Category: Entertainment

Juliette Jules and the Call of the Black Crow

What were you doing when you were a young teenager? I was skulking in my bedroom writing angry poetry. Singer/songwriter Juliette Jules, however, has been crafting beautiful songs, and this debut EP titled Black Crow (released 23rd May, 2014) is the result. It consists of five tracks, four of which are co-written by Juliette along with Peter Karroll, who also acted as producer.  The fifth is a cover of the famous Hallelujah. Juliette plays guitar, piano and synths, with contributions from two guest musicians. This music is variously described as ‘acoustic’ or ‘folk underground’.

Juliette gave this EP away to lucky listeners as a gift on her 16th birthday. Most 16-year-olds throw a party and pass out after sneaking alcohol into the punch so that gesture was pretty classy. But then this young Parisian shows her class in many ways.

Her inspiration comes from diverse sources, both from the musical and the literary world. You can tell she has absorbed the poetry and drama of all she has read and heard, including punk music, the songs of Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith and the writing of Voltaire, Hemingway and Kafka. Lyrics tend to look toward the sadder portions of the soul. But the mature-sounding voice and ability to phrase so expressively lifts the listener’s mood rather than the opposite. Juliette doesn’t just sing – she delivers a performance.

Johnny Was is the first offering. Its gentle melody and sad, imaginative story about the emotionally disturbed, titular Johnny is the highlight of the EP for me. Juliette delivers a beautifully soulful vocal on the title track, Black Crow, with plaintive piano and strings and poetic, sad lyrics. The Game is a more straightforward and familiar tale of losing a boy to a rival. This song’s promotional video shows various familiar Paris landmarks. To The casino online Mountains ends the EP, finishing on a note of optimism, albeit with doubts.

As for performing Hallelujah, written by Leonard Cohen and covered by such luminaries as Tim Buckley, it is almost mandatory for a young singer-songwriter to cover it. In fact, there is such a long history of covers behind this song that it’s become a sort of rite of passage. Perhaps self-conscious about all the other versions, Juliette has tried to make it very different and to put her stamp on it. Just for my personal taste, I find the style too quirky and prefer a straight arrow rendition such as Buckley’s.

Juliette’s discovery as an artist is the stuff of dreams! She was performing in a park in Paris when manager and producer, Peter Karroll happened to be there. He was duly impressed and thus began their creative collaboration. Hollywood couldn’t make it up! Karroll’s production is spot on, enhancing but not getting in the way. It will be interesting to see how this precocious talent develops. Meanwhile, Black Crow is good company.

https://soundcloud.com/juliettejules/sets/black-crow-ep 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Film Review: Harvey

Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” – she always called me Elwood – “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.

So says Elwood P. Dowd as played by James Stewart in this 1950 film based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Harvey.  And a more pleasant man you’ll be hard pressed to find for Elwood will be only too happy to invite you to join him for a drink at his favourite bar or have you round his house for a small informal dinner regardless of who you are or how many words you’ve exchanged. Yes, a very affable chap indeed.

Trouble is, he’ll soon introduce you to his very dear friend, Harvey – a six-foot, three-and-a-half-inch tall pooka in the form of a white rabbit. This is why his sister Veta (Josephine Hull in an Oscar winning performance), who lives with him and is desperately trying to climb the social ladder, resorts to having him committed to a sanatorium because every time she arranges a gathering of the local elite at home Elwood ruins her attempts at networking for a suitable suitor for her not-so-young daughter Myrtle Mae (Victoria Horne) by stunning the assembled guests with his friend that nobody else can see.

What follows is quite possibly one of the gentlest, most charming comedy of errors I think I’ve ever seen. Dowd, whose penchant for a Martini makes him an unquestionable alcoholic  – a possible cause of his hallucinations – is so likeable and friendly that it’s hard not to overlook his whimsical little peculiarity. Stewart who had played Dowd on Broadway for almost three years prior to this film and would go on to reprise the role on London’s West End in 1975, brings his natural affability to the character and together with his innate talent, he received an Oscar nomination for his efforts. He is and always will be one of my all-time favourite actors.

The film is peppered with memorable characters played by some of Hollywood’s finest character actors. Jesse White as Wilson the gruff asylum attendant and Wallace Ford as the taxi driver have some hilarious moments. But saying that sounds unfair to the rest of the cast for there are many golden moments involving everyone. Indeed the entire 104 minutes is a golden moment.

