EntsNews.com

Knocked Up / Superbad

2008-05-05T23:53:00.009+01:00

Having recently been introduced to these two films, amongst the major successes in a bumper year of off-beat American comedy in 2007, it was heartening to see that American teen/ 20-something comedy is finally growing up.

Just when we thought the Ferrell/Wilson/Stiller gang was hitting its zenith, along comes the Apatow/Rogen/Goldberg crew to steal their thunder. Of the two films, Knocked Up is undoubtedly superior. It has heart where Superbad just has head (in all senses of the word), and manages to create a far more sympathetic collection of protagonists.

The fat/curly-haired anti-heroes (Seth Rogan - pictured - and Jonah Hill) of both films represent something of a new wave of American comedic leading man - although they undoubtedly have Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly to thanks for setting the precedent. What these chubby charmers achieve is an overhaul of the traditional casting of American 'dude' comedy. The down-to-earth, witty 'not-quite-nerds' are a new breed of comedy character, owing much to the Marx brothers in that the whole premise of their comedy is founded on interplay. Witty lines happily sit beside the ever-familiar nob-gags, and well-roundedness applies to their emotional make-up as much as it does to their waist-lines.

These are the products of a post-pop America. A generation of young men grown weary with high-school stereotypes yet helpless to resist them. But the use of the phrase 'young men' is significant here - for the women hardly get a look in. There is still a sexist core in both of these films that leaves one questioning when it is that these all-male production teams will wake up and smell the oestrogen. The nerds and jocks have been allowed to mature, but the cheerleaders remain shaking their pom-poms at the side. A depressing reflection of a country still riddled with ultra-conservative values and under-currents of religiosity.

Review of 'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

2008-05-05T23:45:00.000+01:00

It is perfectly apt, pretty much essential, that this book should be a black swan: an unexpected bestseller, topping the New York Times non-fiction lists. Otherwise Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s theory wouldn’t carry nearly the weight that it does. A quirky and engaging writer, Taleb’s central thesis is that we are frequently taken for suckers by the unexpected. Until the discovery of Australia, everyone in Europe believed swans could only be white. We should be careful of all the certainties we hold and be ready to be sceptical about our beliefs. Not in a Cartesian manner following the Descartes fashion (Taleb, for reasons not entirely clear, rejects this throw out all of your beliefs and start again line of thought). Rather we should be very wary of trusting established models for forecasting in economics, society, cultural and natural trends. Will the sun rise tomorrow? – probably, but Taleb takes great pleasure in chronicling the fallacies of the ‘bildungsphilisters’ – the intellectual economic forecasters who believe the world will conform to their platonic models only to discover time after time that, well, shit happens.

Taleb’s message is an apt one for the modern interconnected world. The future (which of course can’t be predicted) will probably be dominated by a few more J.K. Rowlings and Bill Gates who inhabit what Taleb calls extremistan, and a greater number of dissatisfied and disenfranchised unfortunates (mediocristan). As a Humanist, Taleb says, he hates this disparity, and it hardly tallies with those in mediocristan who cling to the protestant work ethic view of life, that the harder you work the proportionally greater the rewards. But he offers succour to the second rate towards the end of the book with the tale of Yevgenia Krasnova, a novelist whose first novel is an unexpected success and her second book is an equally unexpected flop. There is charm in secure mediocrity, and wild success is not always all it is cracked up to be. Take comfort in the fact that you are a black swan – the biggest black swan of all, by virtue of your birth against gigantic odds.

Once the central message is grasped, you don’t really need to plough through all of the book , which is overlong at some 300 pages, unless you want to take in all the quirky asides and stories about the author’s intellectual friends and colleagues and detailed economic theories deconstructing the Gaussian Bell Curve. A vast array of obscure economists and philosophers are referenced which comes across as intellectually show-offy, and Taleb’s style is a clunking dog’s dinner, peppered with faux yiddishisms such as ‘nobel schnobel’ and prefixing any thinker he admires with the Germanic ‘über’. Still, it is partially inthis linguistic naivety, uprooted from his Lebanese homeland (or Levantine as he anachronistically calls his roots), and finding a place in the world as an eccentric commodoties trader in New York, that he is an eccentric and admirable writer. Someone who sees a crowd, and deliberately heads off in the other direction.

By Fred Bosanquet

Review of 'Straw Dogs' and 'Black Mass' by John Gray

2008-04-12T21:55:00.003+01:00

Human progress is a myth, freedom is a fantasy, the individual self is a chimera, our lives are lived from start to finish as illusions, justice and morality are social constructs relied on solely for convenience, human beings are entirely ignorant of motivation and can no more control the future of the race than the most base amoeba can.

This is the pessimistic world view of John Gray, one of the few genuine practising philosophers alive today who still devotes his life’s work to making sense of the human condition. We are no better than beasts, he concludes, because – frankly – we are beasts. The earth has existed long before humans arrived, and humans will disappear millions of years before the sun finally bursts apart and swallows up the solar system. Humans are merely one of millions of species who have inhabited the earth only as long as the span of our striations of DNA lasts.

If you think your own life might be small and purposeless in the scheme of things, reading John Gray may only exacerbate such feelings until your sense of your self shrinks into a miserable chewing gum sized ball. An epigram for his whole collection of writing might be the scribble Darwin wrote in his notebook in 1838: ‘He who understands baboon will do more for metaphysics than Locke’. Gray, to put it bluntly, is a man at odds with the whole corpus of Western Enlightenment philosophy, from Rousseau, Descartes and beyond.

In Straw Dogs, his 2002 polemic, he devotes a brisk 200 pages to a sweeping destruction job of a whole gamut of Post-Enlightenment theories. For example, atheism: ‘Secularism is like chastity, a condition defined by what it denies’, Post-Modernism: ‘just the latest fad in anthropocentrism’ – humans arrogantly thinking they can define the terms of reality, environmentalism: ‘A high-tech Green utopia, in which a few humans live happily in balance with the rest of life’.

Environmentalism, Gray argues may be scientifically feasible, but is humanly unimaginable. In the 17th Century, the population of the world was half a billion people, the same number as the increase in people in the last decade alone. This, points out Gray, is palpably unsustainable. If the Twentieth Century was dire for its spate of genocidal warfare, this one could be even worse, as increasing population growth combined with scarcity of resources will ignite flashpoints all over the planet as the game is up for the rich nations and their hitherto unquestioned dominance over the world’s reserves.

