Today marks 20 years since I got my first iPod and downloaded iTunes, kicking off a digital music journey that's still going strong. Despite switching from PC to Mac, and various other laptop changes, my digital library has remained mostly intact. So, while others are sharing their Spotify 'Wrapped' recaps, I'm celebrating with my own music data deep-dive. Scroll to the end for the infographic I created!
For the second year running, rather than picking my top five leaps of the year, I've picked five stories that sum up my travel highlights of the year. It has, of course, been a year with very little foreign travel. It's also the first year in 15 years where I haven't been to New York a single time. I miss the city so much and can't wait to return. But I'm grateful that I was able to travel to one new country (Malta) and one new European city (Porto), as well as taking short trips to Edinburgh and Canterbury. I've also spent time with family in Oxford and Walsall, and spent a little more time in Birmingham, usually on the way to Wolves matches. My motto for the second half of the year was carpe diem — if a trip or event was possible, I would try to do it as soon as I could, before the situation changed again.
1. Leaping into Malta's Blue Lagoon Like many people, I had to cancel a lot of travel plans last year, including seven international trips, as well as a few more within the UK. As such, I couldn't quite believe that I was finally able to leave the country for the first time in 18 months until I arrived at Luqa International Airport in Malta in September. I spent nine gloriously sunny days in Malta, including a city break in Valletta, and a stay on the island of Gozo. Malta is a beautiful country with stunning landscapes and geological features, and a fascinating history. But nothing could compete with the feeling of leaping into the crystal clear turquoise waters of the Blue Lagoon on Comino Island. At last, I was able to enjoy some of the R and R that I had been craving for so long.
Like many people, I enjoyed Tayari Jones's acclaimed 2018 novel An American Marriage, and a friend recently recommended I check out Silver Sparrow, which was published in 2011. Silver Sparrow tells the story of two sisters, Dana and Chaurisse, growing up in Atlanta in the 1980s. They are the same age and have a lot in common, but there's a catch: their bigamist father James Witherspoon married Dana's mother Gwen out of state having already married Chaurisse's mother Laverne years earlier. And although Dana knows who her father is and spends time with him in private, this secret must be closely guarded. The asymmetry of information results in dramatic irony in the second half of the novel, when the narration shifts from Dana to a blissfully unknowing Chaurisse.
This post is rather more personal than usual but I wanted to write down some thoughts during these most uncertain COVID-19 times. Normal coffee- and travel-post service to resume...at some point, I hope.
“I never realised you were so into football,” a colleague said to me last year. It was a fair point: although I had mentioned the game and my team — Wolverhampton Wanderers — periodically over the five years we’d been working together, I'd also been inflicting my updates on my non-football-following co-workers with increasing frequency.
1. You Will Know Meby Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott's latest novel, You Will Know Me, which is set in the world of competitive gymnastics, is an ideal read for anyone mourning the end of this year's Olympic Games. 15-year-old Devon Knox is about to qualify as a Senior Elite gymnast, which would put her one hop from the US national team and just two skips from the Olympic team. Since she was three years old, her whole life has been focused around achieving this goal since with an uncommon drive and single-mindedness, and her parents Katie and Eric have done everything they can to support, encourage and finance their 'extraordinary' daughter's ambition and talent. But in run-up to the qualification, a violent accident throws shockwaves through the community, threatening to destroy Devon's hard work and the sacrifices her family have made to propel her into the top spot.
You Will Know Me is told through the perspective of Katie as she becomes drawn into the investigation of the accident, and the novel is a compelling and suspenseful story of ambition and love, posing the question of what a parent wouldn't do to help their child achieve her dreams. There isn't as much gymnastics in the novel as I would have liked — the novel focuses more on what it takes to be a top-level gymnast (or her parent) and the relationships among the gymnasts' families — but the story is nonetheless taut and addicting.
2. Stranger Things
I'm a little late to the party on this but if you haven't already checked out the Netflix series Stranger Things, I would highly recommend that you do. The series opens in the month of my birth, November 1983, in a small Indiana town. A 12-year-old boy vanishes and the police, his mother and his friends begin to investigate. Winona Ryder, who plays the boy's mother, gets top billing but it's the young cast (especially Mille Bobby Brown as Eleven) who really impress. Moreover, the show seamlessly melds genres, from horror and sci-fi, to political thriller and mystery, with a hefty dose of inspiration from classic 1980s films. If you like Stephen King or John Carpenter, you'll probably love Stranger Things.
3. FM-84
This music recommendation follows on quite neatly from Stranger Things because California-based FM-84's blend of 1980s-inspired synth pop would slot in nicely to the show's soundtrack — or Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, another Netflix series, for that matter. I particularly like the song Running in the Night, which features vocals from Ollie Wride, but I've been listening to the whole album (Atlas) repeatedly over the past month. It's a great soundtrack for summer. You can download the music from Bandcamp.
4.Undertow byElizabeth Heathcote
In Elizabeth Heathcote's gripping psychological thriller, freelance journalist Carmen struggles with demons from the past — her husband Tom's demons, to be more precise. Tom has three children from his first marriage to Laura, a practical and self-assured fellow lawyer, but it's his relationship with Zena, the beautiful but troubled woman for whom he left Laura, that is still creating ripples even three years after Zena drowned in the sea. Carmen's freelance career is floundering and she must also deal with the challenge of being a step-mother to Tom's children, when she begins to discover that her husband seems to have been keeping secrets from her. Secrets that could shatter her marriage — and her whole world.