Director Henry Koster had been nominated for another comedy with fantasy leanings three years earlier – The Bishop’s Wife with Cary Grant and Loretta Young but it’s arguable that over a 30 year career, Harvey would be his finest hour.

Ships Have Sailed With Grown-up Pop

Ships Have Sailed, with Will Carpenter at the helm, is a name which promises songs of maturity and self-awareness, and this Los Angeles-based outfit delivers. Named Someday, their debut EP (nationally released 15th July, 2014) contains six tracks that carry me along willingly on a wave of indie pop. The song’s influences come from more than one wellspring, and there is a pleasing variety here.  Will Carpenter started playing instruments when still very young, listening to musical greats from the 1960s and ’70s before discovering angst-ridden grunge in the ’90s. A multi-instrumentalist, he plays the violin, bass guitar, and electric guitar. He is also a member of rock/hip hop band, 7Lions. Will wanted another musical project for a set of songs which are different to the 7Lions output. The result is Ships Have Sailed.

All the songs here are either written by or co-written by Will Carpenter. First track on the EP (and the debut single) is titled Midnight. It’s catchy, radio-friendly pop with soft vocals. Building to a rousing chorus, it’s the obvious choice for the single. The You Tube video for Midnight tells the tale of love and jealousy amongst circus folk. Clouds is a simple arrangement with sparse acoustic guitar and voice and is more in singer/songwriter territory. Lovely parental sentiments are expressed – clouds on water, sons and daughters, don’t you falter. Bring You Down returns to more familiar pop material, but still in thoughtful mode, with a slightly Coldplay feel. With a driving beat and rock guitar, Better Off is a heavier song – conceivably, heads could even be banged to this one. But we’re in the land of mellow California sunshine on Just To Get Through, with some nice harmonies. Someday is the final song and title track, with inventive percussive patterns, another rousing chorus and introspective lyrics – I feel like I’m living someone else’s life.

Good instrumentation, harmonies and arrangements pull the best from these songs. Ships Have Sailed are obviously not attempting to be trendy, and that always helps artists to have a longer career. The quality of the songs is the priority here – no tricks – just good craftsmanship and honesty. Their versatility also stands them in good stead, as they can go down different musical paths and grow.

Will Carpenter’s plan is to record a full-length album in 2014 involving collaborations with more producers and songwriters.  https://soundcloud.com/shipshavesailed

 

 

Slagg II and Freefalling Ninjas

Ed Purchla, aka 1700 monkey ninjas, is a man of many talents. As well as producing experimental electronic music under his monkey ninja persona, he is a digital artist and has also recorded some singer/songwriter material. You can get the full, immersive Ed Purchla experience by exploring his sounds and artwork plus delving into his range of merchandise, which includes t-shirts, bags, car stickers and jewellery.

Ed’s digital art, which is also used for the images in his 1700 monkey ninjas promotional videos, is a collection of abstract explosions of vivid colour, some of it chaotic – some of it beautifully symmetrical.

Electronic music is not just for dancing to these days. In fact, it never was, and there is a long and distinguished history of experimentation in this field.

I am intrigued by the more cerebral end of the spectrum. Rather than vainly struggling to work out how this track – Slagg II – has been achieved technically, I will try to describe my emotional response to it.

It starts off with quite a famous quote about art – well, that’s what art is innit, it’s you being free of all the world’s heaviness. Fans of the UK’s maestro of comic quotes, Karl Pilkington, and Ed is one of those fans, may recognise this as one of his most quirky observations. Bleeps, beats, distortion, keyboards, and percussive effects follow, as if a vast bank of electronic gizmos has exploded and an ocean floor dweller is sucking up the remains and spitting it out again. Snatches of EDM melody anchor the anarchy of staccato, jerky spasms, leading you down many corridors in a labyrinth without exit signs. This is the kind of track that compels you to put it on repeat until you’ve heard every twitch and tick – pulled out every thread.

Of course, it may not be your cup of tea.  Being free of all the world’s heaviness is subjective, after all. If your world is defined by a dance floor alone, you may not want your neural pathways zapped in this way. But if you do – you can bounce around for 3:31.

So, what other pieces of electronic wizardry has 1700 monkey ninjas produced? You Tube provides us with lots of examples of his output. Most of these tracks are so dense, with so much going on, you need 20 pairs of ears to hear everything. Some have spoken word samples, such as UStaytheF***outtaSYRIA, which has a U.S. military involvement in Syria theme and is one I particularly like. Ones with a lot of distortion may be a noise assault too far for some. One man’s poison and so on.

