Category: Entertainment

Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go (released 2010) is in the science fiction dystopia category. Whilst that’s true, that description does not convey its spirit or its intent.

Alex Garland displayed great skill in adapting his screenplay from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel. The story is set in the 1970s in England, but with an imagined medical ‘success’ having taken place in the 1950s.

We enter the world of Hailsham House, an exclusive boarding school, where Tommy, Ruth and Kathy are friends. Tommy, a naïve boy struggling to fit in, is manipulated by Ruth into being with her, rather than Kathy whom he is really drawn to. In this first part, three young talented actors play these main characters, whose teenage and adult lives are portrayed by Andrew Garfield (Tommy), Keira Knightley (Ruth), and Carey Mulligan (Kathy).

Great emphasis is put on the students maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and producing artwork is given greater importance than academic subjects. A mystery surrounds the purpose of The Gallery, where much of this artwork is sent. Everyone knows that students from Hailsham House are ‘special’. A new teacher reveals that the students have one sole purpose in life. They have been cloned for organ harvesting, and their organs will be donated to members of the ‘ordinary population’ in order to extend their lives. Whilst still young adults, they’re destined to make their final donation and die, no one having survived their third donation.

When Tommy, Ruth and Kathy leave the confines of school, we see their inevitable future come to pass. There is no rebellion or attempts to run away. If the story had gone down that route, it would have suffered for it. Their responses are much more subtle than that. They try to stall the inevitable but that is all. In the end there is acceptance, albeit of the most melancholy kind.

This is not a political movie. It’s stripped down to basic human emotions and explores how we deal with the idea of mortality and our place in time. Cloning is an elegant plot device enabling these questions to be posed:  what is a soul, and what does it mean to be human?

As Tommy and Kathy finally have the relationship they should have had years before, being in love could be significant in terms of their soon-to-be organ donations. Rumors have always persisted that couples that could prove they were genuinely in love could be granted extra years of life before they were required to donate. Tommy theorizes that this is in connection to the artwork the students produce, and he thinks he has unlocked the secret of The Gallery. Tommy invests all his hope in his drawings, which he shows to his former teachers. He has to hope because hope is all he has. Trying to show that their love is ‘verifiable’ through the outpourings of his soul is a heartbreaking scene.

Muted colors give the film a period feel, and the cinematography for scenes shot on location at the coast are stunning. Its slow pace actually empathizes with a short life in a strange way. Like the characters, we, the audience, want to cling on as long as possible.

The three main leads are extremely impressive, but Andrew Garfield’s immersive performance particularly so – in fact, it’s quite astonishing.

Never Let Me Go’s triumph is in telling a desperately sad story, but also celebrating the human spirit. In the end, all we have is hope and love. And that’s what it means to be human.

 

 

Close Encounters with Alien Beats

Aliens and androids feature prominently on this six-track EP from EDM/Dubstep artist and producer, Eluusif.  It comes as no surprise that his biography presents an alter ego from another planet, although currently residing in London. All the pictures I have seen of him, including the cover of this latest release, show a rather sinister figure, wearing dark glasses and a face mask.

Released on 8th April, 2014, Aliens Do It Better is a self-produced record which fans of Krewella, Xilent, Nicky Romero, and Zedd are recommended to check out. Respected music blogs have been positive about Eluusif’s output, with intriguing promotional videos supporting the cause.

So, we have six blasts of electronica with vocals, mostly female and some male, launching with Hair Like Skrillex (featuring Adorah Johnson). Sounding like a Disney song interpreted by a Japanese pop act, it references the notorious haircut known as Skrillex. If you haven’t heard the word before, you will have seen photographs of celebrities who have adopted the style, defined by one shaven section of the head. The term originates from Skrillex, the DJ/Producer. This is actually a song about love, so the introduction of someone demanding hair like Skrillex is pleasingly surreal.

Talking of celebrities, Justin Bieber Is An Android is the next track. Eluusif claims that this song is not an insult to The Bieber, but rather a compliment, as androids are admired on his planet. Well, okay then. Oh, my god; does this mean there could be more Biebers rolling off the conveyor belt? Putting that alarming thought aside, punchy beats complement the robotic message. Reference is made to the fact that he drives the girls wild. Oh, yes.