Straw Dogs is a wide ranging polemic, but in Black Mass, the successor book, the target is more specific: the policies of neo-conservative Western governments who believe that the world can be remade in their image. Politics, given the animal natures of human beings, is inherently impossible and therefore corrupting. The desire of Bush, Blair, and the team of neo-cons who laid out the Iraq plans is the modern incarnation of a religious will, which, Gray argues, has always been present in societies. The Enlightenment, 250 years ago, merely gave this yearning a secular edge.

Stalinism, National Socialism, Neo-Conservatism, free market liberalism: all are ideologies that betray a religious, utopian impulse. The plans to introduce democracy in Iraq was as misguided and unrealisable as the Marxist claims that capitalism would be overthrown and a post-state brotherhood of humanity would be realised. Gray concludes the book by saying the only way to proceed in political affairs, as with all human affairs, is with clear eyed realism in the manner of his few philosophical and political heroes: David Hume, Edmund Burke, Isaiah Berlin.

Those who maintain faith in progress will reject Gray’s analysis on the grounds that some reforming, progressive ideals have been instilled in society: slavery was abolished, in the face of those who said it was unrealisable. Why should the citizens of the Middle East not have a chance to be freed from tyranny and live in democratic peace like their more fortunate coevals in Western Europe? However this is precisely Gray’s point – there is not enough resources in the world for everyone to eat at the ‘rational’ liberal democratic table. That is the privilege of the wealthy nations, who fiercely safeguard their resources (successfully, up to now at least). Liberalism is cast as a sort of Range Rover, I-Phone type of political theory – something only the rich can afford.

Gray’s arguments are trenchant, and easy to follow if hard to swallow. His style is that of the apercu – brisk, swift, impressionistic. Such a loose limbed writing style is easily open to objection. But he incorporates large bibliographies in the back of his books for those interested in investigating his arguments further. De-coupling human beings from their human-centric world view is a difficult operation. The tradition in which Gray writes: Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Schopenhauer, is a lonely and uncomfortable one, and it is unsurprising that his bulletins on the current state of man are met with hot opposition.

By Fred Bosanquet

Review of 'Queuing for Beginners' by Joe Moran

2008-04-07T22:48:00.002+01:00

Surely the British have always been obsessed by the weather, consumed clutcher inducing fry ups for breakfast, and have stood in line since time immemorial.

Not so, says Joe Moran, who in this intricate little book, outlines the provenance of these and many other everyday lifestyle traits. Queuing for beginners is a social history book that looks at society through a close lens microscope. Eschewing the big political and economic themes normally associated with social change, he shows just what crazy folk we really are as he traces the typical day of an average British adult – a person who arises in the morning, eats a bowl of cereal for breakfast, squeezes into a packed train and commutes to the office, sits at a desk with a computer, attends meetings, fires off more emails than are strictly necessary, has a pint or two in the pub after work, heats up a supermarket ready-meal for dinner, watches a bit of TV (especially the weather forecast) then retires to bed under a duvet (a now commonplace bed furnishing that only dates from 1964 when Terence Conran opened the first Habitat store in South Kensington) and tries to get as much sleep as possible in this era of constant bustle and distraction.

Such a narrative might seem like the most boring book since the two volume Paddy Ashdown diaries, but it is actually a compelling look of the myriad little things that appear in our days. Drawing on a vast range of archival research (Moran is a lecturer in everyday life at Liverpool John Moores University), the author finds that there is a fascinating story behind just about everything we take for granted. The first pedestrian crossings, marked by Belisha Beacons (named after the minister of transport, Leslie Hore-Belisha in 1934) caused a scandal when they were first introduced. Militant protestors fired shots at them with air rifles as they believed the introduction of pedestrian crossings had effectively conceded the rest of the highway to the motor car. The modern form of queue – a single line in which people are called to the next free cashier by an electronic display –only became widespread in the 1990s. Before that, individual queue lines were the norm, leading to the commonplace frustration of joining the shortest queue only to find it was the slowest moving since an elderly man at the front was engaged in a long and protracted argument with the cashier.

An entire chapter is devoted to a single item of furniture – the sofa. Historically, it was a low status item, mocked as a shapeless, lumpen article. In the twentieth century, design traits from Scandinavia slimmed and reduced the size of the sofa and its modern manifestation - especially the minimalist IKEA sofa, often bought on hire purchase - is a far cry from the traditional sofa which was traditionally a lifetime wedding present for a married couple.

In so much as the book is didactical, the lesson Joe Moran seems to want to impart, is to make us take a closer look at our everyday surroundings. If we occasionally pause in our hectic lives to take note of exactly how the packaged sandwich has come to dominate our lunchtime eating habits, or why we have so many more TV channels than we used to, we can begin to realise that our lives are not endlessly recycled Groundhog Day style routines, but part of a constantly evolving historical time. In twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years time, many aspects of our everyday lives will be quite different, and the Prêt a Manger sandwich and the IKEA sofa may be objects of as much nostalgia as the Bakelite telephone or the 1940s railway carriage.

Meet The Spartans - The Worst Film Ever Made?

2008-03-27T12:01:00.011Z

I'm going to cut to the chase. Meet The Spartans is 78 minutes of complete and total, unmitigated shit. Quite how the writers (dreaded spoof-movie 'gurus' Friedberg and Seltzer) manage to achieve such levels of buttock-twinging awfulness is a mystery. If you want to experience the film without forking out the price of a cinema ticket, simply ask a friend to say "isn't 300 really gay" and "boobs" over and over again. Trust me, you'll save yourself much time, effort and cash. In fact, what am I saying? If you really want to replicate the experience of watching this film, ask your friend to hit your nut-sack with a tennis racket for 2 hours continuously - the only difference is that this experience would be slightly funnier.

I'm all in favour of spoofs and love a good boob-joke as much as the next man, but here there is nothing to induce even the faintest of wry smiles. Compared to the likes of Hotshots, Airplane! or Shaun of the Dead, classic spoofs all of them, this looks like a student film shot by a group of drunks who've all had humour labotomies. Sean Maguire (clearly cast due to his impressive back-catalogue of Grange Hill, Eastenders and Holby City) gives the worst comedic performance I've ever witnessed on celluloid, whilst Carmen Electra looks and acts every inch the desperate, leather-faced old slag that she is. Pop-culture references are shoe-horned in at every opportunity, and none of them hit the mark (or even come close for that matter).

If you do for some reason decide to inflict this film upon yourself, you'll leave the cinema in a state of quiet shock (I was glued to my seat by sheer exasperation until the final credit had rolled). And, oddly enough, you might well come to the conclusion that this film actually says more about the state of American culture than any Oscar-winner ever will.

