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so this isn't christmas part 2Jan 6, 2008 by garyL. The Word programme on my computer wants to make 'christ' begin with a capital letter C and when I change it it puts a wee red line under it. Like it’s saying “ahem, excuse me but our lord baby jebus is actually a lot more important than you’re making out”. Yes yes I was raised a good christian (ahhh, it did it again!) but you can’t force your capitals on me. Anyway this laptop is a direct result of some hard cold science so why is it, of all devices, bossing me about like some pamphlet wielding doom-sayer trying to grab my truant soul back from the brink of temptation into the ever loving bosom of the lord. OK so it’s just a ‘C’ but that’s where it starts. Ha. (I put the ha in there to represent that the above diatribe isn’t as serious as it pretends to be. I detest organised religion, not believers. As long as they don’t try and convert me.) Actually I’m reading a marvellous book at the moment called The Year Of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs. He went on a quest to do just that: adhere to every rule in the bible in both the old and new testaments for a year. He is from a secular background and sets about it in a very rational but open-minded way. It has illuminated me unexpectedly to a lot of the bible’s warmth and it has made me much more patient with the idea of Christianity (ha! Again! OK I’ll leave that one) and Judaism (OK just one more then) and religion as a whole. He also, however, has to live by the bible’s less than humane traits as well and this can make difficult reading. Still it is often moving and even funny but sometimes it’s just stomach churning and vile. Still it’s a step up for the likes of me who before only thought the worst about organised religion.
I digress… The next twenty albums in no particular order:
Thee More Shallows - Book Of Bad Breaks
Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Maps - We Can Create
Gallows – Orchestra Of Wolves
Girls Aloud – Tangled Up
Patrick Watson – Close To Paradise
Emma Pollock – Watch The Fireworks
Stephanie Dosen – A Lily For The Spectre
The National – The Boxer
Digitalism – Idealism
King Creosote – Bombshell
Sunset Rubdown – Shut Up I Am Dreaming
Justice – Cross
Panda Bear – Person Pitch
Biffy Clyro – Puzzle
Wheat – Every Day I Said A Prayer
Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam
Iron And Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog
Blonde Redhead – 23
Battles – Mirrored
I was also introduced to the quite incredible Arthur Russell this year. His 1994 album Another Thought is one of the best things I’ve heard. Sparse and strange yet warm and glorious. That’s the great thing about music: you can’t hear it all (although Sir John Peel tried) so you can always be surprised every day.
There was so much great music released in 2007 I couldn’t begin to make a comprehensive list. This is as lean as I can be. Thirty albums is certainly leaner than my list of last year but that is not to say this year was in any way worse for music. It gets more exciting every year.
Now films:
In no particular order:
Control
The Lives Of Others
The Counterfeiters
Once
Hot Fuzz
Superbad
Bee Movie
The Last King Of Scotland
Knocked Up
Eastern Promises
Ratatouille
Knocked up, Superbad and Hot Fuzz where my favourite comedies. Judd Apatow seems to be controlling the universe at present with his fingers all over next year’s Drillbit Taylor with Owen Wilson; Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story with John C Reilly; and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, staring our very own Russell Brand. Although when I say our very own it sounds like either I know him (I don’t) or I’m English (I’m not) but you know what I mean…
I thought Spaced was the best British TV comedy of the last ten years and that Shawn Of The Dead would be a tough one to top. Hot Fuzz turned out to be the best British comedy of the year and I shall fawn no further in case my love of Wright, Pegg and Frost spills out of your computer screens and falls unwelcome onto your tidy hands.
Control is an astonishing movie. Sam Riley is a magnificent Ian Curtis. People smarter, much smarter, than me have said this already so I’ll not gush. We used to be label mates when he was in 10,000 Things but we never met. I do not however have a career in acting to look forward to on the side, just check all previous SP videos for evidence of that. Sam Morton is in it too and is so good in every movie she’s in. If you haven’t seen In America then please, for godsake rent it, or download it, or get it streamed right into your brain hole if you have the new youPOD. Paddy Considine is in it too and they are the best two British actors in a very long time. Every detail of it is masterful down to the accents. Neither of them are from Dublin although both have flawless Dub brogues. Incidentally Considine co-wrote and stars in Dead Man’s Shoes which is a breathtaking, punch in the face of a thriller.
Speaking of great thriller (flawless segue way) Eastern Promises is quite brilliant. Another two of my favourites are in it: Vincent Cassel and Viggo Mortensen. Mortensen steals every scene he’s in though. Not least in a naked Russian Baths fight sequence that played out every man in the cinema’s worst nightmare in a vivid, bloody mess. Naked or not Mortensen filled every inch of the screen sometimes literally and deliberately by a David Cronenberg well aware anyone who dared to look would be mesmerised. So now I’m gay for Wright, Pegg, Frost and Mortensen. In case anyone is keeping score.
The Lives Of Others and The Counterfeiters share a similar pace and weight if not subject matter. The latter rendered me helpless on several occasions and as it was during one of my frequent solo outings to the cinema I had no ones hand to hold or eye to catch to at least divide the horror. Both of these are German made movies about periods of German history that until recently (Downfall I suppose) no German dared to make. They are both stunning.
Once is so bare and beautiful it’s hard to describe it. It was also a smash in the US where it took 10 million dollars at the box office. Yet it is so unlike any other film that had that type of success this year. Hand held cameras, the sparsest of dialogue, mostly preferring to drift off into overlaps of it’s own music. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova’s beautiful songs say all that needs to be said for the most part. The scenes that break your heart the most are the ones in which the camera catches one of the pair watching the other sing. A near perfect movie about impossible love.
As for the animated films Bee Movie is a classic. It just is. Wondrous, ridiculous and hilarious. I have been a fan of Jerry Seinfeld for years. Seinfeld was the best American sitcom ever. Bee Movie is full of Seinfeld’s patented puntastic, observational comedy. A joy. Ratatouille I didn’t have such high hopes for but it surprised me and I laughed like an imbecile most of the way through. Except the sad bits. During those I wept. Wept like a big bubbling baby.
CLICK TO READ PART 3
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