Thursday 24 December 2009

Maybe I’m Amazed: Watching a Beatle.

I went to the O2 in London last night to see Sir Paul McCartney perform. Not all that surprising in itself, after all, he is Paul McCartney, and I am Paul Staveley, and as you already know, I am a gigantic fan of his first band, and actually a big fan of his work in general (Frog Chorus and several other songs notwithstanding). I’ve never seen him before in the flesh, despite my familiarity with most of the recorded output he has produced in the last 50 years, so it was quite a big night for me.

Well, so I thought. As it turned out, it wasn’t a big night, it was massive. And here’s what I liked about it.

First of all, serious hats need to be taken off in honour of whoever thought of converting the Millennium Dome into a concert arena. What once appeared destined to go down as one of the most expensive laughing stock s in Britain’s history is surely due very soon for a re-evaluation. When they close the history books on that piece of land by North Greenwich station, there is every chance that it will be remembered as an iconic music venue. It really is impressive. Yes, I couldn’t find a cash point anywhere and my burger was distinctly crap, but as a concert venue, it will surely outstrip, outrank and outclass Wembley (which is easily the most expensive laughing stock currently in London, if not the world) as a live music theatre. Unlike most other things in London, the facilities for transport are fairly impressive, although there’s nothing wrong with the tube station that a couple more escalators wouldn’t have fixed. All in all, very impressive, and a suitable stage for the evening’s events to unfold upon.

It’s hard to know how to feel about sitting in the O2, waiting for the biggest hero you’ve ever had through both childhood, adolescence and adulthood, to walk on stage and sing. On one hand, the anticipation was thick in the air, but on the other, I was almost blasé. Being such a fan, I’ve watched countless (and I literally can’t count them) McCartney concerts on TV & DVD – would I think this was any different? I could see the various guitars ready for use, among them the very same Hofner Violin Bass that Sir Paul bought back in Hamburg in 1961, and it all seemed just like another video. After all, how is my mind supposed to process that I’m looking at the bass guitar that saw the Beatles’ reluctant new bassist through hours of rock and roll in Hamburg and the Cavern, recorded the first four Beatles albums, and has been used in nearly every gig since 1989. Paul McCartney’s bass guitar. I looked at it and almost felt nothing. I’ve seen it a million times before, and I imagine I’ll see it a million times in the future, it was almost as though I wasn’t really there, in the same room as it. (Yes, I know that the “room” in question is three storeys high and holds about 25,000 people, but you know what I mean)

And then, on he came. As the evening moved along, in fact I never really collapsed into a sense of realisation that Beatles songs were being played to me by a Beatle, less than 200 yards away from my very nose. But after hearing a straight shot run of Paperback Writer, Let It Be, Live and Let Die, Hey Jude and Day Tripper, it did dawn on me that I was watching a living legend, a personal hero, and a magnificently talented performer do what he did best right in front of my eyes.

The gig ran for three hours and he never stopped. No breaks, save for one or two instrument changes, and the obvious encores at the end, the energy was incredible. The crowd were actually relatively quiet to begin with, but the quality of the songs, matched with the enthusiasm of the band was infectious, and it soon started to tell. Everything was included. There was old fashioned rock and roll in Helter Skelter, Drive My Car, Jet, Day Tripper; there were quiet solo moments in Blackbird, Yesterday, Calico Skies; there was genuine emotion and intimacy in My Love, Here Today, Something, and The Long and Winding Road; there was motown funk in Got To Get You Into My Life; surreal rollicking in Magical Mystery Tour; famously bad songs in Obla-di Obla-dah and Mull of Kintyre; Christmas giggles in Wonderful Christmastime; ambient electronica in the Firemen songs; a new song from the latest Robert De Niro film; and throughout a genuine grip exerted on the crowd by the man at the helm of this amazing group of musicians.

Obla-di Obla-dah was actually very enjoyable. Terrible on the White Album and hated by John Lennon, as a live romp it came across particularly well, and had everyone up on their feet. Mull of Kintyre started well enough but then on came the bagpipes. Seriously, bagpipes. I go and see Paul McCartney and it costs me a bloody fortune and he brings on bagpipes!! If I wanted to listen to bagpipes I would...well, I would probably just borrow a shotgun and end it all, but I certainly wouldn’t splash out that kind of money on a ticket to a concert! Still, I’ll find it in my heart to forgive him I suppose, he did write Blackbird and Lady Madonna (and about a million other great songs). Strangely, the most fun of the evening was probably had during the slightly obscure “Mrs Vandebilt” from 1973’s Band on the Run. Hidden gems are not uncommon in the Wings back catalogue, but I wouldn’t have picked this one out as an obvious choice to select – but it really came to life and the atmosphere it created was fantastic.

I simply don’t have a bad word to say about the experience. Yes, it was expensive, but sometimes in life things are just worth paying for. When I look back in however many years (or minutes really, since I haven’t once regretted shelling out for the ticket) I won’t ever say “Ooh, I once spent £x on a Paul McCartney ticket,” I will be thinking back to the three hours that I was lucky enough to spend singing along with the man who taught me music, in great voice, in great form, and leaving me in a great mood. If any gig wants to out-do what I saw last night from a 67 year old scouser, the artist in question is going to have to work incredibly hard. It was more than a bit special, it was absolutely bloody incredible.

Monday 21 December 2009

Why Shakespeare is still Shift-hot.

“Basically speaking, there are only a few human stories...and they’ve all been told before” – Norman Vincent Peel.

Microsoft recently put together a presentation called “Shift Happens” – and it talks about the rate at which the world is changing, developing and advancing. It’s really interesting, and a little bit scary, truth be told. Anyway, one of the reasons that teacher training-type people have jumped on it as something to be shown on every available course is that it showcases the need to imbue the children of today with a set of universal skills that can be adapted to any circumstance, not simply to teach them the tired old curriculum that raised the generation who actually effected these changes. Just pointing out that we did ok on what we were given at school, but I suppose a change is as good as a rest, so let’s go along with it.

It points out that the average person is expected to have 10-14 jobs before the age of 38. That seemed unrealistic to me, especially as I think I have found the career that will see me through to retirement at only 27, but then I thought about the various roles I have had since 2004 when I left university, and it turns out that teaching is my ninth job. Now, some of them were never “careers”, they were just bill-paying short term ideas, but nevertheless, for each one of them I needed to have a different skill set and couldn’t rely on the number of GCSEs and A-Levels I had, but rather on the life skills I had learned whilst I was growing up. There’s plenty of evidence that the shift is happening – people with far fewer qualifications than I have are earning a lot more than I am – and if it’s true that by the time most students finish the third year of a university course, most of what they learned in their first year will be outdated, it does speak volumes to the need to have skills to get by in life, not specific qualifications in single things.

With this in mind, some students have asked me... “What’s the point of reading plays from 400 years ago?” Yes, it’s nearly time to start GCSE coursework on Shakespeare, and the question will undoubtedly be rolled out again. And it’s not an unreasonable question either. What IS the point of studying archaic language, from a different time in history?

Well, I’m about to give you the answer, those of you who are worried. The answer is quite simply that the plays of Shakespeare, like them or loathe them, have much to teach us about life, love, society and the human condition. There is an oft-misquoted saying that says “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” There is monumental evidence that suggests this remark is accurate, and yet there is even more evidence to suggest it is wilfully ignored by all who read it.

But while the language of Shakespeare may have long since died, the themes and insights that the language conveys have not. Call me a dusty old clichéd English teacher all you want, but what possible future world can you imagine for the children of today in which they won’t need to understand (or at the very least encounter) Love, Death, Sex, Violence, Gangs, Politics, Peer Pressure, Honour, Betrayal, Heartbreak, Bitterness, Revenge, Divorce, Family Tensions, Satire, Humour...?

If we have to learn from the past to avoid having to repeat it (and more importantly, to help us understand it when it happens to us) then I can’t think of a better teacher than the work of Shakespeare, if for no other reason than it shows us that with all the changes that the world has undergone in the last 400 years, the people who live in it, and the day-to-day issues that they face are still basically the same. The skills we need and the world we inhabit may change, but we do not. And surely a better understanding of ourselves is a key component in dealing with any new innovations the fast-moving world of the 21st century cares to throw at us.

So, why is Shakespeare still taught? Because there is still so much it can teach.

Sunday 15 November 2009

How to Buy...The Eagles.

I find The Eagles one of the more puzzling bands in my record collection. This is mostly because I find them genuinely difficult to like. There’s no doubting their talents, and I would say that two of their songs have to rank as two of the greatest songs ever written. Maybe there are one or two more threatening to break into that echelon, but even if that is the case, they are an extraordinarily difficult band to really like. Perhaps because there is no myth to buy into, perhaps because there is no story of a gang of young friends living in holes, paying their dues, and getting through by believing in the music, etc etc. Their story reads as if they got together purely because it was an easy option, and then stayed together purely because it made them a lot more money, then broke up because they became too bloated and ego-fuelled for their own good and then got back together purely because of the size of the cheque being dangled before their eyes. In short, it’s rare that you ever feel that they truly enjoyed their work, ever lost themselves in the music, ever approached their recordings as more than just a scientific formulaic money machine. When you listen to The Beatles play Long Tall Sally, or the Stones playing Brown Sugar, or Buddy Holly singing Rave On, Elvis performing All Shook Up, Queen playing Tie Your Mother Down, there is an inescapable feeling that these people would do this job for free. And it’s a nice feeling because you think that they’re in it for the right reasons. And it is gigantically conspicuous by its absence in the back catalogue of the Eagles.

BUT – all that being said, you can’t disguise great music – and the Eagles are responsible for plenty of that. Likeable or not, you could put together a 20 track CD of their work and every song would be really, really good – and like I said before, a few of them would be truly great. More specific reasons for my general dislike of several elements of the Eagles setup will be detailed in the review, and here we go.

What you must Own.