Anthony Minghella - A Huge Loss To The World Of Entertainment

2008-03-19T16:50:00.007Z

The news of Anthony Minghella's death came as a huge shock yesterday. He was a magnificent film director, whose hit-rate was almost unrivalled by his British contemporaries. Amongst these contemporaries, perhaps only Richard Curtis and Ridley Scott can lay claim to having as big an influence on the industry as Minghella did.

Considering his credits as a writer/director only stretch to 5 films, he had a remarkable career which spanned mediums, genres and collaborators. His breakthrough film Truly, Madly, Deeply displayed a rare understanding of the human psyche (particularly the female psyche), and his follow-up The English Patient needs no introduction. I studied this great adaptation at University, and considering the complexity of the source material it's a testament to his genius that Minghella was able to construct such a lucid narrative. Apparently his methodology involved reading the book several times through, putting it on a shelf and retreating into isolation to work up the screenplay from memory. This approach, to me, was ground-breaking, and proved that in order for an adaptation to be successful it must have a sense of detachment from it's source.

I never met Minghella but I did attend a seminar given by his brother Dominic quite recently. Dominic, like his brother, was warm, intelligent, funny and generous, and I hope we will see more of his work in the future. But either way, the hole left by his more famous sibling is huge, and his death is a loss to us all.

Review: 'Nothing to be Frightened Of' by Julian Barnes

2008-03-17T13:57:00.003Z

Julian Barnes has long been a novelist preoccupied with death. Every one of his previous books has, I think, contained at least one section featuring ruminations on the inevitable dénouement to life, but never before has he devoted a whole book to the subject.

Nothing to be Frightened of is a book that will appeal mainly to long term Barnes fans. It is a return to the smorgasbord style – part essay, part epistolary debate, part philosophical disquisition, part literary homage that hallmarked his great 1984 novel Flaubert’s Parrot, and was reprised in his 1989 meditation on history, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters. This book is hard to summarize, but the blurb writer has an impressive stab in one sentence: ‘among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard.’ That just about does it. It is something of a departure from Barnes’s previous novels and essays, a comedown from the lofty heights of intellectual detachment, as he gives the reader an insight into episodes from his own life, particularly his relations with his family, people he has written of very little in the past.

Not that we should read this as his autobiography mind. A scrupulous guarder of his privacy, Barnes is unlikely to rip the lid off and spill everything in a messy reveal all in one go. Rather, he reaches into the pot to reach out carefully chosen morsels, starting with an account of his maternal grandparents who were an arch conservative and communist respectively. He recalls how his grandfather used to let the young Julian and his brother watch while he wrang chicken’s necks in the garage. Here, the Barnes brothers’ memories diverge over the exact nature of the execution (was there a guillotine mechanism? Was there a bucket to catch the heads?), and a tense dualism between them is set for much of the book.

Barnes, the younger of the brothers, gives us the impression that he is an intuitive, novelist thinker who is interested in things such as whether human life has a narrative, what happens after our death (he contemplates a huge array of options), how to get value out of a life in an age where Darwin and Dawkins have pretty much done for the idea of God – his chosen path, is a devout appreciation, the religion of art as Flaubert called it, even to the extent where he downplays his blood relations and instead considers his genetic lineage as a line of great artists including Renard (a death haunted artist who features prominently in the book), Flaubert, and Stravinsky.

Perhaps this worship of art is a result of his tricky family relations. His older brother, Jonathan, is a remote, fiercely rational Aristotelian philosopher. He features at points throughout the book, hoisted in at carefully chosen moments to illustrate a cold, philosophical angle on life. In an early exchange Barnes recounts a discussion in the car on the way home from their mother’s funeral that turned into a stern grammatical debate on the music that should have been played at the service, and whether this construed an inadmissible ‘hypothetical want of the dead’. Some readers may find this medical gloved dissection of the event appealing in its precision, many more may find the reaction of the Barnes brothers, with their mother’s corpse not yet cold, rather sub zero on the emotional scale.

Barnes's pere and mere were a difficult couple too. His father was a quiet, reserved French teacher, frequently overruled by his domineering wife who was frequently damning of her sons’ literary talents ‘one son writes books I can read but can’t understand, the other writes books I can understand but can’t read’. Parts of the book focus on their respective declines and deaths, Barnes painfully watching as his father suffers a series of strokes, his mother reacting with stern admonishing towards his aphasia.

The deaths of his parents are the way into this book, the gate at the entrance, but most of the short sections feature great artists and their reactions to the inevitable. Philip Larkin, author of the great death angst poem Aubade, we learn would have died gibbering with fear in a Hull hospital were he not heavily sedated. Flaubert maintained stoical impassivity in the face of the void. Renard himself aimed to die a stylish, French death and eventually succumbed to standard emphysema. Barnes himself fears death constantly, waking up in the night pounding his pillow screaming NO, NO, NO at the injustice of it all. He says he expects his departure to be preceded by extreme pain, coupled with extreme frustration at the euphemistic, imprecise language used by those about him. A grammarian to the end.

Coupled with fear of death is fear of God, or rather, wistful unhappiness at the absence of God. ‘I don’t believe in God, but I miss him,’ is the first sentence of the book. His brother finds this soppy, but Barnes can’t give up so easily. As with his 1986 novel Staring at the Sun he asks a number of questions concerning God - on Pascal’s wager: ‘What if it turns out that God exists but disapprovesof gambling’. He ponders the hypothetical fury of the resurrected atheist and posits a would you rather question (one of many in the book – would you rather be an atheist philosopher who finds a wonderful surprise after your death, or be right after all.

The scale of the philosophising in this book stretches from the solipsistic to the very large. In the worst passages of the book, Barnes engages in self indulgent games, wondering what the last ever reader of his books will be like, or how it would work if he were to die in the middle of writing the book, or a sentence, or a wo (not one of the high points of his normally erudite style). But he can also stretch his mind to contemplate the bigger picture. Towards the end he considers Martin Rees’s warning to us that humans are nothing in the scheme of things. By the sun’s demise, in 6bn years time, any creatures left will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

Yes, as John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run, we’re all dead. So enjoy this witty and contemplative death volume while you can, and try not to worry about it too much.

By Fred Bosanquet

A 'Bonding' Experience At Club Pedestal

2008-03-17T12:15:00.003Z

Andy Warhol tried to create a whole coterie of superstars, glamorous creations of stick-on eyelashes and sequins whispering like ghosts in the perfumed squalor of some downtown lower east side warehouse, grooving to choppy tunes like seasick sailors. Now I don't know for a fact what that whole scene was like, but I've glided on the third rail of deranged weekends enough in my life to be able to make an educated guess. Kind of reminds me of Club Pedestal, albeit in a more controlled way, like sexual deviancy for the beginner.

