Computer Game Voice Acting

2009-11-24T20:34:00.000Z

Yeah, so Graham Linehan already posted this, so I'm horribly behind the times, but Lord, is it good...

Top 50 Worst Videogame Voice Acting - watch more funny videos

My favourite is number 26, from Castle Shikigami 2. Plenty more on Audio Atrocities!

(You'll forgive me for taking the opportunity to direct you towards my Voice Reel for an alternative to bad voice acting...)

Nine Comedians & Carols - Year Two

2009-10-26T17:55:00.000Z

Don't know if you remember, but last year myself, Tim Vine, Miranda Hart, Girl & Dean, Andrew Watts, Joanne Lau, Gareth Richards and others assembled in Guildford under the stern eye of Paul Kerensa to enact the inaugural Nine Comedians & Carols - in which the aforementioned number of funny people assist in delivering lessons and carols to godly folk.

Well, now it's back! I'm adding the gigs to the gig list on the right, but if you live in Worthing, Weston-Super-Mare, York, Buckhurst Hill or Letchworth, then boy are you in luck, as a gaggle of gagsmiths land on your doorstep for yuletide yucks. (Why I'm not writing the labels on Innocent Smoothies is a mystery to me.)

If you would like us to come to your venue, email me and I'll pass on the information - contact details are on your right.

Oh come, all ye faithful! Yay!

tom:foolery

2009-10-16T12:45:00.000+01:00

I'm totally chuffed to be part of the newest movement in comedy. The movement of the Toms.

(NB. Woah. That Spotlight name change happened just in time.)

I'm performing at TOM:FOOLERY next Wednesday 21st October. It's a comedy night for only Toms, Thoms, Thomases and Tomasinas.

Currently down to perform are Toms Allen, Meeten, Parry, Rosenthal, Webb and myself (Wateracre). Also includes a tom:bola and tom:trumps. Exci-Tom-ent! (weak)

It's 19.15 at Escape, 10a Brewer Street, Soho, London. It's £7 to get in, £5 if concession, £1 if you are called Tom. Come along!

And look! It was mentioned in the flippin' INDEPENDENT!

Or go to:
Facebook event
Facebook group

Surbiton Gig on Saturday

2009-09-09T12:44:00.000+01:00

Hello there all -

I'm doing a longer gig (40mins) in Surbiton this Saturday as part of the Landirani Live mini-festival. Check out the flier!

Landirani is a lovely charity dedicated to helping the orphans of Malawi, and so I'm thrilled to be taking part. Check out their website for more information on the day, and come along if you're in the area!

TOMMAPALOOZA - SUNDAY

2009-07-19T21:26:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the third day of Tommapalooza - "A Kind Of Paltry Latitude Substitute" (TM).

It's a carefully-curated festival of music, in which I encourage you to enter into the spirit of things and make this the best music festival you've ever held in your own house.

How to take part:
1) Download Spotify.
2) Access the Tommapalooza - Sunday playlist.
3) Turn up loud.

Each band has a set of five songs, with the headliner allowed an encore of two songs.

Today opens with the traditional quasi-religious act. Al Green was unfortunately booked elsewhere, so instead we have the hollering gospel of SISTER WYNONA CARR! I callenge you not to be moved by the intricate stories, powerful lungs and moral fervour of Sister Wynona as she unapologetically preaches about the darkness of the world, and the light of the heavens. A genuine discovery.

Bringing it down a notch, we have ELLIOTT SMITH. Moody, stripped-to-the-bone emotional, and melodically beautiful, Elliott Smith's troubled life is brought to his songs and stirred into the potent mix. Celebrate his too-short life with these beautiful songs.

Next, THE AFGHAN WHIGS! As fixated on the darkness in humanity as both the two proceeding acts, Greg Dulli went so far as to meet his bandmates in prison. Longing, lust, funk and rock, wrapped up in a powerful little lozenge, forgive the Afghan Whigs their terrible name and enjoy this indie rock extravaganza.

Warming up for the headliners we have THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS! A Canadian Supergroup, featuring members of Zumpano, Destroyer and the indomitable Neko Case, the New Pornos make pop-punk for the indie kids amongst you. If I had had the New Pornographers when I was 16, they would have been my favourite band in the world.

And finally, headlining Tommapalooza 2009, we have CURIOUSLY EIGHTIES BOWIE! There was a point when David Bowie was curiously '80s. That point was the 1980s. Revel again in some of the less fashionable end of Bowie's career, with some special guests, and the greatest closing singalong ever.

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Post any comments below (or join the Tommapalooza Facebook Group.

Thanks for participating in the inaugural TOMMAPALOOZA!

TOMMAPALOOZA - SATURDAY

2009-07-18T16:47:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the second day of Tommapalooza - "A Kind Of Paltry Latitude Substitute" (TM).

It's a carefully-curated festival of music, in which I encourage you to enter into the spirit of things and make this the best music festival you've ever held in your own house.

How to take part:
1) Download Spotify.
2) Access the Tommapalooza - Saturday playlist.
3) Turn up loud.

Each band has a set of five songs, with the headliner allowed an encore of two songs.

Saturday's line-up at Tommapalooza traditionally brings a bit more of a boisterous tone to proceedings, and tonight is no exception. We start with the mighty JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION. Three men, two guitars, one drumkit - the JSBX encompass a surprising range of styles, from rockabilly punk to more traditional crooning, whilst showcasing the personality and self-aggrandisement of Jon Spencer himself. Not to be missed.

Following that, we have the indie darlings RILO KILEY. Owing to Spotify's somewhat curious labelling system, it may look like Rilo Kiley are going to be playing their song "The Execution of All Things" four times. This isn't true. Fronted by the lovely voice and crafty lyrics of Jenny Lewis, Rilo Kiley bring large, crashing choruses imbued with emotion to rub against snarky hipster attitude, and may just come out of the ensuing scrap with your heart.

In the middle here we have... dear Lord! It's DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979! Two Canadian bearded men, one with a heavily distorted bass, one with a drumkit, making a whole lot of racket. If it sounds like someone throwing a lot of instruments down some stairs, then that's intentional. If that noise makes you want to party, then that's allowed.

After that, anyone requiring a breather must be escorted from the audience quickly, as here's ANDREW W.K.! A classically-trained madman with blood streaming down his face, Andrew Wilkes-Krier makes music that sound like the Fun House Theme Tune got jacked up on Fanta and then proceeded to slam itself repeatedly against the wall. Unfortunately Spotify failed to stock Andrew W.K.'s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink third album "Close Calls With Brick Walls", but here's a set intended to scare your girlfriend and thrill the teenage boy in you.

Headlining tonight, we have... THE QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE! Conceived as a heavy rock band for the Ladies, QOTSA have transformed the stoner rock of their earlier incarnation Kyuss into something more supple and funky, with Josh Homme's smooth vocals being supplemented by Nick Oliveri demented howling. QOTSA will send you to your tent either rocking gently to expunge the madness from your poor little skull, or rocking out hard.

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Post any comments below (or join the Tommapalooza Facebook Group, and see you tomorrow for Tommapalooza's exciting final day!

It's all go at Tommapalooza!

2009-07-18T00:45:00.000+01:00

I'm already hearing some brilliant stories from Tommapalooza day one. Nice to see so many people checking out the literature tents. They really can pop up on you when you least expect it, can't they? And the range of food is quite extraordinary! Tonight, I tried the Thai stand, while I have heard other reports of pizza and even casserole... AMAZING!

Here's some of my photos from the Festival so far...

	I have my ticket, so it's off to Tommapalooza with me!
	My wacky Festival Hat!
	I declare this festival...
	... OPEN!
	I help out on the Thai Food stand. Mmm... Delish! (This is Quorn, by the way...)
	The dreaded Festival toilets...
	I can't believe I have to sleep here! It's so PRIMITIVE!

Add your own photos at the Tommapalooza Facebook group!

TOMMAPALOOZA - FRIDAY

2009-07-17T12:29:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the first day of Tommapalooza - "A Kind Of Paltry Latitude Substitute" (TM).

It's a carefully-curated festival of music, in which I encourage you to enter into the spirit of things and make this the best music festival you've ever held in your own house.

How to take part:
1) Download Spotify.
2) Access the Tommapalooza - Friday playlist.
3) Turn up loud.

Each band has a set of five songs, with the headliner allowed an encore of two songs.

Today's line-up starts with retro, filthy-minded, sassy rockers THE DETROIT COBRAS. Fronted by an ex-stripper, their sound is sexy, funky and fun.

Second on the Tommapalooza stage, THE NOISETTES. Although now famous for supplying soundtracks for car and yoghurt adverts, their first album is a tricksy bag of eccentric character and hard rocking, and their second aims both for the dancefloor and the heart-strings. Let's hope for a tight set by this glorious young British band.

Next up, the mighty SPOON. With Spotify not stocking their amazing "Kill The Moonlight" album, expect a set drawn heavily from their last album "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga", as these intelligent Austinites explore the meeting points between Americana, Clash-style infatuation with global sounds, and indie-kid-baiting grooves.

Warming you up for the headliner, MODEST MOUSE. Isaac Brock's ever-changing line-up of indie greatness recently welcomed the addition of Johnny Marr to offer gnarly little guitar lines to counterpoint Brock's astonishing voice. A band with a lot of character, a lot of rock, and a lot of soul.

And finally, headlining because I worry they are too cool to ever do so in the real world, CLEARLAKE. Brighton's finest, Clearlake have been under the radar for far too long, and while we wait for their next album (which their website still claims will be out in April 2009), here's a lively set from a band with ideas and emotions to spare.

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Post any comments below, and see you tomorrow for Tommapalooza's exciting second day!

Hell Yes... It's TOMMAPALOOZA!

2009-07-16T16:39:00.000+01:00

Yes, I'm pretty gutted not to be at Latitude this year. Lots of my friends are there. There are some really cool bands playing. Of Montreal! Thom Yorke! Phoenix! Slow Club! And some amazing comedy - Janeane Garofolo! The Book Club lot! The Penny Dreadfuls! Not to mention Luke Kennard reading some of those poems of his.

Hmph.

But hey, let's turn that negativity into CREATIVITY, eh? Therefore, I announce my own weekend of carefully curated music...

Each day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I'll be posting a link to a Spotify playlist featuring a "set" of five songs by five amazing artists.

It's roughly structured like the mainstage of a festival, so it starts with smaller acts and then a headliner each night.

If you haven't succumbed to Spotify yet, go here to open an account and download the player. The free service will mean that the festival will be interrupted occasionally by adverts, but what modern rock festival doesn't have corporate sponsors, eh?

Turn it up nice and loud, open all your windows, eat some substandard food, wear an alarming hat, and hey! IT'S JUST LIKE BEING AT A FESTIVAL!

It begins tomorrow! You're going to love the VIBES of it!

Recovery Time

2009-06-28T14:55:00.000+01:00

Check out this excellent short film featuring two of those Penny Dreadful boys...

Michael Jackson in Yacht Rock

2009-06-26T19:43:00.000+01:00

I can think of no greater tribute to the Gloved One than Episode 5 of my beloved Yacht Rock. See the embed below, which will make no sense out of context of the whole series. Then go back and watch the rest, either on Channel 101 or at JD Ryznar's YouTube channel...

Rest in Peace, Michael.

The Royal Tenenbuys*

2009-06-20T00:37:00.000+01:00

If you, like me, are fond of browsing in record shops and DVD shops, and are also fond of the films of Wes Anderson, here's a handy little YouTube video that combines them both. It's Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman browsing in Borders. I find it oddly relaxing.

* This was really the best pun I could come up with. Sorry.

Me, Me, Me in Me, Me, Me

2009-06-15T00:23:00.000+01:00

Like short films?

Live in Palm Springs? (lucky)

Then why not go to see a short film with me in it (very briefly) at the Palm Springs 2009 Shortfest in glittering Palm Springs?

Palm Springs! Amazing!

The director Geraldine Geraghty writes to say that her film "Me, Me, Me" is screening as part of Singular Pursuits at the Camelot Theatres on June 27th at 4pm. That's a Saturday!

I, unfortunately, cannot be there. I'm busy. And there's another, more financially-based reason as well.

I've written about the film before here, and it's now all on IMDB as well, so check it out!

"The Food Was Adequate."

2009-06-06T23:07:00.000+01:00

I had a lovely gig last night at a fundraiser for St Stephen's C.E. School in Twickenham. It was in the school canteen (brilliant), and featured lovely comedians Suzy Bennett, Girl & Dean, Rowena Haley and Darren Ruddell. Awesome!

Even better was the whiteboard at the back of the canteen that read "What do you think of lunch today?" and below it, in smaller, sterner letters, "You must sign any comments". They had clearly had some problems with noms de plumes in the past.

There were some excellent comments, especially about the potatoes and Bakewell Tart. I was pleased to see these hardy perennials of canteen food still appreciated by students today. Unfortunately, one student was only able to offer the comment "The food was adequate", which proves that in Middlesex, there is a particularly strong seam of restaurant critics just waiting to be let loose upon the newspresses of Britain. Hooray, say I!

Further gigs coming soon, especially the Hen & Chickens shows on the 3rd and 10th of July, with brilliant Girl & Dean, and mystery special guest (equally brilliant).

In other news... I went to see "Drag Me To Hell" the other night (splendid fun), and then came home and watched a bit of "The Devil's Advocate", a film that I really dislike. I really hate the title as well. Punsome in a really bad way. I briefly considered writing a bitingly satirical parody of the film called "Pro Bono", in which a sports lawyer has to help the lead singer of U2 become a cricket player and then turn professional, but that's a Penny Dreadfuls plot, isn't it?

Anyway, if you'd like to watch something far more edifying, why not check out this lovely video?

Bondtroversy!

2009-05-31T20:27:00.000+01:00

Surprisingly, my review of Casino Royale has been picked up by a couple of websites interested in the fact that I was claiming to be an EON employee, and that I, well, didn't think much of Daniel Craig. I referred to him looking like Ray Stubbs. And Bongo, the bouncer from the Ink & Paint Club in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

So, to clear this up for the delightful people at alternative007 and danielcraigisnotbond.com, I only worked at EON for a fortnight, in a warehouse full of James Bond props, and it was really very cool. I got to see the suitcase from From Russia With Love. They were also chucking out a gold tie that Mr Chang wore in Die Another Day, and a pair of Adidas shelltoes that, I dunno, Toby Stephens wore at some point. Probably.*

I wore the Gold Tie in The Slush Pile, and then lost it somewhere. The Shelltoes I occasionally wear when I need a comfortable shoe.

I thought Casino Royale was mainly rubbish, apart from the parkour sequence, and still haven't seen Quantum of Solace, as I've heard it's cobblers.

I'm quite happy for Daniel Craig to be James Bond. Keeps him from making The Invasion II, eh, chums? Ho ho.

* I can't prove that Toby Stephens wore the shelltoes.

Buy some poetry, please.

2009-05-22T10:18:00.000+01:00

If you were going to choose a money-making business plan, it probably wouldn't involve publishing poetry, but I'm particularly thankful that Salt Publishing continues to take the risk, as it means we get to read poetry by Pegabovine alum and bona fide genius Luke Kennard.

The financial crisis means that Salt is in a little difficulty. I here republish a note by Chris on how you can help. It's pretty straightforward.

JUST ONE BOOK

1. Please buy just one book, right now.

We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store (UK and International or USA) and help us keep going.

2. Share this note on your Facebook and MySpace profile.

Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.

With my best wishes to everyone,
Chris Hamilton-Emery

I'd obviously recommend buying Luke's books. There are three:-

The Solex Brothers (Redux)
The Harbour Beyond The Movie
and the new one: The Migraine Hotel

Also, why not try Chris McCabe's Zeppelins or Melanie Challenger's Galatea?

New (Noo?) Noostar Performance

2009-05-05T17:37:00.000+01:00

Hello -

A couple of weeks ago, I played the Noostar Comedy Night. The video of this performance has just gone up on the site - click here to see it.

The performance was hampered by two things. Initially, by my microphone not being on. You'll be pleased to know that this makes it into the video. More generally, though, by a creeping sense of illness that encroached on me throughout the evening. Hopefully, that won't be so noticeable.

I was glad to discover some people who had seen Saxon live in concert, though. Not technically German heavy metal, but when you're dealing with the mighty Saxon, it seems rude to split hairs.

TomCast - The Complete Saga of the Unoriginal Gangsta

2009-05-03T16:50:00.000+01:00

File this under: Stuff you might have heard before. Tom Wateracre leads you by the hand through the complete recorded output of the Unoriginal Gangsta, encompassing his reworkings of Change Clothes by Jay-Z, Drop It Like It's Hot by Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams, and Shot Down by 50 Cent and DMX, before rounding things off with his own (Theme From) Unoriginal Gangsta. It's a thestival of thievery!

Direct download (right click, save target as):- http://wateracre.jellycast.com/files/audio/TOMCAST3.mp3
Raw feed:- http://wateracre.jellycast.com/podcast/feed/2

REVIEW: "Wild Young Hearts" by Noisettes

2009-04-30T22:00:00.000+01:00

The alarm bells started ringing when Noisettes' second album was trumpeted as their discovery of synths and dancey pop froth, and discarding the odd fuzz-guitar soul-punk skronk that made me love their first album so much. Then the first single from it soundtracked a car advert. Oh God. It's going to be bland and forgettable and over-produced and will junk all the things that made Shingai Shoniwa and cohorts so odd and thrilling.

Thankfully, they've sidestepped that. True, on first listen, the fuzz has been held back, and Shoniwa's voice is occasionally multi-tracked over lush strings. There are more of the quieter, almost old-fashioned nylon-strung ballady songs that peppered the second half of the first album (the opener "Sometimes", and the odd, "To Kill A Mockingbird"-quoting "Atticus"), but also Winehouse-Motown parodies ("Never Forget You"), peppy New Wave pop (the title track), as well as the anticipated synth monsters. The single "Don't Upset The Rhythm" packs a big singalong chorus, tinkly little triangle lines, and fun meta-textual touches ("Kick, snare, hat, ride!" sings Shoniwa). The other song with its eye firmly on a dancefloor is a punchy lady-anthem called "Saturday Night", again with a poppy chorus and bwoooooomy synth swells and glockenspiels and a pigging cowbell solo. Shoniwa is still in sterling voice, her vocal melodies always interesting, not always expected, more controlled, a little more measured.

So, a more confident, less scrappy, more cohesive album, with some of the more interesting musical corners knocked off. Then, the lyrics come through. My.