Obviously, Hotel California. It didn’t sell all those copies by accident, and it really is a pretty special album. The problem with it is that when they were recording it, the band were so packed full of drugs they’d have bled cocaine if you’d cut them. They were falling out left right and centre and had, for some reason, decided that the album could not be released until every last part of every last song was absolutely perfect. That’s admirable in theory, but of course the net effect is that the final takes, the ones that ended up on the album, were the 137th take of each part, and so while they are as smooth as a baby’s bottom, they have also had the life, soul, fun, energy and rawness taken entirely out of them. There are some incredible songs on this album, but a lot of their potential is dampened by how utterly soul-less they sound. The worst culprits are Wasted Time, Pretty Maids All In A Row and Life in the Fast Lane, three songs brimming with emotion but that sound so polished they’ve become entirely sterile. It does work on some songs, New Kid in Town, Last Resort and Try and Love Again are all well suited to this style, and of course the title track will stand out forever in the pantheon of truly great rock songs. The music is hypnotic, the guitar lines genuinely mesmerising and the lyrics are mystifying, confusing and thought-provoking. The story of the song is terrifyingly beautiful and the guitar solos at the end are delivered with perhaps the only true emotion on the entire album. The other songs are excellent- the closest the album comes to a bad song is Victim of Love, which has the redeeming quality that it was recorded live, thus injecting at least a tiny bit of energy that might otherwise have been missing.

Hell Freezes Over. This will be an odd choice in some people’s eyes, but there are two very good reasons you should look at this album ahead of many of their other efforts. Firstly, the band is live, and hugely overproduced. This leaves us with some energetic performances, and an edge to the songs that is noticeably absent on the albums. Secondly, the band are older – and the songs have had longer to mature. There isn’t a song on here that isn’t better than it sounds on the original album – this is especially true of the songs on Hotel California. Perhaps Hotel California itself doesn’t sound better, but it’s so re-worked it’s hard to compare, and this version is brilliant too. The ageing of the band hasn’t affected their vocal skills either, the harmonies are better than ever, and as for Don Henley’s voice, his delivery on Wasted Time and Desperado (made more impressive given that he is also drumming) is spine-tinglingly fantastic. Bad points? Well, the new songs are pretty average – (that is me at my most generous by the way) – and the album is missing some standout tracks from the concert, which are available on the DVD. Still, these are minor gripes, and it shows the band as a 5 piece, in what was really their final hurrah before yet more in-fighting, lawsuits and departures.

Desperado – back in 1974, the band still felt like they had something to prove, and certainly hadn’t disappeared up their own backsides, and they produced this concept album about outlaws in the American West, a backdrop against which few things could fail. The songs are not as strong individually as they are collectively, although the title track is a remarkably beautiful piece of songwriting and makes the album worth owning on its own. But the rest of the story is well thought out and constructed, and if you have 35 minutes one day to yourself, you could do a lot worse than throwing this album on.

What you should think carefully about.

On The Border, One of These Nights, Eagles.

These albums have many a decent moment. Their debut is a little bit suspect, but solid enough with some carefreely enjoyable songs on, and as their confidence grew, you start to hear them building towards the egocentric drug-fuelled blind spot that was Hotel California, whilst retaining some of the energy that they seemed to lose with every year that went by. Songs like Lyin Eyes & Take It To The Limit are really genuinely boring and overdone – but at least the On The Border album does manage to keep some youthful abandon in songs like Already Gone and Good Day in Hell, the first songs to feature Don Felder on guitar, an addition to the group whose importance cannot be overstated.

What to avoid.

The Long Run – there are some decent songs on this album, the title track and the incredible Sad Cafe to name the best – but the album reeks of mediocrity and clearly tells the story of a band completely unable to continue under their own self-inflicted pressures and lack of genuine unity within the group. By the time the group went on tour with this album, tensions were so high that one of their concerts at Long Beach famously ended with Frey and Felder coming to blows backstage, and this lack of camaraderie is very evident on this album.

Long Road Out Of Eden – I have often gotten the impression that Don Henley feels that he isn’t considered as important as he thinks he is. Now I know it’s famously stupid to have a go at Henley, because he will sue anyone for anything – so I hope he doesn’t read this. If you are reading this and decide to sue me, well done – you’ve just made my point for me. Anyway, his solo career, and even some Eagles songs like The Last Resort are filled with what I’m sure he considers scathing exposés of American hypocrisy and the evils of consumerism. That’s all well and good, but when you write a 10 minute song about how corporations and capitalism are destroying the values of the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and then sign a deal meaning that your album is sold exclusively via Wal-Mart, you really are asking for it. And it’s a horribly slimy film that never really lifts from the album, as Frey attempts to get some good old fashioned country into the album, and doesn’t really succeed, Walsh continues to sing about what a crazy old drunk he is, and Henley basically whinges for the entire album about how awful America is. There are some good songs on here, for sure – the lyrics to the title track are really good (if only you could believe that they were heartfelt), the lead single How Long is fun (but also is one they used to play 30 years ago when they cared) and the opening “No More Walks In The Wood” is really nice. But then you hear about how the “band”, the “group” recorded the album, which basically involved being in the same room as little as often – not out of malice or anger this time, but out of sheer lethargy and ambivalence, recording 3 part harmonies in three different states etc etc...it just doesn’t sit right. Also, it’s a double album and there isn’t nearly enough good material to fill that kind of space. I reckon you could squeeze a 9 song album out of this material, with 7 of them being good songs. So, all in all – it’s possible that I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to like this album even if it was packed full of good songs, but that doesn’t end up being a worry.

There is an argument to be made that the band were never genuinely relevant, but always felt that they ought to be, and this childish feeling of not being allowed to sit at the big boys table leaves the listener with the impression that here was a band so desperate for credibility that they ended up scuppering their best chance of ever achieving it. But for all that, there were moments in this speckled career when their star truly shone, and those moments ought to be enjoyed by fans of genuine musical achievement.

Happy Eagling!

Mr S.

Friday 16 October 2009

The Beatles – remastered box set – any good?

I’ve been offline for about three or four hundred years now, mainly because Sky are morons. Now, if you’re reading this and you work for Sky, please don’t take that as a personal affront – but Sky are morons. And if you’re one of the people I or Sarah spoke to trying to set our phone line up, you actually are a moron. Anyway – what better way to welcome myself back online, I thought, than a Beatles blog. And what more appropriate and topical Beatles blog could there be than a full scale epic review of the recently released re-mastered CDs. I bought mine in a giddy rush during a lunch break and proceeded to spend every journey to and from work for the next two weeks listening avidly back through the world’s most famous back-catalogue. And I thought there might be like-minded Beatles fans out there who are concerned about whether or not it would be worth it to buy these CDs when they already own every last thing the Beatles ever recorded, like I do.

There are a number of problems with reviewing something like this, and the main one is that Beatles fans can’t resist a good opportunity to eulogise the band, and I will try and avoid that – but at the same time I make no apologies whatsoever for the times that I do it. The Beatles are my favourite band, and while they occasionally curled out a steamer (see my earlier blog on that topic), and it’s arguably fair to say that they never made an album without a fairly rubbish song on it, when they were good, they were really very very good.

Another problem is that this is a re-mastering, not a remixing. The Love album from a couple of years ago was remixed, and it was (to my humble ears) a revelation. But this is just the exact same songs in the same order that they’ve always been. So there’s relatively little to say about it. It sounds loads better, and so you should buy it if you like the Beatles. But that wouldn’t do as a blog. So, let’s begin at the beginning.

1962 – 1970, The Beatles release studio albums and however many singles it was. Lots of people like them, swinging 60s, love and peace, drugs and psychedelia, bigger than Jesus, blah blah, good good. Oh, all albums are released on LPs. They think they can be businessmen and set up Apple. They fail miserably. They fall out a lot and get bored of each other, and split up so George can do meditation stuff, John can live with Yoko, Paul can live on a farm, and Ringo can go country, and mental.

1970 – 1980, everyone keeps asking the Beatles if they will reform, and they say no. They slag each other off in songs. All release at least one good album, and at least one stinker. McCartney forms Wings, has mental success. Lennon doesn’t really do anything consistently, Harrison meditates and runs out of material and Ringo goes country, then goes mental. Loads of Beatles compilation albums come out – they are largely rubbish.

1980 – John Lennon is murdered outside his home. People are sad.

1981 – 1987 – People miss John. Other Beatles respond to sad loss by being terrible at music, a lot.

1987 – The Beatles catalogue is mixed for Compact Disc, which is a new-fangled technology. People who bought the LPs are very cross, because the sound is a bit drudge, and they start bemoaning the lack of quality and “how dare they, this is the Beatles and blah blah” and all the rest.

1996 – Beatles Anthology is released. New songs are recorded. They are great. Albums of old out-takes are released, they’re mediocre. TV show is put together, it is rubbish – well, apart from the first episode. Harrison and McCartney pretend they like each other, it’s clear they don’t. Ringo talks in half Scouse, half American accent, McCartney bobbles his head, Harrison appears remarkably chirpy for someone who didn’t want to do it, Lennon’s absence is hugely conspicuous. Beatles fans rush out and buy it, and go “don’t they look young” at the old footage of the band in the cavern. They do.

1997 – 2008 – Everyone babbles on about the Beatles, swinging 60s, love and peace, drugs and psychedelia, bigger than Jesus, blah blah, good good. George Harrison dies, which is sad. He and McCartney make up which is nice. McCartney suddenly remembers how to be a brilliant songwriter and makes good albums again. Ringo randomly gets a monk on about signing memorabilia and posts a message online about peace and love while simultaneously showing neither to anyone.

2009 – The Beatles Rock Band is announced. Beatle fans can’t work out if this is selling out or not. Music critics decide John would not be happy. People who actually knew him say he would. This annoys most people, as it is mind-numbingly irrelevant. Giles Martin is son of George Martin, Beatles producing genius. Giles Martin realises that there have been 20 years of technological progress since the CDs last came out. Like a genius, decides to remaster the original tapes so they don’t sound gash. They are released, I buy them.

And here we are!