The sentiments on  No, I  Don’t Wanna Be Your Facebook Friend will resonate with the thousands of people who have periodically shouted at their screen, no, I don’t wanna be your Facebook friend, I don’t wanna follow you on Twitter, no, I don’t want to see your f*****g video. These wonderfully brutal lyrics also rhyme ‘Twitter’ with ‘shitter’. How cathartic is that? A fun track with catchy, whoosh whoosh hooks and a vocal that sounds rather posh. And posh people swearing always sounds funny.

You Should Be Mine (Rework) is a more conventional pop offering, with a lighter vocal and instrumentation. I don’t like this one as much as the others, but it would please a dance crowd. I Need An Alien Tonight sounds like a track produced in Area 51. All the little green dudes get down. You Should Be Mine (Craniel Daig Mix) is the alternate version of track 4. Craniel Daig? An anagram of Daniel Craig – and why not. It’s been shaken and stirred into more of a dance track and I prefer the extra oomph.

Eluusif has carved out his own part of the universe with inventive ideas and layered production, and he’s not as sinister as he looks. Close encounters are recommended.


 

Film Review: Days of Wine and Roses

While attending the 1963 Academy Awards, Gregory Peck was (according to IMDB), totally convinced that his good friend Jack Lemmon would beat him to the Best Actor Oscar for his searing portrayal of an alcoholic in Days of Wine and Roses.

It was reading this snippet of trivia while researching my last review for To Kill a Mockingbird that led me to this movie. I think it also highlights how unjust the awards are because to choose Peck’s performance over Lemmon’s is like saying David Rudisha is a better runner than Mo Farah or Usain Bolt. Some Hollywood icon (whose name escapes me right now) once stated that, in order to judge which actor has given the best performance of the year, surely they all need to playing the same role.

But la de da! That’s the way it is.

Anyhoo, the snippet led to me to the movie and so I watched it. And, to quote Dr Sam Beckett from the beginning of each episode of Quantum Leap – “Oh Boy!”

Days of Wine and Roses tell the story of Joe Clay (Jack Lemmon), a skilled PR man who can booze with the best of them. He has to, for it seems to go hand in hand with his job. But what he really is, is an alcoholic.

One day he meets and falls in love with the pretty secretary of a client, Kristen Arnasen (played by Lee Remick), who happens to be a teetotaller. Her weakness, she admits on their first date, is chocolate, but that changes once Joe introduces her to Brandy Alexanders – a brandy based cocktail with creme de cocoa.

The pair get married and soon have a child but Joe’s drinking worsens and because he doesn’t want to come home after a hard day’s work to spend a quiet, sober evening with his dull, “shushing” wife, she feels pressured into “loosening up” over a few drinks with him. And from there, their downward spiral into full-blown alcoholism is rapid and full. Suddenly, what started out as a slightly quirky romance film (albeit one with a subtle underlying sense of doom) becomes a powerful and bleak tale of addiction and ruin.

The film was adapted by JP Miller, who wrote the original Emmy nominated teleplay for Playhouse 90 in 1958. Producer Martin Manulis (also from the Playhouse 90 team) thought the story would make a good movie and so with Blake Edwards (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther) in the director’s chair, Charles Bickford (A Star is Born, The Big Country) and Jack Klugman (12 Angry Men, Quincy M.E.) giving solid acting support and Henry Mancini providing the music, they made the movie partly on location in San Francisco and then set out on the road for the Oscars.

It would win only one Academy Award for Best Original Song, Mancini (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) but it got four other nominations – Best Actor (Lemmon), Best Actress (Remick), Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.

Days of Wine and Roses is most definitely not a feel-good movie but it will make you think about your own drinking habits, however briefly. It’s engrossing film drama though and I’m not at all surprised to read that it is required viewing in many alcoholic and drug rehabilitation clinics across the U.S. It’s that real.