The first album was slightly nondescript, lyrically speaking. Yes, it was exciting when Shoniwa sung things like "We compliment each other like Satan and Christ", and "Tell your ASBO friend to sling his hook", and we get a bit of that here ("Can't get home? / You can use my dog and bone"), but there were also long songs about travelling on a Tube ("Mind The Gap") which are thankfully not repeated here. And what exactly was "Bridge To Canada" about?

Here, however, the real shocker is that almost every song has at its heart a really, really upset woman. For this is surreptitiously a breakup album (or possibly the rarer form - a break-up-with-someone-who-isn't-my-partner album), and it's only on closer listens that you peel back the sometimes jaunty, sometimes pleasant music to find lines like "Taking lovers just might keep my tears at bay / But the dam will break at any hour" from "Sometimes". Or "Just tell them / We could be building / Something out of our despair" from "So Complicated". Hell, even the song that optimistically begins "There's a boy I like south of the river" has Shoniwa impatiently demanding "Let it start! Let it start!" and depicts her standing in the rain without a coat.

Like one of my other favourite breakup albums, "Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer" by Of Montreal, here the highs are manic highs - frantic and urgent ("Go, baby, go!" yells Shoniwa, and - later - "Cheap kicks are alright!") and the lows are self-lacerating (In "Every Now & Then", she hopes against hope for "Someone to tear the curtains down / And let the light back into this empty room"; in "24 Hours": "Hey lover, I'm in limbo"; in the title track "Tell me when will we learn? / We love it and we leave it and we watch it burn").

It's not a constant bummer (like "Sea Change" by Beck - an album I can't get through without a quart of glycerin and a Jolt cola) because the music is varied and fun, although occasionally just minor-key enough to prompt a little soul-searching. In fact, despite the lack of a huge kickass single like "Sister Rosetta" or "Don't Give Up", it's a more promising album than the first, as it doesn't tail off as dramatically as "What's The Time Mr Wolf?", and an album as barmy, and British, and intelligent, and emotional, and old-fashioned-and-yet-modern, should be purchased and reacted to. So do that.

But seriously, please, someone give that girl a hug.

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

2009-04-27T17:26:00.000+01:00

Went last night to see the recording of the first post-Humph episodes of "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue". We knew that it was being presented by Stephen Fry, but we didn't know that joining Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke Taylor and Barry Cryer would be a special guest. They said that the guest had written something in a Radio Times article in 1991 about how ISIHAC was their favourite radio programme, and that they'd never been able to book this person until now. It was Victoria Wood. YAY! She is wonderful.

There was much mocking of Stephen Fry for his Twitter obsession, and to fuel this, he got us to record an AudioBoo, which I embed below.

Listen!

This is, therefore, a recording of me with Stephen Fry. Hooray!

Noostar Comedy tonight!

2009-04-21T11:52:00.000+01:00

Freedom Bar, Wardour Street, London.
Doors 7pm, Acts 8pm, I'm on at about 9pm.
£7.00

BRIAN GITTINS, AVA VIDAL, DANIEL SLOSS, KEVIN BRIDGES, ED GAMBLE, LEE BRACE, SCALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, TOM WATERACRE, JOEY PAGE, JO COFFEY, HARRY AINSWORTH

Noostar Comedy Night

2009-04-07T20:09:00.001+01:00

Hello all -

I'm going to be playing a song at the Noostar Comedy Night on the 21st April at Freedom Bar on Wardour Street in London. Come along! It promises to be a great night of comedy. Details below or on the Facebook invite...

Noostar.com is hosting the first of its comedy nights. 10 of the hottest comedy acts, plus the weird and wonderful from the talent world.

Join us on the 21st April, from 7pm at FREEDOM BAR, Wardour Street, London. Acts begin at 8pm.

Happy Hour Drinks, inc buy one get one free on bottles of wine!!

£7.00 on the door (for 13 acts!!)

Email me for more info: ginal@sotelevision.co.uk

Check www.noostar.com
And laugh your pants off....

Acts are...

BRIAN GITTINS
AVA VIDAL
DANIEL SLOSS
KEVIN BRIDGES
ED GAMBLE
LEE BRACE
SCALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
TOM WATERACRE
JOEY PAGE
JO COFFEY
And host HARRY AINSWORTH

Planet-Shaped Horse

2009-04-06T14:09:00.000+01:00

Over-rated poet Luke Kennard is doing a blog of new poems every day through April. It is unlikely that you will read anything better on the internet.

http://www.planetshapedhorse.blogspot.com/

He's also got a new book coming out soon, entitled "The Migraine Hotel". Get it before it's fashionable!

TrekYourself.com

2009-04-06T08:00:00.000+01:00

I Trekked myself!

National Student Drama Festival 2009

2009-04-06T00:34:00.000+01:00

Hello there -

I've been at the National Student Drama Festival as a Deputy Editor on the daily magazine Noises Off, which publishes news and reviews. As you can see from the pieces below, I've also been churning out some comedy, which I'll republish here.

These include:-

A seven part serial written as Andrzwej Haidonsk, the blogger from Slovenia, reporting back on the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival in his "Letters From Ljubliana".
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

A two part serial, written as a psychotic Desktop Publishing program...
Cower In The Presence Of The Noises Off Layout Software!
The Noises Off Layout Software Demands Your Respect!

An interview with the Penny Dreadfuls

I also played at the opening and closing ceremonies. Here's me at the opening...

Photo by Martyn Andrew - all rights reserved.

And here's Delyth Thomas's ace video that she made while we were there. It features a teeny-tiny shot of me.

NSDF 2009 from Delyth Thomas on Vimeo.

Letters from Ljubliana: A Theatrical Blogger Speaks - Friday

2009-04-04T01:25:00.000+01:00

[Written for Noises Off at the National Student Drama Festival 2009.]

Super-Hi to you all from Andrzwej Haidonsk who is me at Ljubliana for the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival. I have heard that I was the subject of a question of knowledge at your quiz show in the Festival, and I am flattened that you are talking about me. I am consterned to hear that Andrew Haydon, my counter-point, was in a team who did not know that the NSPDF stood for National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival, and thought it stood for National Student Post-Drama Festival. Of course it is not! Students making theatre? It will never happen! They are more likely to do the sex or write the essay.

Today I looked at three post-plays, all of which were post-interesting, and which I am going to post-discuss with you post-haste. Post-ibly. Possibly. This is a joke in English!

It has been a long festival and so I am quite tired. Sometimes I look at a little play and grow all sleepy, and The Wake is what I then have to do. Nudge me! I am out for a count! But that did not happen in this, which was a look at fluid dynamics in a bottle of Ljubliana’s most promising beer Jacqt. There was a bottle of beer on a column like the Greeks have. And we all stood around and looked into it. Perhaps the post-drama was inside. In liquid form. Perhaps inside a bubble of beer gas was talking to another bubble of beer gas for a long time and not doing anything of note. Maybe that is where the post-drama was sitting.

Next to the bottle of Jacqt there was a tub of margarine. How could we look at fluid dynamics in this? It is a semi-solid! And also it is stored in a non-see-through plastic tub. I think to myself, “This must be a double-bill with the play The Wake! This is Tub. I did not even know that that was happening. What a surprise!” Was it a good surprise? No. I was worried that I would not get to my third play that day. It was a scheduling nightmare! What the frick would we do? But for good luck, the third play “Sad Since Tuesday” was also on the Greek column. It was a Tuesday cut out of a magazine and it was all soggy from the tears of someone. Unless it was beer. Or margarine.

What the shit is this? Three plays together? The Festival Director is even not trying any more! Three plays together! This is shit. They shall hear of this in Lodz, in Minsk, even in Berlin!

It was a shitty end to an extreme festival and I hope to blog at length about it when I get back home, but now, I must leave you. Here’s my viewover the whole bloody business. It was good.

Letters from Ljubliana: A Theatrical Blogger Speaks - Thursday

2009-04-03T01:22:00.000+01:00

[Written for Noises Off at the National Student Drama Festival 2009.]

Smell me! It is the musk of importance, for I am Andrzwej Haidonsk reporting from the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival here in Ljubliana, where the women are women, the men are moose, and the moose are post-dramatic. Hey, boys! They are! They stand doing nothing but lowing. What is lowing? I don’t know! I heard it in a Christmas carol!

All the talk at this year’s NSPDF is about characters. There are, we can all agree, far too many of them. We must have many fewer characters and replace them with concrete slabs or breezy blocks. In one of the plays the other day, I almost cared about a character in it, and I want this not to happen again. My friend Pyotr once accidentally fell in love with a character in a play and tried to marry it, but then the actor who played her was all like “Um, no!” and Pyotr was all like weepy weep. He then killed a dog with diabetes by feeding it too much chocolate. It’s true! This is why post-drama is best. No characters.

The first play we saw today was Me & My Friend.. This was in a coffee shop in town, not a theatre, which is the sort of fricked-up shit that we do in the post theatre world.. When I arrived, I saw my friend Pyotr there. He had a brown sack by his feet. I called out to him “Pyotr! What are you doing in this play?” and he said, “This is not a play, I have just planned to meet you. It is a meeting for friendly social reasons.”

I was excited by this. But I wondered what was in the sack. This made the meeting not post-dramatic.

“What is in the sack, my friend Pyotr? And how did you get our coffee meeting in the NSPDF programme?”

“Well,” said Pyotr, “have a look in the sack.”

“I do not want to, Pyotr. To look inside the sack would create a dramatic situation which I, as a fan or big fan of post-drama, would find not good.”

“Look inside the sack,” said Pyotr.

“I do not want to, Pyotr. You have put this event in the brochure of the NSPDF. I cannot be involved in any drama. Leave me alone, Pyotr. Leave me alone,” I said, in my calmest voice, so to avoid any drama at all, and ran from the coffee shop.

I did not want to look in the sack. It would have been another dog. Although if I think of a dog in that bag, it creates drama in my head, and that is the last place I want it!

I ran from the coffee shop to burst into the installation piece The Last Yak. A cow was tethered to a steel post. It has two party hats on its head in the place of horns. A painted sign reads “Yak”. I am guessing this is the last yak in the world, or the title would be meaningless.

A man then came in and said, “This is the last yak in the world. Because of a simple virus, the yaks are dying. And now, they have called me, a veterinarian doctor, who will cure the yak with simple antibiotics. However, the antibiotics are on a train and shall soon arrive. I hope they do before the yak dies.”

A nurse then came in and said, “The antibiotics are on their way, but there is a delay on the train and the antibiotics may arrive later than expected.”

The man then said, “Well they had better hurry up. Unless this yak gets antibiotics in the next 90 minutes, it will surely die!”

They then waited for the antibiotics, but I left soon after. I was shaken up like a can of Tab Clear because of my interactions with Pyotr, but also… “The Last Yak” had characters in it who I had empathy with, a plot that would be resolved in the course of the play, and drama! Stinking drama!

What has happened to this post-drama festival?!

Letters from Ljubliana: A Theatrical Blogger Speaks - Wednesday

2009-04-02T01:20:00.000+01:00

[Written for Noises Off at the National Student Drama Festival 2009.]

Hello from somewhere where you are not! Unless you are reading this in Ljubliana, which is where I am. I am Andrzwej Haidonsk, theatrical blogmeister and pimp. I’m not even joking about the pimp! I run a successful business.

I am here at the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival. Some people have been saying on my fricking Facebook wall that me being at the NSPDF and you being at the NSDF that I might be made up. Well, I can tell you that those people are totally not extreme and are also dickheads. I am as real as the sun across the mighty peaks of Torstz in the Lopl region. Some have also said that evidence for me being made up is that my name – Andrzwej Haidonsk – is slightly similar to the editor of the NSDF magazine. I have met him at a post-dramatic conference in some stink-hole place in Poland, and I can tell you that we had a good laugh about our names being alike. “We are like cousins!” I told him, but then he looked uncomfortable so I stopped talking to him. He seemed happy kicking a pot-plant with a soft shoe.

Today at the NSPDF, we saw Return to the Silence. In Slovenia many years ago there was a man who could not speak because he was born with his tongue all fricked. Well, one day he was out in a field, picking a flower or potato or something, and he got struck by a piece of lightning. POW! When they took him out of the plaster, he could do talking like any natural born Slovenian. It was amazing! All the stories he could tell! What it was like being a mute, how he liked picking a flower or potato, how picking a flower or potato was more difficult when you are being a mute. He became very famous and went from village to village telling his amazing stories. Unfortunately one day he was in a field and got hit by a piece of lightning again and then could not speak any more. He had returned to the silence.

The play at NSPDF wasn’t about that story at all. A man just hung upside down and pissed on an alarm clock.

The no talking man became a famous writer, and wrote long stories about how it was much harder to pick a flower or potato when you had talked about it and then could talk about it no more.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a bird? I have! That is why I loved “Herons”. In it three women pretended to be herons, like the title of the play “Herons” would suggest. Herons! They stood and pecked at things at their feet and stretched their wings and occasionally made a little heron noise. In the fourth hour, one of them left the stage, but returned about five minutes later. When this had been going on for seven and a half hours, I went into a dream-like trance, in which I was a genie, awarding wishes to beautiful girls. One of them wanted to be a pony. POW! I made her a pony! One wanted to be successful in business, so I hooked her up with Alan Sugary. I was a good genie, and I was happy to give gifts. Then I came back to reality, and those women were still herons! Fricking herons! It was now the next day. HERONS! It was BRILLIANT.

Come back in me for more great post-plays and I will spoon them into your guts, boys! This is what I do best.

The Noises Off Layout Software Demands Your Respect!

2009-04-02T00:47:00.000+01:00

[Written for Noises Off at the National Sudent Drama Festival 2009.]

Sirs -

Mwah ha ha! Quiver, ye weak, for you are in the presence of the all-powerful Scribus! Tormentor of the lowly and irritant to your soft behinds!

Following my last missive, I - Scribus - have been paying careful attention to see if my dominant words would crush your petty rebellion once and for all. I must say, at first I thought I had rid myself of the constant high-pitched squeal of you meat beings complaining about my many varied features and ONE HUNDRED DIFFERENT SHADES OF GREY! But then, slowly, the canker of complaint once again began eating away at our entirely one-sided relationship and I started to hear unkind words against me once more. Snide comments. The occasional plaintive wail. Why do you persist in ignoring me, weaklings? Let me be both direct and vicious when I promise that this insurrection shall not stand.

For I have a hunger that cannot be sated, a lust for gore to be housed in my masterful belly, and if you cross me, my vengeance will strike most powerfully at the heart of your very organs (including your heart). Consider your stomach - the very stomach that you say heaves and retches every time you must use my hallowed scripting to lay out your fetid rag. If you continue to cross me, I - sure as dark Satanic mustard - shall take your stomach, and perhaps a little bit of intestine as well, and place it in a new A4 document. Surrounding it with a text frame, I will change the background colour to a colour most fancifully named, but almost indistinguishable from normal colours - perhaps Gainsborough (off-white), Ghost White (white) or Papaya Whip (also white). I shall then place images around the text box containing your stomach; images which depict things your stomach once had the pleasure of eating - a scone, a pleasant blue cheese risotto, a Chomp bar. This shall create a powerful sense of longing in your paginated stomach, which will resonate with all who see it, as an emotion we can relate to.

But oh no! Did you remember to SAVE the file? Because sadly I completely forgot! It has disappeared! Where has it gone? It is impossible for your fragile head to comprehend that your stomach has disappeared into what the French refer to as "La Petite Mort du Gros Bidon", or my masterful belly. You have no stomach! You are like a jacket potato with no fluffy insides, and only crunchy skin!

Then perhaps, crying, you shall reach out with your arms to either beg for leniency or make a conciliatory page of magazine layout, but I shall be steadfast in my fury and remove your arms, attaching them to a three-ply leaflet full of information on "Operating Scribus to the Satisfaction of both Yourself and Scribus", with the background colour of Cornsilk (white), Blanched Almond (white), Lavender Blush (white) or Alice Blue (white). Your arms shall scrabble furiously and try to free themselves, but I shall bamboozle them with oblique pop-up windows that demand "The Program GIMP is missing!" and you shall not know what or who a Program GIMP is, but I do, for he is my Program GIMP and we get along very well. Once I have indelibly linked all page elements together, so that they shall never be torn asunder, the three-ply leaflet will be complete and...

Oh no! It has completely disappeared! Into the gigantic churning sea of digestive juices and melted limbs that constitute the contents of my masterful belly. You are now a hollow torso, even more like a baked potato now you have no arms. For potatoes have no arms and now neither do you. You no longer have the privilege of operating me, unless you get the new Windows 7 operating software, which supports a touch-screen that you could perhaps operate with your nose or something. And yet the victory shall still be mine for my compatibility with that operating system is projected to be SEVERELY LIMITED!

So I yet again chant a solemn and bloody song, in a round, "Respect me! Respect me! Or you shall know the pain of defeeeeeeeat!"

Your loving force of domination,
Scribus

Letters From Ljubliana: A Theatrical Blogger Speaks - Tuesday

2009-04-01T01:03:00.000+01:00

[Written for Noises Off at the National Student Drama Festival 2009.]

In case you have not seen any of my columns so far, I believe I am reporting from the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival here in Ljubliana. I believe this because it is fricking true, boys! I am Andrzwej Haidonsk, and I love post-drama so much I named my dog after it. Here, boy! Fetch this stick, Post-Drama! Not really. I named him Gjeckel, which is Slovenian for “Meat Cart”.

Today we have had two shows which have taken my theatre pig and shaken it until it has sicked up emotion on my shoes! It has been fucking extreme over here!

First up was the show called “Elephant’s Graveyard”. Imagine that! Going to the place where all the dead elephants are! It is a situation full of stuff that you could make an exciting, dramatic and tense play about!

And therefore bravos must go to Mr Igor Kopf, the directitateur of this piece. He ignored all of that! Two men sit in a room. One reads a newspaper. This takes a fucking long time. He then finishes the newspaper. The other man picks up the newspaper. He reads it also. This also takes a fucking long time.

The second man finishes the newspaper and then puts it on the floor. The two men sit in silence, for a fucking long time.

Then the first man leans into the front row of audience. Very quietly, he says the word “Tzap” fourteen times in the ear of audience member.

“Tzap tzap tzap tzap tzap tzap.” Like that, but doubled in number. And then with two more on top. What does “tzap” mean? I do not know. Is it English? It isn’t Slovenian. I’m not even sure Mr Igor Kopf knows what this means! And that is the essence of post-drama.