And so, onto my opinions about the CDs. Well, first of all, there isn’t much of a notable improvement in the early albums, but there was never going to be. Their first album was recorded in a day, using absolutely no studio techniques, so in terms of an adventurous sonic landscape, there’s not much to work with. Also, the songs aren’t really very good. Even George Martin admits that when he first met them, it was their attitude and energy that attracted him to the band, not the fact that they were any good at song-writing, because they weren’t. And all the remastering in the world can’t hide that fact. But of course, if you’re going to end up being lauded for the speed and dexterity of your songwriting development – you have to have a starting marker, and from Please Please Me, while it isn’t true that the only way was up, they certainly didn’t have to move mountains to improve. The quality is undoubtedly clearer than it was on the 87 issue, but really if you can tell the difference, then you’ve been listening to too much Beatles. I noticed the difference immediately. This is true for Please Please Me, With The Beatles AND A Hard Days Night – although those albums do showcase a genuinely meteoric rise in quality of songwriting, performance, studio knowhow, musicianship and delivery – they were still recorded on rubbish 4 track, and while the quality again is noticeable, there isn’t any kind of revelation in terms of what you can hear and how it’s been cleaned up.

But then along comes Beatles For Sale – and the difference suddenly becomes truly apparent. The murky quality of this tired and rushed album has been polished to a beautiful shine – and in fact, listening to Rock and Roll Music and Kansas City is like hearing new songs. The rest of the album is quite obviously better, and there are points when it feels like new material – and it’s fabulous. Not the best album originally, and not the best now either, but at the very least you can hear it as it was meant to be heard. Once you’ve dispensed with the first 4 albums, you get on to the most critically acclaimed period in the band’s history. Now, there was nothing wrong with Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper in 1987, but it is great to hear them sounding so sharp, with the instrumentation coming more to the fore. Ringo was oft maligned as a drummer, even by Lennon at one point (when asked if Starr was the best drummer in the world, Lennon famously replied that he wasn’t the best drummer in the Beatles) – and while that may have been hilarious and cheeky, people seem to have jumped atop that bandwagon with all the hurried enthusiasm of Daily Mail readers when they want to blame foreigners for something, complain about something they didn’t hear on the radio or lament the loss of Princess Diana. But listen to the way that drummers (or in fact anyone who understands music) talk about Ringo. Hushed tones, my friends – and on these albums we start to see why. The rhythm section that he formed with McCartney (who is another under-rated musician in my opinion) is remarkable, and it is brought right to the fore here. In a time before click tracks and Pro Tools, Ringo was the glue that held that group together, and you can hear his effectiveness as a drummer finally get the airing it deserves. Peace and Love.

That being said, Ringo also sings sometimes, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the only way you could remaster “What Goes On” and “Yellow Submarine” into listenable tracks is if you wiped the tape completely. And they haven’t. It’s too bad, because they were awful before, but now they’re crystal clear awful.

Sgt Pepper is disappointingly un-different. I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but it didn’t quite deliver. That being said, it’s a brilliant album which is suddenly much better to listen to, and you can’t argue too far with that.

The White Album was always a bit of a sprawling mess, and again, the remastering doesn’t help it much. The Beatles could be excused below-par material on their first album since it was their first album and nobody knew what below-par really meant for the band, but by 1968 they really should have known better. Not only are some of the songs absolutely awful, but actually the whole album resembles something that was recorded in a skip, with little or no effort paid to mixing, and in some cases, tuning. This isn’t solved by the remastering, and I suppose it’s right that it isn’t – after all, if you start messing too much with levels etc, you run the risk of remixing it, and while that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea, it isn’t the point here. BUT – for every Bungalow Bill, there is a Blackbird. If McCartney ever wrote a more endearing love song than “I Will”, I’d like someone to play it to me. Now it is as clear as the Indian day on which it was written, and can’t be flawed really. Helter Skelter retains its near violent hysteria and is all the meaner and more virulent now. The arrangement of “Good Night”, already lush, takes on new dimensions. Revolution 9 is still a bit of a mauling, but a bit of tape cleaner was never going to change that sad fact. This album was always one of the murkier in the Beatles canon – partly because the band were getting stroppy with each other, and so couldn’t be bothered, and George Martin left because he got sick of them fighting and so the production gang was effectively the youth team. But the best of a bad job has been made of the album and the sound is about as good as you could hope for – and it’s a relief for someone who has always been ambivalent about the White Album.

Yellow Submarine is a strange album to add to the canon – most of the songs on it had already been released, and the second side is entirely made up of instrumentals by George Martin – which are actually very nice to listen to, but still seem a bit odd. The songs that we hadn’t heard before should really have stayed that way. All Together Now, Only A Northern Song, and It’s All Too Much add nothing but a sense of atypical sloth in terms of songwriting and production. I suppose it all needs to be covered in the catalogue, but if you’re going through the albums, just listen to the second half of this one. I love the Beatles dearly, but little on God’s earth could entice me to listen to this album again. When you only made 13 albums, and are considered one of the greatest bands of all time, then a half-arsed selection like this shouldn’t be among your offerings.

Let It Be has already been remastered, and remixed into a new album – the fan-dividing-but-nevertheless-let’s-be-honest-now-it’s-absolutely-loads-better-than-the-original-except-for-maybe-I’ve-Got-A-Feeling-but-other-than-that-it-is Let it Be...Naked. So the only new things we really get to hear on this album are Maggie Mae and Dig It – and who cares about them anyway? They were terrible the first time and they’re terrible now. So, nothing wrong with it, but nothing amazing either. I was struck on re-listening to the album just how good the title track is. Just an aside there.

Abbey Road has always been a pleasant listening experience. In fact, I would probably have rated it as my favourite Beatles album before the remastering, and that opinion is only enforced by the updated version. I never hated Maxwell’s Silver Hammer as much as everyone else (including every Beatle that wasn’t McCartney) does – or Octopus’ Garden either for that matter, being as it is about three million times better than Starr’s other compositional credit, Don’t Pass Me By. As for the other songs, McCartney’s gravel on Oh Darling, Harrison’s tender guitar solo on Something, Lennon’s anguished cries on I Want You and the transcendent beauty of Because are glorious in their clarity – as are the drum fills of Here Comes The Sun, the harmonies on You Never Give Me Your Money and the scorching guitar solos of “The End”. Even Her Majesty sounds better. There was nothing wrong with this album, but they fixed it anyway, and for once, that tactic worked to perfection.

And finally the Past Masters CDs. Well, the same goes for them as went for all the other albums. The early songs sound very similar, and the later songs begin to take on a clarity that wasn’t available back in the mid to late 1960s when they were recorded. You Know My Name is still ridiculous, but is genuinely hilarious in parts, and a nice note on which to close the singles collection. The two German songs are still on there, sounding exactly the same as they always did – that is to say, nice novelty but actually a waste of two tracks on the CD, and other than that, the songs are brilliant and a timely reminder of a time when artists didn’t put their singles on their albums. The Beatles canon is already considered a masterpiece, what would we have thought had Sgt Pepper contained Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields? If Let It Be had been permitted the odd but wonderful Old Brown Shoe, if Rubber Soul had replaced What Goes On and Run for Your Life with Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out? How about Revolver not having Paperback Writer on it or the fact that I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You never appeared on an album? Why were Lady Madonna, Hey Bulldog, The Inner Light and Hey Jude left off the White Album when Wild Honey Pie, Bungalow Bill, Revolution 9, and Don’t Pass Me By stayed on? Who can say – still, makes you think.

If you like the Beatles, then you will be glad you bought this. If you don’t like them then this isn’t going to change your mind. But for my twopenneth, I didn’t half have fun rediscovering the music I grew up to. God Bless those four lads and their cheeky mop-top/acid gobbling ways.

Tuesday 13 October 2009

England v Germany – a blog.

Since I mentioned it on the podcast, I’ve had a bit back about saying that Germany often beat us at football and how the rivalry is “just a game” – and let me tell you why I think that is. Apparently I need to stop being such a stuck-up ponce and just accept that if you fight a war against someone, and win, you’re entitled to rub it in to their faces for the rest of eternity. Well, let’s think about why that might be. It’s because England fans, and by that I mean your traditional clichéd England fans, who like a drink, have no brain and like to make up for their own limitations and shortcomings by fighting foreigners, can’t face the fact – and sadly it is a fact – that Germany have got us by the short and curlies in terms of international football. So here’s my football log blog giving you a brief, depressing, rundown of the footballing history between these two nations.

Other than going back to the first four games England ever played against Germany – and those 4 games were won by an aggregate margin of, wait for it, 38-4, so they don’t count – the rivalry began in earnest in 1966. Now, I know there were a couple of wars inbetween times, in which Germany were the “enemy” – but as I said before, using that as a reason to dislike a football team is stupid, so I don’t do it. The only concession to that I will make is that England beat Germany 3-0 at White Hart Lane in 1933 in a game that the Nazis were basically using as a showpiece for German supremacy. That’s pleasing, but it’s not a reflection on the Germans as a whole. Then we beat them 6-3 in Berlin, but since all the players were ordered by the foreign office to perform the Nazi salute before the game, I think it’s best if we just wipe that from existence, because it’s bad enough that those players had to live with that on their conscience without me going back over the various moral implications of the situation in which they found themselves. Incidentally just for the record, I don’t “blame” the players for having done it, but I wouldn’t want to have lived the rest of my life having been part of that team.

So, let’s get on to the meat and two veg of this most famous football rivalry. Why do I say that we ought to just shut up because Germany have battered us on aggregate over the years? Well, you’re about to find out. In our first competitive game against them, we beat them in the 1966 World Cup, so score one England. They then proceeded to beat us in 1970, and 1990, when they went on to win the World cup. This wasn’t the only tournament in which a good England side (and potential winners) faltered to the Germans. In our own back yard no less at Euro 96, England famously failed from 12 yards yet again – in what was my choice as most heartbreaking football moment of my life. In Euro 96, before the Germans beat us, the Daily Mirror - in an attempt to stir up some national “pride” - published the famous headline: "Achtung! Surrender! For You Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over", which sickened me at the time, and certainly hasn’t lost its disgusting edge in the 14 or so years since it was published. The editor of the paper? Piers Morgan. Help, I have died of shock.