Film Review: To Kill a Mockingbird

If I was allowed just one word to sum up this movie it would be, “beautiful”. For it truly is. I caught it recently on TV (mercifully without those dangerously irritating commercial interruptions), and as the end credits rolled, a feeling of what I can only describe as ‘euphoria for being alive’ came over me. I’m sure you know what I mean – when you behold something so incredibly worthy of our world that it just makes you glad to be here, be it a clear night sky riddled with a billion stars or a toddler’s first steps towards your beckoning arms, smiling a smile that just melts your heart.

What possibly makes the film so beautiful is the way that it’s told through the eyes of six year old Scout Finch (Mary Badham) who, together with her older brother Jem (Phillip Alford), lives in the fictional ‘tired old town’ of Maycomb, Alabama with their widowed father Atticus (Gregory Peck) sometime during the Great Depression.

I shall refrain from giving away too much of the plot but the meat of the story can be divided into two parts. Firstly, the children, together with a visiting boy named Dill Harris (John Megna) who comes to Maycomb every summer to stay with his aunt, are fascinated to learn the truth about one of their neighbours, the mysterious and reclusive ‘Boo’ Radley (played by Robert Duvall in his big screen debut). This involves lots of childish antics like spying through the neighbour’s windows and knocking on their front door then running away to hide. All perfectly charming kid’s stuff and you can’t help but love the little rascals for it.

The second part concerns their father – a town lawyer – and his defence of Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), a black man accused of raping a young white woman. With the action taking place sometime in the 1930s at a time when black people were viewed in the town to be inferior than whites, things basically don’t look good for Tom. But Atticus, who believes that all people should be treated equally and fairly, is determined to seek the truth even if it sets the town against him.

For me, the greatness of the film lies in the way it weaves this second storyline (which even though it’s the business of the adults, we, the audience, still receive via the eyes and ears of Scout) so seamlessly with the first. And it’s this innocent person’s perspective of not fully comprehending the reason why things are happening the way they are, that gives the film its power. Racism really doesn’t make any sense.

Of course, such greatness on screen is born out of great writing and To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee’s 1961 Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The book itself is a masterpiece and has since become a modern classic of American literature and Robert Mulligan (director) together with Horton Foote (screenwriter) did one of the best jobs in the history of cinema of turning a novel into a film.

Foote won the Oscar for his screenplay and Peck won the only Oscar of his long and distinguished career for his sublime portrayal of Atticus Finch. The film’s third and final Oscar win was for its Black and White Art Direction-Set Direction. There were five more nominations for it at the 1963 Academy Awards including Best Picture (Alan J. Pakula), Best Supporting Actress (Mary Badham – who at 10 years old held the record for the youngest nominee in this category until Tatum O’Neal won for Paper Moon in 1973), Best Director (Mulligan), Best Cinematography (Russell Harlan) and Best Music Score (Elmer Bernstein). Bernstein’s music is effortlessly moving and the black and white cinematography serves well at placing the film in the time it was set. Of course, there are numerous other awards and honours the film has garnered over the years and to list them would require more space than I have here but perhaps the most significant is this –

The American Film Institute named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th Century. I find this quite remarkable when you think of all the gun-toting, macho types that typify a movie hero these days. Well deserved of the honour he is too. And well deserved was Peck’s Oscar. According to IMDB, he nailed his 9 minute summation speech in one take and if you’ve seen it, you’ll know it’s a seminal courtroom monologue.

On second thoughts, maybe my one word to sum this film up would be, “perfect”. For in cinematic terms, that’s what it is. But there’s been so much praise about this film since its release in December 1962 that a few more words from me mean very little. Therefore, I will let one of the film’s original tag lines have the last word.

If you have read the novel, you will relive every treasured moment…If not, a deeply moving experience awaits you!

Book Review: Atlantis and The Silver City by Peter Daughtrey

Although I found Peter Daughtrey’s book interesting, I have little knowledge of the subject area, while a friend of mine has a firm interest in classical history. Given his intrigue in the book I thought it best to offer him the opportunity to review it. The following is Robin Temple’s review of Atlantis and The Silver City.

