CDs/DVDs
theartsdesk
Blur: 21Bruce DessauThe recent closure of Word magazine has been seen by some as linked to the demise of "Fifty Quid Man". Who can afford such a wallet-frightening splurge these days on the kind of music the monthly's writers wrote so eloquently about? Well, have a chat with your friendly bank manager because this lavish tribute to the winners of the Britpop long game retails at £134.99 and is just about worth it. Every stage of Blur’s career is here – apart from, annoyingly, one their recent new tracks, "The Puritan" – charting the band's evolution from pre-Madchester incarnation Seymour to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As a refreshing change from Disney-style hyper-tech 3D animated blockbusters, A Cat in Paris offers a modest story of adventure and intrigue on a pleasingly human, as well as feline, scale. The titular character is a faintly sinister black-and-orange tomcat called Dino, an accomplished lizard-hunter who lives in a Parisian apartment with Zoe and her mother Jeanne. Or at least he does by day. After dark, he slips out onto the rooftops and window ledges of Paris, and becomes the accomplice of Nico, the notorious cat burglar. Writers Jacques-Rémy Girerd and Alain Gagnol (who also co- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The sacred word 'om' is spoken in different ways according to its context. Elongated, it can be stretched over multiple syllables. As a musical unit, OM work with building blocks that are similarly minimal, yet drawn out for maximum effect. And like the origins of their name, their heady, psychedelic music is heavily indebted to cultures which lie to the east.California’s OM were originally vocalist/bassist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius. Both used to be in drone/metal outfit Sleep. After a late-2007 five-hour live set in Jerusalem, Hakius left and was replaced with Emil Aros. Although Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Brian Fallon, The Gaslight Anthem’s heart-on-sleeve frontman, would be the first to tell you that there’s nothing complicated to it: big songs with tons of heart; love and death and the last light of fading youth, all to the accompaniment of your favourite songs on the radio. Inspired in no small part by hometown heroes (let’s get the Springsteen references out of the way early, shall we?), the New Jersey band’s major-label debut ramps up the big rock choruses, but retains an intimacy through its wistful lyrics and Fallon’s bruised vocal delivery.Lead single “45” delivers a typically anthemic Read more ...
Ismene Brown
No matter how many war films come out about unbelievable suffering or astonishing heroism (and there are several around just now), there will always be more stories untold, hidden unlikely saints, overshadowed because some bigger movie did the job already. Schindler’s List did sterling work to lionise a “good” German; Agnieszka Holland’s In Darkness compellingly brings to light a Polish sewer-worker who concealed 10 Jews from the Germans for 14 months underground.Holland doesn’t put a halo around Leopold “Poldek” Socha - when we first see him he is burgling a house, his potato face hard and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Occasionally sounds from the dance underground come blasting into the wider pop world through sheer zest. It’s not that these tunes veer from the essential clubland blueprint of simply keeping the dancefloor full – as opposed to rock’n’pop’s focus on songs and melody – but that their ebullience makes them irresistible to a wider audience than was ever anticipated. Think of The Prodigy, Chase & Status or Dizzee Rascal’s “Bonkers” and now add Sleepin’ Giantz to the list.Sleepin’ Giantz do not have major-label backing so may not be thrust immediately into the wider limelight but, musically, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After his über-memorable performance at Her Majesty’s jubilee concert, the next step on Sir Elton John’s journey through 2012 is just as arresting, but less likely to be dusted off at such conventional occasions. In fact, it’s hard to see how he could even perform his new album outside a club setting. Good Morning to the Night could have been a colossal misfire. It’s not. It’s spiffy.The story of its genesis doesn’t need repeating in detail. Sir Elton heard and liked Australian electro-dance duo Pnau, scooped them up for his management portfolio and offered access to the masters of his early Read more ...
Nick Levine
There's something about Frank Ocean that sets him apart from other male R&B singers. It's not the letter he wrote on his personal blog last week revealing that his first love was a man. It's his songwriting: Ocean sketches out a scene with economy and aplomb, then illustrates with indelible detail.Ocean's stint with the Odd Future collective, home to several controversial but verbally dextrous rappers, will have sharpened his pencil. But he's clearly a natural storyteller and a keen observer anyway. See how he skewers the lifestyles of "Super Rich Kids" with a single line: "Too many Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Massive commercial success usually buys an actor the right to bring a pet project to fruition. The Artist had not yet conquered the planet when The Players was cooked up. But its release in the UK – simultaneously in cinemas and on DVD, which says it all – is of note mainly because it features Jean Dujardin. Teamed with Gilles Lellouche, the two stubbly middle-aged roués explore the corridors and back passages of playing away, French style.The film’s original title is less euphemistic: Les infidèles is an adultery palimpsest whose original French poster (pictured right) caused a storm in a PC Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The first thing that strikes you is the voice. At once coarse and warm, like the creak of the stairs of your childhood home as it settles in at night, Meursault’s Neil Pennycook sounds like a man with more than a few stories to tell. Of course it helps that, instrumentation-wise, Something for the Weakened is one of those musical "progressions" which sees the band abandon the programmed beats that punctuated earlier recordings in favour of a more conventional sound that knows when to play it sparse and when to swell, filling out beautiful melodies that top the five-minute mark in places. But Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Once upon a time – six years ago - there was “nu rave” and it was immediately taken to pieces as a media construct and trashed. Fair enough, it was, but then so was Britpop and some people are still crapping on about that a decade and a half later. At least nu rave plugged in some whacky synths and psychedelic attitude. Such grumbles aside, Van She, named after frontman Matt Van Schie, were and are four Australians who hooked into the scene that the media called “nu rave”. No-one involved but The Klaxons (briefly) embraced the term. Then again, British punks didn’t embrace that term either, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The great Spanish surrealist film-maker Luis Buñuel was 72 when he made The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie but it is as madcap a piece of weirdness as ever he came up with. It also won him the 1972 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. One of the great things about Buñuel is that, while his films are unhinged, dipped deep in artsy satire and opaque avant-garde concepts, they remain supremely watchable entertainment, often very funny.Discreet Charm stars Fernando Rey as ambassador of the fictional Republic of Miranda and involves the foiled attempts by he and five friends to dine together. As the Read more ...