This is not background music that you’ll want to play all day. Some of it pins you to the wall, like a blast from white hot sound waves. Slagg II, in particular, introduces another element here – a sense of humour. It’s a lot of fun and makes me smile.

Tracks from 1700 monkey ninjas feel very free. There are no rules. It’s music without a safety net. Freefalling makes you free of all the world’s heaviness, but it’s not for the timid…

http://www.reverbnation.com/1700monkeyninjas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Film Review: Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Not to be confused with the 1969 musical remake starring Peter O’Toole in the lead role, this 1939 Oscar winner manages to be funny, sentimental, sad and uplifting over the course of its near two hour run time.

I caught it over the Easter weekend – the perfect time to see such film – and how fortunate I was because it’s yet another one of those notable movies of yesteryear that had so far escaped me.

Mind you, it’s not a film that’ll bring about a surge of adrenaline, so shelve it for another day if you’re up for some fist pumping action. Instead it’s a gentle character-led tale about the life and career of a teacher at a boys’ boarding school set in England.

The body of the movie is a memory so at the outset, we see the aged Mr Chipping (admirably played by Robert Donat) confined to his bed with a cold. His long career at Brookfield Pubic School is relayed to us in flashback and it begins in 1870 when we see the 20 year old Mr Charles Edward Chipping arrive for his first day as a teacher of Latin.

That first day is a bit shaky and the little rascals in his classroom give the poor idealistic new arrival a bit of a hard time. So he gets strict which earns him their respect but not their affection. But as the terms come and go and the years pass by, his relationship with his pupils improves and his position at the school gains importance when he is made senior master.

At one year’s end though, his high hopes of being appointed house master for the following year come to nothing and so to stop him from languishing in sorrow, the German teacher, Max Staefel (Paul Henreid), persuades old Chipping to join him on a walking holiday in his native Austria.

It is here that Chipping meets Kathy Ellis (the lovely Greer Garson), a forward thinking English woman who is also on holiday. Despite their obvious differences of character and age (she is about half his 50), they fall completely in love and marry.

Back in England, the new Mrs Chipping makes quite a stir at the school with her charming, friendly manner and her influence on ‘Chips’ as she calls him subsequently influences his ability to interact with the boys. Alas, tragedy arrives shortly after when his beloved wife dies in childbirth along with the baby but perhaps the silver lining (if one can find such a thing in so untimely a loss) is that her job was done. She made him a better teacher and a better man.

Devastated as he is (the entire school too), he throws himself into the only thing he has left. His work. And as the years pass and he becomes an eccentric but much loved fixture of the school, we see him enjoy a rapport with the boys that is quite unique. Indeed, he talks about teaching the sons and grandsons of many of his earlier pupils.

He reluctantly accepts retirement in 1914 but is such a part of the school that he remains on campus. However, with the war taking so many of the younger men off to fight he is called back to serve as headmaster – his lifelong dream and his wife’s prediction come true – albeit temporarily. Over the course of the next four years, he is saddened to read out the names of many former pupils and teachers who have died in battle, one of which was his friend and colleague Max Staefel, who had perished fighting on the German side.

He retires permanently in 1918 and dies fifteen years later, his last words summing up his sense of contentment.

The film had stiff competition at the Academy Awards that year from Gone With The Wind. Both films were nominated in the same seven categories (Outstanding Production, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Writing, Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Sound, Recording) but Donat beat Clark Gable to the Best Actor award. MGM’s southern epic would take five of the others while When Tomorrow Comes, a romantic drama starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer, took the award for Best Sound.

Donat was well deserving though. His performance is a perfectly judged progression of character and often quite moving. The fact that he ages 63 years over the course of the film is remarkable, not only in appearance but in manner.

The film is based on the 1934 novel of the same name by James Hilton and was directed by Sam Wood, whose credits include A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races and For Whom the Bell Tolls. It was shot on location in Repton, Derbyshire and at Denham Film Studios in Buckinghamshire. The man who captured those interior and exterior images so ably was one of Britain’s most successful cinematographers, Freddie Young whose expertise won him three Oscars for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan’s Daughter during a career that spanned more than fifty years.