In the hipster hotbed of Old Street stands that staunch nineteen eighties reject the Aquarium. This venue has seen the demolition ball standing idly by for some time, always finding a reprieve and new hope so in those terms holding a marginal bdsm event within its Thatcherite hold feels quite right, it gives it that whole magisterial last ever night on earth feel. Club Pedestal is held once every three months, and is a gathering point for patrons of this lifestyle but in a safe consensual way. Only be warned, it's not to everybody's tastes. I have to admit I spent the first hour and a half openly bad mouthing hordes of leather clad men, writhing around on the floor and kissing the statuesque high heels of their mistresses, their faces simply frozen in ecstasy at the degradation - different strokes (pun intended) for different folks.

Now I'm all for equality between the sexes, hell if I was a chick I would have burned my bra long ago, grew my armpit-hair and displayed my Amelia Earhart tattoo with pride as I slipped a chubby arm over my slim girlfriend (because I would be a lesbian off course). And I am an ardent admirer of the female form, particularly ones poured into tight pvc like a second skin (which there were obviously lots off at the club), but seeing them parade guys on leashes like pets and then using their mouths as ashtrays was a tad unusual for a working class kid from south London. It resembled a scene from Dante's seventh circle of hell but in reverse, as scores of people were writhing around on the floor flapping like dying fish but moaning in pleasure, literally a carpet of flesh. I would heartily recommend this place for our female readers though, how empowering it must be to have guys flocking at your feet begging you to allow them the honour of licking the dirt from the soles of your shoes - the ultimate girls night out I would say. And for the fellas, well all I can say was the women were as intoxicating as sin, floating on worshipful gazes and on the butterfly flap of sexual energy.

The parade thickened around 11pm and the club started groaning from the almost lopsided frenzy of its patrons, as the heat fell from the DJ like hot butter (nice mixture of tunes, everything from industial dance to goth) and the jerky epileptic lights started seeping beyond optics to the very cortexes of everybody grazing in pastures of lust around the club, I found myself digging the entertainment. I mean you may go into this thinking of it as an exclusive scene, closed off and mistrustful of strangers, like a redneck with a shotgun on his porch, but the openly friendly manner of everybody took me unawares. Sure I did get accused of showing one particular "mistress" disrespect, but I'm not involved in this scene, and as such obviously find it hard to know their rules. But as an (almost) passive observer I enjoyed myself (drinks are a little expensive though).

I'm not here to knock anybody's lifestyle, perhaps my own eyes were opened by the manner of more marginal lifestyles juxtaposed within the reams of reality, a point glaringly illustrated to me when, deep in conversation with a serving Afghan squaddie, while being told about the claustrophobic realities of war, he suddenly stopped, looked at his watch then proceeded to turn white as a ghost. "Oh no" he said "I'm late for my mistress, and she needs her foot stool!" With that this war hero ran off to crouch at the feet of his mistress for the next hour.

By Charles Malakos

For more info on Club Pedestal, visit www.clubpedestal.com

Two Harry Potter Films For The Price Of One

2008-03-13T12:44:00.005Z

News that the final Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) will be split into two films should come as no surprise. The 'official' reason given is that the book (over 600 pages in length) is simply too long to pack into a single film. Daniel Radcliffe rather bafflingly suggests that the number of sub-plots in previous books made them easier to adapt into single narratives. "The seventh book doesn't really have any subplots" he recently told the Los Angeles Times, "it's one driving, pounding story from the word go."

Now, are we really supposed to swallow this line that it's merely their passionate affiliation to the story that has 'forced' Warner Bros. to make two films where there could've been one? Is it not clear that this is simply a way of milking a few final millions out of this most generous of cash-cows? The BBC, diplomatic as ever, provides this as a gentle afterthought, suggesting the boost in profits will be an "added benefit" of the two-film strategy. This feels a bit like the film world equivalent of the Iraq war - sold to the public as a noble crusade but in fact this is nothing more that a quest for box-office oil.

Ok, so that might be putting it a little strongly, but I hope you see my point.

What On Earth Was McGregor Thinking??

2008-03-06T11:12:00.002Z

Review: Eagle vs Shark

2008-03-06T10:29:00.005Z

You can see this film in one of two ways; either it's a shameless rip-off of Napoleon Dynamite, or the most originial New Zealand comedy ever made (granted, it's probably the only New Zealand comedy ever made). Personally, I think it would be harsh to accuse this film of overt plagarism - after all, it was most likely conceived of before nerd-god Dynamite was released onto the public conscience. So, leaving that issue aside, what you're left with is a charming, slow-burn off-beat rom-com with stacks of great moments strung together with a weak, if functional plotline.

As the lovers-to-be, Loren Horsley as Lily and Jemaine Clement (of Flight of the Conchords fame) as Jarrod both do a great job. Their physicality is excellent, meaning that often it's the moments of silent comedy which pack a greater punch than the scripted gags. The chemistry between the two may be slightly questionable, but by the end you've been convinced that, however bizarre Lily's obsession with Jarrod may be, at least it appears, by her own cookie standards, genuine. Rom-coms usually always take advantage of the rule whereby from the moment the lovers first set eyes on each other, the audience must just blindly assume that they are meant to be, however implausible it may seem to the rational mind. Eagle vs Shark certainly takes this to the extreme, as from the very first scene Lily appears to have an almost pyschotic obsession with the largely awkward and unlikeable Jarrod.

But still, in a film where almost every character appears to be autistic (and I don't say this with any spurious intent), this kind of structural analysis is perhaps futile.

Mannix Street Preachers

2008-03-05T18:57:00.003Z

The Albany, Deptford, London, 25th January 2008

I find myself in an uncaring corner of South London musing over poetry. I'm pretty conflicted with this as a form, I mean how art thou art blah blah blah, dead art form right? Sure, sceptics all around internet land are screaming into their herbal teas "yeah but what about Byron, the first rock star, or Wilfred Owen and his harrowing war stories?" Yeah, yeah, i heard it all before, and flouncing around with baggy shirt sleeves shagging your sister (deranged rock 'n roller I'll admit) or getting your head blown off by the "hun", tragic as it is doesn't make it an artform. I've read Byron, and let's face it he was no Thom Yorke, he didn't twiddle frequencies of overnourished angst within me, or find a pressure valve of release causing me to float backstroke on swampy warm seas of treacle (must have been stoned or drunk when I first heard kid a).