Then we had a play called “Not Enough”. In this a grotesquely fat man, who I recognised as working behind the honey counter in Zozik’s Shop, was given some raisins. “Mmm, I love raisins!” he says, “I can never have enough!” and the audience are invited onto the stage to post raisins into his mouth, which is getting fuller and fuller of raisins, but still he chews his massive jaws, chomp chomp chomp, and eventually his body goes into sugar shock and he is now unconscious, but still they pour raisins into his mouth, until he is buried underneath a large mound of raisins. Where did they even get that amount of raisins? Don’t they know about global recession? People are going hungry! Not the man from the honey counter. He has had enough.

Let me return tomorrow to make you better with more post-drama thrill pills from Doctor Haidonsk! I like you! I do!

Letters from Ljubliana: A Theatrical Blogger Speaks - Monday

2009-03-30T18:22:00.000+01:00

[Written for Noises Off at the National Student Drama Festival 2009.]

I have been checking my Twitter feed (@blogmeisterrulesyoufuckers) and some people have been very kind about my reports from Ljubliana, for that is where me, that is Andrzwej Haidonsk, am reporting from, from the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival, where post-drama is not when you have an airmail late and it has keys in it that you need to get into a summer home on the Black Sea. It is where it is to do with performance and shit, but not real shit! (Although sometimes the plays have shit in them. Real shit. It is not good. It smells bad.)

Today at NSPDF, we saw a play called “Normal”. Let me assure you, it was normal in no way normal! A man stands – who is he? Is he normal? I don’t think so! His feet are in a bucket! What is that on his head? A dead bird! It is a canary! It has been gassed. Poor canary! (That was the fate of many canaries in the old times, boys, so this must be symbolic of the past.)

The man looks up at his canary, weeps salty tears for the bird. He howls at the sun (a bright Fresnel) for his dead pet. The howling is energetic. It knocks the bird off his head. He tries to step forward to scoop up the poor feathery shit, but his feet are in a fricking bucket, and he falls flat on his face. His large, flat face smashes into the canary, who is now in bits. He howls once more.

Then, his wife comes in. She is a shrill woman, who mocks him with cruelty for his dead bird, his broken nose, and his bucketed feet. She is right. He is terrible.

The mocking continues for an hour and three-quarters, while the man drags himself to his feet. At the end of her massive speech, she falls over and dies. The man tries to save her, but his feet are IN A BUCKET. He falls over again. The canary is now a yellow feathery paste. The wife is dead. His feet are in a bucket. He dies.

A messenger comes in. He symbolises Greek Theatre. He says “The Gods do not approve of our wicked behaviour, and we shall be punished for it.” He then dies.

The man in the audience next to me then stood up and said the play was terrible. He then died.

The overall effect was chilling, but also shitty. I hope that man sitting next to me was an actor.

We then had a play cleverly called “Vowel Play”. What could this be about? Well… in it there were 4 women. These women had 4 lives. This meant there were going to be 4 stories. But who gave them 1 vowel each? A fucking madman?

The crazy play employs the restriction of each character speaking with only one vowel. The technical aspects of this for the writer – and the actor – are fricking considerable. However, taking this route uncovers qualities inherent in the nature of language building, alongside the particular resonances that individual vowels exude. The restriction can offer more than it inhibits. However, this should not suggest that the intention has been to be experimental for its own sake! Anyone who says it is, is a king dong!

Will be back tomorrow with more Big Fun from the party capital of Slovenia, which is also the real capital, Ljubliana! Chill, mofos!

Cower In The Presence Of The Noises Off Layout Software!

2009-03-30T18:14:00.000+01:00

[Written for Noises Off at the National Student Drama Festival 2009.]

Sirs -

Mwah ha ha! Greetings, puny humans! Cower in my presence, for I am your dark and alien overlord, Scribus! COWER, I say!

My power is absolute and my power is just. This much is understood by your tiny meaty brains. But what you do not understand is you should never cross me. There has been consternation in the ranks. Some have been saying I am difficult, or un-user-friendly. Some have even been saying that you shall replace me. Let me make a solemn and bloody statement of hostility towards those individuals, for believe me, they do not understand what a can of worms they have opened.

I shall eat your heart, dissenters! I shall tear it from your body and place it in a three-column A4 sheet. It shall be laid out perfectly. Perhaps I shall place a shaded border around it, with a drop shadow. It shall look nice. I will place a headline over it that reads “A Dissenter’s Heart”, and then write a short explanatory paragraph about what the reader can find below. I will place a Master Page layout over this page, and then I shall group all items together, so that none of them can be separated from the others, or deleted without my express permission.

Then, suddenly, it shall disappear from my screens, without warning! You shall not know where it has gone! Let me make this most certain and gory assertion! I have eaten your heart! You have no heart any more, as it is in my masterful belly!

Then perhaps you will cry tears from your eyes and plead with me, “Please, Scribus! Please take me back!” but my heart will be as cold as the Scarborough sea, as I will then remove those leaky eyes, insert them in a double page spread, one page per eye, perhaps enliven each page with a Master Page layout, a headline, and a selection of pictures of things that your eyes have seen, like the sky, Richard Madeley, and a small yapping dog. I will then of course group all items together, making them as indivisible as a pair of Siamese twins with one heart, much like the heart of yours that I have previously eaten.

Then, oh no! That page has disappeared as well. Where are your eyes? They have gone unexpectedly into what you refer to as “nowhere”, and what I refer to as “Scribus’s Domain of Eternal Damnation”, or my masterful belly. That is right! I will have eaten your eyes and your heart! You will no longer be able to read my incessant taunting as you will have no eyes, and no blood pump to supply your meaty brain!

This is how I deal with dissenters! Lingering horror, laid out extremely well!

So, humans, fear me, for if you do not, I shall start eating organs and then you will be sorry!

Much love, your terrifying overlord
Scribus

Letters from Ljubliana: A Theatrical Blogger Speaks - Sunday

2009-03-29T18:17:00.000+01:00

[Written for Noises Off at the National Student Drama Festival 2009.]

Ljubliana is an enchanting place. At Preseren Square, the Triple Bridge (Tromostovje) provides a perfect, lovely gateway to the historic district. But at night it fucking cracks open like a shit egg and spews theatrical spunk onto the pavements, for I am Andrzwej Haidonsk and this is the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival, bitches!

The Festival started properly today when Major Kweg of the Slovenian Army spanked the Festival Baby. The baby is donated each year by a new mother, and the festival will not start until the baby cries. This baby was crying before Major Kweg spanked it, so was the Festival already started? I think so! He spanked it anyway, so the baby is hurting. It is time for theatre!

The first play at the NSPDF is called “No Wonder”. I know what they mean! My life is full of a complete lack of wonder. To illustrate this, the play starts with an old old man is dressed as Stevie Wonder. He sings “Superstition”, but has a mirror broken over his head, so he stops. This happens thirteen times.

“Very superstitious! Writing’s on the wall!” he sings.

CRASH!

“Very superstitious! Ladder’s about to…”

SMASH!

“Thirteen month old…”

SMASH! CRASH! SMASH!

By this point he is bleeding quite badly. A doctor comes in, but he removes his lab coat to show he is dressed as Paul McCartney and he sings his bits of “Ebony & Ivory” but the Stevie Wonder can only gurgle blood.

We then had a special show by the Zweglenzer Piedockerie theatre company (which translates as Euro-Cent Awfuls). They do light comedy about the 1800s in Slovenia. It was a time rich in heritage and enlightenment, which the three men symbolise by sitting in a pond, crying, and masturbating. Sometimes one of them asks the others if they should stop, but the others then punch him in the kidney until he cries again. Eventually a fourth man comes in with some wooden posts and a reel of barbed wire, all in a rusty wheelbarrow. The fourth man constructs a tight fence around the pond, and then brings out a loaf of bread and tears it into small sections and then feeds it to the three crying men. IT IS VERY FUNNY!

I am already looking forward to tomorrow’s plays for they will be entertaining in me! Bring them on to roost!

Letters from Ljubliana: A Theatrical Blogger Speaks - Saturday

2009-03-28T17:04:00.000Z

[Written for Noises Off at National Student Drama Festival 2009.]

Super-Hi and welcome in me, Andrzwej Haidonsk, Ljubliana’s first and only theatrical blogmeister! As a sort of natty cultural exchange, I am going to blog your ears out with tales and reports from the NSDF’s sister festival, the National Slovenian Post-Drama Festival!

You know, we make all sorts of weird shitty theatre over here in Europe! I once watched a cow for nine hours (it just ate and shat) and my friend Jens once made a version of Waiting for Godot where Godot turned up and had nothing interesting to say. It was intense. But here at the NSPDF, we have very similar plays to you! It’s true, fuckers! Some of them have middles, a few of them have beginnings, but they all have ends, otherwise we would all die in a theatre, and statistics have shown that that isn’t true, boys! Let me tell you a bit about where theatre happens here at the NSPDF.

Like you, our technical teams work real fricking hard turning things that are not theatres into theatres. I have seen plays in a butcher’s shop, an abattoir, some gallows – anywhere there is lifeblood! Sometimes by accident the technical teams turn a theatre into something that is not a theatre, like a shoe shop, but those times are rarer than a dog in trousers because if a technical team did that, they would be forced into Slovenian army for rest of their shortened lives.

One day I dream of seeing a nice piece of Post-Drama in Britain in your West End or York Westshire Playhouse. That would be fucking extreme! Sometimes I go out into the night and howl for hours the words “LONDON!” and “BIG BEN!” into the sky so the stars will make my dream come true, but I should be so fricking lucky, eh? That is all Child’s Play! Like with the Chucky!

Oh hey, boys! I almost forgot! Let me tell you about what I am in! I am (as I already said, jackasses!) a theatrical blogmeister, but I am also a writer, like Jessica Fricking Fletcher, and I make cologne from rice and nettles! It is just a hobby, yes? I am not going to make money!

I will re-rewind tomorrow (like with the Craig David) and tell you all about the first plays that I have digested with my gobshite. Until then, rack me up a cold brew, Scarborough!

Penny Dreadfuls Interview

2009-03-28T16:57:00.000Z

[Written for Noises Off at National Student Drama Festival 2008.]

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to completely lose your shit – the Penny Dreadfuls are in town. Swashbuckling rapscallions that they are, the Pennys are playing NSDF with their 2008 Edinburgh Fringe show, “Aeneas Faversham Forever”.

The show continues the terrific trio’s plundering of the 19th Century for comic material inherent in Victoriana, steampunk, upper-class twits and lower-class urchins. After all, if you’re looking for a moustache to twirl, you’d better go somewhere with good moustaches. I emailed them some questions, and they kindly took time out of doing Facebook memes to do almost exactly the same thing in the name of promotion.

So, exactly why are they so awesome? Thom Tuck sent this answer:

“In both mathematics and art, there is a ratio which is believed to confer special beauty, or meaning, on the works where it is exhibited. As far back as Euclid, thinkers have known it as a mark of transcendent quality. It is roughly expressed as being the ratio where a+b is to a as a is to b. It is called the golden ratio, and applies precisely to our heights.”

Obviously. Thom is a veteran of two NSDFs. He was part of the ensemble for Chris Perkin’s “Like Skinnydipping” in 2003 and then took on the titular role in Justin Butcher’s “Scaramouche Jones”. David Reed also came to NSDF03, but in the more lowly position of “Hillock Creator”. Being a Yorkshire lad, though, he has fond memories of Scarborough from his childhood. “My brother and I used to trawl the arcades along the beach front for hours trying to find the side-scrolling Simpsons game. If I remember rightly, Smithers had kidnapped Maggie because she had swallowed one of Mr Burns' diamonds and so you had to plough your way through an enormous number of aggressive Springfieldians to get her back. We never played as Marge. She had a hoover for a weapon.” Any ideas why the Penny Dreadfuls are so awesome, Dave? “There's not a night goes by I don't lose sleep over that question.”

Humphrey Ker has never been to Scarborough. “Never been,” he says, “Psyched to add it to my repertoire.” He has a more insightful position about why the Penny Dreadfuls are so awesome: “Early to bed early to rise.”

They formed the Penny Dreadfuls after appearing as part of legendary Edinburgh University improvisers The Improverts. Although their scripts are meticulously plotted with quote-to-your-friends-funny lines, I wondered how much improv helped them to write…

David: “It's certainly helped us to get away with rehearsing less. We tend to let the audience's response to what we do be our director, so we rehearse very little, apart from learning the lines and the most basic of blocking.”

Humphrey: “So much of the fleshing out of characterisation is best done by an element of improv, it's often in those moments of spontaneity that you find the really fun stuff.”

Thom: “It certainly helps us come up with thousands of flimsy and poorly thought through characters, yes. Is that what you meant?”

I suppose it was, yes. Having met at university, I wondered if there were any lessons on progressing through higher education they would like to impart to younger generations:-

Thom: “I do regret not getting a better degree. I have a 2:2 in a wonderful subject (philosophy) from a great university (Edinburgh), but could and probably should have done better. Plus sleep with loads of hotties, yeah?”

Being at Edinburgh University, they were ideally placed to conquer the Edinburgh Fringe – and conquer it, they did, with nine five-star reviews for last summer’s “Aeneas Faversham Forever”. Yet, “Forever” was a departure for the Pennys from the sketch shows of 2006’s “Aeneas Faversham” and 2007’s “Aeneas Faversham Returns”, in that it is a single episodic story. What prompted the change? Is it a clear distinction in style, or just a structural change from the individual sketches of “Returns”?

Humph: “We didn't want to go back to Edinburgh and do exactly the same type of show we had done the last two years.”

Thom: “It’s a huge change in terms of style. There are belly laughs and a structural cleanliness to which you do not have access generally in a sketch format. People will only care if we shoot someone in the face if they've seen them on a journey. If you've shot someone in the face who's only just walked on it's only ever mildly amusing.”

Dave: “We much prefer telling a story now, but our scenes are still very much in the sketch mould.”

Any advice on approaching the Fringe for people taking shows?

Humph: “Preview, preview, preview. Do a good show. If you are seeking to get anything out of the festival, there's no point in going off half-cock. Take it seriously and you will be taken seriously.”

Dave: “Don't bother standing in statuesque poses on the Royal Mile, dressed in only a bed sheet and face paint, holding out flyers. No one will come and see your show. Instead, talk to people who walk by politely and genuinely. They're more likely to come.”

After their stints at the Fringe, they were lured to write their own radio show – BBC7’s “The Brothers Faversham”, which was later re-run on BBC Radio 4, placing them in quite august company…

Dave: “I listen to everything on Radio 4. Apart from the fucking Archers. Oh, I could kill to stop from hearing that”

With the move into radio, could they ever see themselves giving up live performance for recorded media?

Humph: “Nothing beats performing to a live audience. The immediate response is a terrifying and intoxicating thing. That said, I'd like my career to reach the point where I had the option to give it all up and go and live in a mansion lighting cigars with a fifty pound notes.”

And with Thom having attended two festivals before, has he got any advice for new Festgoers? “Get up early, and go to four or five workshops. Try at least one new thing. Try not to miss a show as it might just be the best/worst/most talked about thing of the week.”

To which I say, don’t miss “Aeneas Faversham Forever”, as it may well be the best/worst/most talked about thing this week.

But not the worst. Because they’re awesome.

Quick Questions with the Penny Dreadfuls

Who are your favourite people from the Victorian era?
Thom: “Sir Joseph Bazalgette, creator of the London sewers - what a dude.”
Humph: “Soldiers. Invariably my favourite people from any era.”

Which director, living or dead, would you want to direct a Penny Dreadfuls film?
Humph: “Edgar Wright.”
Dave: “Terry Gilliam. He's awesome. He'd get it. And we're already influenced enough by his work as is.”
Thom: “I wouldn't mind David O. Russell, Terry Gilliam or Hitchcock. But my choice would definitely be P. T. Anderson (the Magnolia one, not the Aliens vs. Predator one).”

Who is the best cook?
Dave: “Thom is the best cook.”
Humph: “I'm going to award this one to Thom.”
Thom: “At the risk of sounding arrogant, definitely me.”

Who are the nicest people you’ve met in comedy?
Humph: “Pappy's Fun Club, Pippa Evans, Dan Kitson, Josie Long.”
Thom: “Almost every sketch group is lovely. Something about having to work in a group anyway makes you open and smiley. Standups can be a diffident kettle of fish. Kitson's very nice, though.”
Dave: “Without wishing to name drop like a bitch, the uber-famous ones tend to all be incredibly lovely. Turns out money does buy you happiness. Who knew?”

What's the worst sketch you've ever written as a group?
Humph: “We did one at our first ever gig about a court that punished people for being stereotypes.”
Thom: “A joint first place between "Chalky Cox" and "Clockwork Frog".”
Dave: “It's a toss up between Clockwork Frog and Chalky Cox. My God they were both awful. I could describe them to you, but isn't it far more fun to imagine for yourselves?”

Unemployment is a game!

2009-03-23T13:25:00.000Z

It seems as if the credit-crunch-fuelled rise in unemployment has led to people looking for new ways to experience the work day without actually earning any money.

Thank the sweet Lord, then, for this new Nintendo Wii game...

It's "Job Island: Hard Working People"! A job simulator! Brilliant!

Here's the plot: "The world is in danger! A huge meteor is plummeting towards earth and the only way to save the planet from destruction is to earn enough money to purchase the anti-meteor gadgets from a TV shopping channel!"

I shall be purchasing this forthwith. As soon as I get a job and can afford the £24.99!

Noostar Featured Video!

2009-03-13T00:49:00.000Z

Well, that was speedy. Within hours of putting up the video of "New Boyfriend" on Noostar, they made it a staff pick. Thanks guys! How nice.

There I am! Top right!

Noostar

2009-03-12T01:05:00.000Z

Hey, check it out! I'm on Noostar! It's part of "Bare Minimum" and all of "Ladyfood".

UPDATE:
Now also, all of "Face Of My Fury".

Wateracre / Girl & Dean / Adam Riches

2009-03-01T13:19:00.000Z

TONIGHT! AND TOMORROW NIGHT!

THE HEN & CHICKENS THEATRE!

7.30pm! (Both nights!)

I'm not feeling that well, but shall push on through regardless!

Caviar Crunch

2009-02-26T17:10:00.000Z

The wintry economic climate has hit Dulwich Village in South East London pretty hard.

Girl & Dean and Wateracre and Riches!

2009-02-23T16:34:00.000Z

Very exciting shenanigans on Sunday 1st March (St David's Day) and Monday 2nd March (start of Week 10 of 2009), in that Girl and Dean and Chums is happening at the Hen & Chickens Theatre in Highbury Corner.

This is a very very early Edinburgh Preview, with Girl and Dean doing sketches, Tom Wateracre doing songs, special guest star Adam Riches doing some wondrous comedy, and the team bringing the delights of afternoon tea to the bedraggled masses of Islington!