Although Undertow loses pace during the middle section, the opening is smart and intriguing and the dramatic conclusion is suspenseful and surprising. Carmen is a sympathetic character but sometimes felt like a bit of a cipher — a means to tell an interesting story about other characters. I also wondered whether it was a coincidence that Zena nearly shares a name with the eponymous robber bride Zenia in Margaret Atwood's novel. Heathcote really captures the essence of the places in her novel — both the beautiful Norfolk coast (the sea itself being a catalyst and having a constant, looming presence) and Carmen and Tom's southeast London neighbourhood, and Undertow is a well-plotted and clever mystery.
Disclaimer: Undertow will be published by Quercus on 1 September 2016. I received a pre-release copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
5. A Quiet Placeby Seicho Matsumoto
Seicho Matsumoto, who died in 1992, is widely acclaimed as one of Japan's best crime novelists. His work came to my attention when a new English translation by Louise Heal Kawai of his 1976 novel Kikanakatta Basho (A Quiet Place) was published earlier this year. The novel centres on Tsuneo Asai, a modest and precise government bureaucrat who learns that his wife has died suddenly while he is on a business trip. Although his wife had a heart condition and, as such, for her to die of a heart attack wasn't entirely unexpected, the circumstances surrounding her death do not seem to quite ring true to Tsuneo and he begins to investigate. Matsumoto's novel is meticulous in its execution and a wonderfully controlled piece of writing — even as events begin to spiral out of control, he maintains the suspense without deviating into the realms of hyperbole or hysteria.
A Quiet Place is as much of a character study of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances as it is a crime thriller and it is the perfect antidote to the numerous books whose jackets proclaim them to be 'the new Gone Girl' or 'the new Girl on the Train'. Although it was written and set in the 1970s, it hasn't become dated and you can really see how the writer (and translator) have taken great care in choosing each word so that it is exactly right.
January has been a busy month for me and although I've been blogging a fair bit — mainly my attempts to watch and review most of the big Oscar-nominated films before the Academy Awards — there were a few other things that I enjoyed this month and that didn't quite make it onto the blog.
The Affair
I was fairly skeptical about the show that denied The Good Wife and Julianna Margulies their Golden Globes awards, especially when The Affairsounded a lot like a Jodi Picoult novel. In fact, it is a lot like a Jodi Picoult novel. It tells the story of Noah, a supposedly happily married Brooklyn schoolteacher with four kids, who meets and falls in love with Alison, a Montauk waitress, while holidaying in the Hamptons. What elevates The Affair, though, is the performances: particularly Dominic West and Ruth Wilson as Noah and Alison, but also Maura Tierney who plays Noah's wife. Oh, and did I mention that Pacey is in The Affair? Well, technically Joshua Jackson who played Pacey in Dawson's Creek, but his character — the fourth member of the love quadrangle — is a lot like an older version of Pacey. And he's still really hot.
Also, if you are a fan of unreliable narrators, you will love The Affair. The showhas a really interesting narrative device where we see the events each week from the point of view of one of the two lead characters and then the same, or overlapping, events from the perspective of the other lead. Compelling viewing. I can't wait for season two.
Hemiplegia by HAERTS
Last summer, I was in COS and heard a song that I really liked. I didn't yet have Shazam but I tried to write down as many lyrics as I could remember once I'd found a pen and paper, but despite endless Google searches, I couldn't find the song. Imagine my delight, then, when I found out that it was featured in the trailer for the new Jennifer Aniston film, Cake. HAERTS are a Brooklyn-based indie pop band with some serious '80s vibes. Hemiplegia is the title track from their 2013 EP and it's a sweet, ethereal song that reminded me, at times, of This Mortal Coil.
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill Jenny Offill's beautiful novel tells the sad but enjoyable tale of a writer who lives in New York with her husband and daughter. It's a story of love and marriage, motherhood and self-knowledge, trust and intimacy. The novel takes place over the course of several years and offers brief, snapshot-like glimpses into the life of the characters. It is both moving and compelling and well worth a read.
Neom Reed Diffuser in Tranquility I burn a lot of scented candles at home, but last month, I also got into reed diffusers. I picked up one of Neom's diffusers (£38) in the Tranquility fragrance — a wonderfully calming blend of lavender, sweet basil and jasmine — in Selfridges' post-Christmas 20%-off sale. I have the diffuser in my bedroom and now I always feel more relaxed on entering the room. Neom's diffusers are a little pricey but their scents are wonderful and it's a great luxury to have in the bedroom.
Ultra Light Down Jacket from Uniqlo At Christmas, I was the only member of my family without a down jacket and the others did such a good job of selling the concept to me that on returning to the UK, I headed straight to Uniqlo and bought their Ultra Light Down Jacket in black (they are usually £59.90 but are currently on sale for £49.90, so if you've been wavering, now is the time to purchase). I had avoided down jackets in the past because I thought they were too bulky and unflattering, but I've been really happy with the Uniqlo jacket: it is surprisingly sleek and extremely warm, although it hasn't been too cold a winter in London this year. The jacket also packs down into a tiny bag for storage and travel, which means you can slip it into your suitcase if the weather is looking a bit iffy and you want an extra layer.
Yes, that is my selfie stick. I was slightly embarrassed to receive it for Christmas, but it is actually very useful and is another January favourite of mine!