Following this, Germany won the final game at Wembley, which breaks my heart but is true. Yet again, that game was marred by sheer brain-dead idiocy. As Ian Ridley wrote in the Observer, “It was the last refuge of the inadequate. Half-time neared, England were a goal down and a sizeable section of the crowd sullied the ever-dampening occasion. 'Stand up if you won the War,' they sang". They should have picked every last one of them up and banned them from football, and if possible from society.

The times since the ‘66 final that we’ve beaten Germany have been effectively pointless. They are also few and far between. How many times between 1966 and 2000 did England beat Germany? Twice. How many were competitive games? That’s right folks, none. Yes, we beat them in Euro 2000, in a shockingly boring 1-0 game… but for what? We both got knocked out in the group stages so there was no benefit to us, and it’s staggeringly apparent that the German side in question was one of the weakest in living memory. Then, of course, we beat them 5-1 in Munich. Now, as a standalone result, that is obviously hugely pleasing – but the fact remains that all that happened in the aftermath of that game was that both teams went to the World Cup, so we didn’t really inconvenience them all that badly – we just humiliated them a little bit, and they then went on to go further than we did in the tournament anyway – so what the hell do they care if they got hammered in one qualifier? That 5-1 game was fun for 90 minutes but it was ultimately totally meaningless. It didn’t kickstart a great England turnaround and set us off on the road to being a world class team, it just seemed to galvanise the Germans even more who then went to Japan and got to the final while we wilted like petunias against an average-at-best Brazillian side. Oh, and incidentally after the 5-1 in Munich, the Sunday Mirror’s headline was “Blitzed” – yet again an insensitive and pointless reference to something that had nothing to do with football. Incidentally, I’m not saying that an epic war against another country doesn’t add a bit of something extra to games in the immediate aftermath. How could it not? I don’t think it should, but I won’t pretend to be so whiter than white that if I had played for England in 1946 against Germany some feelings would still have been running a bit high. But it ought to have subsided by 1966 and it really ought to have subsided by 1996.

Now, it upsets me greatly that we don’t have more in our locker against Germany – or in fact any other major side in Europe – but the facts quite clearly tell their own story, which is that when it comes to football, we have been in Germany’s pocket ever since the 1966 final and the sooner we accept that and actually try to do something about it rather than whinging and singing “Two World Wars and one World Cup”, the better. I think it says it all that the Germans don’t even see us as their main rivals. They have a stronger rivalry with the Dutch, and who can blame them? The Dutch have also traditionally been a much better team than we have, Euro 96 aside.

In the grand pantheon of England v Germany games, the stats speak for themselves. The countries have met 27 times. England have won 12, which isn’t bad but needs to be read in the context that 7 of those were before 1966, when England beat pretty much anyone who wasn’t Hungary. So, from 1966 onwards, we have played Germany 19 times. Germany have won 12, and 2 have been draws. Can’t argue with the facts now boys. Perhaps the words of the song should be changed to “one World Cup, a number of disappointing performances, and near-continuous footballing inadequacy ever since.” Not as catchy, I’ll grant you, but at least we could sing it and know we spoke the truth.

Sunday 4 October 2009

Oh, if only I could get online...

Hello all.

I can't get online at the moment.

I mean, I can right now, cos here I am...

but other than that, I am finding myself super-frustrated by Sky. They cannot install the internet in someone's house and it's 2009.

New blogs will arrive as soon as my gosh-darn internet connection does.

Word

Paul

Thursday 3 September 2009

Holy flawed sequel Batman! - Why The Dark Knight is inferior to its predecessor.

The Dark Knight broke about sixteen million box office records when it came out, and understandably so – the online marketing campaign was arguably the best ever put together, and the hype surrounding Heath Ledger’s joker (which was already bubbling before his untimely death, and went into orbit after) was always going to lead to a big run for the film. It’s since made several “Best of 2008” lists and Ledger’s performance has earned deserved plaudits and a posthumous Oscar for the actor.

However, a review I saw of the film described it as “not only the best Batman movie ever made, but the best comic book movie ever made”. I take issue with this statement, because I think there is one movie that outdoes it in both categories, and that film is Batman Begins, Bale’s first outing as the caped crusader.

The main reason that I hold this opinion is that while The Dark Knight is on a much bigger scale, with a much better villain, it has serious flaws and major problems that do not plague its predecessor, not to mention the fact that it could not exist without Begins having been made when it was and how it was. In fact, after careful thought, I cannot think of anything I would change about Batman Begins – but there are at least 4 things I would chop off from TDK before I considered it a perfect film.

Although the plot of any film in which a grown man dresses as a bat to fight criminals will always stretch the limits of realism, Batman Begins marks the first genuine attempt to show not only what made Bruce Wayne into Batman but how he did it. Origin films are notoriously difficult to convincingly pull off, but so detailed is the back-story of Bruce’s teenage and early adult years (almost completely ignored in every other film to date) that the audience buys into it completely and it seems utterly plausible. The end result of this is that the film is a personal, emotional journey set against the backdrop of a crime-fighting superhero. I’ve always loved the idea of looking deeper into Batman’s psyche, and that’s why the first film with Michael Keaton was long one of my favourite films of all time, and it’s something that was promised but not delivered by The Dark Knight.

To highlight this journey, Batman Begins is fairly limited in its use of characters. There are three villains, none of whom outstay their welcome. Tom Wilkinson is excellent as Carmine Falcone, but never on screen long enough for us to tire of him, and the same can be said of Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow and Liam Neeson’s Ras-al-Ghul. All three are characters from the original comics but steer clear of the more predictable options that have been tired out before, with not a Catwoman, Riddler, or Penguin in sight and only the merest hint of the Joker at the end – itself a brilliant touch.

The film concentrates on Bruce’s journey and Nolan could not have picked a better actor than Christian Bale for this. Bale is an excellent actor, so we shouldn’t be surprised that he turns in such a great performance here, however I think that his Bruce Wayne in this film has to go down as one of the great storytelling performances, not just in this genre of film either. The inner turmoil that drives his Bruce is played to perfection, and his Batman is as terrifying as he is heroic.

The Dark Knight, on the other hand, is positively teeming with characters that, in my opinion, drag the film down. Whereas Begins picks a plot device and sticks to it, The Dark Knight seems to have tried to fit two films into one. Given the quality of the two leading actors in the film, the entire movie could have just been an extension of the interrogation scene and my instincts tell me we would have been in for a treat. However, the Hong Kong visit (visually incredible, but only tenuously related to the plot and not actually needed in the film), the very existence of Coleman Reece’s character (an interesting idea, and played well for some comic effect but not actually needed in the film), Jim Gordon’s faked death (not really very suspenseful since he isn’t Commissioner at the time so we know he’s not really dead, and it doesn’t actually help or change the plot in any way and isn’t actually needed in the film) are all surplus to requirements and only serve to add to a feeling of disjointed hesitancy in the movie.

One major problem, in my opinion, is the decision to include Harvey’s transformation into Two-Face, and then seemingly play out his entire character arc in 15 minutes. Now, the rumours are abounding that he might be back in the next film, but even if he is, we are talking about a character that Batman has to battle despite knowing that he is the man who was suppose to save Gotham. Given Bale’s predilection for playing characters suffering from turmoil to a high level of brilliance, and Aaron Eckhart’s more-than-accomplished performance as Harvey Dent, the promise for a third film concentrating on the battle for Gotham between these two seemed almost too good to be true. But this potential has surely been snuffed out by the cluttered and rushed ending to the film. Controversially, I want to mention another troublesome issue with the film, which is the performance of Heath Ledger as the Joker.

First things first, I am all too happy to leap onto the bandwagon supporting Ledger’s portrayal of this old villain as a cinematic revelation. However, the sheer magnetism that Ledger brings to the role leads to some inbalance within the film. Ledger, while undoubtedly incredible, overshadows the performances of the other actors on show to such a degree that their talents are all but wasted. Bruce Wayne hardly ever appears in the movie, and when he does the story is never really about him, he is just a pre-amble to Batman’s next appearance. Gone are the doubts and troubles that clouded the young man in the first film, and in their place comes a kind of playboy bravado childish attitude which ill-becomes the character and the man who plays him. And as for other scenes in which Ledger does not appear, the audience are simply left wishing that he did. Michael Caine, superb in a role which has traditionally offered little for the actor inhabiting it, is relegated to a few comic asides and technological lackey for Wayne’s somewhat convoluted comb through the records of the Gotham Police.

Then there is the still-troubling character of Rachel Dawes. Created specifically for the first film, Christopher Nolan had two films and almost 4 hours of screen time to convince us that she brought something to the series, and he never quite pulled it off. People have criticised Katie Holmes’ performance in the original film, but I think that’s just symptomatic of people’s desire to criticise Katie Holmes. I liked her in the first film, and I think Maggie Gyllenhall does an acceptable job following her in the second, but I’m still not convinced of the character’s importance or relevance. Certainly we don’t feel our world caving around our ears as we realise she is doomed the way we would have about Basinger’s Vicky Vale. Certainly for the time being, Michelle Pfeiffer’s crown as the cream of the crop of Batgirls is safe.

Other characters then fill out the film. A nice enough but unnecessary return for Murphy’s scarecrow, Eric Roberts as Sal Maroni (again, an original character from the film and a crucial one in Harvey’s story, but not really used to any effect here) and Nestor Carbonelli’s mayor never really makes any kind of substantive difference to the movie’s plot, good though he is. Lau is relevant to the story, although it would have been easier not to include him, and far too much time is spent on him, and even Gamble is used just enough to count, but not enough to really make a difference.

There are plenty of other issues with the film. Most notably, if the Joker really is a guy without a plan, how come he managed to anticipate every move made by his adversaries and plan ahead to ensure that everything worked with military precision? Why include Bat-Sonar? Why, why why? It’s convoluted, ridiculous, and could easily be overcome by having a CCTV system that Lucius could tap into. When the convoy is diverted by the burning fire truck, why go onto Lower 5th, why not just drive down the other side of the road, since no cars are on it anyway? Who are the 5 people that Harvey killed and are 2 of them actually cops? And how does Gordon know about it anyway?