Anyway, Deptford, cold Wednesday night. I'm stood in a spit and sawdust boozer, minus the spit and sawdust. At least the chalky smoky atmosphere is still intact, particularly as I see most of the patrons are eschewing the smoking ban and exhaling happily to the yellowed ceiling. I'm here with an artist friend of mine who is literally coming in his pants as he recounts all the names on the bill - I forget them as soon as I hear them. A pofaced wizard Gandalph wannabe is flouncing around spreading good luck spells and cough germs far into the sweaty pub, he sees me spill my drink and rattles around me offering good karma incantations. I kindly explain to him that I'm making a collection of bad karma and am looking for one final big score. Fortunately before he can speak again we are motioned to our seats by a huge blast of atonal jazz.

The first spoken word act on is my old friend Gandalf, whispering away in a sexless Welsh accent some poem about the drudgery of the workplace. My god this guy is killing me, it reminds me of the time as an overeager 19 year old I found myself joining the socialist workers party. This reject from Arthur Scargill's ball busters conscripted me, painting a picture of fighting and looting, continually smashing his knuckles into his hand for extra emphasis. Yes, thought I, a chance to shine a light into this monochrone world, disrupt the status quo. I didn't know what they were fighting for, but it sure would piss people off. So I went to this first meeting full of bile and piss and redenned forehead, only to be greeted by the sight of this army of fabled change, which consisted of a middle aged woman with the most rotten teeth I have ever beheld (which she insisted on constantly flashing to me), a short-sighted university dropout who believed in female dominance and enjoyed a fine line of cardigans which were apparently knitted with no anatomical knowledge whatsoever by Mrs rotten teeth, Mr smash fist in hand and myself, a 19 year old kid who really only ever wanted to get laid and steal your car.

This Gandalf guy was making me have the same feelings. Nevertheless, dear reader, for you I stayed, rummaging through seaside postcard sauciness, poems about cats and vet bills, the goalkeeper Pat Jennings (cool guy, cool poem) and perhaps the coup de grace, some guy wearing an alien face mask while intoning haikus.

Intermission came and went, as I found myself pissing out the scotch and pear cider chasers I'd found myself dabbling in. Now even I had heard of John Clarke, probably London's central mover and groover within this scene, hell I'm surprised they haven't printed up 'I'm with John Clarke' t-shirts yet, that's how central the guy is. Anyway he took the stage, shaking his long hair, wizened and frozen white with age, but his words spat out like mini dervishes, cascading through the talentless and barren room like a machine gun in the hands of a fire and brimstone piss artist his poems cut in shards. But like a fine bottle of whiskey, it ended too soon, and the man took a bow, walked off the stage, and seemed frail and spent. Later, drinking together, I asked him if this was a dead art form? "Nah" he answered, "words outlive us all. I mean after all, they outlived Byron."

By Charles Malakos

Review: Juno

2008-03-04T12:18:00.004Z

If you can imagine a cross between Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine, then you've got Juno. Written by rising star Diablo Cody and directed by Thankyou For Smoking's Jason Reitman, this is the kind of pseudo-indie comedy which has become very popular in Hollywood recently. The brilliance of films such as this and Sideways, the film which arguably started the trend, is that the central character is so well constructed and sympathetic that by the end of the film the entire audience wants to grab them out of the screen and take them home.

This is certainly the case with the titular Juno Macguff, played with relentless charm by Ellen Page. She's a teenager in a 'condition' which has now become familiar for the under-twenties - she's pregnant. But, refreshingly, the film does not condemn her. Instead, it places us firmly by her side throughout the entire process, showing us how much more mature she is than her fellow jocks and cheerleaders, and how such an event can actually bring people closer rather than driving them apart. In a typical narrative Juno would be thrown out the house, have to give birth to the child in difficult conditions but then find that the love she has for her newborn galvanises her to start a new life elsewhere. Not here. I won't give any plot-spoilers but suffice to say most of your expectations are likely to be wrong-footed.

Special mention must go to the supporting cast, particularly Michael Cera and Allison Janney who turn in superb performances. Cera plays Paulie Bleeker, Juno's ever-understanding teenage friend and father of her child. His support never wavers, and serves to highlight the fact that age is no guarantee of maturity (Mark, the 30-something adoptive Dad-to-be is a child by comparison). And as Juno's stepmother Bren, Janney manages to subvert the step-stereotype and show us that this family, however dysfunctional society may label it from the outside, actually has more love at it's core than any of those deemed 'functional'.

In our recent EntsNews survey, asking which film deserved to win best film at the Oscars, Juno came top by a country mile, winning 42% of the vote. Although personally I still think There Will Be Blood was the more deserving winner, it's certainly easy to see why this film has cast such a spell over those who have experienced it.

Budding Short Story Writers Read This!

2008-03-04T11:58:00.004Z

I've just been glancing my eye over a website called 'Transmission', which publishes a tri-annual magazine primarily stocked with short stories. Whilst not a paying publication, if you're keen to get your stories in print a magazine like this can provide the ideal way to do it. The current theme is Europe, and having just returned from a trip to Bulgaria myself I'm tempted to have a shot! So get writing and good luck.

Click here to visit the Transmission website.

Review: How To Lose Friends And Alienate People/ The Sound Of No Hands Clapping

2008-03-01T10:48:00.005Z

I've always been a fan of 'loser-lit'. Call it schadenfreude, but from Mr Pooter to Adrian Mole, reading about the inadequacies of others makes me feel all warm inside. So with this in mind, Toby Young's books about his failure to make it as both a glossy magazine editor (in How To Lose Friends) and a Hollywood scriptwriter (in The Sound Of No Hands Clapping) represent something of a holy grail.

In HTLFAAP (as it shall henceforth be known), Young recounts his years spent trying to 'hack it' in New York, following an invitation to work at Vanity Fair by it's somewhat naive editor Graydon Carter. Carter clearly sees something of himself in Young (pictured), but what he doesn't count on is the 30-something journalist's combination of naked ambition and interminable self-sabotage. After committing faux-pas such as embarrassing Carter at public events and making the grave mistake of asking Nathan Lane about his sexuality (my favourite anecdote), Young manages to lose his job, his status and his dignity in one fell swoop.

Of course, the irony of HTLFAAP is that Young has now reached the levels of fame and acclaim he so desired when he set out to New York. In The Sound Of No Hands Clapping (TSONHC), he writes about the effect the success of the first novel has on him, and admits that one of the prime motivations for writing it was to prove his capabilities to Graydon Carter. And he certainly manages that. The story, although not always wholly cohesive, is engrossing and as with most 'stick it to the man'-type books it reminds you of the reason you hate the establishment, the media and the world of celebrity. Of course, you knew this already, but reading about it from an insider's perspective gives you a real feeling of 'living with the enemy' that is utterly compulsive. The Graydon Carters of this world are not bad people, they just exist in a framework that seems utterly removed from any kind of ethical normality. It's a world where in order to climb the ladder, you have to be a snake.