Damien Chazelle's new film Whiplash is a tense, intense thriller about talent and what it means — and what it costs — to succeed. Andrew (Miles Teller) is an ambitious young drummer at Schaffer, a top Juillard-esque music conservatory. He is recruited by the brilliant but terrifying conductor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) to join Schaffer's ultra-competitive studio band.
UK readers may find it helpful here to imagine an episode of The Apprentice with talented young musicians as the candidates and Fletcher as the boss from hell — he makes Alan Sugar look like a pussycat. He yells at his students, throws things at them, hits them, insults them and — worst of all — swaps them out for their alternates at the drop of a hat or, at least, the missing of a beat. "The key is to relax," he tells Andrew before, moments later, screaming at him, demanding to know whether Andrew is a rusher or a dragger. After some initial praise from Fletcher, Andrew thinks he is immune from this torture, but within minutes, he is thrown off his pedestal and forced to nurse his hurt pride.
Andrew's father (Paul Reiser) tells Andrew to quit — that nothing is worth this level of abuse — but Andrew can never abandon his one true passion. He is that Apprentice candidate who will always give 110% — every drop of blood and sweat, and every tear — in order to succeed. At first, Andrew seems like a nice, quiet guy who lacks confidence with girls and has a major inferiority complex around his talented cousins. But we soon realise that Andrew has had to sacrifice likability in order to realise his dream. He lacks people skills and he is arrogant and single-minded to the point of ending a blossoming relationship because he knows the girl, Nicole (Melissa Benoist), will try to interfere with his devotion to music. In this way, he resembles Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg; his break-up with Nicole, in particular, is very reminiscent of The Social Network's opening scene.
Does Andrew really have what it takes to be the best and if he does, will Fletcher allow him to achieve the recognition and success Andrew feels he deserves? Whiplash, which is named for one of the core pieces played by the studio band,is a physically draining and exhausting film — especially the epic drum solo in the film's final act. You can't help but be swept up by the movie's taut, heightened energy: you find your feet tapping along with the rhythm and your heart racing along in time with the breakneck beat of the drums.
Teller, who has played the drums since the age of 15, is great in a difficult role as the often unlikable protagonist, but it is Simmons who steals the show, just like his character in the film. Whiplash isn't the film to see if you want a nice, relaxing evening at the cinema, but if you want a raw, uncompromising story about talent, ambition and ego, it's definitely the one to watch.
Towards the end of last year, I began to realise that are lots of things I like that I would like to recommend, but which don't fit into a post on this blog. As such, I'm going to start compiling monthly favourites posts, where I will highlight a handful of items and experiences I have enjoyed. Here are my picks for December 2014:
Jo Malone Wood Sage & Sea Salt Cologne
I'm something of a monogamist when it comes to fragrance and I've been loyal to my favourite, Hermès's Un Jardin en Mediterrannée, for many years. However, I love the unique fresh, woody scent of Jo Malone's new Wood Sage & Sea Salt cologne (£40), so I waited patiently until I could pick it up at Duty Free on the way to France. It's lighter and a little more fun than the Hermès fragrance, so it's nice to have a different perfume option in my armoury.
NewTree Lavender Chocolate
Years ago, Tesco sold an unusual lavender-infused premium chocolate bar that I used to love, but then one day it disappeared. However, I found a similar product in Casino, the French grocery store chain, while on holiday and stocked up. It's a little tricky to track down in the UK, but you can order online from NewTree if you are in the US or Europe (€3.50), or raid your local Casino in France.
Pink Pepper Gin
My parents bought me a bottle of Pink Pepper Gin (£37.45) for my birthday after I had sampled it at the London Gin Club. It has a really unique warm, spicy taste and doesn't need a citrus garnish, although it is even better with some pink peppercorns sprinkled on top.
Sea of Love by The National
I've been re-listening to The National's album Trouble Will Find Me pretty much constantly since I saw the band at The O2 in November, and Sea of Lovehas emerged as my favourite song on the album. It isn't the title track but the lyrics do contain the album title, and I am also particularly enamoured with this enigmatic lyric with its pleading final tag question: Hey, Jo, sorry I hurt you, but they say love is a virtue, don't they? Check out the whole album: it's a corker.
The Royal Tenenbaums
When I first watched Wes Anderson's film The Royal Tenenbaums at university, over a decade ago, I really disliked it. I thought it was excessively quirky, pretentious and not very fun. Since then, I've done a U-turn on Wes Anderson — I rather liked Moonrise Kingdom and loved The Grand Budapest Hotel — so I decided to give the Tenenbaums another go. Yes, it is wacky, but it is also brilliant funny and a little sad, and with that meticulous attention to detail Anderson is famous for.
I don't go to a lot of gigs — somehow I never end up being as organised when it comes to music as I am for cinema — but when my brother suggested I join him and my sister-in-law at the last night of The National's Trouble Will Find Me tour, I was totally in. The National has been one of my favourite bands since I discovered Boxer on Radio Paradise some seven years ago. Although I like most of their songs, four rank in my all-time 50-most-played tunes, which is no mean feat. Their penultimate album, High Violet, wasn't my favourite, but I've kept most of the songs from Trouble Will Find Me on my 'current' playlist on my iPhone for much of this year. I'm no music writer, but if you like complex, melancholy lyrics; soulful, baritone vocals; and a sound that goes from contemplative to pumping in sixty seconds, you will probably love The National.