Not that Begins is without its problems of course, no film is, but there is considerable time and effort invested in the plot and the character arcs within it to ensure that the film works on just about every level. The emotional intensity of the later encounters is set up through a slow process at the beginning and this is something which never happens in TDK. It starts big and fast, and it stays big and fast throughout, which means we never really get a chance to digest anything, thus compromising our reactions later.

I felt it on the first night I watched The Dark Knight, and now, 5 viewings later, my mind is still not changed – the film has much to recommend it (most of it being Ledger, who is simply brilliant) but it tries too hard and as a result never really accomplishes anything to a satisfactory level. Perhaps the third film will come to the rescue and tie up the loose ends, but when it comes to handing out the “best Batman movie ever” awards, I think that Batman Begins should be head, shoulders and cape above the rest.

Wednesday 2 September 2009

The 5 best Beach Boys songs you’ve never heard of.

The Beach Boys are famous for a number of things. Most obviously creating that West Coast sound of summer that is indelibly burned into all our brains, I think – but most notably for natives of California, the sunshine state – for whose identity and legacy the band will always be the soundtrack. Then in 1966, they suddenly turned “arty”. They, in this case, being Brian Wilson, the musical genius behind their biggest hits – who created Pet Sounds, often considered one of the most influential and best albums of all time.

So, a few good-time summer driving tunes, Good Vibrations, Pet Sounds and then a seemingly light-speed decline into drugs, changing band members, mental illness, in-fighting, bad songs and eventually becoming their own tribute band through a number of nostalgia tours. What was once arguably the most creative band in the world was slowly driven into the ground by Mike Love and his completely addled belief that the band could somehow remain relevant to the ever-changing world by simply re-hashing songs about being teenagers in the late 50s/early 60s in California. Various points in their career have been described as their absolute nadir; Smiley Smile in 1967 – rescued from the aborted SMiLE project that eventually sent its creator into a destructive downward spiral from which he arguably never recovered; 1988’s “Kokomo”, from the soundtrack to the film Cocktail, and any album they released after Dennis Wilson’s death in 1981, but my personal choice for this award would have to be the album “The Beach Boys Salute NasCar.”

God help me, I wish I was joking.

But anyway, in between re-defining youth culture and Americana, completely overhauling the method by which pop albums were a) made and b) judged and then ending up literally re-recording a load of songs as 60 year old men singing about taking young girls out in their little deuce coupe (urgh), they actually came up with the odd song that wasn’t half bad. Mind, they didn’t half put out some gash as well during the decade between 1967 – 1977 but there are some in there that are well worth listening to. As with the worst Beatles songs, I have constructed a shortlist and will now pick the best Beach Boys songs that you’ve never heard of. They won’t exclusively be from the decade noted above but most of them probably will be. There are about fifteen thousand “Best Of” compilations, and so I have tried to pick songs that don’t feature on any of them – but obviously I may not have covered absolutely all the bases there. It’s a shame, because songs like Good Timing, Sail on Sailor and Please Let Me Wonder have to be left off, although they’re still not well known.

The shortlist.

1. You Need A Mess of Help To Stand Alone (Carl and the Passions/So Tough, 1972)
2. Marcella (Carl and the Passions/So Tough, 1972)
3. Darlin’ (Wild Honey, 1968)
4. It’s About Time (Sunflower, 1970)
5. Forever (Sunflower, 1970)
6. Time To Get Alone (20/20, 1969)
7. This Whole World (Sunflower, 1970)
8. Our Sweet Love (Sunflower, 1970)
9. Disney Girls (1957) (Surf’s Up, 1971)
10. The Night Was So Young (Love You, 1977)


The top 5.

5. This Whole World
This is only a couple of minutes long, but it harks back to the Beach Boys’ heyday, largely because of the brilliant backing vocals and airy lead vocal. It’s very simple, lyrically, but the music is interesting and complex, with a number of key changes sounding – as per usual – as if they were the only natural way to progress through the song. Brian was heavily involved in both the writing and recording of this song, and that tends to be a hallmark of a successful venture for the Beach Boys – despite the amount of musical talent in the band, there’s no denying that without Brian at the helm, they lack a certain degree of icing on the cake. This is probably the best song from the Sunflower album, which is itself the best album they made after Pet Sounds – but no more Sunflower excerpts on this list. But go and check out the album, it’s a cracker.

4. Marcella
The Beach Boys were never a great rock band – but this song does break the mould somewhat, it’s a fairly simple pounding rock song, but the melody and of course the vocal arrangements make it a stand out track. Brian Wilson still performs this live, and I can vouch from experience that it is a brilliant part of the set. The Carl and the Passions album is often dismissed as having been quite poor, but in fact there are two stand-out tracks on an album of very decent songs – the only album that can make that claim without having had Brian at the desk.


3. You Need A Mess of Help to Stand Alone
Why this wasn’t a bigger hit is a mystery to some people, but not to me – and probably not to those people either if they thought about it. It’s a really good song, no doubt, but at the time of release, the band were arguably at their all time low in terms of public perception, their credibility and relevance both shot to hell by a number of poor commercial decisions and albums that were below average in both performance and quality. Appearing in the video like a load of North Sea fishermen who have got lost on shore somehow, the group no longer radiated Southern Californian charm and carefree youth no longer abounded. I've included this video from Brighton pier, in case you want to see how accurate my description was....


Here's the actual song.

But taking all that into account, this is a really good song – and if chart performance was based purely on the quality of the song in question, it would have done a lot more business.

2. The Night Was So Young
By the time “Love You” came out in 1977, the band had arguably reached breaking point, and some would say too late. For those of us who can’t see what harm would have been done by the band having broken up 10 years earlier, the decade after Pet Sounds reads as a massively frustrating and creatively ramshackle period in the life of what had once been a truly great, and important, band. In 1977, Brian decided (or was persuaded) to take the reins again at the desk and produce an album. The finished product is often called the Marmite of Beach Boys records – you either love it or hate it. I don’t really fall into either camp. Some of it is absolutely awful, but there are moments when you are reminded just why Wilson was once held in such high regard by just about anyone who had ever had anything to do with music, and this is one such moment. Although the lyrics are not his best (although he was never a great lyricist anyway), the music, mood, harmonies and Carl’s delivery of the vocal all contribute to make this a stand-out moment in a decidedly topsy-turvy album.


1. Disney Girls (1957)
It pains me to select a Bruce Johnson song as the best “hidden-gem” of the Beach Boys catalogue, as he wasn’t an original Beach Boy, although given the numerous people who have performed under the banner, and the considerable cheapening of the name, he’s as close to an original as anyone. But the other reason is that he tends to contribute the most sickly-sweet cheesy compositions to their work. For instance, he wrote “I write the songs” for Barry Manilow, which just about says it all, and for those Beach Boy aficionados amongst you, you will already be aware of things like The Nearest Faraway Place, or At My Window, Deirdre and Tears In The Morning – all of which are drenched in gorgonzolic mawkishness. Still, at least he didn’t write Take A Load Off Your Feet –probably the most ear-offendingly terrible dross that you’ll hear on a Beach Boys record. Well, no, sadly that isn’t true – but it’s morbid none the less. Anyway, he did write this, and while it is just as sickly sweet as his other work, it is fitting a genre that suits the style, i.e. the nostalgic 50s trip down memory lane. It’s a beautifully written song, both musically and lyrically, and on an album that is ostensibly about the fading of past glories (whether the band realised it at the time or not, it is) it finds its home particularly well here. There’s nothing particularly epic about the song, in fact, the way that it is relatively stripped down does wonders for it, and the feelings it invokes and the emotions it stirs are powerful and moving. Added to a melody that is simply gorgeous, and chordal structure that is complex and yet never forced, this song stands out, not only on the album, but in the entire catalogue of Beach Boys songs as one of their best.






PS. Just out of interest, here’s a quick reason why most Beach Boy fans hate Mike Love. This isn’t the only reason, by any means, but when I talked about still trying to be relevant – look at how he dresses, listen to how he speaks, and listen to the way he talks about cheerleaders. It is just embarrassing. On the flip side, listen to Brian Wilson’s “Lucky old Sun” album, to see how it should be done. It’s cringe-worthy, but still worth watching if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

PPS. In case that didn’t do it for you, and it should have, this should do it.

Please remember, that this guy sang lead on some of the most important rock and roll songs of all time and was part of a group that redefined the identity of an entire state – some would say the nation. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

PPPS. When Brian does Christmas songs – this happens.

You can’t fake class like that.

Tuesday 1 September 2009

My YouTube clips of the week.

Here are some YouTube clips that I’ve found that I thought people might like.

1. All the Single Ladies.
I despise Beyonce and Destiny’s Child with a passion, so much so that it might even form the basis of a future blog, and her recent song “Single Ladies” is just as awful as most of the tripe that she brings out. BUT – mix it with the theme tune to the Andy Griffith show, and watch as it’s magically transformed into a whistle-along classic. I defy any of you not to whistle along with this...



2. Runnin with the Beatles
I’ve already espoused how much I love the Beatles, but is there a way you can make one of their classic songs even better? Of course there is – by mashing it up with Runnin with the Devil by Van Halen. Shouldn’t work, but really does.



3. Stairway to a Hard Day’s Night
Another Beatles Mashup here – well, almost. This is the Australian band Beatnix performing a special re-writing of Stairway to Heaven, and is absolutely fantastic.



4. *apply sunglasses*
David Caruso is really a self-parody now, and the fact that he (and the rest of the CSI Miami team) are so aware of it and happy to play up to it makes this all the more enjoyable...


5. Real tough guys
Not many things are funnier than this video.


6. The Welsh Wonder
It’s easy to forget just how devastatingly brilliant Ryan Giggs was back in the day. Here’s a reminder. The writing in green is a bit sycophantic but the video clips speak for themselves.



7. Don’t Look Back In Anger
Oasis have become a bit of a circus in recent years, but there was a time when they were literally changing the face of British rock and roll and the lives of young boys up and down the country who wanted to play the guitar and had no contemporary idols to worship, me included. Here they are at Maine Road, a gig that I watched so much I wore the VHS out.