For sheer readability, I actually preffered TSONHC (I do hope these acronyms aren't getting too confusing!). It certainly has more laugh-out-loud moments and has an added emotional depth thanks to Young's pitch-perfect description of the trials of fatherhood. He is very much an everyman, and like John O'Farrell managed in The Best A Man Can Get, defines the quandries faced by all 'modern men' without an over-reliance on pyschobabble. As Young is courted by Hollywood, it seems his dreams are within touching distance, but as ever the proverbial banana skin is on hand to ensure he remains 'one of us'. While it's not entirely clear this time round what has caused him to be frozen out, the implication is that as a screenwriter he simply doesn't cut the mustard. As a journalist however, Young is in a league of his own, helped largely by his uncomparable levels of self-awareness.

One small criticism is that his constant repetition of the phrase 'needless to say' makes him sound a bit like Alan Partridge at times - which is surprising considering that in the acknowledgements he actually thanks a friend of his for pointing out the number of times he uses it!

With a film version of How To Lose Friends (starring Simon Pegg) due out later in the year, now is as good a time as any to familarise yourself with these books - if only so you can snootily say "well of course the book was better" as you leave the cinema.

Click here to buy How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Click here to buy The Sound of No Hands Clapping

Blue Mondays

2008-02-25T09:25:00.000Z

Let’s face it: Mondays tend to get the better of us all. After a shambolic weekend simple tasks like getting up from the bed and facing the new week of fresh, exciting opportunities can seem an ordeal even to the most optimistic minds. Monday has not traditionally offered any great excuses to leave important matters from your ‘to do’ list until tomorrow in the same way as, for instance, Fridays. London’s nightlife is not packed with thrilling events on Mondays; you really need to research intensively to find something reasonable to do. Not to worry; there is a safety haven in the heart of East London for people who would much rather escape the unbearable reality of the start of the week. This safety haven, brothers and sisters, is known as the Rhythm Factory’s eccentric open mic venue Spoonful of Poison.

The concept is simple: those with any talent can perform whether it is stand up comedy, poetry, music or things beyond human imagination –as long as they arrive before eight o’clock and put their names down on the sheet of paper located at the bar. Spoonful of Poison is not destructive towards anybody’s finances either; entry fees will not be charged and beverages are cheap. If you are not an aspirant artist of any kind you should show up any time between half eight and half eleven as that is the designated time slot for top quality performances. The variety of performers is extraordinary; you could end up witnessing anything from trombone poetry to the resurrected Sex Pistols; from a guy playing his game console to rising stand up comedy stars. It is not only the performers on stage that will take your breath away; the audience occasionally consists of intriguing regular characters and amusing hecklers. The cherry on the top of this delicious serving is the pleasant master of ceremonies, Mr. Spoon whose cockney niceness is beyond compare. It is indeed worth seeing and wondering how he manages to keep the circus together week after week without ever growing bitter. The next Monday you plan to take your own life; why bother? Just head down to Whitechapel High Street, kick back and enjoy the show.

For more info visit www.rhythmfactory.co.uk

By Laura Rosten

Review: There Will Be Blood

2008-02-22T09:30:00.011Z

As the camera presents the postcard-imagery of the Californian desert whilst discordant piano and strings blast out over the audience, it's clear this film is anything but introverted. And yet the entire narrative revolves around one man - oil prospector Daniel Plainview - and his inner struggles with bitterness, loss, anger and alcohol. This is an opera on the subject of psychology, an all-guns-blazing melodrama on the ramifications of greed.

We first glimpse Plainview mining for silver down a hand-picked mineshaft. As he claws at the rock for all he's worth, he seems a man possessed, and certainly the allegory that this is a fallen angel crawling back to hell is apt. Soon his attention turns to oil, and with it a tip (from the enigmatic 'Paul') of where he can find lakes of the stuff beneath a Californian ranch. He duly buys up the ranch, but comes into conflict with Eli, Paul's evangelical twin-brother, who takes a very different view of Plainview's intentions. As Plainview builds his rig, Eli builds his church on the opposing hill, the implication being that this is little more than willy-waving.

Both the Church and the oil prospectors are condemned in equal measure by director Paul Thomas Anderson. The message here is clear: the raping of America, both by money-men and churchmen, have caused irreparable damage. As revealed in the brilliant final scene, Plainview and Eli have far more in common than one might first imagine, and the assertion of both of them that money is the holy grail of human happiness is well wide of the mark.

As Plainview, Daniel Day-Lewis gives, as you'd expect, a powerhouse performance. What makes him so great is his unswerving commitment to the characters he plays. You know that when he winces, he is feeling genuine pain, and when he's dog-tired, he's dog-tired. There's something in his guttural roars that is truly 'from hell', yet his sinister charm works as well on the audience as it does on the ranch-owners he's looking to exploit. This is a lesson in film-making, evoking obvious comparisons with films such as Citizen Kane, Gone With The Wind, Chinatown and Giant. There is something Shakesperean about the narrative that makes it all the more compelling - a reminder that the roots of modern-day capitalism are as tragic as anything the bard could dream up. Indeed, for me, the title provides an eerie reminder that the century which followed this black gold-rush was the bloodiest in human history.

For my rant about the UK release date of this film, click here.

UK Asian Music Awards

2008-02-22T09:00:00.008Z

For the first time B4U Music, the number one Asian Channel in the UK has teamed up with the premier event for the UK Asian Music scene, the UK Asian Music Awards. With only a few weeks to go, the organisers have been busy putting together a fantastic show to celebrate and honour the best in the industry with exciting performances and great celebrity guests and hosts.

Taking place at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall on Thursday 6^th March, the awards ceremony which promises to be even bigger and better than previous years will be hosted by West End star Priya Kalidas (pictured) alongside B4U Music VJ Salil, who will be flying in from Mumbai for the show.

Attendees to the event will be treated to performances by some of the UK’s finest Asian musical talent and also a few international artists. Performances on the night will include; North American hip hop artists Blitzkrieg, Roachkilla and Kidd Skilly with Surinder Rattan, D-Boy featuring Swiss and V Dubl E, Dutch singer Imran Khan, RnB sensation Jay Sean, Singer-songwriter Karen David, Punjabi singer Lehmber Hussainpuri, Punjabi Hit Squad featuring Alyssia, girl group Serese, the Shaanti Collective with The Kalyan, Sona Family, Bollywood producers Trickbaby and Rishi Rich will be closing the show with a special performance with Veronica, Mumzy and H Dhami.

