Tag: entertainment

Woeful and Roses by M.K. Aston: A Review

Collections of short stories are a difficult thing to get right without coming across as pretentious and trying to bridge the gap between poetry and novels, but I’m happy to say that M. K. Aston has certainly cured my usual aversion to them. Each story offers a different take on the ‘twist’, which is a style that I have always loved although, once again, they are difficult to get right. As a reader it is like a form of abuse, eagerly awaiting the twist and knowing that it is going to shock and appall you, but wanting it anyway; Aston delivers this beautifully.

Each story is quite different and some even feel like they are written by a completely different author, but what they all have in common is that final twist and the subtle study of human nature. This is a subject that I could read an unlimited amount of books on, because it is so varied and so captivating and through the different styles of writing Aston really taps into this, offering a very realistic collection of stories.

Woeful and Roses opens with a story that sweeps you off your feet and into your imagination from the word go. Written through the eyes of an elderly man who we can all relate to – although we might not admit to it – End of the Line offers a realistic portrayal of the inner workings of the mind and the final, jaw-dropping twist at the end prepares readers for this style of writing. Simply put, don’t take the narrative for granted; all is not what it seems.

As with any short story collection there are always some I love and some I could take or leave. Portrait of an Angel is definitely the former and utterly heartbreaking. Although there were some seemingly unnecessary details that didn’t really add anything to the story, ultimately it all adds to the build-up and this is a very difficult thing to create. There were also some moments in other stories where the style didn’t match the rest of the story, but these were such small details that they don’t affect the overall telling of the story. I couldn’t pinpoint my absolute favourite story as they all offer so much, but Finders Weepers, Déjà Clue and Greetings from Saint Christopher were the three that truly resonated with me because they tapped into realistic fears and were told in such a personable manner.

The overall style of the book is difficult to pin down as some stories, such as Queasy Like Sunday Morning are quite different to the others, but this story in particular offered a nice break from the more serious or heartbreaking narratives and that is really needed in this type of collection. It is always difficult to review this type of book without giving away too much and ruining it for future readers. Suffice to say: it is well worth a read, but prepare for some wide-eyed-hand-over-mouth moments!

Arc & Stones Roll Out the Blues

<!–
google_ad_client = “ca-pub-6469969007044671”;
/* Anne Iredale */
google_ad_slot = “4931800784”;
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 90;
//–>

Arc & Stones is a four-man band from buy viagra in canada New York City that likes their rock on the bluesy side. Comparisons have been made to such luminaries of the genre as Kings of Leon and The Black Keys. In February of 2013, they released their debut EP with the simple title of Arc & Stones EP. Their first live show was in September of 2012 and they have gained a reputation as a good band to see live.

Containing five tracks, their EP kicks off with Silence, which instantly hooked me with its no messing rock, bluesy vocal from singer, Dan Pellarin and its sing-along chorus. It’s my favourite song out of the five. Say Goodbye follows, beginning with just vocal and piano before the rest of the band starts rocking. Let Me Down promises much with the melancholy opening notes on piano and acoustic guitar in what is a sparser contribution from the band, but I find it the least inventive track. She’s Mine takes us to what they do so well – dirty blues bubbling up from the swamps; it’s the heaviest song on the EP. Rise is the final track, a song that builds and builds, containing pleasing guitar work and a rousing chorus.

If you like your rock without frills or fuss, this is for you. There’s enough musicianship to keep you interested and it’s good to know this kind of rock is alive and well in an up and coming band.

The band is also crowdfunding their 2nd album here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1229045028/arc-and-stones-2nd-release
Streaming link: https://soundcloud.com/arc-stones

Websites:
Official Website: www.arcandstones.com
Bandcamp: http://arcandstones.bandcamp album.com//arc-stones-ep
Facebook: www.facebook.com/arcandstones
Twitter: @arcandstones
Video links:
“Let Me Down” Official Music Video –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiPj5b0NAXA&list=HL1365693750&feature=mh_lolz

“Say Goodbye” Official Music Video –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCAolOkB7_A

“Silence” Official Music Video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a49ENUCqaFU (Preview)
Artist contact: J.R. Rees – The Entity Inc. – joseph.rees@yahoo.com
(general management)

Press contact: james@independentmusicpromotions.com

Aurganic is a Dynamic Duo

<!–
google_ad_client = “ca-pub-6469969007044671”;
/* Anne Iredale */
google_ad_slot = “4931800784”;
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 90;
//–>

From Toronto/NYC, this “alternative/electronic duo” likes to experiment.