Sunday 30 August 2009

Great Scott! Is Back to the Future the best film trilogy ever?


I was watching the Back to the Future films recently, and it dawned on me that I'd forgotten just how brilliantly enjoyable the trilogy is. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I started to wonder if it just might be the best film trilogy ever made. I know it wouldn’t be first choice for a lot of people, but I thought that nevertheless, it might be worth comparing it to some of the other standard choices to see how it measures up. The major issue of course, is how you define “best”. I’m looking at the films as a collective whole, the overall story and effect of the films. I’m not judging it on solitary acting performances, or even the depth and development of the major characters, but rather how enjoyable and convincing the story is, and how easy the films make it for the viewer to enter and accept the premise of their world. For instance, the Back to the Future trilogy is about as unrealistic as any films could ever be. But so are Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Star Wars and The Matrix. The Bourne films and the Godfather films have a more realistic feel to them, although I’m not sure anyone would really defend them as being 100% true to life if placed under oath, so let’s remember that suspension of disbelief is an important part of any film experience. But what counts is that once you are inside that world, that the films stay true to it. This is a glaring error in the Matrix trilogy, which seems to make its own rules up as it goes along. The Indiana Jones trilogy seems to suffer the same problem, with Temple of Doom really never making up its mind as to what kind of film it wants to be, and consequently ending up as not much of a film at all.

I’m also judging the films as a trilogy, not as single films. Die Hard is an incredibly brilliant film, but the trilogy of which it is a part is not. Same goes for The Godfather, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Matrix. I’m also not counting “unofficial trilogies”, like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge. Plenty to recommend in all those films, and they have been lumped together by Luhrmann, but as far as I’m concerned, it simply doesn’t count. Even Kevin Smith’s films in the View Askewniverse aren’t going to be counted in this, largely because there are more than 3 of them anyway, and second of all because the films are completely different stories linked tenuously together by supporting characters and locations, which doesn’t quite cut the mustard, and so they too, do not count.

The reason they don’t count is that unofficial trilogies aren’t telling the same story, and so you can’t have sly little references to the other movies therein. One of the many things that impress me about the BTTF trilogy is the self-referential nature of the films, which is common in a lot of sequels and trilogies, but rarely as subtle as it is here. Even the way Marty crosses the road when finding himself in a new time zone by the clock tower is consistent, not to mention the supporting characters such as the Statler family’s horse/car business, and the Texaco filling station, shown in the first two films and referenced in the third. This is one of the cleverest techniques in this trilogy and makes the films feel all the more familiar and makes repeat viewings all the more rewarding.

Now, obviously I realise that when it comes to epic genius in terms of acting and directing, the films may not be up there with The Godfather. That being said, Godfather III is notably poorer than the other two, and it could be argued that it's not thematically consistent, which I don't think you can say about BTTF. The first two films are undoubtedly cinematic masterpieces, but they certainly don’t have any of the feel-good factor of the Future films. You don’t just channel surf, spot Godfather II and decide to watch it for a laugh – like so many other classics, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind, to name but a few, you have to make a decision to sit down and watch it. This is all well and good, but it’s a solitary journey. It’s a rewarding one too, but you could never sit down with friends at a party and play those films and expect the humour levels in the room not to nose-dive. Al Pacino is incredible, in all three films, and Brando still sends shivers down the spine in the original, not to mention the more-than-able supporting cast who ply their trade with such style alongside them. But the story and cast of Godfather III seems completely out of kilter with the tone of the original two, and this was commented on heavily by critics. I personally think the third film has much in its corner, another fine performance by Pacino, a fitting conclusion to the epic story of Michael Corleone and Andy Garcia’s impressive turn as the young hot-headed Vincent. But there’s no denying that it stumbles through some very tenuous plot lines and is over-populated with characters that completely fail to enhance the story. Finally, Sofia Coppola, although she is not as bad as everyone says, is still bad. The Godfather is so hugely different from Back to the Future that it’s almost pointless to even hold them up under the same light, but for a trilogy that I would pick to watch when I was at a loose end and wanted cheering up, there is no doubt that I would dive for the Delorean every time.

I also know that in terms of Sci-Fi influence and impact, the films are not up there with the original Star Wars films. And the Star Wars films hold the aces in some areas too. For instance, Biff and the other Tannens are effective villains for their genre of film, but they’re more pantomime than would be allowed in a film that took itself seriously. Darth Vader, on the other hand, is a truly great villain, especially when his story is further revealed and his tragedy brought to the fore. As heroes go, Luke Skywalker certainly undergoes a more immense journey of personal development than Marty McFly, but he doesn’t have Marty’s quick wit and he’s a whiny little so-and-so for sure, a trait that he obviously picked up from his father, if the prequels are anything to go by. As for things that are wrong with the films, there’s very little – especially with the first two films, but by the time of Return of the Jedi, the Ewok storyline grates on even the most sympathetic fan. Once you compare the original three to the prequels, the originals look like genuine masterpieces, but then once you compare just about any film to the Star Wars prequels, you get the same result. And once you start to bring in the storylines of the prequels, the rule about staying true to the world that you have asked the viewer to enter goes flying out of the window like a drop-kicked Ewok. The prequels are truly three of cinema’s great horrors in my opinion, and sadly because they are prequels, their very existence adversely affects the original films. Incidentally, and strangely, even though the insinuations of incest are much greater in BTTF, and in fact both sets of films contain exactly the same amount of screen-time for blood relatives kissing each other, it’s much more unsettling in Star Wars than it is in Back to the Future.

It seems likely that Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan will join forces for a third Batman film before 2010 is out. Does this count as a trilogy? I’m not sure. Even if it does, is there any guarantee that it will outshine Back to the Future? Batman Begins is one of my favourite films of all time, with Christian Bale’s performance so impressive that I thought I’d never see a better turn in a Batman film, until Heath Ledger’s incredible Joker burned itself into all our minds. If the third Nolan/Bale film is even half as good as the two that precede it, I would find it almost impossible to pick holes in it – although Bat Bale’s growl whenever he speaks (which seemed like a good character move on Bale’s part in the first film) is irritating at best by the end of two hours plus of The Dark Knight. There are also plot holes so massive in TDK that you could quite easily drive a DeLorean through them. This is also true of the BTTF films, but since they never took themselves too seriously anyway, you could argue that the minutiae of time travel physics don’t matter as much as the overall effect of having a really good laugh.

The Back to the Future trilogy might not be considered as impressive, visually, as the Lord of the Rings films, but if you look at the standard of visual effects against the era in which the films were made, I think there’s a fine argument to be made that BTTF was hugely impressive. The LOTR films have been received incredibly well, and have plenty to recommend them, although they're all 16 hours long and if you don't like that particular genre, you'll be asleep before you see your first hobbit. And yes, I know they won a million Oscars, but that doesn’t always equal sheer enjoyment. Titanic won Best Picture because it looked nice, but was it really the best film of that year? Here are some films that didn’t win Best Picture at the Oscars, just for fun.

Citizen Kane, 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Dr Strangelove, Bonnie & Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cabaret, The Exorcist, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Goodfellas, Dangerous Liaisons, Born on the 4th of July, My Left Foot, JFK, A Few Good Men, The Fugitive, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, LA Confidential, Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, The Sixth Sense, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
Hudson Hawk.

For action and adventure, it's possible that the Back To The Future films don't compare with the Indiana Jones films; although they have more than their fair share, they admittedly are not as action-oriented as the Indy films. Sadly, following the below-average-but-probably-still-better-than-Temple-of-Doom “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, that trilogy has also been unnecessarily tampered with. Even if it hadn’t been, (or if Crystal Skull had been really good), the fact remains that Temple of Doom is pretty naff compared to the other two original movies. I’m not sure any adventure film will ever rival The Last Crusade, because that film pretty much has everything you could ever want from an action movie. Nazis being crap? Check. Exotic Locations? Check. Sean Connery? Check. Harrison Ford? Check. Biblical epic-ness? Check. And finally, Alison Doody...check. So, on its own, yes I would concede that Last Crusade is a better film than any of the BTTF flicks – but only just. As a trilogy, our survey says....X!

For Biblical allegory, although not for mind bending “ooh, makes you think”-ness (which isn’t really a thing, I just made it up) – the films don’t compare with the Matrix trilogy, but then unlike the Matrix trilogy, the second two BTTF films aren’t utter tripe. The first Matrix film is a really good (not great) film, with a really good (not great) idea behind it. As a standalone piece of cinema, it must rank as an important contribution to the art. However, the sequels are so mind-bendingly awful and lost in tracts of their own self-righteousness that really the whole concept is ruined and the brilliance of the first film is lost.

Pirates of the Caribbean is probably the closest set of films in terms of the general style, some wacky characters, good old fashioned escapade fun and some funky special effects and pretty far-out plot lines. BUT, the films are long, especially the completely directionless third one. This is nothing compared to the fact that Orlando Bloom AND Keira Knightley “act” in all three films. Now, Keira Knightley is a strangely alluring actress, despite her 12-year old boy’s figure and funny mouth, but her acting chops are not to my tastes, and for the schoolboy crush factor, she’s certainly no Lea Thompson. As for Orlando Bloom, well, I’m really not a fan. Yes, you could argue that Jack Sparrow is a better single character than any in the BTTF films, and Johnny Depp a more accomplished actor than any of the “Future” cast, but that on its own isn’t enough to rescue it.

For hard hitting pace and action and gritty realism with intrigue and espionage, it definitely doesn't come close to the Bourne trilogy, and I can't really think of anything bad to say about that one. It’s different, for sure, but the Bourne trilogy actually reminds me of the BTTF films in more than one way. For instance, there’s no single performance in any of the three films that truly stands out. Brian Cox is excellent, as always, as are Joan Allen and Matt Damon, but none of them put in an Oscar-winning turn. This is a good thing, in my opinion, because the films don’t demand it. The story and action is enough. Like BTTF, the cast are brilliant in their roles, but none of them dominate the screen and take away from the rest of the film, like Heath Ledger does in The Dark Knight. When he’s not on screen, all you can think is that you wish he was. This is not the case in the Bourne films, where no single character is so crucial that you can’t live without them. The films are not made for fun, and have little humour in them, and so there is no comparison there, but they stay thematically consistent and tell a story that stays completely true to the world it inhabits. If I had to pick a fault, it would be that the non-linear style of the end of the second film and start of the third is hugely confusing, but then I could hardly deny that certain parts of the third BTTF film could have been trimmed, so let’s not get too close into criticising brilliant trilogies.