After months of public voting via the official website www.theukama.com, the winners will finally be announced and presented with their awards by a whole host of celebrity guest presenters. Awards will be awarded for Best Album, Best Act, Best Female Act, Best Underground Act, Best Video, Best International Act, Best Newcomer, Best Producer, Best Club DJ, Best Urban Act, Best Radio Show and Best Website. Special awards on the night include Commitment to the Scene and Outstanding Achievement.

B4U Music is the official presenting partner for the event. The channel will be exclusively capturing all the excitement at the event; the big performances, the acceptance speeches and interviews with the winners and performers on the night for a special programme to be aired on B4U Music later in the month. On the partnership, Bala Iyer, Head of Business B4U Network Europe says, “We believe that B4U Music plays a pivotal role in the Asian music industry worldwide, therefore we are pleased to be involved in an event that promotes and celebrates the talent in UK and abroad.”

Promising to be an exciting event, with top performances, great music and celebrities, the UK Asian Music Awards is an event not to be missed. For tickets please visit www.theukama.com

One To Watch - Asa

2008-02-21T11:04:00.010Z

Asa is a 25 year-old singer/songwriter from Nigeria who will soon be releasing a debut album in Britain. Her sound is a kind of acoustic raggae-pop which I can see being a big hit this summer.

Asa's currently undertaking an epic European tour which includes stops in the UK (London & Manchester to be exact). She'll also be performing on Jools Holland tomorrow evening - a move that always seems to mark an artist's entrance into the mainstream conscience.

So, check her out. Then be sure to tell everyone you heard it here first! Click here to visit Asa's myspace.

Black Watch On Tour 2008

2008-02-19T14:59:00.007Z

The big hit of the 2006 Edinburgh fringe was Gregory Burke's Black Watch, and an extended international run has just been announced. As part of this tour, the play will run at several venues throughout the UK - but tickets are bound to sell out fast so get in quick.

Dealing with the subject of Iraq, the play is based on Burke's interviews with members of the legendary unit - what it was like to be there, and what it was like to come home. Directed by John Tiffany and performed by a superb cast, the play received unanimous rave reviews when it premièred two years ago. In 2007 it toured New York and Los Angeles, proving such a hit that it is to return to the States as part of this tour. I can't recommend this play highly enough, and recommend anyone to get their hands on a ticket.

Click here for further details

Best UK Indie Cinemas?

2008-02-19T09:29:00.009Z

I'm very lucky in that my local cinema here in London is the Peckham Plex, arguably the best independent multiplex cinema in the UK (ok, so I may be slightly biased...). When I was at uni in Bristol, both the Watershed and the Arnolfini served up great programmes of arthouse film, and when I was a post-grad living in Newcastle, the Tyneside cinema was a second home.

Many blogs are bewailing the death of the independent cinema, drowning up in a sea of commercialism and over-priced popcorn. However, there are still many of them around, from the Duke of York's in Brighton (where I saw a fantastic live-score version of Nosferatu), to the Filmhouse in Edinburgh. In London, the Prince Charles continues to show a varied and commercial programme whilst keeping ticket prices as low as £1.50 (for members), although in order to cut costs it often receives films after they've done the multiplex rounds. However, in a world where the gap between cinema and DVD release times is narrowing to a wafer-thin margin, I'm not sure this matters so much anyway.

So, for me the leader of the pack is the 'Peck-Plex', which maintains a balance of showing early releases and still charging much less than Odeon or Vue. But I'd be eager to hear your thoughts on this - what's your local indie, and is it worth me venturing outside of SE15 to experience it?!

Links:

Peckham Plex
Prince Charles Cinema
Duke of York's Brighton
Tyneside Cinema
Filmhouse, Edinburgh
Watershed, Bristol
Arnolfini, Bristol

2008-02-18T00:07:00.002Z

Gig Review: Beth Rowley At Cherry Jam

2008-02-17T14:53:00.006Z

First things first - I'd never heard of Beth Rowley. So going along to Cherry Jam (Porchester Road, London) last Tuesday evening was a bit of a shot in the dark. The night started well with genial warm-up act Jon Allen, whose biggest claim to fame is having a song (called Going Home) which featured in a recent Land Rover ad. Allen's sound is reminiscent of a young James Taylor, and he managed to easily hold the attention of a sparse crowd. Unfortunately for Allen, the London gig scene is awash with twentysomething, guitar-strumming singer-songwriters, and as such he may struggle to stand out from the crowd.

After Allen's exit, the room suddenly filled to capacity with the entrance of Beth Rowley and her 8 piece band. She entered to a cacophony of whoops and cheers, and from the off it was clear to see her fans are onto something. Her whole persona is that of a rather shy, innocent girl who, behind the mop of blonde curls and coquettish hand gestures, knows exactly what she's doing. Her band were great, particularly Ben Castle (son of Roy) on the Sax. It's so refreshing to see a band of this number and this talent in a venue of this size - and the addition of a couple of backing singers worked wonders. For me, the highlight of the set was a cover of Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released, a toe-tapper in the truest sense. Other highs included the first single, Oh My Life, and the stupendously soulful Led Zeppelin cover Nobody's Fault But Mine.

Beth Rowley is due to support David Gray on his new tour, a slot that is sure to swell her army of fans. She's a singer on the verge of big things, and as Duffy and Adele have recently proved, the public's appetite for soulful songstresses has never been stronger.

Beth Rowley's Myspace
Jon Allen's Myspace

Review of ‘The Second Plane’ by Martin Amis

2008-02-16T12:13:00.005Z

Martin Amis’s political books have typically been the least well received of his oeuvre. His 1987 collection of stories ‘Einstein’s Monsters’ felt too contrived and naively over heavy on the big ideas (nuclear weapons) compared to the two satirical masterpieces - Money and London Fields, it was chronologically sandwiched between, and his 2002 Koba the Dread, a book to honour the victims of Stalin, was a bit of a hash of an exercise that strained too hard for effect, comparing, at one point, the screams of his infant child with the millions that perished under Stalin in the Gulag.

In this collection of essays and fiction, however, Amis has rather more success in mixing his personal life and concerns with the big political themes that affect us all. The book brings together a collection of Amis’s writings on the theme of September 11, and the myriad fallout from the events of that day: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the wider concerns to assert American power more fully in the Middle East, and more generally (and this is Amis’s real concern) the subliminal effects that terrorism has on us all: ‘it’s mystery, its instability, and its terrible dynamism’.