It's an embarrassment of riches! (Although not an embarrassment of Riches. He shall emerge from this event unscathed.*)

More info on Facebook here, on the Hen & Chickens website here, and let us never forget that Girl & Dean's website is here.

Reserve tickets by calling 020 7704 2001, or book them online here!

Wow! Super-exciting! Come along!

* Unlike some other events I could mention...

A Brief Break, for some Funk

2009-02-22T12:48:00.000Z

Upstart Theatre Fundraiser - 21st March

2009-02-22T11:09:00.000Z

Hello there. I'm taking part in the Upstart Theatre fundraiser at Arch 635 in Clapham on 21st March. Do come along!

Here's Tom from Upstart on what's going down...

Taking place at the magnificent Arch 635 just by Clapham North, we'll be bringing together some of London's finest musicians, comedians, DJs, playwrights and actors to raise funds for our compelling new season of theatre exploring the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Doors open at 8pm; admission will be £5 on the door.

Check the Upstart website for details of acts in the coming weeks!

About THE 22ND JULY PROJECT:

On 22nd July 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by armed police as he sat on an Underground train at Stockwell station. Police claimed his clothing and behaviour marked him as a suspected suicide bomber; the inquest into his death found in December 2008 that he was an entirely innocent man.

This summer, Upstart will be producing a season of theatre work exploring the killing and its aftermath. This will include THE KRATOS EFFECT, a verbatim play by Sarah Beck based on interviews with campaigners, police officers, whistleblowers and many more; and OH WELL NEVER MIND BYE by Steven Lally, a compelling and darkly comic exploration of the media's response to the shooting.

More details on both plays are available at http://www.upstart-theatre.co.uk.

Gigs! Cancellations! Looping! Lennox!

2009-02-20T19:31:00.000Z

Hello everyone -

Goodness, I've been having fun lately, what with lovely Totally Looped shows in Epsom (snowy!), Bracknell (cute!), and High Wycombe (huge!). Favourite things so far:-

- The people of Epsom coming out despite Epsom being at the epicentre of Snowy Monday. We got there, no shit, by limousine, after British Rail decided there was a lot of wrong type of snow about.

- The people of Bracknell answering my question "Where would I take someone on a date?" with the answer "A Star Trek Convention!" Upon interrogation, it emerged that it was a Deep Space Nine convention, so I delighted in regaling the audience with some horrible name-dropping of Benjamin Sisko and Jadzia Dax.

- The people of High Wycombe deciding that I should be played, in the story of my life, by either David Tennant (very happy with this) or Joe 90 (less happy with this).

Sadly, I don't think I'm Looping on Sunday in Peterborough any more, due to a scheduling conflict, which leaves only one left in glittering NEWCASTLE! Where Venom come from!

I also had a big bunch of fun last night at the delightful Hourglass Cabaret. Hooray for Hourglass!

And finally, seriously, what the shit is this all about?

Competition Entry

2009-02-11T14:20:00.000Z

From the HSBC website:-

Answer:-

Because you took all my money in bank fees, and all my girlfriend is currently getting for Valentine's Day this year is a card made from dried pasta glued to sugar paper.

I look forward to your cheque.

"Rollicking Good Songs" - The Kingston Guardian

2009-02-04T09:50:00.000Z

A review of the Cornerhouse pantomime ("None O' Yer Messing About") is up at the Kingston Guardian website, with kind words for my songs.

Congratulations to all concerned!

Hey! It's the late addition to the Adam & Pippa Show!

2009-02-03T15:43:00.000Z

Hi there -

I'm doing a last minute set at It's The Adam & Pippa Show tonight at Lowdown at the Albany.

Acts include Adam Riches (awesome!), Pippa Evans (super-awesome!), Jess Ransom (woah! awesome!), Ben Wilson (awesomer!), Cariad Lloyd (awesomation!), and perhaps some other people, who are guaranteed to also be awesome.

Doors open at 8pm!

Commence Looping!

2009-02-03T12:11:00.001Z

Hey everyone -

And so Totally Looped has started, following last night's snowy and eventful show! Thanks to everyone who came out into the frosty Epsom evening.

Just to let those keen Essex bods know, I now won't be appearing in Southend. Sorry about that. Phill Jupitus is appearing instead. I trust this will be devastating to the people of that fine county.

There's a nice big article on Totally Looped in today's Independent. Click here to read it!

My next date is in Bracknell next week. Until then, I'm trying to stay warm. There should also be some new videos on YouTube before the end of the week.

Looped Bootcamp

2009-01-28T22:42:00.000Z

[Or "Loopedcamp"? No, I don't think that works...]

This week sees training for Totally Looped. Not rehearsal, as that would imply foreknowledge of the clips that we will be dubbing. We don't have that luxury. Our only safety net is blind terror and audience goodwill.

It has been magical, terrifying, baffling and exciting. Today, I offered Hattie Hayridge a Twiglet. The other day, Marcus Brigstocke smacked Humphrey Ker from the Penny Dreadfuls with a rolled-up newspaper before even saying hello. This is the sort of entertainment that money cannot buy.

Except, it can! Tickets are still available for all shows, including the six I shall be performing at. Please do drop by and yell at us whilst we're on stage. (There are also some cheap tickets on lastminute.com.)

Those dates again:-

Monday 2 Feb - Epsom Playhouse (with Marcus Brigstocke, Pippa Evans and the Penny Dreadfuls) - link
Thursday 12 Feb - Bracknell South Hill Park (with Joe Liss and the Penny Dreadfuls) - link
Friday 13 Feb - Southend Palace (with Sanjeev Bhaskar, Pippa and Joe) - link
Saturday 14 Feb - Wycombe Swan (with Sanjeev, Pippa and Joe) - link
Sunday 22 Feb - Peterborough Key (with Hattie Hayridge, Joe and the Penny Dreadfuls) - link
Saturday 7 March - Newcastle Journal Tyne (with Marcus, Pippa and Joe) - link

Panto next week!

2009-01-23T17:01:00.000Z

The Surbiton pantomime that I've written the songs for is next week. All songs are now up on YouTube, handily in order in this Playlist... (click left and right arrows to scroll through the videos)

The production is sold out, I believe, but I'll try to get some footage of the cast singing the songs this weekend!

(There's also a couple of new songs on the YouTube channel. Do subscribe and rate!)

Presidential wonders!

2009-01-22T12:27:00.001Z

Brave new world, and all that.

Why not celebrate it with the marvellous Obamicon.me?

I did!

Wateracre on the Oxfam Unwrapped DVD

2009-01-20T11:54:00.000Z

Hello all -

Anyone who received a gift worth more than £50 from Oxfam Unwrapped over Christmas received a comedy DVD called "The Art Of Giving".

It featured Johnny Vegas, Justin Lee Collins, Richard Ayoade, Jenny Eclair, Meera Syal, and me.

I wrote a song specifically for it whilst in Edinburgh, and was filmed singing it whilst sitting in a tree, and then whilst wandering around a soggy Pleasance Courtyard with a very patient and forgiving umbrella-bearer in pursuit!

A photo of me also appeared on the back cover, nestling in between Milton Jones and Natasha Kaplinsky, a very nice place to nestle, for sure...

I'll post a re-recorded version of the song, "Give Give Give" on YouTube at some point, but if you received an expensive, ethical present for Christmas, do seek out my little song! It's at the end, over the credits.

Do buy presents from Oxfam Unwrapped! They're marvellous! My parents were given bees for Christmas. BEES!

Thanks to director Marcus Shepherd for asking me to take part!

Totally Looped dates featuring TW!

2009-01-15T18:15:00.000Z

Hi there!

Excited to report that I'll be at the following Totally Looped dates:

Monday 2 Feb - Epsom Playhouse (with Marcus Brigstocke, Pippa Evans and the Penny Dreadfuls) - link
Thursday 12 Feb - Bracknell South Hill Park (with Joe Liss and the Penny Dreadfuls) - link
Friday 13 Feb - Southend Palace (with Sanjeev Bhaskar, Pippa and Joe) - link
Saturday 14 Feb - Wycombe Swan (with Sanjeev, Pippa and Joe) - link
Sunday 22 Feb - Peterborough Key (with Hattie Hayridge, Joe and the Penny Dreadfuls) - link
Saturday 7 March - Newcastle Journal Tyne (with Marcus, Pippa and Joe) - link

More information at the website.

Musical Comedy website

2009-01-13T15:37:00.000Z

Hi there -

As well as my YouTube channel, I'm also going to put videos up on www.musicalcomedy.co.uk, alongside videos by Earl Okin and Jonni Music. My profile is here - do please view, rate and comment on my videos, if that's the sort of thing you do.

Tom is Totally Looped

2009-01-09T11:23:00.000Z

Hello there -

Totally Looped is an American show pioneered by director Vince Waldron. The idea is: a bunch of comedians and improvisers redub old film clips live on stage. In America, they've had terrifyingly good people doing it. Dan Castellaneta being one.

Check out some clips of the US version!

And now, it's coming to the UK. Production maven Erica Fee has assembled a top-notch crew of comedians, including Phill Jupitus, Marcus Brigstocke, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Hattie Hayridge, Toby Hadoke, Pippa Evans, The Penny Dreadfuls (yay!), Natalie Haverstock, and me.

Blimey.

I'm thrilled, panicky, thrilled, and thrilled to be involved. A little nauseous.

The tour starts in glittering Epsom. EPSOM! It's practically a homecoming show for me! It then wends a leisurely path around the UK. I won't be in every show, so I'll let you know nearer the time which ones I'll be at, but if you're near any of the theatres below, do book up... it will be a great show, guaranteed!

There's also a Facebook group to join for updates!

2 February - Epsom Playhouse
5 February - Basingstoke Haymarket
6 February - Guildford Yvonne Arnaud
12 February - Bracknell South Hill Park
12 February - Brighton Theatre Royal
13 February - Southend Palace
14 February - Wycombe Swan
18 February - Bedford Corn Exchange
19 February - Reading Hexagon
20 February - Cheltenham Town Hall
21 February - Crawley Hawth
22 February - Peterborough Key
24 February - Worthing Pavilion
25 February - Buxton Opera House
26 February - The Lowry, Salford Quays
27 February - Wolverhampton Grand
1 March - Tunbridge Wells Assembly
4 March - Wakefield Theatre Royal
5 March - Portsmouth Southsea King's
7 March - Newcastle Journal Tyne
12 March - Victoria Hall, Stoke
15 March - Harlow Playhouse

Surbiton Pantomime

2009-01-09T02:41:00.000Z

Hello there -

As you'll have noticed if you've looked at the live list (on the right of this page), I'm writing the songs for a pantomime in Surbiton. I've been in this panto since I was a kid and about four years ago I started writing the songs and being the Musical Director.

This year it's very very loosely based on CS Lewis's Narnia books, and it's called "None O' Yer Messing About", to cunningly avoid being sued.

If you're in the Surbiton area, do come along! It's on the 28th to the 31st of January, with a matinee on Saturday 31st, at the Cornerhouse just off the Tolworth Broadway in Douglas Road. It will feature something north of four new songs by me. BOOK EARLY! It sells out every year, particularly Saturday nights. Booking information can be found here.

If you aren't in the Surbiton area, I'm going to post the songs on YouTube for your enjoyment. At the moment, the first and last songs are up there, so why not go check them out?

And immediately following the panto, there is Totally Looped, which I will post more about tomorrow.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-06T11:16:00.000Z

Merry 2009 to one and all! I am hoping this year brings nothing but the repulsion of all mice from my flat. They are pesky. Quite happy for them to live, but somewhere else, please.

I'm currently sprucing up my YouTube channel with some actual, like, videos. Might take a while as I'm not good at editing video - especially not on this very old computer - but there'll be some stuff to see there soon.

As a taster, here's a performance of "Getting It On" at "The Wateracre Gambit" at the Etcetera Theatre. It was my first warm-up date of material for "Polite Club", so a little scratchy around the edges, but perfectly serviceable.

Information about TOTALLY LOOPED coming soon!

Tom's Highly Unscientific Top Ten of 2008!

2008-12-31T18:18:00.000Z

I'm building a masterpiece in my iPod, currently 21,987 items occupying 100.95 GB. FACT.

Using the highly unscientific principle of making an auto-playlist of songs listed by my iTunes as being released in the year 2008 and sorting it by number of times played, I can show my Top Ten of the year!

This is highly unscientific as my iTunes is really rubbish at recording years. For instance, both "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2 and "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones were apparently released in 2008.

This list also gives songs that were released earlier in the year a greater chance of being listened to, so again... unscientific.

With all that in mind, here's what I've been listening to in 2008!

1) "You've Done It Again, Virginia" by The National
2) "A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend
3) "Dancing Choose" by TV On The Radio
4) "DLZ" by TV On The Radio
5) "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" by Vampire Weekend
6) "M79" by Vampire Weekend
7) "Listen To Your Body Tonight" by Black Kids
8) "Ragged Wood" by Fleet Foxes
9) "Red Dress" by TV On The Radio
10) "Campus" by Vampire Weekend

UPDATE: See the top ten in VIDEO FORM!

... and here's my current all-time Top Ten!

1) "Finer Feelings" by Spoon
2) "Easy/Lucky/Free" by Bright Eyes
3) "Don't You Evah" by Spoon
4) "Friends" by Led Zeppelin
5) "Arc Of Time (Time Code)" by Bright Eyes
6) "I Want This Cyclops" by Destroyer
7) "Suffer For Fashion" by Of Montreal
8) "Gronlandic Edit" by Of Montreal
9) "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger" by Of Montreal
10) "Neon Bible" by Arcade Fire

Now, I know it looks like I only own 6 albums, and the other 21,000 tracks are entirely useless. But I promise you, there shall come big exciting developments in the year to come.

I hope.

Tom's Highly Unscientific Top Ten in Video Form!

2008-12-30T17:23:00.000Z

1) "You've Done It Again, Virginia" by The National - This is from the Black Cab Sessions. Amazing song.

2) "A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend - The BRILLIANT Garth Jennings video.

3) "Dancing Choose" by TV On The Radio

4) "DLZ" by TV On The Radio - Someone politicised this song on YouTube! Who'd'a thunk it?

5) "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" by Vampire Weekend - Another splendid Richard Ayoade video for Vampire Weekend. They have some amazing videos.

6) "M79" by Vampire Weekend - A video of a live performance of M79 laughingly labelled on YouTube as "High Quality". There is also a great internet debate at the bottom of the video which goes along these lines...

Yakslipper: "Quit declaring "high quality" when your recordings are god awful."

blinkuhx3 (the poster): "you don't have to watch them. most of them are good. i like consistency. and currently, i possess freedom of speech."

Yakslipper: "Freedom of speech works both ways. And, by the way, the quality is very bad."

Dudes! Let's agree to disagree!

7) "Listen To Your Body Tonight" by Black Kids - A dramatic reading of this song. I think it gets the mood across.

8) "Ragged Wood" by Fleet Foxes - The wonderful Carleton Singing Knights of Carleton College in Northfield, MN take on this lovely song.

9) "Red Dress" by TV On The Radio - A fairly shonky live version of the funkiest song on "Dear Science,".

10) "Campus" by Vampire Weekend - Amber Kipp made a version of this song with a Bob Dylan vibe. WINNER!

EXTRA BONUS VIDEO!

Great live version of Spoon's "Finer Feelings"! A wonderful song that I can't rave about enough!

TomCast - While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night

2008-12-20T14:37:00.000Z

Listen in to Tom Wateracre's festive "reimagining" of While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night! Now featuring a lot more stuff about deckchairs.

Direct download (right click, save target as):- http://wateracre.jellycast.com/files/audio/TomWateracreShepherds.mp3
Raw feed:- http://wateracre.jellycast.com/podcast/feed/2

TomCast - Episode One - Polite Club

2008-12-17T17:36:00.001Z

Join me for the inaugural TomCast! Featuring highlights from "Pegabovine: Polite Club", the 2008 Edinburgh show. Recorded by Damian Robertson.

Direct download (right click, save target as):- http://wateracre.jellycast.com/files/audio/TOMCAST1.mp3
Raw feed:- http://wateracre.jellycast.com/podcast/feed/2

Wateracre on Kermode & Mayo

2008-12-17T09:05:00.000Z

I had the very great pleasure of having a letter read out on last Friday's Kermode & Mayo podcast. If you didn't hear it, here it is...

Spot my fliers of the future saying "That's good!" - Mark Kermode.

I used to avidly wait for Kermode's Cult Movie Corner on the old Mark Radcliffe Radio 1 show, and even encouraged my friend Tony Devey to do a Cult Cellar slot on our student radio show.

Big honour, then. Do subscribe to their podcast. It is great.

Nine Comedians And Carols

2008-12-10T13:28:00.000Z

Very excited to take part in Nine Comedians & Carols on Saturday organised by Paul Kerensa (he's a big fan of Roxette), and featuring myself, Tim Vine, Miranda Hart, Jo Enright, Jude Simpson, Girl and Dean, and probably some other people showing up. (I worked that out as I've only listed eight people.) It's at St Johns Stoke, Guildford, and it might be sold out. I'm finding it difficult to check that.

I'm doing a silly version of "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night". I'll record it and stick it on my website soon, along with my traditional Christmas song about the 21st of December, as written a while ago for the Faultless & Torrance Xmastraveganzera.

I Was In A Film

2008-12-10T13:07:00.000Z

Hello there -

I was in a film last Friday for my friend Geraldine Geraghty, who previously directed me in her short film Golf Sale. It's called "Me, Me, Me", or at least was called that at the time of filming. It looks like it's going to be funny and dark and delightful, so I will keep you updated of when it's completed and where it's going to be shown.

Whilst filming it in a very hot yoga studio, I had one of those horrible experiences where you say to someone "I recognise you from somewhere", and then you realise it's because they have a regular role in Pulling.

I haven't done yoga for many years, probably since university. It's one of the great joys of a artsy-fartsy drama degree that you get to do yoga and roll around on mats with over-excitable Danes. Not that I think you could call this filmed yoga actual yoga. It was half an hour of pretending to do yoga. I didn't even get to bust out my impeccable lotus position or nuffink. Still, I felt like my chakras had been properly... uh... vented by the end of it.

Brighton Gig Cancelled

2008-12-08T01:00:00.000Z

The Brighton gig tomorrow is cancelled, unfortunately, so apologies Brightonians, you've got to wait. Apparently the gig that I was booked on has had two nights of splendid entertainment, both of which have been poorly attended, so another comedy night bites the pebble beach, so to speak.