Other notable trilogies could include:

Die Hard (except there's 4 of them now, and the second one is rubbish)
Home Alone (only joking. The first two are good though.)
Jurassic Park (maybe if the third one had had some effort put into it by anyone associated with it, director, actors, etc)
Evil Dead (first one, brilliant – other two, I’m not sure)
Spiderman (Hmmm, the first two are superb. But any trilogy that includes that pointless “Emo Spidey” section of Spiderman 3 doesn’t deserve a place at this table. I mean, seriously, what the HELL were they thinking? It’s a bad film without that, but that absolutely nails its coffin permanently shut.)
Terminator (third one rubbish, and there’s a fourth one now anyway)

There are also other film trilogies of course, like High School Musical, Matrix, X-Men, Mission: Impossible, Ace Ventura (yes, they made a third), Austin Powers, Mighty Ducks, Beverly Hills Cop, Blade, The Ocean’s films, Robocop, Rush Hour, Scream, Spy Kids, Transporter, Ice Age, I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc but all of these are discounted for either being a) completely terrible or b) let down by at least one entry in the set.

So, this is obviously a gigantically subjective theme, and a very subjective blog – and I’m fine with that, and I hope that everyone has different ideas about what constitutes the perfect film trilogy. After all, all of the above is only my opinion. But, fellow film lovers, let me ask you this - if someone sat you down and said "Right, you've got to watch an entire trilogy all the way through for pure enjoyment," is there a better choice than Back to the Future?

Saturday 29 August 2009

Why Cosmpolitan Magazine are morons.

Ok, first of all let me preface this entire article with the following two caveats to that title. Firstly, I don’t read Cosmopolitan regularly, however – I found a copy of it lying around today and I thought I’d have a look at it. It’s amazing what being at a loose end will do to you isn’t it? The second point is this – I don’t want people to read this title and think that I’m being a typical lad who says that all women’s magazines are lowest-common denominator trash with no imagination or depth that simply adhere to tired old stereotypes, while heading off to “read” the latest issue of Nuts. I don’t care much for women’s magazines per se, but I don’t have anything particularly against them either – partly because it would be stunningly hypocritical of me.

BUT – having flicked through this issue of Cosmo, I feel that the one article I did bother to read deserves a blog which properly exposes just how ashamed of themselves the writers and editors ought to be. Not only because I think it’s ludicrous, but because I actually feel that, much like the Sex and the City girls, they are doing far more harm than good to the image of women that they are trying so hard to project.

The article is called “46 Kick-Ass Women Who Have Changed YOUR Life.” Ok, that’s catchy enough, “although how could they have changed MY life?” I hear you cry. Well, they explain that...at the start of the article they say “Gutsy, inspiring women come in all ages, shapes and sizes. So, love them or loathe them, Cosmo celebrates these extraordinary women who’ve all influenced the way we think today.”

Fair enough – a cursory glance at the opening page shows that Michelle Obama, Madonna, Germaine Greer and Annie Liebowitz are all there, and I think they are fair shouts, Oprah Winfrey, Judi Dench, Rebecca Adlington and the Queen stare out from the page opposite, and fair enough there too. So, it’s all going well so far. And each person has a little bit of blurb underneath their name. Par example...

"Entrepreneur Michelle Mone, 37, has won several business awards since launching underwear brand Ultimo in 1996, aged 25. Her firm MUM is now worth over £45m. Not bad for someone who left school at 15 with no qualifications."

Good call. Here is a woman who is basically a self-made millionaire, breaking glass ceilings etc etc, blah blah, and has done really well for herself and I think she is a pretty good example for young women.

So, we have Aung San Suu Kyi, the Prime Minister of Burma, Angelina Jolie – nominated for her humanitarian efforts, Oprah for obvious reasons, Shami Chakrabarti, Kelly Holmes, Hilary Clinton, Queen Ramia of Jordan, and Clara Furse to name but a few. There are also women who were “the first woman to...” for example be prime minister, run a TV station, run MI5, chair the G8, edit the Sun (a dubious honour but I see the point) etc etc.

Good. I’m just a teacher from Leeds, so I’m well aware that my opinion is completely worthless, but nevertheless, I think it’s good that these women are being held up as good examples. Oh, but hold on...what’s this? Some of the other names on the list? But Paul, I thought you said this threatened to be a good article?

Well, it looks like it might be...but then Cosmo pull out the ace up their sleeve, which turns out to be the fact that certain entries read as though they were in fact put together by a bunch of giggly, stupid little girls who like shoes, chocolate, wine and “like” football because it’s “cute guys in shorts”. Uh-oh, STEREOTYPE ALERT! And why have I fallen back on this most tired and boring of generalisations? Well...

Michelle Obama – “Have you seen those toned biceps? We salute you!”
Nothing needs saying about this. She’s a Harvard educated lawyer and first lady of the US, not to mention a mother of two. But hey, well done on the biceps. Good arms will always surely outweigh how hard you worked and how far you've come. Well done Michelle!

Jennifer Aniston – “Since the end of her marriage to Brad, she’s encouraged an army of single women by keeping it real.”

Now hold on a second, but am I the only one who realises that “keeping it real” isn’t actually a thing? It’s perhaps the most vague and pointless thing to say about anyone. Fine, hold her up as an example to young women if you want, but for crying out loud, give her more credit than to invent an imaginary thing that she’s done.

Sarah Jessica Parker. Now, let me just interject here to say that there’s nothing they could say about "SJP" that would convince me that she was worth a place on this list, but let’s see what they can come up with...“Her outfits sparked 1,000 imitations and got us all drinking Cosmopolitans.”

I don’t know what that sound is, but I think – I think – it might just be Emmeline Pankhurst spinning at a rate of knots in her grave. Literally, she’s churning that ground right up. Oh, but wait...the worst is yet to come.

“Model of the moment Agyness Deyn, 26, is known for her super-cool style – and for bringing bleached white hair to the masses.”

Honestly, I didn’t just make that up. That's the whole entry. According to Cosmopolitan, ladies, Agyness Deyn has changed YOUR life by wearing things and having white hair. Now, I’ve got nothing against her personally, of course – she does what she does and good on her for it, but for CRYING OUT LOUD!!

I don’t mean or want to wade in on issues on which I am not fully versed, but at the same time what kind of indictment of women is it that Cosmopolitan put a list like this together and then go on to publish it for (presumably) intelligent, educated women to read? This the same magazine that has, every month, someone or other whinging on about just how terrible men are and how we’re all the same and how we treat women like idiots and complain that they’re one-dimensional shoe-shopping airheads. Good job you don’t practice mind-blowing hypocrisy and stereotype adherence in your magazine, eh?

I’d be particularly interested to know what women thought of this article, and whether or not I’m just being a bit of a man about it, because after all, men’s magazines tend to have lists like this that are pretty superficial, but I can’t honestly imagine Robert Pattinson being listed as a man who has changed my life merely because he played a vampire and has long hair that’s also short somehow.

Any thoughts would be welcome. A motto that perhaps the editors of Cosmo should have applied to that article.

Wednesday 26 August 2009

Movie Review - Terminator Salvation

Where do you start when it comes to reviewing a film like Terminator Salvation? Well, let’s begin at the beginning. I love the Terminator films. The first two are absolutely fantastic films, probably both in my top 10 films of all time. Well, top 15 for sure. I even like T3, although it’s clearly rubbish – and it IS rubbish. I’m sick of these people saying “oh, you know it’s not actually all that bad”. You know who you are, and don’t worry about it, but you do it and the reason you do it is that you saw it at the cinema, you thought it was gash, which it is, but you wanted to love it and then a couple of years later you saw it on TV and thought “you know, this isn’t half bad, or certainly not as bad as I remember it being” because you want to love it, you do – you want to love it because the first two were brilliant and you can’t bear to be let down by another trilogy because the third part is lazy.

But, try as you might, Terminator 3 is rubbish. The two lead actors do a reasonable job, but Clare Danes, likeable though she is, seems as confused as the audience are as to just what she is doing in a Terminator film – Arnold looks like his mind was elsewhere (which it almost certainly was) and Kristanna Loken is relatively pleasant to look at but let’s be honest, is almost completely without charm or charisma.

This is the problem when you don’t have the same team working on the third film. Losing James Cameron was a big blow, evidently. And it’s not the first franchise that this problem has affected – the Batman series was the same, and in fact that franchise also reached its nadir with a film featuring a performance from Arnie that ranked, shall we say, outside his best? This is certainly a problem that doesn’t go away in Terminator Salvation.

So, Terminator Salvation – let’s do Heat magazine’s water-tight film-reviewing technique – and I mean that without as much sarcasm as you think. What’s right with it, and what’s wrong with it? So, what’s right with it? Well, it’s important to say this – a lot. There is a lot to like about this film. In fact, I can’t remember the last film I saw that had so many small things to like, and yet somehow was still garbage.

And this is really the problem with the film I think, and I’m abandoning Heat magazine’s technique already because it’s really much easier to talk about what’s wrong with the film, and just interject with the occasional plus point.

You all know the story of the Terminator films by now, and so you also know that the first two films created a perfect story arc that did not need messing with in any way, and so you also know that Hollywood cannot resist a chance to make some money, and furthermore you know, given the recent trends in cinema, that nobody is capable of original thought anymore and so every single new film is either a) a bad adaptation of a novel, b) a bad remake of a beloved movie/TV show from between approximately 1974 and 1994, or c) a “reboot” of a franchise. This is obviously option c, but to a further extent it is also option b, in that it is a re-make of several beloved films, including but not limited to Mad Max, The Dark Knight, the first Terminator film, Blade Runner and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. “Charlie’s Angels?” you say? Yes – I say.