In 1999, Goodbye, Mr. Chips was voted number 72 in the BFI’s Top 100 British Films poll.

It’s a beautiful film that if you haven’t yet caught is well worth a look.

Film Review: I Was Monty’s Double

Based on the book of the same name by M.E. Clifton James, this movie is less interesting than the true story it tells. Having said that, It’s still an exciting and enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half.

First the story.

After serving in World War I, Meyrick Edward Clifton James, an Australian by birth, took up acting. Music halls and theatres were his workshop. When the Second World War kicked off he volunteered in the British Army as an entertainer but instead of getting assigned to the Entertainments National Service Association, which would have seen him touring for the troops, he was posted into the Royal Army Pay Corps and eventually stationed in Leicester where his acting was limited to the Pay Corps Drama and Variety Group. Minor stuff indeed.

But James had an attribute that would elevate him onto the world’s stage and make him go down in history. He bared a uncanny resemblance to General Bernard Montgomery.

It was while appearing briefly in a show dressed as ‘Monty’ that he was spotted by a British Lieutenant-Colonel, J.V.B. Jervis-Reid, and with D-Day less than two months away, MI5 decided to take a risk on the resemblance and cooked up a plan to confuse the Germans.

James was invited to London to meet Lieutenant-Colonel David Niven (yes, that one) of the Army’s film unit on the pretext of appearing in a film. Once the officials were convinced with his likeness to Monty, he was told the real reason for his summons.

Operation Copperhead, would see James assigned to Montgomery’s staff in order that he may learn his speech and his mannerisms. James had to quit drinking and smoking and, having lost the middle finger of his right hand during the First World War, a prosthetic one was made for him.

This ruse was part of a wider deception known as Operation Bodyguard, which intended to confuse the Germans as to the exact date and location of an invasion. One of these deceptions was that an Allied invasion of Southern France (Operation Dragoon) would precede the D-Day landings. The objective was clear; to keep as much of the German Army away from Normandy as possible.

On 25 May 1944, less than two weeks before D-Day, James (as Monty) flew to Gibraltar on Winston Churchill’s private plane to attend a reception at the Govenor-General’s house and later on to Algiers for several public appearances. The Allies knew that German intelligence agents would spot this high-profile Allied commander and report his whereabouts to the German high command. And Montgomery appearing in North Africa, for talks about ‘Plan 303’ a (fake) plan to invade Southern France, meant he wasn’t concentrating on a possible invasion in the north.

James, who apparently did not enjoy the assignment due to the pressures of the objective, was then secretly flown to Cairo where he remained until Operation Overlord (the invasion of Normandy) was well under way.

Reports on the value of Operation Copperhead are unclear but suggest that it had little impact on the Germans. However, taken as part of the wider Operation Bodyguard, it was a resounding success. The Germans in Normandy were taken by surprise and there was a considerable delay in reinforcements reaching the area from the Calais region.

That’s the story.

Now for the film.

This 1958 John Mills vehicle follows the account fairly well. Mills, who is always worth watching, plays Major Harvey, the intelligence agent who sees ‘Monty’ on a London stage and devises the plan with the help of his boss Colonel Logan (Cecil Parker). M.E. Clifton James (playing himself) is doubtful he can pull off such a deception but is persuaded to anyway.

Under the disguise of a corporal, he spends several days at Montgomery’s headquarters to learn the general’s mannerisms and speech patterns and is then flown off to tour North Africa.

It’s all quite exciting and there’s a little humour injected into proceedings too as well as some nice tension. But towards the end, the film strays from the truth when there is a bungled kidnap attempt made on James once his job is done and he’s resting securely at a heavily guarded villa. Dramatic licence of course but still entertaining.

The film was directed by John Guillermin, who would go on to direct The Bridge at Remagen (1969) and The Towering Inferno (1974) among others and the story was adapted by Bryan Forbes, the acclaimed director, writer, producer and actor whose credits include Whistle Down the Wind (1961) and The Stepford Wives (1975).

All in, this is a great little film and it tells a terrific story. M.E. Clifton James must have had great courage to take on such a role and I’m glad the film remains to honour him as I’m not sure his story is that well known.

The Second World War is littered with these amazing tales of disinformation such as my previously written review, ‘The Man Who Never Was’ which concerned Operation Mincemeat. Some of the ruses dreamed up were (and still are) absolutely fantastic and the fact that the enemy fell for many of them, shows just how ingenious they were.