We bought tickets to Wednesday night's gig at The O2 several months ago, and I was particularly annoyed to be feeling so under the weather this week. Perhaps foolhardily, though, I braved it out. I had been looking forward to seeing the supporting act, The Wild Beasts, but delays of transportation and food meant we only caught the very tail end. We did at least manage to grab a decent enough spot in the standing area. The good thing about a huge venue like The O2 is that you aren't completely packed in like sardines, even at a sold-out gig like last night.
And it was a great night! The band were joined by Sufjan Stevens, another favourite artist of mine, and the energy and enthusiasm was infectious. I could have listened to Matt Berninger's deep, rumbling vocals all night, but all we got was a 26-song set list. Which was awesome. Slow Show, which is — unimaginatively, perhaps — one of my favourites, was featured fairly promptly after the Trouble Will Find Me Songs, but I had to wait until the end for About Today, Fake Empire and Ada, the latter of which featured Stevens' Chicago trumpet outro.
As a short woman in a sea of tall, plaid-wearing men, it was a little tricky to follow what was going on on stage at times (as evidenced by the poor-quality photos): I spent most of the night trying to find the gaps between the three tall guys in front of me. But despite not feeling very well, I had a great time. The bro saw the band at the beginning of the same tour at Alexandra Palace, and said that the setlist and the venue worked rather better, but as a fan of The National who doesn't often make it out to see bands live, I thought last night was ace. Next time the band are in town, I'm definitely going to check them out again.
There is something wonderful about Richard Linklater's movies that makes them beautiful, compelling and, well, real even though not a lot really happens in them. Normally, this is a problem for me — I like plot — but somehow, Linklater just crafts these rich, bittersweet human stories that leave me craving more. The Before... trilogy ranks among my all-time favourite films. Linklater's newest movie, Boyhood, has a similar structure — checking back in on a few characters at sporadic intervals — but represents an even greater technical achievement because it was filmed once a year over a period of 12 years.
As the film opens, it is the early 2000s and Coldplay's Yellow is on the soundtrack. Seven-year-old Mason (Ellar Coltrane) plays with his friend and engages in some early-years equivalent of graffiti ("urban art"). He and his older sister Samantha (played by Linklater's daughter Lorelai) live with their mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) in small-town Texas. Olivia had her children too young and has separated from her husband Mason Senior (Ethan Hawke). Wanting a better life for her children, she decides to move the family to Houston so that she can go back to school and eventually get a better job so she can provide more effectively for her family.
As the noughties roll by, Mason and Sam grow older, and their parents meet new love interests, some with more successful outcomes than others. "I really enjoy making poor life decisions," Olivia admits at one point. Mason's creative talents intensify and we see him go on to become a talented photographer. We also see him grow into a man — the film ends when he arrives at college as an eighteen-year-old freshman, having lived through a boyhood that has its share of both happy and sad times.
The film also traces 12 years of culture and politics. Sam lip syncs and dances precociously to Britney's Baby One More Time towards the beginning of the film, whereas nearer the end, she and her brother chill out and play pool while Gotye sings about somebody he used to know. Coloured iMac G3s are replaced by iPhones, and there are Harry Potter book-release parties and references to to the Iraq War and then the Obama campaign and the NSA.
But it's the relationships between Mason, his parents and his sister that are at the heart of the film. Coltrane grows from cute kid to grumpy, mumbling teenager, but watching how his interactions with Hawke and Arquette develop over time is fascinating. "Dad, there's no real magic in the world, right?" he asks Mason Senior, while on a boys' camping trip. There might not be, but Linklater's film does have a magic to it that easily justifies its 2h45 length. It's a masterpiece and I highly recommend it.
I haven't seen John Carney's most famous film, Once, although I do have and love the soundtrack. Its IMDb summary does sound fairly similar to that of his latest film, Begin Again, which stars Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo:
Once: A modern-day musical about a busker and an immigrant and their eventful week in Dublin, as they write, rehearse and record songs that tell their love story
Begin Again: A chance encounter between a disgraced music-business executive and a young singer-songwriter new to Manhattan turns into a promising collaboration between the two talents.
Nonetheless, I really enjoyed Begin Again and will try to check out its less posh predecessor. As Begin Again opens, Greta (Knightley) and Dan (Ruffalo) are both having nightmare days. Greta has just found out that her boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) — who is also her musical partner who has recently been signed up to a big record label — has been cheating on her. She leaves him and crashes with her busker friend Steve (James Corden) in his grungy New York apartment. Steve drags her to an open-mic night and at the end of her set forces her to play one of her songs. It's a good song but isn't very well received by the audience. Meanwhile, one-time hotshot record exec Dan manages to lose his job and the respect of his teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) in a single day. He has no permanent home but drives around Manhattan in a ridiculous vintage Jag, listening listlessly to CD submissions and desperately trying to find the next big thing.
Drunk and lonely Dan rocks up in the same bar in which Greta is playing. We see this scene twice: once from Greta's point of view and again from Dan's perspective, where he loves the song and imagines what it could become with accompaniments and post-production. Dan tries to sign her up to his (now ex-) label, she rebuffs him, saying she just likes to write songs because she enjoys it. But they go to a bar and talk some more, fight some more, and he persuades her to postpone her flight back to the UK for a few days while she shows Dan's partner at Distressed Records, Saul (Mos Def), her stuff.