Its two members are Leo Pisaq (synths, keys, guitars and programming) and Michael Kossov (vocals, guitars, bass, keys and programming). They have been compared to Massive Attack, Incubus, Radiohead and Muse and you can hear echoes of all those bands at times throughout this album. The duo also likes to collaborate and certain artists ‘guest’ on different tracks. Titled Deviations (released 24th September, 2013), the intriguing album cover promises something cerebral and that’s what we get.

The opening track, called Choices (featuring Joel Goguen on vocals), grows on me with each play. Its promotional video consists of different narratives that mainly focus on a group of teenage friends and the choices they make, amidst peer pressure, with reference to bullying, alcohol and recreational drug taking. Erasing eyes, mouth and ears in different characters symbolises their struggle to follow their own path.

Waking Trials has interesting dark lyrics, whereas Lucid is a love song with lyrics that would stand alone as a poem. Its instrumentation doesn’t get in the way of a delicate vocal. Paradigm has a catchy tune with hopeful lyrics, contrasted by The Lost and the Found, about a relationship going sour. A jazzy bass line introduces us to this beautiful, plaintive song that builds and builds. Complex phrasing carries more poetic lyrics in Outcast.

Southbound is a long complicated track at over 7 minutes and probably the most ambitious song on the album. Deviations, the title track, is a pleasing wind down to the album – a chilled, keyboard led instrumental. These are the outstanding tracks for me; four other songs make up the track list.

Some songs may take a few plays to really get under your skin, but these two guys are well worth the effort.

Stream “Deviations” at Bandcamp –

Watch the new video for “Choices” –  (Preview)
Streaming links:
https://soundcloud.com/aurganic,
http://aurganic.bandcamp.com/album/deviations
Music videos:”Choices” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J0ZVec4GbI
“Pleasure Addict” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33o_wIHEajY (Preview)
Artist contact: info@aurganicmusic.com
Press contact: james@independentmusicpromotions.com

Classic TV Review: Colditz

A consequence of writing last month’s article about the 1970’s TV show, The Aphrodite Inheritance is that I’ve found myself pondering nostalgically over what else my parents would have sat down to of an evening once us kids were tucked up in bed. What else might they have watched that I was too young for that I would now find enthralling? The answer is, the more I delve the more I find. And the amazing thing with modern access to information is that it’s so easy to discover. A simple Internet search brought a flood of memories back with opening titles I’d only glimpsed before through the balustrades as I reluctantly made my way upstairs to my room and theme tunes that I’d heard only from afar as I lay in the dark waiting for sleep to whisk me away to some childhood dreamland.

One such show was Colditz, a gritty WWII drama co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios. It originally aired between 1972 and ’74 with 28 episodes over two seasons and I well remember the opening sequence and the music. But it was on at bedtime and I never got to watch it. Of course there’s a very good chance that had I been permitted to watch it, I wouldn’t have understood what it was all about anyway but that’s the beauty of rediscovering things years later and I have to say – I’m extremely glad I have. Because it’s terrific television.

For those of you unfamiliar with the name Colditz, it was the prisoner-of-war camp in Nazi Germany during the Second World War and the place where Allied officers were sent if they were pains in the neck, i.e. prone to repeatedly escape from other camps. It was designated Oflag IV-C (Oflag being short for Offizierslager which means “officers camp”) and was situated in a thousand year old castle on a rocky outcrop overlooking the town of Colditz in Saxony. Its outer walls were seven feet thick and protecting it on one side was a sheer drop of two hundred and fifty feet to the Mulde river below. The Nazis considered it to be escape-proof but history tells us otherwise.

The first three episodes of this 50 minute show introduce three of the central characters and their subsequent capture by the Germans early in the war. Capt. Pat Grant (Edward Hardwicke), Flt. Lt. Simon Carter (David McCallum) and Lt. Dick Player (Christopher Neame) prove themselves to be problematic prisoners for the Nazis by their numerous attempts to escape. They are therefore finally sent to Germany’s maximum security facility where “escape is impossible”. The fourth episode finally takes us to Colditz after the capture of Flt. Lt. Phil Carrington (Robert Wagner) and from then on the series deals with the relationships between prisoners of various nationalities and their German captors as well as the prisoners’ constant attempts to escape. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Great Escape, it’s a bit like that only not as spectacular but a good deal grittier and more realistic.