The publication of this collection comes after a long running media spat concerning Amis’s views on Islam. Terry Eagleton, Amis’s colleague at Manchester University accused him of being tantamount to a ‘British National Party thug’; the satirical comedian Chris Morris tagged Amis as ‘The New Abu Hamza’. All this following an interview Amis gave to the Independent in which he mused that ‘don’t you feel the urge that the Muslim community must suffer in order to get its house in order. What measures? ‘Things like strip searching people who look like they come from The Middle East, or Pakistan.’

Clearly, the old saw about all publicity being good publicity has worked in this case, as The Second Plane is already on its third print run. But what is Amis actually advocating in his views towards Islam? The reality, now that these pieces are all bought together under the same cover, and not merely the disparate fragments of journalism written over a variety of years and numinous publications, is an interestingly thought out, rationally developed view on the burgeoning problem of Islamism. Amis starts the collection with the title piece written immediately after September 11, the almost hallucinogenic quality of the prose bringing back memories of this period when everyone in the world was dealing with the shock of the event. The long term ramifications were unknown, but even then Amis was perceptive in turning his attentions to the terrain, mental and physical, he believed would be most keenly affected – the hitherto protected western liberal worldview, and the wrecked, Taliban crippled badlands of Afghanistan, ‘they should be firmly bombarded with consignments of food, firmly marked LENDLEASE USA’, was his recommendation then.

Now, six and a half years on, we know a lot more. Amis states in the introduction that geopolitics may not be his natural subject, but masculinity is. And he uses this leitmotif to paint an interesting picture of terrorism as masculinity gone wrong, warped, banjaxed with religious and cultural strain. He traces this back to the figure of Sayyid Qutb, a young Egyptian man who came to America in the 1950s. Already semi-radicalised by the vestiges of the British Protectorate in Cairo, and the establishment of Israel, he found himself repulsed by the liberties that were established in America. With almost comical lack of self awareness he found himself threatened by the ‘bulging breasts and smooth legs’ of the young women. Raged and inspired, he embarked on a large corpus of work, prose and poetry, of which the following lines are indicative:

A girl looks at you, appearing as if she were an
enchanting nymph or an escaped mermaid, but as she
approaches, you sense only the screaming instinct inside
her, and you can smell her burning body, not the scent
of perfume but flesh, only flesh
Clearly, not a man at ease with his sexuality.

Islamism (at times Amis takes pains to distinguish this from Islam in general, at other points he seems to elide the two notions) as it is now, is at crisis point. The civil war within Islam has been won by the fundamentalists, Amis argues, the moderates have lost out, and now the dominant force is a retrograde, barbaric, misogynistic, homophobic, murderous ideology. This is the point at which Amis (like his fellow media cohorts on the left, Christopher Hitchens and Nick Cohen – or should that be, formerly on the left?) parts company with type of liberal who would far more eagerly bash the administration of George Bush than the address the human rights disaster going on in the Middle East. Amis spares no effort in using his full descriptive talents to outline the horrors. For example he describes a magazine picture of a Saudi newscaster beaten by her husband as looking like a ‘crudely cross-sectioned watermelon, but you could make out one or two humanoid features half submerged in the crimson pulp.’

Does he go too far in trying to draw a clean cut line between the moral West and the backward and barbaric Arab cultures? There is little in this collection to suggest that Amis is an outright Islamophobe. His writing is certainly too precise, stylish and intelligent to lapse into careless racist slurs, and he does devote a small amount of space to acknowledging the vast cultural contributions Islam has made to the world. But there are undoubtedly weaknesses in the collection. The number of actual, real life Muslims Amis encounters is very few. There is an encounter with a gatekeeper at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem: ‘I will never forget the look on (his) face when I suggested, perhaps rather airily, that he skip some calendric prohibition and let me in anyway’, and an anecdote from Pakistan when, travelling with Christopher Hitchens, they encounter a street stall selling Osama Bin Laden t-shirts. That is pretty much it. Most of the pieces are from the viewpoint of a man who has approached the issue on a purely cerebral level – buttressed by a whole raft of books (4 pieces in these 14 piece collection are, themselves, book reviews, and citations to other secondary sources litter almost every page), privileged access to the entourage of Tony Blair (documented at length in an extended piece of reportage), and a strong position as a highly regarded intellectual figure in the Western world with a tendency to epater les bien pensants de la gauche. It is a little like the people who proclaim loftily and radically on how to reform the education system or the NHS. Those with experience on the ground can usually supply key insights that the pure thinkers don’t have access too.

Further still, is a curious piece on Mark Steyn, a neo-con Canadian writer who most civilized readers can see through as a plain fascist in frontiersman’s clothing. Amis considers Steyn’s book America Alone and writes ‘Mark Steyn is an oddity: his thoughts and themes are sane and serious – but he writes like a maniac.’ After some fun poking at his style, Amis agrees that we should take very seriously Steyn’s prediction that the rising birth-rates amongst Islamic cultures may drown out the culture of choice and rights and entitlements in the lower birth-rate, Western European countries.

Such points are the low end of the wide spectrum of Amis’s us and them mentality towards Islam and Islamism. For the most part, he has devoted much time and intellectual rigour to this most vital of contemporary themes, and his writing is as vigorous and stylish as ever.

By Fred Bosanquet

Cloverfield Review

2008-02-13T14:10:00.003Z

If Hollywood can be relied upon to produce anything it’s a disaster movie, and despite months of internet hype behind Cloverfield it was difficult to see how this offering would differ. Nevertheless, from the start things were unlike past attempts. Filmed from the perspective of Hudson Platt (T. J Miller), Cloverfield depicts the devastation caused by the untimely arrival of a giant monster in Manhattan. The reasons for the creature’s arrival are unclear, and it’s this fact, coupled with the Blair Witch-esque camera angles that give Cloverfield a sense of realness that it’s previous competitors have missed. Director Matt Reeves decided not to go with a star studded cast but instead opted for the lower-budget fresh talent of Lizzy Caplan and Michael Stahl David, something that he surely does not regret because both deliver solid performances.

Déjà vu is evoked at certain times (Godzilla anyone?), but nevertheless Cloverfield brings a certain intelligence that previous attacks on New York City have lacked. What is particularly striking about the film is the sense that you are part of what goes on, being embroiled in the chaos and dizziness seems to bring on a real sense of nausea. Add the clever juxtaposition of a past and present relationship by means of a video camcorder, and you’ve possibly pushed this genre to the limit of what it can achieve. Critics and commentators have drawn parallels between the unknown monster and the terrorist threat that New York faces but this sort of conclusion gives the movie a facet that it doesn’t possess. Instead it’s better to view Cloverfield as what it actually is, namely a cracking Saturday night at the cinema. So not quite a modern classic but well worth a watch.

By Lee Crouch