It turns out that Saul isn't too keen but he tells Greta to put together a demo and he'll give her another shot. Instead of renting a studio, Greta and Dan decide to record an album at various outdoor sights around Manhattan, from the boating lake in Central Park, to a back alley in the Lower East Side, to a rooftop next door to the Empire State Building. They recruit a series of musicians, including Steve, a couple of Juilliard students, a former ballet-school pianist, some local kids and even Dan's daughter Violet. They have fun and the music sounds great.
Meanwhile Dan and Greta get to know each other better, and a friendship — and maybe more — develops between them. But Greta is still processing her feelings for Dave, who is off on tour being a Big Time Musician, and Dan's relationship with his estranged wife Miriam (Catherine Keener) isn't exactly past tense, either.
Although the phrase 'feel-good movie' usually sends my inner cynic into overdrive, you do come out of Begin Again feeling really upbeat and energised. Knightley, as the uptight, introvert Brit who finds a new confidence in her talent and in herself, is really good, although it's Ruffalo's performance as the drunk, depressed loser who is trying to get back on track that carries the film, and Keener is always fun. As with Once, the songs are great too, my favourite being the screw-you song that Greta makes up and then leaves as a voicemail message on Dave's phone while he is picking up a Grammy. No, Begin Again doesn't really break new ground but it won me over, especially because it's as much of a love story with New York as with music and among the main characters.
Lenny Abrahamson's new film Frank, based on Jon Ronson's memoir of the same name about the life of musician Frank Sidebottom, is one of those movies I probably wouldn't have got round to seeing if I hadn't gone to a free preview screening. I'm glad I did, though, because its brand of quirky tragicomedy made for some interesting and entertaining viewing. I didn't realise the film, which was co-written by Ronson, was loosely based by Ronson's own experiences as a keyboardist in Sidebottom's band in the late 1980s. In fact, I went into the film knowing almost nothing about it, but that didn't really detract from my enjoyment.
The action is transposed to the present-day, as evidenced by the occasional tweets and Tumblr posts that pop up on the screen, and as the film opens, we meet Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), who works a boring office job but dreams of being a musician. On the beach in his sleepy seaside town, he sees an intriguing band, who are playing a gig there that evening and whose keyboardist is trying to drown himself. Jon offers his keyboard playing services and joins the band for what he thinks will be one gig, but ends up being a year in a cabin in a remote corner of Ireland, as they set out to record an album.
All of the band members seem to have various issues. Don (Scoot McNairy), the manager, is often pensive and talks of the time he spent in a mental hospital. Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) the theremin player, is a real firecracker and constantly lays into Jon ("stay away from my f*cking theremin!"). François Civil and Carla Azar play two further band members, dark-haired and sullen, and with a tendency to grumble in French and to maintain a stony silence, respectively. Finally, there is the mysterious lead singer Frank (Michael Fassbender), who never takes off the giant, cartoonish papier-mâché head he wears.
Jon takes a shine to Frank and envies the latter's musical talent, but he also wants to see the band — and himself — succeed, and this soon starts to worsen the tensions within the band. The rest of them just want to make what they deem to be great music and to say that their music is experimental is seriously underselling it. They make their own instruments and record various sounds of nature. Yet nine months later and they still haven't recorded any music. Jon, whose nest egg is paying the rent on the cabin, has built up a strong Twitter and YouTube following of the band, attracting the interest of SXSW and bringing the band to a critical turning point: should they continue to make the music they want to make, or should they pursue commercial success?
The movie is really about the characters in the band, though, especially Frank, his history, his issues, and his relationship with the other band members. Fassbender's performance is quite subtle, which may be a product of the fact that we can hardly hear his muffled voice and his face remains hidden for most of the film. Gleeson, meanwhile, is really building up a name for himself in the slightly awkward and geeky leading man stakes (cf About Time). His Jon doesn't always behave likably, but we root for him anyway. The other main cast members, particularly Gyllenhaal, get to be suitably grumpy and wacky, bringing their best artiste A-game. Frank is an interesting character study, and for a film that features a lot of mental illness, there are plenty of funny moments and clever dialogue. If it had been any longer, I might have liked it less, but at a tightly edited 1h35, I thought it worked rather well.
I've had a bit of a mixed history with the Coen brothers' movies, and 1960s folk music isn't really my thing. However, I do like cats, especially ginger cats, so it was inevitable that I would go and watch Inside Llewyn Davis. And if it were up to me, the cat(s) in this film would get the Oscar for best feline performance in a supporting role. As it turned out, the rest of the movie rather charmed me too: it was the perfect film for a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon.
The film centres around a week in the life of the titular Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a struggling folk singer, who is trying his best to alienate all of his friends and family, as well as the population of New York at large. The other half of his act has passed away and Llewyn is left to make it on his own. The trouble is that although he has talent, he isn't very likeable, and his performances, mainly in the Gaslight Cafe in New York's Greenwich Village, seem to lack that special something.
As the film opens, Llewyn gets beaten up in the back alley outside the Gaslight, and then we see him waking up in a friend's Upper West Side apartment. In his hurry to leave for a meeting with his agent — all of his worldy goods, including a guitar, in his arms — he accidentally lets out the friend's ginger cat and, locked out of the apartment, is forced to take the feline with him. He heads downtown for Jean (Carey Mulligan) and Jim (Justin Timberlake)'s place, climbs in through the fire escape, dumps the cat and heads off. Jean is not impressed when he returns later. "Explain the cat," she grumbles. It turns out that Llewyn has a lot more explaining to do, as his history with Jean threatens to affect her relationship with Jim. "Everything you touch turns to shit, like King Midas's idiot brother," Jean spits.