Indeed, the technical consultant on the series was Major Pat Reid (the character portrayed by Edward Hardwicke being based on him) who was in real life the British Escape Officer at Colditz. He was one of the few who actually managed to successfully escape from the castle and after the war he went on to write about his experiences in two best-selling books which in turn would go on to be the basis of a film (The Colditz Story directed by Guy Hamilton in 1955), this TV show and a popular board game in the early ’70s. The majority of the events depicted in the series have some basis in reality and while all character names are fictitious, many of them are based, albeit loosely, on actual people. It therefore gives the show a very “real” feel.

This accuracy in the writing together with generally superb performances from all the actors is what makes this TV show one of the most riveting I’ve seen in a long time. Jack Hedley who plays Lt. Col. John Preston, the Senior British Officer and therefore the man who assumes full responsibility for the British prisoners does a fine job with his role. His stoicism and command of his men is a thing of beauty as is his respect for their wishes and duties. His relationship with the camp Kommandant (masterfully played by Bernard Hepton) is wonderfully multi-layered and as such, a very interesting one to see evolve when the two men share the screen.

But in all honesty, I nitpick by naming certain actors. The entire ensemble is spot on. The scripts are intelligent and always within the realms of reality thereby easily impressing upon the viewer how life would have been for those military men forced to wait out the war behind lock and key far from their homes and loved ones.

Gerard Glaister, who together with Brian Degas created the show, was a flyer in the RAF during the war and would go on to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his duties. Originally training as an actor at RADA, he would draw on his wartime experiences many times throughout his career as writer/producer with a number of other TV shows set during and after the Second World War. One of these was yet another series I remember glimpsing the opening titles to as I trudged reluctantly upstairs to bed – Secret Army and I may well review that at some point in the near future. I caught one fragmented episode on YouTube and loved it.

With today’s TV schedules crammed full of inane “follow some weird individual with a camcorder and make a reality TV star out of them” nonsense (there are exceptions of course with some very good series currently produced), I find it a refreshing change to seek out the programmes my parents would have tuned into. Turns out they had some pretty good stuff to watch. It also explains why they insisted on me being in bed at a certain time.

And there I was thinking they simply wanted me to get a good night’s sleep. Early to bed and early to rise…yeah whatever!

 

 

 

Film Review: Carve Her Name with Pride

This 1958 British movie set during the Second World War tells the story of the courageous Special Operations Executive agent, Violette Szabo. It’s based on R.J. Minney’s book of the same name which is itself based on fact.

Violette’s parents were a French mother and an English taxi-driver father who had met during World War I. She was born Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell in Paris on 26 June 1921 and that’s where she spent her early years. Some time later the family moved to London where Violette attended Brixton Secondary School until she was fourteen. She found work as a hairdressing assistant and then as a department store sales assistant.

The movie doesn’t cover that early part of her life but it picks it up around this time, when she was a young woman working in London. It was on 14 July 1940 that she met Etienne Szabo, an officer in the Free French Army, at the Bastille Day parade in London and after a whirlwind romance, the couple were married just 42 day later on 21 August.

Their happiness seemed complete when Violette became pregnant with their daughter, Tania, but then Etienne was sent to North Africa where he died at the Battle of El Alamein in October ’42. He never saw his child.

It may have been for reasons of revenge or simply because she felt she had to do her bit for the war effort in the hope that her husband’s death wouldn’t have been in vain but whatever the reason, some time after receiving this tragic news Violette agreed to work for the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

She underwent intense training in everything from weaponry and explosives to cryptography and unarmed combat and on 5 April 1944 with little Tania tucked up in bed under the roof of her parents’ house, she was sent on her first mission into German-occupied France. Together with an SOE colleague, her task was to reorganise a resistance network that had been broken up by the Nazis and under the code name “Louise”, which also happened to be her nickname, she led the reformed group into blowing up a railway viaduct. Despite being picked up and questioned by a suspicious Gestapo, she was released and managed to return to England on 30 April. Mission accomplished. She’d proved herself to be courageous, capable and reliable.

Unfortunately, her second mission wouldn’t go quite so well. She was flown into central France on 7 June ’44, the day after D-Day, with the task of coordinating the activities of the local Maquis to sabotage German communication lines to aid the Allied invasion of Normandy. She was riding in a car that came upon an unexpected roadblock and after a brief running gun fight, during which she remained behind to allow her Resistance accomplice to escape, she was captured and taken for interrogation to Limoges.

Refusing to give up any information, she was transferred to Gestapo headquarters in Paris for further interrogation and torture but she remained uncooperative to the Germans and was moved to Ravensbrück concentration camp in August ’44. There she endured hard labour and malnutrition. Having been reunited in Paris with two recently caught fellow agents whom she had befriended during their initial training, Lilian Rolfe and Denise Bloch, the three women were executed by SS firing squad in February 1945. Violette was just 23 years old. Her body was cremated in the camp’s crematorium. The film ends with her daughter Tania, accompanied by her grandparents to Buckingham Palace, accepting the George Cross from the King.