The director of this film, is called McG. I don’t mind people having quirky nicknames, but they have to sound good. It’s the same reason I don’t like Lady GaGa – well, it’s not – I don’t like Lady GaGa because she strikes me as a vacuous moron, but the nickname thing still applies. Now then, McG gets a lot of stick from a lot of people for having directed the two Charlie’s Angels movies. Now as it happens, I think the first Charlie’s Angels is a really good film. It’s not an Oscar-winner by any means but it is unapologetically fun, it doesn’t take itself seriously for a second, and it’s crammed full of decent set pieces and just general enjoyment. The second one, yes – it’s terrible. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. Absolutely awful. And why is it awful? Because it forgets to spend any time on the characters because it got that out of the way in an earlier film, it fills the screen-time with pointless explosions and action with absolutely no direction or point.

And this has to lay at the feet of McG, because he took a perfectly good franchise, and indeed a perfectly good opening gambit film, saw there was a huge budget and just said “Oooooh, budget!!!” and proceeded to spend it on absolutely nothing. And this, my friends, is why Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, is the same film as Terminator Salvation.

Yes, they are superficially different films, in the same way that you don’t immediately notice any similarities between say The Lion King and Hamlet. But at the end of the day, they’re both the story of a young prince whose father was murdered by his evil uncle who steals his kingdom. Terminator Salvation is set in a bleaker world, with considerably less emphasis on fun, and Cameron Diaz doesn’t dance in her pants at all, (not that I expected she would, but it was such a highlight of the first Charlie’s Angels film I thought they might put it in there, but life is full of little disappointments I suppose.) but the two films are basically the same, and the reason is that McG has looked at his budget, and decided to spend it all on blowing things up so much that he accidentally forgot to put a plot or any character development into the film. An easy mistake to make I suppose, but a pretty crucial one nonetheless. And, as a direct result, the first two-thirds of the film are unimaginably boring. I mean, not just for Terminator films, but for any film. The final act is pretty good, I think, but by that time I was so bored it took me too long to get myself involved in the action. For example, there is a point where John Connor kisses his pregnant wife before he heads off into battle. All I could think about was how stupid Christian Bale’s nose looked when it was squashed into Bryce Dallas Howard’s face.

So what else is there? I’ve heard Christian Bale get slagged off from pillar to post for his performance in this film, and I don’t think it’s all that terrible – by any means. First and foremost, I think he is a terrific actor and he doesn’t reach his potential here. That’s partly his fault, but it’s partly the fault of the people making, writing, and basically creating the film. He doesn’t help himself though by continuing to talk like Batman. Now, the Batman voice worked in Batman Begins, I think. The film is practically flawless and that voice doesn’t spoil it. That’s largely because Batman has next to nothing to say. In the Dark Knight, people commented on the Batman voice because a) it’s even more ridiculous, and b) it’s used for more lengthy dialogue. And it continues here. Bale’s opening lines sound like a man who is just learning to speak for the first time. Of course John Connor is not someone who’s relaxed, by any means, and he does and should take things very seriously – but there are times when it is just ridiculous.

Ok, enough about how much I didn’t like it. What’s good about it? Firstly, Bale has several good moments – and I quite liked him as John Connor. Two other characters have a lot of promise. Sam Worthington is particularly good as Marcus Wright. A character who would have stolen the show in the hands of a better director is still the most impressive character in the film, and Worthington is really good – putting in an almost Bale-esque performance in terms of the nuance he gives the character. But I still don’t think I was as impressed with him as I was with Anton Yelchin as a young Kyle Reese. He’s done his homework, and his performance absolutely nails the character as a young man to a T. And in fact, when those two characters are sharing the screen, the film does step up a notch, seeming to get some kind of injection from their charismatic portrayals of their characters.

The film makes quite a lot of reference back to the other films, which is something some people hate, but I love. I love films that do this, I don’t know what it is but so long as it is done well, I can hardly get enough of these little in-jokes – to the point that I’m almost sorry I’m not a trekkie because I missed all the references to the other films, of which I’m told there are many. This film does it well, for the most part. There is a point at which it goes horribly wrong, but 9 out of 10 references are well-placed and appropriately delivered. There is also an “Arnie” moment, and I won’t spoil what that is in case you haven’t seen it, but suffice to say, it will probably polarise opinion, but I really, really liked it.

It feels strange to say that a film lacks the kind of charisma that Arnold brings to the screen. After all, he has consistently been slagged off by “proper” film critics for his lack of personality, and it’s hard to deny that he was probably born to play a robot. Well, not a robot, sorry – a “cybernetic organism” – but I think a lot of critics are missing a trick with his acting ability. Yes, he probably wouldn’t be able to carry off the subtle anguish of Michael Corleone, but he is a massively charismatic actor. Think about it – he must be. He’s not good looking – chiselled maybe, but he’s no George Clooney, and you can’t really understand him half the time, but for a long time he was the world’s most bankable movie star and that doesn’t happen by accident. His performance as the Terminator is more subtle than people give him credit for – in the first film he is completely believable as a ruthless killing machine, and his presence electrifies the screen. In the second film, he has to play a protector, and the journey that the character undergoes is played brilliantly – as he slowly learns human characteristics, the confusion and dichotomy between machine and man is brilliant. In the scene in which Linda Hamilton threatens to destroy his CPU chip, the audience is genuinely conflicted as to who to root for, and a lot of the heart of the movie lies in Arnie’s brilliant performance. And this film misses him, gigantically. It doesn’t have a character that you completely buy into and it doesn’t have an actor capable of such a performance either, and that’s a great shame, because who knows? Maybe they could have rescued the film after all. Some other good things? Well, the supporting cast is fine, if unremarkable; in the final half hour the film remembers that it’s supposed to be a high-octane action movie and it suddenly acts the part well – the emotional climax to the film is believable and pleasant enough, and the earlier films evidently matter to the film-makers, because they go to great lengths to respectfully reference the previous films and not to tread on their toes.

Oh, the last thing that’s wrong with it by the way is the dialogue. It’s terrible. In the first film, Arnold only speaks 17 sentences. This is perhaps a trend that should have been continued here, because with the exception once again of Kyle Reese and Marcus Wright, who deliver their lines with enough passion and conviction to gloss over any troublesome moments, the dialogue is absolutely appallingly written and appallingly delivered. The nadir of this is undoubtedly a scene between Moon Bloodgood (seriously, that is her name) and Sam Worthington, but it isn’t fair to just pick this one scene as unusually bad. I mean, it is unusually bad by most films’ standards, but not this one. Christian Bale is given precious little to work with, and the stuff he is given, he tends to waste. Bryce Dallas Howard does even less in this film than Clare Danes did in T3, which is saying something, and the other characters do a lot of pained expressions and guttural choking but not an awful lot of communicating. If these people were the last outpost of human resistance against an advancing army of super-computer controlled killing machines, I wouldn’t put my money on the humans managing to outwit them since they can’t formulate sentences properly, and surely communication is a key aspect of an underground resistance against the aforementioned machine army, n’est pas?

Finally, there is the time-travel conundrum. As I said earlier, the first two films created a perfect story arc. And this is why I think that T3 and this film should never have been made. The single biggest problem with the entire franchise is that it is based on a completely impossible time-travel scenario. The entire “send back your own father before he becomes your father thus negating your entire existence” thing is just a horribly giant plot-hole, of epic proportions. To talk in Jim Cameron terms, you could sink the Titanic through it. And even if it wasn’t, T2 establishes that Skynet is created because of Miles Dyson’s work on the original computer chip from the first Terminator, except there can’t have been a Terminator for him to discover if it requires his input to invent it, etc etc, blah blah. But the thing is that the first two films are so brilliant, that you don’t care. You’re prepared to overlook it because the films are set in the present day, and you just kind of go with it. The films are incredibly good, and so you’re prepared to buy into the fact that under no circumstances does it even hold together as a premise. However, now that this film is set in that future, this future that people have been talking about, it brings front and centre a problem that did not need attention drawing to it. I found myself practically unable to stop thinking about it as I watched John Connor come face to face with Reese for the first time. The other thing I have an issue with is this idea of “no fate except what we make” blah blah. Ok, it’s fine – and in the first two films it works its way through and it does really well, and in fact sets up the second and third acts of T2 – and compliments the ending particularly well. Then the third film comes along and just blows that out of the water. Yes, there’s no fate – except the apocalypse and the war, that is fate, but other than that, there’s no fate. Except for the bits that are. Ok, that doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Why do that? Why take two of the greatest films of all time, which are held together with a story and moral that I think are not only hugely interesting, but vitally important too, and just make them somewhat disappointing?

I think there is plenty more that you can get out of the Terminator story, and this film almost threatens to do it at several stages, but at the end of the two hours, you are left with an overall feeling that they have failed, and failed miserably. I suppose it should count for something that they tried, but with films like this, films that were so important to people – films that actually changed cinema and certainly the way that people thought about all kinds of issues – you cannot afford to get it this wrong.


Check out these excellent articles at Cracked.com for more Terminator time-travelling insanity.

http://www.cracked.com/funny-254-the-terminator/

http://www.cracked.com/article_17390_5-reasons-terminator-franchise-makes-no-goddamn-sense.html

And here's Christian Bale being a good colleague and generally spearing right through its heart the concept that actors are overpaid jumped-up primadonnas. Of course you've all heard it by now, but just in case you haven't, this is Bale reacting in a measured and mature manner to a lighting engineer who got into his eyeline during a scene with Bryce Dallas Howard. Since all the scenes between these two in the movie have all the tension and emotion of an omnibus of Family Affairs, I don't know why he was so bothered to be honest.



PS, some* of the language is quite unpleasant and so if you are in one of my classes, then don't listen to it, because you're young, and young people don't know swear words. Certainly I would be setting a bad example as a teacher to allow such easy access to words that are a bit rude, so I'm going to trust you not to listen in case you hear a rudie.

*actually, replace "some" with "all".