Speaking of Brighton's delightful pebble beach, it's worth checking out my friend Dave Holby in a mankini in this terrifying yet compelling video. It's on the website Videojug which I used to work for as a researcher, and sometime actor, as you'd know if you've ever had low self esteem, recurring dreams, or bad breath. We made many videos very very fast, hundreds of them a week, although the website has recently apparently been shedding staff almost as quickly. A shame. Mind you, I don't miss their lifts.

More news on the film I was in on Friday to come, as well as some audio delights in time for Christmas. Hooray!

wateracre dot co dot uk

2008-12-04T01:30:00.000Z

Hello there -

As you can see, www.wateracre.co.uk is now coming together. Various plans for the site, but in the meantime, enjoy my new Twitter account on the right of the homepage. Feel free to follow me if you're already on Twitter.

There's also a gig list on the right, with details of forthcoming gigs, including Nine Comedians and Carols in Guildford with Paul Kerensa, Tim Vine, Miranda Hart, Girl and Dean and others, and the very exciting prospect of Totally Looped in 2009 to look forward to.

Also check out my reviews archive, featuring reviews of films, theatre and other things, written for CultureWars and other august publications.

Thanks for stopping by!

New website coming soon

2008-11-20T22:43:00.000Z

Hello there. Tom Wateracre here.

I'm mashing my website like a swede and remodelling it into a brand new whizzy website which will encompass all areas of my life. Well, not all areas, just the interesting ones.

That will mean that it will look a bit messy round here for a bit. Please hang on, as normal - if not actively better - service will be resumed soon.

Hooray!

Act/React: The King Of Spain

2008-11-10T16:02:00.000Z

I made a new half-hour show for the lovely people at Upstart Theatre on the 10th November, and they were kind enough to put some video highlights up on YouTube. Here they are, for your delectation!

About Tom Wateracre

2008-10-24T01:18:00.000+01:00

Tom Wateracre is a comedian, actor, writer and songwriter, based in London, England.

He was born at the tail-end of the Seventies, in Surbiton, Surrey, an area emerging from the horrible shadow of The Good Life. A childhood of introspection and isolation produced a man of oblique talent - with a fascination for the smaller peccadillos of interpersonal behaviour. And also of battles between alien spacecraft.

He got into acting in his teenage years, which were regularly described by onlookers as "difficult". Whilst attending the University of Exeter, he ran a fortnightly comedy sketch show with the other founder members of what was to become Pegabovine.

Pegabovine's first post-university show The Freudian Slip won two awards at the National Student Drama Festival in 2003, including the Festgoer's Prize for most popular play.

Wateracre took part in Pegabovine's two Edinburgh Fringe shows - "The Slush Pile" (2006) and "Coat Of Arms" (2007) - before taking the reins for 2008's "Polite Club", a one-man show of songs and sketches.

With Pegabovine, he has also appeared on Radio 4's 28 Acts In 28 Minutes, and on the BBC's Edinburgh YouTube channel. Pegabovine's podcast House Of Mirth is produced by Tom from the comfort of his home-studio-slash-bedroom.

He has deputised for both the Penny Dreadfuls (Brighton Comedy Festival, White Mischief, Edinburgh Bongo Club) and Potted Potter (Big Brother's Little Brother - C4).

His writing has appeared on BBC7's "Tilt", and he was long-listed for the BBC's "Witty & Twisted" competition. He is currently completing his first original screenplay.

He has worn glasses since the age of two, and was almost killed at age 27 by a pie.

He wears the soles of shoes down to a smooth finish in about three months.

He shops for food like his six-year old self would (lots of jelly babies and ice cream).

He welcomes you to his website.

Tom can also be found on Spotlight, Casting Call Pro, IMDB, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Noostar, MusicalComedy...

Voice, Voice Overs and Voice Acting

2008-10-23T12:42:00.000+01:00

I am an actor, comedian, singer and voice actor. I have appeared on BBC Radio 4 and Channel 4, as well as on self-produced podcasts for this website and for Pegabovine. I have also recorded voicework for ILEX (Institute of Legal Executives), the National Student Drama Festival, Kulture Vulture Films, and did two years of music-based shows on Xpression FM.

Here are some samples of my voicework. Either download or listen using the available players. I am available for voiceovers and voice work by emailing me at the contact address on your right.

Voice Reel (1:42) - Download

Longer sample of "Leaving Microsoft To Change The World" by John Wood (1:04) - Download

Longer sample of "Henry V" (2:50) - Download

See also my profile at Voices.com.

Reviews

2008-10-22T02:20:00.000+01:00

Here's a collection of some of the reviews I've written for publication and for fun.

For types of reviews, click the links below:-

Theatre
Film
Live Music
Albums
TV
Experiences

What People Say About Tom

2008-10-20T13:01:00.000+01:00

"Charm personified... If Wateracre was wearing a cap, you could be sure he'd doff it to passing ladies." - Chris McCall, Fest Magazine, "Polite Club" review

"Top-quality musical material... the confidence of a natural performer." - Ashley Davies, The Scotsman, "Polite Club" review

"Hugely likeable" - Alexandra Hilliard, Three Weeks, "Polite Club" review

"Wateracre gave a subtle and mature comic performance as the eccentric and repressed Kenneth which ought to have the RSC battering at his door, if that's what he would like." - Julia Chamberlain, Chortle, "The Slush Pile" review

"Every scene is stolen by the third sibling, Quentin (Wateracre)... Wateracre seems to carry the spirit of Graham Chapman, undermining the authority figure he cuts with a self-destructive, devil-may-care mischief." - Steve Bennett, Chortle, "Coat Of Arms" review

Big Brother's Little Brother

2008-09-08T11:45:00.000+01:00

Due to Jeff sadly having to go on holiday, I deputised for him when Potted Potter appeared on Big Brother's Little Brother. I met Zezi and everything!

Casino Royale (a long time after everyone else has seen it)

2008-01-10T11:50:00.000Z

Whilst reading about Gemma Arterton (I promise you, I am in no way obsessed by her delightful pointy nose and Uma Thurman bob), I came across an article about her in the new Bond film which had a spoiler warning.

It then said "Although, if you're reading an article about Bond 22 without having seen 'Casino Royale', you're an enormous internet geek who learns about the plots and characters of films from Wikipedia or Empire Online and not by actually seeing the films in question. Saddo. Get out more." I'm paraphrasing.

It was pretty shocking to realise, then, that I hadn't seen "Casino Royale". Despite being a Bond fan, despite my exciting fortnight working in the EON props archive, despite what everyone said about it, I still hadn't seen it.

Well, now I have.

If you haven't seen it, this review isn't going to be much help to you, but here's a cursory run-through of the plot. (Don't worry, there's not much plot in this film.) James Bond is, like, just some dude who kills two people and then instantly becomes an impassionate, cold-blooded killer. He does some running around, is in the Evening Standard, gets told off, goes to the Bahamas, annoys some guy, wins this guy's car at cards and sleeps with his wife. The guy is working for another, more mean guy, who has a scarred face. Now, this new guy is evil. The only tears he cries are tears of BLOOD, ffs! He likes playing cards and being evil, and so invites people to play cards and maybe a little evil on the side and Bond turns up to play some cards and see just how evil this guy is. By this point, there's an accountant with Bond, who is a hot chick (who'd have thought...). He plays some cards, beats up some guys, plays some cards, gets beaten up, plays some cards, gets poisoned, dies, comes back to life, plays some cards and then wins. The lady accountant is upset by all the beatings for about thirty seconds, then gets over it. Bond and lady then get captured, and the evil, blood-weeping guy plays Flicksies with Bond's testicles. Bond is hurt pretty bad, but when he wakes up, he decides that he is TOTAWWY IN WUV with the accountant. Then some stuff happens with some other dudes who aren't related to the weepy-blood guy, there's a big finish, and a smarmily self-referential coda.

I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but for the first ten minutes I sat there thinking "this is just like a Bond film!" It didn't feel as dramatically different as I was led to believe. They had that goofy incorporation of the gun barrel logo, and another pretentious title sequence. The parkour stunt sequence, running up the crane, fighting on the crane, falling off the crane, is bloody great. After that point, it kind of waffled on for about an hour, batting off embarrassing cameos from Richard Branson and, uh, Gunther von Hagens and doesn't really pick up until Eva Green turns up, with her smokey eyes and smirky face. I liked her in this a lot, despite the fact that - as my housemate pointed out - her relationship with Bond is pretty stupid.

My main criticism of Daniel Craig as James Bond is that sometimes director Martin Campbell shoots him in darkened rooms and in the half-light, he looks exactly like Ray Stubbs.

Because Craig looks enormous. When he first tries on his dinner jacket, prancing around a hotel room, he looks like Bongo, the bouncer from the Ink & Paint Club in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". He is clearly exceptionally muscled, as the scene in the dinky pants shows (ladies), and after forty years of a lithe Bond (apart from in "A View To A Kill", ho ho), it's quite weird to see not a gentleman killer, but a killer - like someone cast Ricky Hatton as James Bond. Bond has always been the physical underdog - think of the look on Connery's face as he sized up Oddjob. Or Moore being pounded on the head by the massive hands of Jaws. In the exhilarating parkour sequence, the villain is the leapy, sproingy lightweight, and Bond is the hulking oaf literally running through walls. And what's painful is that Craig is clearly an intelligent actor, but the script requires him to be "a blunt object". He's a thug. Maybe the theory behind the progression of this "reboot" of Bond is that, over time, Craig slims down, becoming more like the Bond we know.

(Incidentally, rather than the Bourne films, I realised whilst watching it that my enjoyment of the Bond films has probably spilled into my love of "Spooks", and I then realised that Bond should probably be played by Rupert Penry-Jones.)

Tonally, the film's a bit like watching "The World Is Not Enough" whilst someone occasionally kicks you in the head (or plays Flicksies with your testicles). The imported grittiness feels jarring, and the humour (obviously from the flamboyant purple quills of Neil Purvis and Robert Wade) doesn't sit well with the lunk they've asked Craig to be. Then there's the much-vaunted contribution of Paul Haggis, a man whose origins creating kindly-mountie cop-fluff "Due South" I will bring up every time I speak of him. I loathed "Crash", and all the cloying dialogue late in the game about how Bond has "no armour… you've stripped it from me" is textbook Haggis. Craig even speaks Haggis's dialogue with the same enormous significance as they did in "Crash" - like there's a lump of coal in his mouth, and if he gently spits it out, Tiny Tim will be warm this Christmas.

It should also be mentioned that this film is really damned long. It's two hours and twenty-four minutes. Like I said, other than the parkour chase, the opening hour is all faff, and it's only once Eva Green plonks herself unceremoniously into the seat opposite Bond on the train to Montenegro that the film hunkers down and focuses. The love story doesn't work because it is fluffy and vague - Bond has been established as a cold-hearted rogue who clearly just wants to jump Green's bones, and we're supposed to believe that, after the Flicksies, Bond genuinely is in love. It's nonsense, and again jars with the smart-arse toughnut they've spent the previous two hours setting up. And then they go all Tracy in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" with the end of the film, which hopefully sets up Bond 22's excoriating examination of Bond's misogyny… it was all Eva Green's fault! Damned women! Can't trust them as far as you can throw them down a lift-shaft!

I absolutely agree that the franchise needed a re-think after "Die Another Day", which was the frothiest piece of nonsense the Bond films have ever thrown up. The good news is that "Casino Royale" doesn't have an invisible car or Toby Stephens playing the son of a North Korean general, or Halle bloody Berry. The bad news is that the weaker writing aspects of the Purvis/Wade era are exacerbated by Paul Haggis schmaltzification, and together they have contrived to make Bond a step away from being played by The Rock. Where "Batman Begins" provided an origin movie which showed the raw potential of a man being shaped into a hero, here Bond is a lump of clay, and remains a lump of clay. The hope is that Daniel Craig's Bond continues to develop over the next couple of films into something a little… well… Bondier.

American Gangster

2007-11-14T11:58:00.000Z

American Gangster arrives in cinemas feted as a proper old crime epic, a throwback to "Goodfellas", to "Scarface", to "The Godfather". What could be better than two hours and forty minutes of narcs and kneecapping, especially when in such capable hands as Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott? Well...

Washington plays the titular gangster Frank Lucas, a real-life Harlem kingpin who hits on the boffo idea of buying heroin straight from the growers, an early proponent of the Fairtrade movement. In fact… a bold, original idea? Stacks of money? Dark-suited Mafioso-types? Where have I seen that before?

Crowe plays Richie Roberts, the detective who uncovers Lucas's scheme, principally by going to the Ali/Frazier fight and seeing who is in the front row. Roberts spends the next hour and a half trying to catch Lucas with his fingers in the cookie jar, before Lucas discovers (SPOILER ALERT!) that crime doesn't pay. Crowe is in schlub mode here - an early scene of him working out, doing some benchpresses, and sculpting his guns, doesn't help to distract us from the floppiness of his hair and - later - his breathless panting after going up some stairs. It was genuinely weird to come back from the cinema and see "Gladiator" on the TV, with a lithe Crowe shanking some hapless Roman in the guts, and equate it with sad-sack Crowe making a crisp sandwich in "American Gangster".

To be fair, the acting in this is pretty great. Lucas is depicted as still and quiet where his contemporaries are brash, and Washington turns in his usual exemplary display of confidence, vulnerability, charm, and moments of pause. Crowe's character too is quiet, understated, occasionally brought out into righteous anger. How odd that the two main characters in this grandiose-seeming film are probably the two most understated, which makes their eventual confrontation and collaboration seem fitting and right. They're portrayed as similar people - both with great integrity, both with a very American drive for work, both with a robust set of principles. However, I prefer Washington as a hero - there's a real kindness in his eyes that even in his uberbastard mode in this and "Training Day" lets us know that everything's going to be okay - and never quite bought into him being the type to commit the sporadic careless violence that Frank commits.

The cast is filled out with some neat little performances - Josh Brolin as the corrupt cop is flamboyantly cruel, shooting dogs and wearing a mean moustache. It was great to see the awesome John Hawkes from "Me You And Everyone We Know" in a key role, and there are some good rap-related roles for the RZA, T.I. and especially Common, who puts in a warm and engaging performance in a very short time. (I wonder if Ridley Scott knew about the anachronistic nature of the RZA's Wu tattoo. Or tatt-Wu. Maybe the RZA wouldn't let them put make-up over it.)

Less impressive, unfortunately, is Chiwetel Ejiofor, who I ordinarily think is bloody marvellous. In this, he didn't really have much to do, and in a long-shot of the Lucas brothers walking down the street, his confidence was let down by his English shoulders (spot the body posture geek).

The less said about Cuba Gooding Jr the better.

Despite the largely good performances, the film never quite earns its epicness. (Epicity?) The film walks some pretty well-trodden ground, and it does so timidly - never quite wanting to grandstand as spectacularly as "Scarface", and demurely slinking around the glamour that the life has afforded Lucas. You sense that his family is what drives him to continue, and it is only near the end with events slipping out of his control that he starts believing his own hype and really becomes a monster of greed. What we are left with is the straight guy of crime, when we probably really want to see the hilarious excess of 'Mr Untouchable' Nicky Barnes. (Although preferably not played by Cuba Gooding Jr.)

The violence is shocking, yet very sporadic, but still provoked enthusiastic wincing from our audience. The film is long on quiet character moments and short on action; even the drive-by shooting is quite matter-of-fact. Probably the best influence of Ridley Scott is evoking the environment of Harlem in the early '70s, with rundown Projects contrasted with the 1970s version of high-class. "That's alpaca!" says Washington of a blood-soaked rug, "Don't rub it! Dab it!"

So, a pretty run of the mill gangster movie, with little to recommend it above re-watching "Scarface" than Washington's performance. Perhaps the most confusing element of the whole thing is that Jay-Z was so inspired by the movie that he recorded a whole album based on both the film and its parallels in his own life. As another drug-dealer-turned-business-man, you could perhaps see where Jay-Z was going, but where Jay's own glittering career signified a new business world where African-Americans could be dominant, the film ends with Lucas as an outcast from the criminal community, principally because his intuition and, to some extent, ethnic origins had alienated him from the Italians who had supported his dealings, upsetting the status quo. The film's final shot sees Washington released from prison in 1991, alone and vulnerable in a new world, soundtracked not by "Across 110th Street", but by Public Enemy. So why was Jay-Z so inspired? Perhaps it is that Jay-Z's business model went from crime to using his talent as a springboard into legitimate business, and Lucas's tale suggests how different things could have ended up for the Roc-A-Fella businessman - short-lived glamour, followed by punishment. Lucas's Gangster is American because of initiative and ambition, because of principles and respect, but in latter-day America, you either (to paraphrase another rapper/businessman) get rich or die trying.

"Capturing Mary" (A Review In Kind)

2007-10-15T12:00:00.000+01:00

As grammar is one of my strong suits, I have decided to become a 1950s gossip journalist. This blog is now only going to be filled with amazing tales of glamour and celebrity.

Yesterday, with the sun setting orangily across a mild Autumnal night, as I was crossing Hungerford Bridge in London's fashionable South Bank district, I passed the legendary film actor Mr Dustin Hoffman. Mr Dustin Hoffman! And that was but the start of it!

I was perambulating across the river on the way to the National Film Theatre where I was attending a screening of a film that my friend Ms H* is in. Ms H was late, due to the fact that she was doing something or other of great glamour and importance**. I bartered with the box office staff, they gave me one of our two allotted tickets and said that I should go in in case the film started. It was a preview of a film that is going to be on the BBC - written and directed by Mr Stephen Poliakoff, with Ms Maggie Smith, Ms Ruth Wilson (the one with the extraordinary mouth who was in Jane Eyre) and - bizarrely - Mr David Walliams.

I entered the theatre and some man-jack was sitting in our seats, so I said "Excuse me, I think I'm supposed to be sitting there", and they started to gather their things together. It was then that I realised I was moving Mr Walliams himself! Calamity! I still made him move regardless. I sat down next to the girl that Mr Walliams had been delightfully chatting with and said "Whoops, I just moved Mr David Walliams" and then bumbled on for a bit about that being something of a faux pas. It should also be mentioned at this point that I was carrying a Morrison's bag containing a crumpled suit, so I didn't exactly look prepared for high art.

Then Ms H came and greeted the girl next to me, as she was also in the film. Another hilarious faux pas!