Matters get worse when the cat jumps out the window and heads off to explore the Village, although a day or two later, he finds it again, and returns it to its owners, Mitch (Ethan Phillips) and Lillian (Robin Bartlett) Gorfein, only to discover that it's not the right ginger cat.
The rest of the week continues in much the same way as Llewyn moves from couch to couch, friend (or acquaintance) to friend. He sees glimmers of hope in his career, and journeys all the way to Chicago to meet with a manager (F. Murray Abraham), but nothing really comes of it. He's a good musician, but not a leading man, the manager tells him. His relationships with his friends and even the cat(s) seem to follow the same cyclical pattern as his foundering career. "If it's never new and it never gets old, it's a folk song," he says in one of his sets. And for Llewyn, the song remains the same. He won't learn from his ways and it's unclear whether he will ever succeed as a musician. Nor does the audience really care much.
Despite Llewyn's likability vacuum, I enjoyed the film. I liked the music and there were some great performances, including John Goodman, an irascible jazz musician with whom Llewyn rides to Chicago. Mulligan and Timberlake were both good, but didn't have a lot to do. I admired Isaac's performance, but it was hard to get behind his character, and when the film ended, I was more interested in what happened to the cats.
I saw Yaron Silberman's movie A Late Quartetway back in January as part of a cinema 'spring preview' for journalists and bloggers, and it's finally out in the UK this week. I had heard nothing of the movie before heading into the screening and was initially worried it was the similarly titled Quartet, which wasn't really my cup of tea. I'm not sure A Late Quartet will be to everyone's taste either, but if you're in the mood for a tightly scripted, well acted film, then you might like it; if you happen to be a classical music buff—and I'm not—so much the better.
Mark Ivanir, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener & Christopher Walken in A Late Quartet. Image.
The Fugue Quartet have been playing together for 25 years when Peter (Christopher Walken) is diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson's disease. He decides he will perform in one last concert with group, as they play Beethoven's Late String Quartets, before he retires. The film is about what this discovery does to the group, as it highlights long-standing tensions and triggers new conflicts among the four players. Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is the second violin player with the inferiority complex. Peter's news and the subsequent changes to the quartet it will entail leads Robert to suggest that he and first violin Daniel (Mark Ivanir) alternate. "The second and first violins aren't hierarchical; they are just different roles," he explains. Robert is also having problems with his wife Juliette (Catherine Keener), the viola player. He has always been jealous of her relationships with Peter and Daniel, and he begins an affair with another musician. "You took this whole alternate chairs theme a little too far," Juliette snaps.
Meanwhile Robert and Juliette's daughter Alexandra (Imogen Poots) is receiving violin tuition—and, it turns out, a whole lot more—from Daniel. Both Alexandra and Daniel are keen to hide their relationship from Robert and Juliette, but no secret can stay hidden for very long in this movie, and its revelation only complicates things further, both within the quartet and within Alexandra's family. And with so much drama and Peter's worsening condition, can they all keep it together for the quartet's swan song?
A Late Quartet is a film about obsession, drive and the single-mindedness musicians need to succeed. You can see the ambition and the dedication on the faces of each of the actors as they play their instruments, especially Keener as her character is betrayed by each of the others in turn, in different ways. I thought Ivanov was perhaps the weak link of the four, but I am a fan of Walken and Seymour Hoffman, and the chemistry between all four actors worked rather well. It is definitely a film for music lovers, but although there were probably references that went over my head, it didn't stop me from enjoying a piece of work that was subtly emotional. A Late Quartet is also a very New Yorky film, with the Lincoln Center and Central Park featuring prominently; I also enjoyed the cameo of the Frick Collection, one of my favourite New York galleries, and apparently this is the first time the Frick has granted permission for a movie to film inside.
I wasn't expecting great during my trip to Cannes but I was lulled into a sense of false security by the gorgeousness of Thursday afternoon. Yesterday, though, I woke up to rain and wind, although it was still fairly warm. Film Festival-related activities for non-ticket-holders aren't much fun in the rain and as a result, I had a rather de-CaFF-einated day. Of course, it's still fun to go for a morning run along the Croisette while the town wakes up, with women in fancy dresses and men in black tie, nursing hangovers, slink back to their hotel rooms after screenings, desperately seeking darkness.
Spotted on the rue d'Antibes
I did a little window shopping on the rue d'Antibes and, seizing a rare moment of sunshine, sat on the Croisette with a baguette and an éclair and soaked up the buzz. Near the Martinez, there is a little stage where last year I saw Jessie J sing a few numbers (not being particularly down with the kids, I didn't know who she was).
This year, on Thursday, it was LMFAO's turn, although I wasn't convinced it was really them (it was a tiny stage and they seemed to perform their most famous number, Sexy and I Know It, several times but apparently it was. Now I wish I had taken some photos. Ah well. I didn't recognise the band who was playing yesterday--they sounded French. How very dare they.
Eventually, the sun came out and we went down to the rocks near the beach to watch the Croisette come to life for the evening and to listen to more random French dance music. It looks like Pete Doherty, Asia Argento and Bérénice Bejo, among others, will be there tonight. The one thing the weather can't spoil is eating delicious, rotisserie chicken with homemade mash and baguette on the (covered part of) the terrace in my parents' flat.