“Atlantis and the Silver City” is Peter Daughtrey’s account of his theory of the location of the mythical land of Atlantis. Born in England, the author now lives in the South of Portugal, pursuing his lifelong interest in ancient civilizations. A serendipitous find in a local museum in the Algarve sparked his hypothesis that the seabed of Southwest Iberia once formed the cultivated plains of Atlantis, the Northern mountains of which still exist in the Algarve. Based on the descriptions in the texts of the greek philosopher Plato, Daughtrey identifies Silves, as the eponymous capital of Atlantis.

The book is hard to categorise: it is partly a report, partly an exposition of the author’s hypothesis, interspersed with fictional accounts of the Atlantean past – akin to a docu-drama in book form. As you might expect, this mix of styles offers an unusual and riveting read. The author might not be a trained historian nor archaeologist, and certainly does not pretend his book is an academic text. Instead, from the word go you are taken on a journey of discovery, based somewhere between fiction and fact, and you are sure to be entertained.

It is a vibrant collection of matches between his interpretation of clues in Plato’s text and the landscape in Southwestern Iberia.  However, serious readers should approach with care and skepticism, as much of the supporting arguments come from like-minded laymen and the book does not relate the core hypothesis comprehensively to the academic literature. Much of the matches identified by Daughtrey are based on his correction of supposed mistranslations of Plato’s text. It is not necessary to be a expert in classical languages to imagine that the textual history of two thousand year old manuscripts leaves much for debate, even more so the interpretation and translation of single words. This uncertainty also allows for many different possible interpretations of the clues.

“Atlantis and the Silver City” should be read as the account of someone having fun unearthing clues in a historical detective story. Daughtrey’s writing style is very satisfying to read and he does not distance himself from the reader by using overly complex phrases or terminology. His use of different writing forms keeps the pace of the book interesting and the reader engaged, making it a good book to read even if you have no prior knowledge of the subject area. As a skeptic of the topic unfortunately Daughtrey failed to persuade me of the true location of Atlantis, but perhaps other readers might come to a different conclusion.

Synth Noir Confessions from Electro Duo

Confession is the name of the game and the title of the latest offering from the duo, no:carrier. Released on 24th February, 2014, this 6-track EP is the third ‘taster’ for the full length album, Wisdom & Failure, which will follow in April or May. Confession  gives more value when listening to it all the way through rather than picking out individual tracks, especially as it contains three different versions of one song. Allow it to permeate your brain.

This is a long distance musical partnership for the two German members, with the duo’s chief songwriter and producer, Chris Wirsig based in San Francisco and vocalist, Cynthia Wechselberger living in Germany. Chris and Cynthia have been collaborating for a number of years.

Described as Electro Noir Pop and Synth Pop, Confession contains three new remixes plus three new songs. Three mixes of the track, Confession appear on the EP. That’s a lot of confessing – what on earth did they do? Confession – Single Mix – has a melancholy vocal juxtaposed with upbeat electro pop instrumentation and fun plonky keyboard.  Confession – 1st In 14 Mix has a dreamier arrangement and vocal.  Confession – Inspired By F.P. Mix is the third and final version and my favourite of the three. With a percussive dance beat and staccato keyboards, it is somehow more dramatic and darker.

Hero to a Fool is the most conventional-sounding pop song of the EP. Wechselberger’s vocal is quite melancholy as she delivers an indictment of celebrity culture: we’re living in a world where the dumbest man can look like a hero to a fool. And Sometimes – RMX 2011B is a remix of a previously released song first heard on their debut album.  With dark keyboards and vocal delivery, I can hear echoes of Depeche Mode.

My favourite of all six tracks is the final one. A Bright Room is, unfortunately, the shortest offering, only lasting 2:19. It’s distorted and menacing and described by the duo as experimental, with surreal lyrics.

I’ve never come across a band name with a colon in it before, although apparently there is a Scottish electro-pop band called  : ( and it’s pronounced Colon Open Bracket.  The important thing is that Confession will please fans of this genre. It’s intelligent and dark and reveals more on each play.

 https://soundcloud.com/nocarriermusic/sets/confession-ep