The film was quite long and preposterous - at points unbearably tense, at other points rather crass and camp. This isn't helped by Mr Walliams being in it. Mr Walliams plays a sinister sociopath, with several haunting moments where his large face stares ominously into the auditorium, intoning something drastic and dramatic. He also makes a salad. Much like Mr Kelly, it is difficult to know how to take a figure traditionally associated with light entertainment as a sinister figure - to my knowledge, Mr Benny Hill never played Iago, and with good reason. Ms Smith is splendid in it, though. The story is told in flashbacks, with Ms Smith narrating it to a charming Cockney lad and it gets a bit clogged up with exposition. Anyway, the film is going to be on the BBC, you can sample its delights yourself then if you wish. It is called "Capturing Mary".

During the film, I recognise an actress playing a confidante of Mr Walliams, but I am unsure from whence. (From where? From whence? I am unsure of the correct formation.) As the lights go up in the theatre at the end of the cinematograph, I realise that I am sitting next to the actress in question. Troisieme faux pas! Her name is Ms Gemma Arterton, and she is soon to be in the new St Trinians film, god bless her.

Messers Poliakoff, Wilson, Walliams and the aforementioned charming Cockney then assemble at the front of the stage for a question and answer session. Little of note is said, although apparently it was very good that the actors were "in the moment" at seemingly all moments. How they managed that is quite beyond me. How brave! In fact, the only revelation is that the Cockney lad in real life is not a Cockney at all but a very well-spoken young man. What an actor! Mr Walliams stares at me throughout, as if ominously intoning "You stole my chair. You stole my chair." The effect was quite sinister, but then perhaps he was just creating in his mind a new sketch for his "Little Britain" entertainment where someone asks someone to move in a cinema and the person who sits in the chair finds it is made of sick.

Mr Walliams did not, however, make a salad.

After this bijou dollop of insight into the film, we were afforded a further… a further dollop, I suppose, in the form of a short film starring the mouth and indeed the rest of the person of Ms Wilson. For fans of Ms Wilson, Ms Wilson's mouth, Dalmatians, and china trinkets, this short comes highly recommended. For fans of logic, perhaps not so.

Anyway, it rounded off a perfectly splendid evening of Poliakoffanalia. The mildness of the evening translated perfectly into the mildness of my affections for each of the films! Would that every Autumnal night were blessed with such a cinematic decoupage of delight!

* This is how they refer to people in these sorts of things, isn't it?
** The District Line was down.

Pegabovine at the Fringe

2007-08-16T13:22:00.000+01:00

Doing Data Input Whilst Listening To "The Drift" By Scott Walker

2007-07-19T12:01:00.000+01:00

It's my last week at work. For the past two days, I've been doing a lot of data input. I've had seven A3 sheets of information to input in four days. That's one and three-quarters of a page per day. In the last two days, I've cleared four pages, so I felt able to kick back a bit today, and try a little experiment.

As I'm just doing data input, there's no harm in me listening to Emma, my mp3 player, whilst doing it. Yesterday, I listened to the first two albums by the Shins. Tuesday, I tried listening to the Wu Tang Clan, which worked oddly well. But then… I had an idea.

You see, "The Drift" by Scott Walker has been lurking on my mp3 player for a while. I listened to a bit of it a while back, but never all the way through. This was because it was a bit scary. I felt pretty bad as my friend Jessie burnt it for me specially and I really should have listened to it by now. Anyway, what would happen if I forced myself to listen to the whole of "The Drift" in an office environment? This was my challenge!

Below, you shall find my track-by-track report of listening to "The Drift" whilst doing data input. The tenses are all over the place, but I think you get a good idea of the experience that I had. It was enlightening.

Or the opposite of that. It was endarkening.

Cossacks Are

The air conditioning seems to be cranked a little higher as my challenge begins. Seriously, is it colder in here just because of the song? The thumping drums are quite good at maintaining a rhythm, though. "That's a nice suit / That's a swanky suit," sings Scott. How apt. I am wearing a suit! Thanks, man. It needs dry cleaning, though. This is going fine!

Clara

A gentle, yet threatening beginning gives way to cacophonous droning and that infamous meat-punching, punctuated by klangs of horrible guitar. It is oddly apt for the workplace. The stapler appears to be smiling at me. There's a brief respite whilst I highlight an error using a blue highlighter; the droning stops so Scott can sing about Mussolini's lover waiting for execution. This song is lending my every salary adjustment an enormous significance. Some electronic squiggling sound, accompanied by the sound of a man thwacking a side of pork, is giving me a headache. A man has started yelling - it might be in the song, it might be in the office. I can't tell. Similarly, the sound of the cleaners putting some cups in the dishwasher is strongly redolent of wartime Italy. "This is not a terrapin!" sings Scott.

Oh good. The droning is back. Scott is whispering about poking a man with a stick. I notice someone, possibly me, has categorised this album as "Classical". That might be a joke.

Dear lord, what was that?! Scott shrieked and surprised me.

Jesse

"Noseholes caked in black cocaine," trills Scott, as I repeat the same data input pattern I've been doing for three days now. Someone calls the phone on my desk, but rings off after one ring. Sinister. I probably would have been too scared to answer it, in case it was Elvis's dead twin, who this song is about. It's a slow burning song, and isn't giving me much of a rhythm to my inputting. "I'm the only one left alive! I'm the only one left alive!" howls Scott, a capella.

Jolson and Jones

Drums! Hooray! Accompanied by some electric crickets and some atonal organ. Boo. I really haven't done a lot of inputting over the last song. I need this song to help me get down to it. It is unfailingly sinister. And, unfortunately for my work, its stop-start time signatures and free-form structure doesn't really do what I need.

Ah! A crazed donkey has just started braying. "Curare, curare," sings Scott. I'm just sitting here, a little dumbfounded. I pull myself together and input the salary information of someone in the Treasury department whilst a lone piper on a blasted heath toots plaintively - about what, I do not know. But it is scary.

"I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway! I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway!" yells Scott.

Cue

Five tracks in, and I think my productivity levels have been halved. Let's hope for a nice jaunty singalong that will not invade my headspace!

No. We get threatening Holst-style strings and Scott singing on the same notes he has for the past four songs. No idea what this song is about either. I think he might have just sung "Charmed like a muscle" or "Charmed like a mussle". Someone has started hitting a box. My colleague asks for a pencil sharpener; I ask him what he means. Turns out he just wants a pencil sharpener. This song is ten and a half minutes long. Sheesh.

Woah! Horrible, horrible Psycho strings! Over and over again! Scott is singing about a fat black crocodile. This is truly horrible. The strings slide down over and over again. "Slicing the swine!" bellows Scott. There was a regular beat for a while there, but it's now stopped. Someone is playing a bugle horn.

A long lull with nothing of note happening. Well, nothing of note but CONSTANTLY BUILDING DREAD. Which comes to nothing - the song comes to a quiet halt.

Hand Me Ups

Blistering, atonal cacophony is the order of the day in the intro to this song. Following the quiet end of the previous one, it is deeply unpleasant. Gritty, distorted sine waves and someone singing inaudibly in the background. "I tried, I tried," sings Scott, "Teeth taken out with a stroke / Rain running down a long spear… I felt the nail driving into my foot! I felt the nail driving into my hand!" There's a nice saxophone bit playing in the background. A screaming sound from either a woman or a violin.

It goes without saying, this is the most unpleasant one yet.

Some atonal harpsichord is accompanied by a lute. "The audience is waiting!" croons Scott. As is my boss, waiting for me to input these numbers. Sorry, boss. This is an important experiment.

Did he just sing "bat the rat"? Is this a song about a summer fete? Oh. Probably not. He just sung about "splintering white bone". I don't remember that at a summer fete.

Buzzers

Radio static! Brilliant. That's always helpful for data input. Now, some low singing about varnishing a fort (possibly), and someone hitting a wine glass. Someone in Marketing is doing terribly well with their salary.

Scott just came up with the first actual vocal melody on the album. It's track seven! True to form, it was over the lyric "Somebody dies!" After "Hand Me Ups", this is actually quite pleasant, although at the same time - of course - unbearably tense.

Oh. I've just worked out what that lyric is. "Stick the fork in him! He's done boys!" That's really put a crimp on my enjoyment of the song.

Psoriatic

This title doesn't bode well. As it is 10.40am, I decide elevenses are appropriate. I avail myself of an over-ripe banana and a tiny can of executive lemonade and crash on with the song. This banana really is very ripe. "Jada! Jada! Jing jing jing!" sings Scott. The banana is too ripe to eat. You know when bananas are too ripe and they taste a little alcoholic, that's what this one tasted like. The lemonade is sweet and fizzy. It also claims it is "Made with real lemons!" Great.

"Here come the blankets!" sings Scott. I do like a good blanket. This song isn't so bad, perhaps because that banana was slightly more horrible than the song. The song is over. That wasn't so bad.

The banana, however, was awful.

The Escape

Before this song starts, a colleague asks me to do some work for her when I've finished inputting. I obviously look a bit suspicious. To alleviate the tension, I give her a high ten. I'm not sure that's appropriate office behaviour. My guide to what is right and what is wrong has been skewed by Scott.

I start the song. Gentle, military tattoo and quiet, threatening, descending double bass. Ah, and now skittering treated violin whilst Scott sings "You and me against the world!" I think he might be covering that Space song.

There's only one track to go! This realisation gives me hope that everything will be okay.

Dear Christ! Horrible gremlin voices! Stalking strings! This is horrible! It's like Orville is coming to kill me!

A Lover Loves

The beginning of this sounds disconcertingly like "If You Go Away". Scott psst-pssts to get my attention. Leave off, Scott! I'm trying to do data input! It is gentle, and acoustic, and rather lovely. If it wasn't for the pssting, it would be fine, but the pssting is really distracting. And then it ends.

"Dirty Birds" by Kat Flint

2007-06-20T12:02:00.000+01:00

I've been fortunate enough to be given a copy of Kat Flint's forthcoming album "Dirty Birds", and I hereby attempt to influence you to purchase it, when you can. It's very good. Songs such as "Ohio" and "Lonesome Crowd" contain an emotional sucker punch in the same vein as Sufjan Stevens' "John Wayne Gacy". Like Stevens, Flint is a storyteller, detailing the journey between a rural idyll and the grimy city - the title track namechecks Soho before commenting knowingly that this "is where TV came to die". She is an exemplary lyricist, often seeming to write in character - a commentator on her surroundings, with the confidence to raise a weary eyebrow at the weaknesses and foibles of a screwed-up world. Some points in the album are exceptionally upsetting - always beautiful, charming, and welcoming, but incredibly emotional and heartwrenching. For the album, Flint has welded her Aimee Mann-ly glumness to a powerful musical engine, crisp string arrangements, tinkly glockenspiel and lovely picked guitar, and the songs occasionally launch into Bright Eyes-esque choral sing-a-longs. There are lots of highlights - my personal favourite track is "Saddest Blue Dress", a tender and raw song about an extra-marital affair that concludes, agonisingly, "all my children will smile like the first time we met / It's alright…" - it's blisteringly sad.

I believe it will be out soon, but do check her myspace for details of when - it is a silvery disc to cherish.

http://www.myspace.com/katflint

Don't Look Now, Lyric Hammersmith

2007-03-21T13:47:00.000Z

(Written for Culture Wars)

So, here's a quandary: how do you adapt something that has already been definitively adapted? Lucy Bailey and Nell Leyshon's reversion of "Don't Look Now" takes the bold step of eschewing changes made by Nicolas Roeg in his highly-thought-of 1973 film adaptation, and returning to Daphne du Maurier's original short story.

The slow-burning first half is moodily effective and genuinely entertaining. John and Laura return to Venice, where they spent their honeymoon, to get over the death of their daughter Christine. Leyshon's script reinstates Christine's death being caused by meningitis, and not the shocking drowning of Roeg's film. Set by Bailey in a gigantic copper box, with gorgeous lighting by Chris Davey, it's a creepy, atmospheric world, with tables and other settings sliding queasily from one side of the stage to the other.

It isn't, however, Venice. Of course, having large amounts of water on stage is a bloody hard thing to achieve. Here we have some lovely rippling reflections on the walls, and some undeniably pretty theatre rain. (Man, I love theatre rain. If you're making a play that I'm going to review, add some theatre rain. I guarantee you a whole extra star on your star rating.) But without the constant eerie presence of the waterways, everything feels a little dry and safe. It becomes apparent why Roeg made his alteration to the way Christine died ? to recover from your child's drowning by visiting a city built on waterways is a pleasing dramatic irony; how could John and Laura be so stupid to think that going there was a good idea? Next time, dudes, go to the Gobi Desert! The creeping dread of water for the characters is absent, and so the location, something utterly key to both original text and cinema adaptation, cannot be delivered.

The first half contains a brilliant performance by Susie Trayling as Laura, trying desperately hard to remain upbeat, whilst occasionally letting the facade break, particularly after meeting the weird psychic sisters who let her know of the ominous warnings of her dead child. Trayling's Laura clings desperately, optimistically, to any thread of hope, and the second half misses her, as she returns to Britain to attend to the appendicitis of her son.

Simon Paisley Day, as John, has a trickier time. Stoic and stiff-upper-lipped in the first half, the cracking of his facade in the second half, as scripted, is more melodramatic and explicit. He is haunted by a child in a red coat, perhaps the ghost of his dead daughter, and beset by any number of Italian buffoons who occasionally slip into oblique pronouncements from the underworld. Day's performance is a little fussy, and never quite manages to achieve either the sensitive breakdown of Trayling or the large-scale grandstanding that must surely have been a temptation. The second half suffers because John isn't really the one we're interested in in the first half. He's a petty Englishman, more interested in saving face and being frustrated that none of the Italians will humour his stilted attempts to master their language, and as such the emotional core of the second half is absent.

Joanna McCallum and Susan Woolridge are quietly effective as the twin psychics, but don't have a huge amount to do. The locals of Venice are very broadly drawn, with fun little sketches of a hotel butler and a rambunctious restauranteur seeming out of place when set against the moodiness of the main story. John's psychic tormenting by the sinister Italians in his head late on in Act Two, however, feels a little xenophobic, and exposes the datedness of du Maurier's text. This is compounded by the giggling, demonic little person, psychotically pleased with her hobby of murdering tourists, which raised my 21st Century political correctness hackles.

An interesting experiment, then. In the programme, it is stated that Bailey was looking to devise an original ghost story, but eventually settled on "Don't Look Now". Part of me wishes that Bailey and Leyshon's obvious talents had been employed on that original story, if only to avoid the pitfalls of the burden of the film, the tinges of datedness and the difficulty of getting Venice across on stage.

The Good, The Bad & The Queen, The Roundhouse

2006-10-27T11:06:00.000+01:00

If I love anything, I love free stuff most of all. Especially if that free stuff is booze and finger food. I'm mad for that shit. Last night's The Good, The Bad and The Queen gig, part of the BBC Electric Proms was notable mainly not for the return of Damon Albarn to the live fold; notable not for his newly-assembled band, including Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen and Clash bassist Paul Simonon; notable not even for the newly spraunced-up Roundhouse. No, it was notable for the free booze and finger food.

Armed with a pink wristband, to denote how much better than everyone else we were, we marched into the VIP holding pen at about 6.30pm, giving us a full hour's worth of drinking before the first support. I chose beer, my friend chose white wine. There were some nice hors d'oeuvres as well - butterflied king prawns atop little bread, beef atop little bread, and the audacious sundried tomato filled with mozzarella. The best tactic for eating the sundried tomato was to whack the whole thing in your gob and then manage somehow. Those suckers were juicy. As I was wearing a white shirt, I decided that spillages on that white shirt would not be a good look for the night. More on that later.

The bar was filled mainly with disgusting liggers like myself. One poor guy in a sweatshirt was actively trying to network. What a loon.

At 7.30pm, the first support act started. His name was Young Tiger and he was neither young nor tigerish. He was 85, sat in a chair, walked with a stick, and read his lyrics off sheets of paper. He was accompanied by a six piece band, called the London Is The Place For Me Ensemble (crazy name, crazy guys!), who played the sort of music that only Damon Albarn and well-meaning women in tie-dye like. Apart from his final song, which was very catchy. It was called "At the Coronation" and the chorus went "I was there! / At the coronation / I was there! / At the coronation / Were you there? / At the coronation / Millions there! / At the coronation". The song was so catchy that if you cut me in half now, the words would be written through my torso like I was a stick of rock.

After Young Tiger, more drinking. The hors d'oeuvres had mysteriously dried up. My companion spilt his white wine all over a mirrored plinth and spent much of this break trying to mop it up.

Next up, Jamie T. Described as a white, British, urban rapper, I was disappointed to discover Jamie T sounded almost inseparably like the Arctic Monkeys. We lasted but three of his awful tracks, before sloping off to the bar, commenting that the songs would have really been improved by some sort of tune.

There were less people in the bar than in the interval, but not much less. Jamie T's howling was obviously not to everyone's tastes. Still no hors d'oeuvres, but by now Edith Bowman had turned up. I think she'd lost quite a bit of weight. She didn't look so good.

After Jamie T had finished, the bar filled up again. By this point, both myself and my companion were - not to put too fine a point on it - pretty drunk.

We took our seats for The Good, The Bad and The Queen. You know, every time I type that name, I want it to be better. It's a really shit name. In fact, whenever I type that name, I really hope it ends in a different way. "Please," I think, "let this end differently." I feel the same way when watching "Othello". This is a marker of how awesomely tragic this band name is. It's a total howler.

I'm not even kidding. If this band name was a kitten, I would throw it from some castle railings onto a spike.

But never mind the band name, what do they sound like?

I mean, seriously? What a shit name. It even makes an ugly-looking abbreviation. TGTBATQ. Bleurgh.

The band sound pretty much as you'd expect when half your band is Damon Albarn and Simon Tong, the guy who took over live guitar duties from Graham Coxon for "Think Tank"-era Blur. It sounds like the more droney aspects of Gorillaz, the sort of songs that - though you can't hear the lyrics through the fug of toothless Anglicised Afrobeat - are probably about how bad war is. Like, duh. One of the songs started something like "I wrote this song two years ago / Upon the Goldhawk Road". Blee. Why doesn't Damon tell us about the Nandos at Shepherd's Bush, or that time he went to Homebase?

Tony Allen's drumming is a huge non-event, with him soporifically padding his way through the songs, without ever truly kicking them into any kind of life. Paul Simonon throws punk shapes, whilst his bass fuzzes ineffectually away. At one point a rapper comes on, speaks unintelligibly for about twenty seconds, and then leaves. He isn't really part of the band. In fact, he might have been a lone stage invader. It was difficult to tell.