My kingdom for a ticket!
This morning, the weather was even more erratic, not that that stopped the hoards from queuing outside the Palais des Festivals with their brollies, hoping some kind benefactor might take pity on them and give them a ticket to a screening. The London Film Festival is certainly much more of a democracy, and if you can't even guarantee nice weather in Cannes in May, one almost wonders what use it serves. As I complained to the apartment block's guardienne this morning, j'en ai eu assez du mauvais temps. She, of course, replied, C'est le Festival. C'est normal. Indeed.
I almost didn't go to the preview of Café de Flore this evening, even though it was free and in a cinema near my office. The description on IMDb didn't really tell me anything about whether or not I would enjoy the film:
A love story between a man and woman. And between a mother and her son. A mystical and fantastical odyssey on love.
On the basis of this, I thought the film would be some sort of francophone version of The Time Traveller's Wife in which the titular existentialist-hangout-turned-tourist-trap-café would serve as a TARDIS, allowing the characters to travel through time and space as they carried out their "mystical and fantastical odyssey on love." I was wrong, of course, although having seen the film, my prediction doesn't seem quite so wacky. My main advice for anyone who goes to see it is to watch carefully — especially the small details — and to enjoy the journey.
Montréal. 2001. A 40-something DJ (Kevin Parent) is playing in his swimming pool, laughing with his beautiful younger woman and his two daughters. Don't be fooled by the seeming perfection of his life, because he's dealing with a number of problems. In the meantime, though, he flies to the UK for a gig. People dance at Fabric (or wherever) while he mixes the Doctor Rockit electro version of the song Café de Flore. It's all very arty: blurry shorts of a group of young people at the airport. Lights. Sad music. Electronic music. Etc.
Meanwhile, in Paris, some 30 years earlier, a beautiful young woman (Vanessa Paradis) gives birth to a boy with Down's syndrome. Forced to raise him alone, she vows to do all that she can to ensure he lives long past the expected 25-year lifespan. He is her whole world and she will do anything for him. You can tell it's the late 1960s because everything seems sepia-tinted and because of the record player, which is usually playing the son's favourite song, Café de Flore. There's a record player in our DJ's apartment too, though. Music is super-important to him: it connects him to his first wife and serves as a weapon through which his tween daughter exacts revenge on him for leaving her mother.
And so we alternate between 2001 and 1969, with many other flashbacks, dreams, nightmares and long, languorous shots thrown in for good measure. Sometimes, we see two goth teenagers, a sad-looking girl and a boy who thinks he's Robert Smith. They listen to Pink Floyd and The Cure. The DJ tells his shrink all about the pictures of her, whoever she is.
It is difficult to say much more without spoiling the film but suffice it to say, it wasn't anything like what I was expecting. Café de Flore is lyrical, beautiful, haunting and enigmatic. Vanessa Paradis stands out as the determined 1960s mother, and it's hard not to be charmed by her son (Marin Gerrier). The soundtrack is fantastic — an interesting mix of The Cure, Pink Floyd, a couple of versions of the titular song, a few sigur rós tracks and this gorgeous song called Le Vent Nous Portera(Sophie Hunger's cover of a Noir Desir track). Incidentally, the café hardly features in the film; I thought I caught a glimpse of the signature green-trimmed chairs and tables at one point, but that was about it.
There may be some spoilers in the rest of this post, although I try not to go into much detail about what happens and what it might all mean:
Towards the end, Café de Flore began to feel a bit David Lynch lite. Writer-director Jean-Marc Vallée hits you over the head with his repeated shots, imagery and motifs. Children in the back of a car, an angry woman pounding the horn of her car in rage, the teenagers looking at each other adoringly. The dreams and dream-like sequences. The mysticism. The foreshadowing. The somewhat confusing achronological storyline. At some points, you might well wonder whose drug-induced hallucination you are going into, to paraphrase Inception, but I don't think the puzzle of Café de Flore is that simple. And actually, I don't think this film necessarily needs to be interpreted or decoded in the same way as Mulholland Drive, although the "mystery" of how everything connected together kept me gripped almost until the ending.
I've written before about my former love of dance anthems (pronounced dance anfems, of course) but a random conversation in the office earlier this week about late nineties and early noughties dance music sent me back to my dance/trance playlist on iTunes. I used to own hundreds of these songs, most of them bought as CD singles, but on reaching university and embarrassed by my teenage taste, I deleted most of them from my computer and chucked the CDs. Since then, I've been slowly re-acquiring some of my old favourites.
For years I listened religiously to Dave Pearce's Dance Anthems on Radio 1 on Sunday nights, which was great because they tended to play a lot of the same songs week after week and there wasn't too much D&B, which I disliked even then. Yes, you had to put up with all the listeners who had been "having a wicked weekend, largin' it in Basingstoke" calling in with their requests for shout-outs for their Basingstoke buddies. I probably tuned in to the show a few times while I was at university and had assumed it was still on in the same slot but alas! It turns out that the programme was shunted onto Radio 6, to which I have never knowingly listened, and then finished altogether last spring. Alas!