As a movie, it’s perky and, in the right places gripping. Director Lewis Gilbert, whose career spanned six decades and included titles like Reach for the Sky (1956), Sink the Bismarck! (1960), Alfie (1966), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Educating Rita (1983) does a great job in pacing the action. Virginia McKenna who plays Szabo in a BAFTA nominated role, really got her teeth into the character and spent weeks training physically for the part. She manages to portray Szabo with a realism that leaves you feeling terribly sad as the end credits roll and yet so thankful to her and all those other individuals who gave their help and in many cases, their lives, to defeat Nazi Germany.

I remember (albeit a little vaguely now) what I was doing when I was 23 years old and it certainly wasn’t dodging bullets, blowing up viaducts and having my body scarred by torture. If you’ve never seen this movie or heard of Violette Szabo, then I recommend you check it out. She was a true heroine and paid the ultimate price for the risks she took but her memory will live on.

Modern Book Review: “Bright Young Things” by Scarlett Thomas (2001)

Bright Young Things is the high concept story of a group of young people who respond to an ad for “bright young things” who are wanted “for a big project”, and who all mysteriously wake up in a house on a remote island, with no recollection as to how, or why, they are there.

In Part One we are introduced to the characters one by one. They are – Anne, a girl of a nervous disposition with a sheltered life and not sure of what to do next in life; Jamie, a mathematician who is haunted by numbers and looking for his next challenge (What’s the square root of everything? Nothing.”; Thea, who works in a nursing home and is also become tired with her lot in life; Bryn, a petty drug dealer who does freelance photography; Emily, a “bright young thing” who is conventionally attractive and ends up working for an escort agency; Paul, a vegetarian workaholic who is on the verge of quitting, and for the sheer thrill, is planning on releasing a virus in the near future.

A little is said about how each person came to the point of travelling all the way to Edinburgh for an interview for a job about which they know nothing. At least on the surface, they seem to have little in common, which makes their discovering themselves trapped together in the middle of nowhere all the more bewildering.

Of course, their first instinct is to wonder what could possibly have happened to them, the general consensus being that the interview people drugged them, for whatever reason, and dropped them off here. But as they explore, the house is well stocked with supplies and a sign saying “PLEASE. MAKE YOURSELVES AT HOME”.

However, it is not long until it becomes apparent that, rather than trying to escape immediately, the young people start talking about all the various things they’re into when it comes to “pop culture” (taking place in 1999, many of the pop culture references will perhaps be lost on people of a similar age today). Some – Thea particularly – object to resorting to discussing lowbrow entertainment such as pop music and soap operas, and being sarcastic all the time – indeed most of the time, being ironic is more important than being genuine – but with otherwise such contrasting backgrounds, the “bonding” effect of their conversation is surprising.

The superficiality of their conversation – discussing soap plots for pages at a time – is potentially off-putting, but as the “bonding” goes on into their first night there, the superficial eventually leads into the meaningful, with deep and dark secrets coming out into the open, mostly with the help of a drunken game of “Truth or Dare”.

Events soon take a drastic sinister turn, when they decide to call it a night and stumble back to their beds; one of them goes exploring in the attic and there finds a dead body; someone who, presumably only died a short time ago, and who must have brought them all there in the first place. It is only at this point in the story that they all seriously contemplate how to make an escape, and after a few of them have varying degrees of breakdown, along with more soul-searching, they eventually hatch a plan to build a boat and send the dead body away with a note asking for their rescue. After that, their future is, seemingly, left entirely up to fate.

Bright Young Things is largely built upon inner dialogue, where each character contemplates what’s going on, and outer dialogue, which is itself built largely upon the pop culture – and the trend for self-conscious affectation – of the time. The author, Scarlett Thomas, alludes to this in the introduction, saying that “The characters in Bright Young Things don’t know they are in a book, but they do know that they are in a story”.

Basically, the whole unlikely scenario the young people find themselves in is dealt with by treating it like a random occurrence in everyday life, which each character treats like a “story”. Even if many of the references now seem out of date, its use in aiding the “story” of the young people in this bizarre situation seems more appropriate.

Simply substitute any pop culture reference in the story for a more up-to-date one, and the same idea will still apply; this story can be seen as a satire of modern culture, or simply a survival story, most likely, it is probably meant to be both at the same time.