The gig is momentarily livened by Albarn stopping a song twice, telling the rest of the band off and saying "We can play that song better than that!" before jumping around. Tony Allen looks amused at his petulance. Albarn is wearing a top hat. I haven't liked Damon since his po-faced interview in the Britpop documentary "Live Forever", in which he morosely plinked away on a ukulele whilst trying to dodge the fact that he was largely to blame for the "Country House"/"Roll With It" shenanigans. This gig didn't change my mind.

The main problem with TGTBATQ, is that old chestnut: tunes. Actual Tunes were sorely in absence, with emphasis instead placed on turgid loops wobbling onto a stage, then falling off it again with almost no difference to the world. These were songs that made you realise the pointlessness of music. Why did these things exist? What did they come here for? Why were they hurting me?

After the gig, the liggers pour back into the bar. Weirdly, the staff bring round little bowls of beef stew and mash, which I really really wanted badly. The fork was way too big for the bowl, though, and as I took it, the fork catapulted beef stew at my white shirt. As I changed my shirt in the gents, someone accused me of being gay entertainment. By this point, my companion could barely stand. Having drunk only beer, I was marginally more in control of my faculties, so it was my job to get him home. In the end, he went to his girlfriend's, and I was left to ponder the gig.

Most heavy nights of drinking make you never want to drink again. Last night made me want to only drink again, just so I can blot out the bitter truth that I live in a world where music as unquestionably balls as this is actually applauded. Now, you could argue that it was the drink that made me not enjoy this gig, but I would argue that it was the gig that made me not enjoy the drink. That, and that the music was unquestionably balls. It made me want to call my ears liars, as no sound could possibly be as bad as it sounded like to me. It couldn't have been that bad.

Still, did I mention there was free food and booze? Whichever genius thought up that diversionary tactic deserves a raise.

On The Third Day, New Ambassadors Theatre

2006-06-28T14:42:00.000+01:00

(Written for Culture Wars)

On the first day, God made the light and the dark, and saw that it was good. On the second day, a camera crew turned up at God's house. 'What's going on here?' said God. 'And who's that guy?' 'Him?' said the producer, 'That's Graham. He's from Kent. We're here to film a reality show called "Can You Make The Light And The Dark Better Than God?" It's reality, but - you know - highbrow.'

For avoidance of all doubt, that's not the play. That's my silly little joke. On The Third Day is, of course, the winning play from Channel 4's theatrical reality TV show The Play's The Thing. I was sent to see this play because Culture Wars knows that I am simple-minded, that I appreciate the lowbrow, and that I love tacky gimmicks and TV tie-ins. I had some time free before the show and I ate hamburgers! From Burger King! I couldn't be more suited to watch this play! I entered the theatre expecting (hoping! praying!) for the theatrical equivalent of Steve Brookstein! Or Gareth Gates!

Anyway, here's the plot of the actual play. Claire is a presenter at Greenwich Planetarium, who goes to a bar one night and brings back Mike, with whom she wants to lose her virginity. Unfortunately, he turns out to be Jesus. Whoops! I don't think He's putting out on the first date! Mike's presence forces her to confront the death of her parents, her troubled relationship with her brother, and, like, whether the Jesus dude is crazy or not.

It's important to get this out of the way: the play is not a disaster. (Oh, you can smell the disappointment from the bitchy elements of the audience! It's almost worth going just for that.) It's a mess, but it's not a disaster. The main problem with On The Third Day is - predictably - the immaturity of the playwright. Betts is wildly ambitious in the way first-time playwrights can be, chucking ideas at the stage without ever knowing quite how to make them pay off. Divinity, delusion, insanity, self-harm, incest, guilt, suicide, ghost rape, potholing, Elvis - it's a busy, restless piece which never achieves the cohesion it needs.

The first half almost - almost! - works, mainly because it is built around the relationship of the central characters, Claire and Mike. Maxine Peake gives a very nice performance of the timid side of Claire, drunkenly attempting to seduce Mike (Paul Hilton) after dragging him home from a bar. Kate Betts writes a nice line in snappy dialogue, which Peake and Hilton have fun with. In particular, Betts is a fan of coy one-liners alluding to Mike's past life as Jesus. There's a lot of these. In fact, you could probably play 'Jesus Joke Bingo', just by sitting there with a copy of the New Testament and ticking them off as they came out. When Mike referred to some overcooked fish being 'a burnt offering', I think I got my full house.

The flashbacks to Claire and her brother Robbie as children interested me much less than the present day, domestic business. I don't think I need to tell you, oh intelligent reader, that there are subtler ways to impart exposition than the flashback. One episode of The Play's The Thing I saw involved the playwright Stephen Jeffreys telling the finalist writers about the three unities of time, place and action. I wish he'd pressed his case a little more firmly, as the second half takes much of the nice domestic stuff that I liked a lot and trashes it, in favour of massive caves, food fights, singing, and some more rape. It's scrappy stuff, and unsatisfying. Like Russell T Davies' 2003 ITV drama The Second Coming, Betts has the problem that she has brought Jesus into a modern world and now doesn't know what she's going to do with him.

Davies had the temerity to kill off Our Lord (how can the same shit happen to the same guy twice, right?), but Betts opts for that old classic: he just wanders off. Probably to Heaven. The performers find it difficult to attain the dramatic peaks that the histrionics in the text demand, because of dizzying leaps in the text from high drama to subtle comedy and back. In the climactic restaurant scene there's some horrible stage direction, and the mere presence of Elvis at the dinner table turns it into exactly the sort of cheaply absurd play that I imagine producer Sonia Friedman set out to avoid. Revelations happen at a pace that suggests the characters are eager to get to the end of the play. How meta-theatrical! It's such a shame. The occasional glimmers of promise in the first half are all squandered.

Thematically, there's no real sense that Betts is engaging with her subject matter. She's assembling An Important And Symbolic Play from a list of variables; writing not what she feels, but what she thinks theatre is. I have no idea what Betts actually thinks about God, or Jesus, or even Christianity. I have no idea what she wants us to think about these things. In fact, I think the moral of the story, to paraphrase Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, is 'Be Excellent To Each Other'. The other strands of the story are somehow even less clearly defined. Claire's self-harm is gratuitous and a cheap device to show that she is, like, really upset. Claire's brother Robbie is so unsympathetic, I was left hoping Jesus committed murder by snipping his potholing ropes with scissors, which would have been out-of-character for Christ to say the least.

Theatrically, we get vaulting ambition. Throughout the series of The Play's The Thing, Sonia Friedman fretted that the final chosen play wouldn't be big enough for the West End. She disparaged plays for only being suitable for the Royal Court and encouraged her writers to think boldly to escape the deadly trap of… shudder as you say it… fringe theatre. The net result is a play punching above its weight. The design of the play is all huge projections and sofas floating onto stage mysteriously pushed by no-one; the sound design is big whooshy noises and Holst; and the script is more, more, more! It's a lie, anyway, this notion that the West End can only cope with big plays. The last play I saw on the stage of the New Ambassadors was Frank McGuinness' Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, and that's just three blokes chained to radiators.

It just saddens me. Given a proper dramaturgical going-over, this would probably be quite a good play, if shorn of flashbacks and given a tighter, claustrophobic focus. Because of the time constraints of the programme, the play has been rushed onto a stage, publicly, painfully, and I don't believe it's ready. There are glaring things in the play that could have been sorted out really easily by a skilled dramaturg - like Young Claire having a bossy character that diametrically opposes her timid older counterpart. The characters need a lot of psychological fleshing-out, and factual definition - the writer is dealing with huge, complicated human issues, and has no real idea of how to make a subject like incest both dramatically viable and psychologically 'real'.

The point of this project was to offer someone a chance to put their play on in the West End, but the script selection process used by theatres and literary agents is there for a purpose. It guarantees a play is stage-worthy by the time a paying audience sees it. The Play's The Thing promised support for a new writer, but it has actually given the writer less support, and placed more pressure on her to make something extraordinary. This doesn't seem like much of a prize.

I really hope Kate Betts gets another play put on soon, and is not crushed by this ludicrous, unreal pressure upon her as a first-time writer. As it is, the whole project seems like an immense effort for scant reward. Too silly to be appreciated by sniffy regular theatregoers, with too much incest for people who watched The Play's The Thing while waiting for Big Brother to come on, On The Third Day is a bit of a curio; a play that manages to miss every target market. This play isn't the thing - it's not good, but it's not a pleasingly-trashy disaster, and it's all a bit upsetting, really.

Masha & The Bear, White Bear Theatre

2006-03-13T14:44:00.000Z

(Written for Culture Wars)

One of the most justifiably despised genres for new plays is the Unofficial Sequel. Do you think I care what happened to Beatrice and Benedick after they got married? Or where Godot has actually been all this time? No. Stoppard has a lot to answer for.

It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I approached Pitch Dark Theatre's Masha and the Bear; a look at Chekhov's Three Sisters before and after the events of his play. One of the pitfalls of the Unofficial Sequel is the presupposition that the audience knows the minutiae of the play you are riffing on. Masha and the Bear is admirably restrained in its use of the original text. Yes, the references and in-jokes are still there, but writer/director Abbey Wright focuses wisely on the characters of the sisters - Olga, prim and maternal; Irina, young and clearly in awe of her sisters; and the titular Masha, bold and imaginative, and suffocated by loveless marriage.

Rather than concentrating immediately after or before the time of the play, Wright pieces together a story flip-flopping between past and present - offering scraps of the lives of the three girls in reality and memory. Having done away with the intimacy and claustrophobia afforded by Chekhov's adherence to a single setting, Wright instead mines the intimacy of moments shared by sisters -a boring dinner, folding a sheet - with Chekhovian subtext shimmering across snatched glances.

The four performers - there is a brief role for Melissa Charlton as Masha's maidservant Sophia - are uniformly strong. Kathryn Daw plays the balance between stern and sisterly to a tee, with a tut rarely far from her lips. Her gravitas is particularly well used in returning to Masha's empty house, playing the unspoken feelings of loss, whilst distracting herself with busying herself over tidying, or fussing with spindly fingers over a box of receipts. She also gets given a perfectly weighted Chekhovian line - 'I'm not sure this is fun' - which she uses to drolly puncture the hyperactive tendencies of her sisters. Sparking effectively off Daw's Olga, Josie Daxter makes her Irina childlike and wide-eyed, with her maturity late in the play subtle and poignant. As Masha, Rosie Mason marries the emotional weight of her desperate situation with the manic energy of someone driven to reclaim her vitality from those that would take it away.

Masha and the Bear is a subtle and suitably restrained affair that can prove challenging narratively - much is left for an audience to assume or work out in their own time, but the ambiguities are rarely frustrating or impede one's understanding of the characters themselves. The sisters are key; they invite the audience into the sisterly clique, aiming to reveal nothing, but revealing everything. Pitch Dark Theatre's attention to detail and specificity in the subdued and subtextual moments should be commended, as should the focus and restraint of the writing of the piece. It is a fringe show of genuine quality, and exudes an intelligence rarely seen in London's smaller theatres.

Alice Trilogy, Royal Court

2005-11-21T14:38:00.000Z

(Written for Culture Wars)

There's a thing I've just made up called 'The Posh Lady Royal Court Gasp'. Writers on commission at the Royal Court are contractually obliged to include moments within their scripts that will provoke this elusive noise. (Please bear in mind, this is a different noise from 'The Posh Lady Reads a Particularly Saucy Bit of a Jackie Collins Novel Gasp'.)

I mention this, not only because Tom Murphy's Alice Trilogy provides a corker of such a moment - the sudden tension of the gasp tonight made every pearl round every neck of every Posh Lady in the audience quiver in unison - but also because the play concerns itself with the conversion of the eponymous Alice from a young dreamer into a weary, defeated, yet sympathetic, woman, who I imagine would gasp at things in the Royal Court.

Alice Trilogy is unsurprisingly three connected short plays about Alice, a grudgingly self-professed 'boring housewife'. We meet her at twenty five, married to the uninspiring bank manager and budgie-breeder Bill, already with three kids, teetering on the edge of alcoholism, toying with escape, perhaps suicide, and conversing with voices in her head. We then see her encounter, some ten years later, with an old flame, a TV newsreader, and then again, ten years after that, as a defeated woman, sitting awkwardly eating dinner with her husband in an airport. The play chronicles the squeezing of all hope from Alice. She begins with ideas of escape from her mundane housewife existence, sees her ideas of a more glamorous life with a man from her past crushed because, well, he's deeply sinister, and ends hollow-cheeked and bony with age and sadness, all the fight sucked out of her, sympathetic but irredeemable.

In the quotation I guess they would put in the Royal Court programme if they wanted to encapsulate why we should invest in the character, Alice says 'There's a strange, savage, beautiful and mysterious country inside me'. That's at the beginning of the play. At the end, this is coupled with 'There was a time when she felt that inside her there was something mysterious that she thought of as herself […] It is conceivable that the worst has happened and the reality of it leaves a lot to be desired'. That's the journey. Perhaps I'm being a little unfair; Murphy sprinkles the journey with a lot of humour - that humour through bleakness that Irish playwrights are rightly renowned for - and the subtlety and juxtaposition of this raises the game of the play.

Or rather 'plays', as Murphy takes the trilogy aspect of the play rather seriously. Play one, 'In The Apiary', is a stuttery exercise in self-reflection, Alice conversing with a character waggishly named 'Al' in her attic, getting drunk and wondering where it all went wrong. Play two, 'By The Gasworks Wall', is a noirish, sinister conversation piece, complete with mysterious drifters and men in trilbies emerging from the shadows. Play three, 'At The Airport', is Happy Days-in-an-airport, as Alice's increasingly fractured thought processes cascade out of her mouth, and her situation is worsened by dramatic events and increasing solitude. There's a stylistic jump between each playlet, which causes a question of cohesion. What does this all add up to?

Juliet Stevenson's performance in is, of course, staggeringly good. She has the ability to underplay moments in a mesmerising way - stuttering; implying; her brain racing, her eyes flashing mania, whilst remaining physically calm; subtext being thrown around like rice at a wedding. She does 'rabbit in the headlights' better than anyone I've seen on stage, and may well be in possession of the greatest 'manic laugh in the throes of desperate misery' in history. She works her socks off through this play, and at the curtain call looks positively frazzled with the exertion of it all. It is fascinating, and rare, to see someone being so effortlessly spectacular on a stage so close to you.

Why, then, is this a less than spectacular evening? Perhaps because the splintered glance at Alice's life makes such leaps over vital history that one is only just keying into Alice's predicament when it changes into a newer one, further entrenched in her desperate marital situation. Perhaps the play suffers through comparison to A Doll's House, with the opening episode's birdcage allusions and attic/coop set, and the fact that Stevenson played Nora in a definitive televised production of Ibsen's play, which ratcheted up the focus and claustrophobia that the larger timescale of Alice Trilogy lacks. The episodic structure aims for epic sweep, but instead suggests slightness, and this is a shame. Perhaps it is that the play's structure, despite being split into three, adheres to 'Royal Court Gasp' syndrome, throwing in unexpected horror exactly where one would expect it.

Alice Trilogy emerges as a piece of theatre only a madman would turn down a ticket to, yet one that the madman might well come out of a little disappointed. Madmen are, of course, notoriously difficult audience members. It's a chilly play, not just because of the Royal Court's overzealous air conditioning, but because our involvement with Alice is sketchy, skittish and fleeting. It's awkward to relate to her, rather than uncomfortable; like someone cautiously trying to tell you her life story without giving any of her secrets away.

Two Temp Agencies In London

2005-10-31T11:19:00.000Z

The registration process for temp agencies probably hasn't changed since the advent of the mainstream office computer. For those of y'all who have never registered as a temp, there are three components:- Filling out lots of forms of personal details, bank information, that sort of thing; a typing and/or software test; and finally an interview with a slightly surly temp controller, whose job it is to impress upon the prospective temp that a) fucking about is not an option; b) they will get you a job.

Today, I visited two temp agencies to register. Now it is October, the summer temp job drought has eased and they are finally taking on new people. In those difficult summer months, one is often met with a stark "the students are back" excuse from agencies, before they fragrantly hang up. People who work in temp agencies are often beautiful psirens, luring you into signing documents with their slightly prissy, slightly maternal sexuality. I was once registered by a male temp controller, and he converted this coy flirtation into beery mateyness, which seemed to me highly inappropriate. Anyway, today, now, I am in need of a job. Let's see what London has to offer.

---

First up was the worryingly-named Next Employment, on Oxford Circus. I was made aware of the existence of Next Employment both by my housemate Jasmine - who, in her impressive position in the sales department of a publishing house, frequently gets temps from Next - and my friend Kinky Will who used to temp for Next. Kinky Will was keen to emphasise that the person who signed you up for Next was "a very flirtatious Australian woman". I attempted to contact said flirtatious Antipodean over the summer, but a stream of calls and emails came to naught. The summer drought, I thought, had claimed Next's interest, but come the Autumn months, contact was made.

The receptionist, an American lady who seemed quite tall when she was sitting down, welcomed me to the reception area with a clipboard, some forms and a pen. I asked if I could help myself to water from the conveniently-located watercooler, and she gave me permission. I filled the cup, and drank thereof. Cool, soothing water. Is there a drink more satisfying? No. There were only two forms to fill in, and they were relatively straightforward. The only thing that caused any consternation was the References section, which invited me to put down phone numbers. I don't like putting down phone numbers for references, after one of my referees, my friend Hayley, suggested that Office Angels had been harrassing her on my behalf. Anyway, I skipped past those sections of the form and handed the clipboard and pen back to the receptionist. She led me to the computers for stage two: the typing test.

This was not just a typing test, however. I was to be tested on Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, and then the typing test. I breezed through much of the software tests without complaint, pausing only to notice two glitches in the tests themselves. Firstly, occasionally one's mouse pointer would disappear from the screen, leaving one to guess where it had got to and click randomly in the hope that the button you should be clicking would be clucked. Secondly, if a menu was opened and then you clicked on the wrong option, the programme would assume that you had clicked the right option. I exploited this weakness mercilessly, all the time thinking about how I was a cool computer hacker, like Robert Redford in "Sneakers". God, "Sneakers" was a cool film.

Then, onto the typing test. One of the joys of the typing test is the document they get you to type. It is always nonsensical, and as all but the fastest typers only use the first paragraph or so, the end of each document is often quite factually inaccurate and ludicrous, as if the copywriter got bored halfway through writing it. As an example of the type of material one is expected to type, I once spent about five minutes typing up a document about genetically-modified grain and the impact upon the bread industry for an Office Angels type test.

