One of the knock on effects of the downturn, nee the credit crunch SOON TO BE PROPER ACTUAL RECESSION EVEN UNDER OFFICIAL DEFINITIONS is there is less frivolous money banging around in industry. Cutbacks come in more profligate and somewhat unproven areas. HELLO advertising, an industry puffed up with its own importance but a general lack of all that much in the way of concrete evidence that its work really improves sales. The Cadbury’s drumming ape after all did more to drive up sales of Phil Collins Greatest Hits that it did Cabdury’s*.
I saw this ad this morning and it told me where all the ad pounds are going.
Singing food stuff in a DEFRA advert for not importing food from outside the EU. … read on …
In some ways Bucks Fizz’ Eurovision triumph is pop’s equivalent of England’s 1966 World Cup win. It encouraged a certain complacency in the victorious nation, who began to convince themselves that not only was the competition eminently winnable but that this famous victory had established a formula for more. For passion, grit and English physicality read bubblegum, camp and dollybirds having their skirts whipped off. There the parallels break down. The subsequent failure to win the World Cup has become something festering, a cultural fixation in its own right that Popular will collide with in due course. Not winning the Eurovision Song Contest has only recently started to niggle in English minds, and the response is often that it’s not worth winning. … read on …
The Reader is not a biopic of folk singer and Fairground Attraction frontwoman Eddi Reader. Which is just as well as I do not believe Ms Reader’s life has involved being a concentration camp guard and toyboy taunting sexual predator. In Kate Winslett’s hands (and as ever over-exposed tits) the role becomes a tour de force: I WILL GET THAT OSCAR seems to be Kate’s mantra this year and she has a good chance. Serious themes, heavy emotional toil and excessive ageing are all on hand to attract the academy. That said, to get said Oscar she will need to overcome the following problems with The Reader.
-Her tits. Let’s be fair, the only film I can think of with Winslett in where you don’t see her saucer sized areolas is the Peter Pan one, Finding Neverland. … read on …
Frank Miller’s film of the Spirit has been beaten to death by the press, which befits a film where ultra-violent beatings are the order of the day. Watching it out of curiosity it is interesting to see how much of this beating is due to
a) Frank Miller
b) Superhero fatigue
c) Violence fatigue
d) Blue-screen movie boredom
There is no doubt that all of the above contribute to the Spirits’ awfulness, but at the same time the film has a gusto and energy missing from many movies, something which could be down to the writer directors singular vision of the titular character. Which unfortunately boils down to “What if Miller’s Batman moved into Sin City?”. So we get endless voice-overs of how “The city” is The Spirit’s wife and life - which is somewhat ironic as the choice of filming technique leaves us with little image of the city itself except as a black silhouette and a few bricks. … read on …
I made a resolution today to post an MP3 every day here. (I would happily do it on FT, but server space and bandwidth forbid) Sorry, it’s yet another link with my stuff on: I do have an internal what-goes-where architecture, honestly.
Mars Planets: the atomisation of the Mars Bar. An entropic dis-integration, the tendency of all things to become more chaotic, in confectionery form. I’m trying to resist the impulse to tie this stuff up to no-such-thing-as-Society atomisation because that’s not how we do things, right? And Mars Planets are better to share than a proper big Mars Bar, after all, for reasons of ease and hygiene. Nevertheless, my friends, here’s our chance to take a brave and random stand against entropy, to roll back the ticking clock of chocolate-coated chaos.
Each packet of Planets is a little black pod of chocolate covered spheres: two thirds filled with a Mars Bar constituent (light Milky Way nougat, caramel) and then one odd third filled with malteser-ish wafer. The question is: can we re-integrate a Mars from these ingredients?
The forty best tracks to be a UK Top 40 hit for the first time last year, as judged by me.
SONGS WHICH ARE AMONG MY FAVOURITES ALL DECADE BUT CAME OUT IN 2007
MIA - “Paper Planes”
Britney Spears - “Piece Of Me”
SONGS WHICH ARE AMONG MY FAVOURITES ALL DECADE AND ACTUALLY CAME OUT LAST YEAR HURRAH
Wiley - “Wearing My Rolex”
Goldfrapp - “A&E”
SONGS IN WHICH HUMAN INTERACTION CONFUSES ROBOTS AND MAKES THEM SAD
Kanye West - “Love Lockdown”
Ultrabeat ft Darren Styles - “Discolights” … read on …
There. I just wanted to say that before anyone else on the interwebs (and I probably haven’t).