I can't even listen again to the last show but they did include the playlist and I'm pleased to note that it seems hardly to have changed since I last tuned in: a nice little opener from Armand van Helden (which, I seem to remember, often opened the show), and then Liquid, Delerium, William Orbit, Matt Darey, Rui Da Silva, Paul van Dyk, Energy 52, Underworld, Push, Mauro Picotto and Rank 1, they're all there. And with the exception of the latter, which I have just re-acquired, every single one of the songs I've just listed is still on my computer (or on my computer again), proving my point about the repetition.
Anyway, in the name of nostalgia, I've put together a list of my top five dance anthems (this is all relative, of course; only the top two get four-star ratings in iTunes):
Forgotten gem: I had completely forgotten about the Rank 1 song, Airwave(surprisingly, given that the song is also extensively sampled in another trance tune I did still have called True Love Never Dies), but after listening again to the radio edit, I conceded that either this or Café del Marby Energy 52 would be my first reserve.
I have now officially given up on the idea of compiling a list of my favourite five songs of the year. In 2011, I added about 50 new songs to iTunes, of which only ten were released in 2011. For what it's worth, my favourite was, by a long shot, This Ain't No Hymn by Saint Saviour, which I've played over 60 times since October.
Far more worthwhile is for me to rank my top five leaps of the year. 2011 has been a great year for leaping and although I managed to whittle down my favourite leap photos down to a list of 12 fairly easily, the final cull was harder. Some of the leaps that didn't make the top five included: my current blog header, taken on Christmas Eve in Cannes; my leap-in-a-birdcage in London (best use of a supposed art installation); and my reconstruction of the original leap outside the Louvre in Paris. Now, here are the top five:
1. Highest leap -- Atlas Mountains, Morocco. This was definitely my highest leap--in terms of altitude, anyway. Our tour guide was highly amused by the fact that I would insist of jumping for the camera at every available opportunity, despite having a horrible cold.
2. Highest leap II -- New York City, USA. This photo, taken on the High Line in June, made good use of one of the benches to give me some extra height. Bonus points for retaining some of my modesty.
3. Earliest leap -- Nowheresville, UK. Not bad for six-thirty in the morning! This was taken at the very end of my college's May Ball in June. St Jocks' famous bridge was all decked out in college colours so it was too cool a photo opportunity to pass up.
4. Coldest leap -- Cannes, France. Cannes was actually very sunny and fairly warm this Christmas. However, this leap was taken shortly after a very cold and extremely brief swim in the Med, so it was lucky we got the photo in one take.
5. Narrowest leap -- Stockholm, Sweden. Mårten Trotzigs Gränd, the narrowest alley in Stockholm, provided the setting for this leap. It was quite hard to jump safely (hence the spirit fingers) but I liked the way the perspective came out.
I considered taking a leaping photo every day in this leap year but leaps are quite hard to capture well using a self-timer so I decided to can that idea but I may still highlight one leap per month. In the meantime, happy leap year, everyone!
I first came across Annie Clark, AKA St Vincent, over four years ago at a random gig on a crazy trip to San Francisco. I really enjoyed her voice and her lyrics but although someone gave me a copy of her debut album, I had sort of forgotten about her. As for The National, I discovered them via Radio Paradise, although assorted people, ranging from The Bro to my boss seem amazed that I have heard of them. Fake Empire and Slow Show are well within my top 100 most played iTunes songs and, unusually for me, I often listen to both Boxer and High Violet as albums (I prefer the latter overall but the former has more stand-out songs).
You can imagine, then, how pleased I was to find a copy of a St Vincent-The National collaboration on one of Caitlyn's recent playlists. It's called Sleep All Summer and is, apparently, a cover of a Crooked Fingers song (not that I've heard of that band). I do love listening to Matt Berninger's deep, soulful tones, which are complemented very well by Clark's sound. And the lyrics are lovely if rather sad.
So, it seems, The Stone Roses are re-forming (isn't everyone these days?). The Roses often in feature in lists of my favourite music--top ten songs, favourite album covers, and sometimes even favourite bands. Let's be clear, though, I only started listening to their music a good three years after they broke up and nearly a decade after their eponymous first album, which is also their penultimate album and, let's face it, their only great album. Even then, it was only when The Stone Roses was introduced into the eight-CD rotation at the Sandwich Shop of Dreams for a year or so that I really started to appreciate them. I like every song on The Stone Roses and, unusually for me--a fickle, singles listener--I often listen to it as an album. I Wanna Be Adored is, of course, my favourite song on the album; I'm no music critic and the video clip below, which I must have downloaded years ago and lovingly saved onto my portable hard drive, probably sums it up best. I Am the Resurrection, with its awesome drum solo, comes a close second.
As for The Second Coming, the only stand-out song for me is Ten-Storey Love Song and even that isn't as good as almost all of the songs on The Stone Roses. As for their even earlier work, in early drafts of my novel, one of the characters shows her commitment to another character by tracking down a 12" white label edition of the Roses' first single, So Young (I assume that at the time I wrote this, I researched it adequately and found that such a disc would indeed be hard to acquire). He thinks she wanted to reflect on one of the song's repeated lyrics, "Where there's a will there's a way."
My liking of and emotional history with the band aside, am I glad that they're back together? I'm not sure yet. I love Manchester indie music from the '80s and '90s as much as the next person--more than most, in fact--and yes, they've probably moved on from their last, disastrous performance at the Reading Festival in 1996. But the more albums Oasis pumped out after 1997, the less I liked their music overall, and I worry that the Stone Roses and their debut album could be further tarnished in my mind. For now, though, I'll wait until I hear the re-formed band before passing further judgement.