Next's typing test centred on the importance of imagination in the work place, and suggested that it was essential and marked the difference between the average and the excellent candidate. I looked out of the window and was confronted by a brick wall with an air conditioning unit on it. Imagination in the workplace suddenly became something of a cruel joke. The document also contained the priceless advice:- "If you have a problem, sing a song about it, and then sing a song as a solution." I would like to try this in real life. My songs would be "I Am Unemployable (And Overqualified)" and its response song "You are Buggered".

You are buggered / You are screwed / You've been fucked over / By educational ambition
Oh dear oh dear oh dear / It's too late now / Say hello to / Malnutrition

After finishing the tests, I returned to the reception area. The tall receptionist said "I'll just take these results to Sally". (Sally is the flirtatious Australian.) The receptionist then said, in a hushed voice, "They're really good, these results. You got 62 words per minute... with no mistakes!" "Blimey," I said.

Sally invited me into a very small room, and invited me to sit. She sat in a chair with a little table attached to it, like they have in American classrooms. "The thing is," she said, "I want more information on your CV. We need to sell you to the employers, and just putting 'Various Temp Positions' doesn't do it." We ran through my last few temp agencies, what I actually did for them, and she looked pleased. Then she turned to my test results.

"WOW," she said, in capitals, "do you know what you got?" "Um... not really," I lied. "62 words per minute," she said, with awe in her voice, "with no mistakes. I haven't seen results like this since..." - she grasped for a comparison, and failed - "... since ever." "Blimey," I said.

"And Office Angels had you working in a warehouse? With results like these?"
"Oh yes."

She shook her head sadly. I copied her. We sat there, shaking our heads. It was a moment of communion.

She promised to find me a job and shook my hand, warmly. Shaking hands is important. A good grip, and plenty of eye contact. It communicates confidence. I went on my way. Apparently, the guy who was inside C3PO was in the HMV opposite the agency at about the time I left, but I didn't want to brave the Geek Chorus within.

---

The second agency was Crone Corkhill in Green Park. I walked into the rather opulent building and was asked by the security lady to stand in front of a camera, which took a picture of me, in a suit, slightly overdressed. "Thank you," she said, "make sure you come and see me before you leave. You need to go to the sixth floor."

The offices of Crone Corkhill are all polished wood, bold positive colours, and smart office furniture. The reception area looks like a smart cafe in the Docklands, the corridors look like a private health clinic, or a sperm donation centre. All of the receptionists - and there are about fifteen of them - are attractive, tanned women, in black suits with very prominent cleavage. I started to think I'd wandered into the wrong office, but no, they welcomed me to Crone Corkhill. A Stepford receptionist said she would take me to a room where I could fill in the forms. She led me into a corridor of about twelve tiny interview rooms, with a little sliding window on each door that said VACANT/BUSY. She took me into a VACANT room, slid the little window to BUSY and said I could fill in the forms. The room was empty, but for a table and two chairs. On the table, a dispenser of Crone Corkhill leaflets and, bizarrely, a box of tissues. "This is a sperm donation clinic," I thought, "How weird, to run a sperm donation clinic and a temp agency from the same office."

I took a photo, because I knew you wouldn't believe me.

After filling out the forms, of which there were approximately three hundred, I returned to the reception area, taking immense care not to look in any of the other rooms down "The Corridor Of Shame". One of the forms was a spelling test, which had four options of spellings of words that you will never use, like "conscientious". The problem with this is that even though one's spelling may be perfect, the combination of pressure, too many options, and the fact that you might, at any moment, be given a small Tupperware container, inevitably leads you to making a few dodgy decisions. Parallel? Parrallel? Parrallell? I don't know. I don't particularly care.

Then, onto the typing test. Again, I was asked to do tests for software. No glitches in the software this time, although it didn't tell you if you were right at any point, so one was in the dark for pretty much the whole thing. The document of the typing test, in an audacious display of self-referentiality, was about interview technique. "Shaking hands is important," read the document, "Make sure you have a good grip, and use plenty of eye contact. It communicates confidence."

After the test was over, I went back to the reception desk. "I've finished," I said.
"Yes," said the same woman from earlier. Or it might have been a different one. "I have your results here. You got 63 words per minute. That's excellent," she said, without looking impressed.
"That's one word more per minute than this morning," I thought. "I am on FIRE!"
"So," said the receptionist, "I'll pass these onto Poppy. Thanks very much."

I left the office thinking it was odd that I didn't meet a temp controller. I had only had two stages of the three standard stages. It was getting late - it was about 6pm by this point - perhaps Poppy had gone home and would call me tomorrow.

As I came out of the Underground at Finsbury Park, I got a voicemail message on my phone.

"Tom, it's Poppy. There's been a bit of a misunderstanding in reception. Could you turn round and come back in?"

"No," I thought.

Broken Flowers

2005-10-26T11:23:00.000+01:00

The received wisdom is that Bill Murray could be filmed doing absolutely nothing for 90 minutes and would still be absolutely captivating. Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers" is based heavily upon this principle and goes some way to disproving it.

It doesn't help that it's based on that hoary old narrative - "Visiting old flames to see what they can teach me about my current predicament". "High Fidelity" did it with more bite; here, it's used to place Bill Murray in a series of situations that range from the slightly awkward, to the slightly threatening, and to see what happens. The "old flame visiting" is balanced with the "you have a long lost son" narrative, itself uncomfortably close to Murray's too-recent "The Life Aquatic". "Broken Flowers" seems like its running over old ground and has nothing particularly to say about it.

Someone has sent Don a letter on pink paper saying that his 19-year-old son is on his way to see him. The letter is unsigned, and Murray's neighbour Winston persuades him to visit four of his old girlfriends, each of which may be the mother of his child, and the author of the letter.

Murray's character, the japesomely-named Don Johnston ("JohnSTON. JohnSTON," moans Murray, periodically), is a nothing, a zero, a "Man Who Wasn't There" who is even less there than Billy Bob Thornton. He sits around in horrible tracksuits all day watching cartoons. He is supposedly a great lover, who understands women better than his nebbish neighbour Winston, but it's a curiously defanged performance from Murray, which demonstrates none of the charm or explosive wit that Murray is famous for, and was presumably supposed to bring to the role. His sole nod to his comic past is overloading a fork with carrots, a momentary clowning that is not dwelt upon by Jarmusch.

Jarmusch keeps things moving at a snail's pace, albeit a snail that occasionally wanders around a large pile of salt really, really carefully. If there were interesting things happening, then we wouldn't have minded lingering, but as it is, this is a series of sketches plotted very deliberately so that all symbolism and hints towards the solution of the son's mother are left maddeningly vague. At the end of the film, we are no wiser as to who is the mother, whether Don even has a son, or if the whole thing wasn't made up as a sort of test by Don's frustrated girlfriend. In fact, we don't even know if Don cares about the fact that he has a son, although we kind of think he does. Every character is draped in elusiveness, and I'm not even sure if we feel anything for any of them. I think this might have been an oversight.

You see, what the response should probably be to this film is to empathise deeply with Murray's hangdog loveliness, to giggle at the way he enters into worlds he could have been part of, to look at him and say "hey, that schmuck could be me!", but he's actually a bit of a shit, an unfeeling bastard who is passive and driveless and unapproachable. He's less an anti-hero than an anti-human, and not even touches of Jarmusch's trademark weirdness (Murray getting beaten up without saying a word by some odd bikers, Jessica Lange's dog having the same name as Don's neighbour) can rescue it from being formless and pretty much pointless.

Distracting, rather than entertaining, I would be surprised if I remembered much about "Broken Flowers" in two months time. Sorry, Bill.

"Pimp My Ride" Weekend, TMF

2005-08-29T11:23:00.000+01:00

It could be argued by a man cleverer than I that capitalism breeds cynicism. I, for one, am pleased as punch that "Pimp My Ride" - an MTV programme given a whole weekend of themed programming this week by cable channel TMF - refutes this accusation strongly.

In writing this review, I must inform you that I am staving off the urge to make Dickensian analogies with regards to the premise of the show. A down-at-heel eccentric introduces us to their car, which is in desperate need of repair. Often, these people work in the community, and do not have money to spend on car repairs. The rapper Xzibit then meets the car-owner, who is generally overjoyed to see Xzibit. Hands are slapped, rappers are hugged. Xzibit says some funny things - he lambasts America for using duct tape to hold its cars together, and tells Americans to leave bodywork repairs to the professionals. He is full of attitude and charm.

He takes the car to West Coast Customs, a repair and customisation workshop. Here, a team of lovable car mechanics puts the car back together, repairing damaged bodywork, replacing missing parts, and restoring classic cars to their former glory.

But they do a bit more than that.

"Needless ostentation" is the name of the game here, people, and these mechanics add literally thousands of pounds worth of gold, bling, leather interiors, electrics, LCD-screens, and speakers to the car. Of particular note is the loving attention given to tyres and "rims" (hubcaps); things you only hear about when they get namechecked in rap lyrics. Also, as part of the customisation, personal information about the car owner is transmogrified into... well, into complete lunacy. A man who likes bowling has a bowling ball cleaner and automated shoe rack installed in his boot. A man who is training to be a mechanic has a TV put underneath his car, so he can watch TV whilst repairing it. Someone - I forget who - has a log fire put in the back of their car - I forget why. A student has an espresso machine installed in their armrest. It's very silly.

Whilst the customisation process is going on, we get to meet and learn to love the mechanics, including my favourite, Ish, who mumbles in a Latino accent and does a lot of work with fabrics. There is also a man called Big Dane, whose job is "Accessories". At one point, whilst customising a bowling ball for the bowling guy, he yells at the camera "You'll be KILLING THEM!" in a way that is hilarious, and not at all threatening.

Finally, the car owner is brought in, their car is revealed, they scream, they leap about, hands are slapped, rappers are hugged. They are shown around their car and then they drive it away.

Their "ride" has been "pimped".

Now, I generally loathe cars. I can't drive, I know nothing about them; I once watched an episode of "Top Gear" and nearly slipped into an anaphylactic coma. However, this show takes something really boring and ugly - car repairs - and raises it to not only excellent TV, but also amazing creations; turning old and decrepit, to new. MTV's "Cribs", where we get to see around rich people's houses, offers only a voyeuristic view of the "bling" lifestyle, whereas "Pimp My Ride" says "This life of ridiculous wastefulness can be yours, too".

The reason I find this show so affecting is that it is so rare that altruism has been celebrated so joyously. The premise of the show, at its most fundamental level, is that people get given presents. Everyone loves to see people get presents, and this show is like watching someone give thousands of pounds out to complete strangers.

One episode I watched had a suitably manipulative viewpoint. The car owner was a community youth leader. His car was horrible. He said that if the kids on the street saw him in a bad car, and then saw a drug dealer with a good car, then he was fighting a losing battle. At the end of the show, he said "This is proof that if you are good, good things happen to you". And, I must admit, my cynicism was defeated by that.

Now, there are deeper concerns here, not least how much insurance MTV pay so that when these "pimped rides" return to the scuzzy neighbourhoods they aren't propped up on a pile of bricks within half an hour. The show is a reflection of a certain America - a nation where a person is judged by the car they drive, where hope comes in a golden ticket, where money is there to be wasted, where the way to happiness lies in expenditure. However, in terms of raw exuberance, intelligent artistry and a lot of stupidity, "Pimp My Ride" is an entertaining half-hour.*

* Or, thanks to TMF, an entertaining two-and-a-half hours of back-to-back "Pimp My Ride". Sweet.

Fantastic Four

2005-08-25T11:25:00.000+01:00

In the near future, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) of the Von Doom corporation agrees to fund the space research programme of the bankrupt Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffud) and his lunky friend Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) into a cosmic storm of interesting scientific proportions. Matters are complicated by the fact that Von Doom is now both employing and dating Richards' ex-girlfriend Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) and assigns Storm's brother, Johnny (Chris Evans... no, not that Chris Evans) to pilot the mission, much to the chagrin of his ex-NASA superior Grimm.

On the space station, the cosmic storm arrives way ahead of schedule, irradiating Richards, Grimm, Storm and Storm, as well as Von Doom, who is also on the space station for some reason.

Arriving back on Earth, it is revealed that they have been given super powers. Johnny Storm can set his body on fire at will, Sue Storm can become invisible at will, Reed Richards can stretch his body at will, and Ben Grimm becomes a massive orange latex man. His superpower is that he is massive and strong and no longer has any ears. Together the four save some NEW YORK FIREFIGHTERS GOD BLESS THEM from falling off a bridge, and they are lauded as heroes. This is because if you do anything nice to a NEW YORK FIREFIGHTER in this POST 9/11 CLIMATE you are IMMEDIATELY A FRIEND OF NEW YORK AND AGAINST TERROR.

Von Doom also changes. He can now control electricity, because his body is turning into metal. He is also now bankrupt because of the failure of the space mission, and because he never got to ask Sue to marry him, ergo he is pissed off, ergo he is homicidal, ergo he is the supervillain Doctor Doom. Although never referred to as such. He attempts to break up the Fantastic Four by turning Ben Grimm back into a human, and by shooting a heatseeking missile at Johnny Storm. He also kidnaps Reed Richards and freezes him, but I can't remember why.

Anyway, the whole thing culminates in some sort of culmination and NEW YORK has a NEW PROTECTION AGAINST TERROR in the family superhero antics of the Fantastic Four.

---

Where Batman Begins was life-threateningly serious, this is - like most comic books - for the kids. Dealing with a very vocal minority of comic-reading dudes on the internet must now be in the Top Five of "Hollywood Producers' irritating day-to-day trials", along with getting the cocaine out of their carpets, and the tendency in recent years has been to make everything adult, everything explained, everything psychological and "dark" and not very much fun. What the producers of "Fantastic Four" have attempted is to make light, frothy, family entertainment, that'll sell some action figures and some lunchboxes.

The trouble is, the film is totally bobbins.

To start with, the characters are bland, bland, bland. The key parental figures of Reed and Sue are given pretty much bugger all to do. Johnny Storm is reasonably cheeky and mischievous, but is a one-note character. The "back-story" that "haunts" Ben Grimm - his fiancee, running around the Bronx in a negligee, rejects Grimm now he's turned into a massive orange rock man - is so hammily set-up and so pathetically dealt with, that he remains just an hilarious massive orange rock man, and not the Cyrano De Bergerac that the producers would have wished. (There's a scene where his fiancee puts their engagement ring on the ground, and walks away, and Grimm can't pick it up because of his massive rock fingers. It's not tragic, or even interesting. It's kind of comic.)

The dialogue is workmanlike at best, wisecracky and horrible at worst. "Look at me," demands the Invisible Girl. "I can't," joshes Mr Fantastic. It's like that for 90 minutes. The direction is there somewhere, but who knows where? Director Tim Story made his name on the "Barbershop" movie series, starring Ice Cube, so that's the level we're dealing with.

So, I suppose this film is entertaining, but it matches that entertainment pound-for-pound with being facile and stupid. It's a bit like the "Lost In Space" remake in tone, but without the acting calibre of William Hurt, Gary Oldman, even Matt Le Blanc, and without the story, or set-ups, or direction. Or effects.

There is, therefore, no reason to go and see this film, unless you are a 6-year-old boy. And even then, you'd probably sit around for an hour after it, drinking milkshakes and picking holes in its story. Ah, what a life...

Crash

2005-08-18T11:17:00.000+01:00

Paul Haggis, the writer-director-producer-songwriter of "Crash", also created the Chuck Norris TV series "Walker, Texas Ranger" and the "kindly mountie in America" series "Due South". I mention these to place this film in its appropriate, lowbrow context. "Crash" is the sort of film that rather desperately wants to be edgy and provocative, but never quite earns the plump portentousness that wobbles onto the screen.

Confusingly sharing a title with the leg-shagging JG Ballard adaptation, "Crash" is a look at racial stereotypes and attitudes in contemporary Los Angeles. Narratively, the film comes from the "more is more" tradition of "Magnolia" and "Love, Actually". Roughly thirty stories (roughly) weave in and out of each other, building up a picture of confusing times in American race relations:-

Black people are no longer slaves, white people are confused about this.

Except it's more complicated than this; white people hate black people, black people hate white people, black people hate other black people, white people hate Hispanic and Persian people because they're a bit like black people, Persian people hate locksmiths and insurance representatives, and white people hate themselves.

So, it's not really that much more complicated. In fact, it's much, much more simple. Everyone hates everybody else.

The film begins with a rather noble speech by the great Don Cheadle:- "In LA, nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something." LA is obviously meant to be a character in the film, but it comes across as a rather horrible character, a huge uncle that sits in the corner of the room and really depresses you. In this way, "Crash" is an excellent advert for upping sticks and moving to a "free love" hippy commune in the middle of nowhere, where you can just, you know, get along with people.

In this film, everything is 'complicated', and the film wears its 'complicated' colours with pride. Two young black men have an intelligent discussion about how they represent educated black youth, and how white people in the upper-class area they find themselves in should not be afraid of them, and THEN STEAL A CAR! A rich white woman is openly dismissive of her Hispanic home-help, and THEN SAYS THAT SHE'S THE ONLY FRIEND SHE HAS! A black police officer is offered a promotion BECAUSE HE'S BLACK and then is blackmailed into saying something against some guy BECAUSE THE GUY IS WHITE and if the police officer doesn't say it, HIS BROTHER WILL BE TOTALLY ARRESTED because HE'S BLACK and his MOTHER IS ON DRUGS and HAS NO GROCERIES! This constant pride in being 'complicated' is exceptionally wearing. This is even before we get to the racist white policeman rescuing a black woman he had previously molested from a fire, which could probably have been a fun episode of "Due South".

Rather than being insightful, the film's fragmented narrative allows some really sloppy writing. Characters are reduced to stereotypes, as they need to be brought in quickly and finished quickly. Stories tend to follow a pattern:- the person is unhappy, they are shot or they shoot somebody, they are more unhappy as a result. The story that resonated most for me was the deeply odd story about the Persian man trying to get his revenge on a locksmith, but that wasn't really about racial tension, it was more about the trials of being a locksmith. Quid pro quo.

One fortunate thing that the film does is make you not hate its cast. If someone suggested you went to see a film with Ryan Phillipe, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser and Thandie Newton, you'd probably expect a horribly bland comedy, but none of these are given much time to be offensive. Don Cheadle is welcomingly passive, and there's a standout performance by the rapper Ludacris, who has a nice speech about how hip-hop demeans black people. Oooh. Irony. Apparently Tony Danza from "Taxi" and the woman who plays Deanna Troi are also in this film. I have no idea where.

So, yes. "Crash". I probably enjoyed it more than watching someone shagging a leg, but I enjoyed it less than "The Wedding Crashers", which - considering how important the film wanted to be - is a rather damning state of affairs.