OK, of all the accusations that could be thrown at Russell T.Davies, closet prog-rock fan seemed, before tonight, unlikely. He has had ample opportunity to invent a race of armadillo tank monsters in the last few years after all called Tarkus. And whilst he has dallied with the Tudor period in the series, we have never seen The Six Wives Of Henry The Eighth On Ice. So it came as a touch of a shock to realise that all the flim-flammery about David Morrisey’s “Doctor” (that no-one believed going in let alone past the first two minutes) was really a slight of hand for a visual gag which would go over the head of much of its target audience. This truly was one for the dads. Or the grandads these days (King Crimson’s debut being in 1970 I believe). Of course having one of the Cybermen gurn and have massive nostrils would have also helped. Spoilers follow. … read on …
Inkheart is a fun little kids movie which has a couple of contradictions at its inky heart that it can never really shy away from. Oddly its the most British of the recent batch of fantasy films, despite being set in Europe and starring Brendan Fraser. Fraser’s Americaness is never really explained away despite being Helen Mirren’s nephew and having raised a daughter on his own who also has a cut glass English accent. But then this just goes to show how superfluous Fraser’s character Mortimer is (MORTIMER – that’s a nice American name). … read on …
I’m away for Christmas this year so there won’t be any more Popular entries until 2009. (There might be other FT content though!) I had hoped to put one more song up before I left but my indecision has taken me from behind and so my metaphorical skirt will remain on until the New Year. See you then, and have a great Christmas!
This is a series of posts “liveblogging” the Pitchfork 500, reflecting the book’s dual purpose as criticism and playlist. The ground rule is that I do the writing in real time as I listen to the music: no edits after that (except of typos). Posts in this series are intermittent, because I don’t have a lot of uninterrupted writing time.
Disclaimer: I write regularly for Pitchfork and contributed a dozen pieces to the book. I have no insider knowledge of how tracks were selected, had no say in the selection, and any commentary on the book’s purpose etc. is purely speculative.
In this episode: Reggae gets its first look in, and the awkward squad of post-punk gives way to mutant disco… … read on …
In some ways Bucks Fizz’ Eurovision triumph is pop’s equivalent of England’s 1966 World Cup win. It encouraged a certain complacency in the victorious nation, who began to convince themselves that not only was the competition eminently winnable but that this famous victory had established a formula for more. For passion, grit and English physicality read bubblegum, camp and dollybirds having their skirts whipped off. There the parallels break down. The subsequent failure to win the World Cup has become something festering, a cultural fixation in its own right that Popular will collide with in due course. Not winning the Eurovision Song Contest has only recently started to niggle in English minds, and the response is often that it’s not worth winning. 
The Reader is not a biopic of folk singer and Fairground Attraction frontwoman Eddi Reader. Which is just as well as I do not believe Ms Reader’s life has involved being a concentration camp guard and toyboy taunting sexual predator. In Kate Winslett’s hands (and as ever over-exposed tits) the role becomes a tour de force: I WILL GET THAT OSCAR seems to be Kate’s mantra this year and she has a good chance. Serious themes, heavy emotional toil and excessive ageing are all on hand to attract the academy. That said, to get said Oscar she will need to overcome the following problems with The Reader.
Frank Miller’s film of the Spirit has been beaten to death by the press, which befits a film where ultra-violent beatings are the order of the day. Watching it out of curiosity it is interesting to see how much of this beating is due to
Inkheart is a fun little kids movie which has a couple of contradictions at its inky heart that it can never really shy away from. Oddly its the most British of the recent batch of fantasy films, despite being set in Europe and starring Brendan Fraser. Fraser’s Americaness is never really explained away despite being Helen Mirren’s nephew and having raised a daughter on his own who also has a cut glass English accent. But then this just goes to show how superfluous Fraser’s character Mortimer is (MORTIMER – that’s a nice American name). 
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