AKA Year in Review: The Music

This wasn’t easy. My tastes run towards the old skool, so for those expecting an exhaustive list of the good and great of 2004 are doomed to disappointment.

Yes, there were fine, fine albums this year from the Beastie Boys, De La Soul, Jill Scott and Prince. But they all have back catalogues full of fine albums, so no surprises there.

The closest we’re going to get to a musical retrospective is going to come from a glance at the stack getting the most play currently on the AKA Wheels of Steel. To wit:

Masters at Work Mastercuts – Kenny Dope – Disco Heat (2004) – OK, granted, this came out this year, but this is all predominantly late 70s stuff. Discs 2 and 3 are unexpurgated full tracks, but the real treat here is Disc 1, a DJ mix tape. Taking all the chunkiest slabs of funk and cutting the shit out of them, MAW man Dope strips the disco cheese out and only leaves the full phat.

Tom Waits – Foreign Affairs (1977) – Towards the tail end of his lounge lizard lothario era, and just before he embarked on the found sound alchemy of hitting dustbin lids, screaming down tubes and creating sonic marvels, this is Waits at his bruised and beautiful best, with that inimitable voice that sounds like bourbon and barbecue, gravel and gasoline, heartattack and vine.

David Holmes – Ocean’s Twelve OST (2004) – The Rat Pack stylings of the first film are tweaked for a more Eurocentric groove on another flawless package of retro concoctions from Holmes.

Snoop Dogg feat. Pharrell – Beautiful (2003) – The Neptunes sterile soundscape twinned with the loping drawl of the Doggfather gives him his best single since those days with Dre.

Maxwell – Now (2001) – One for the Where Are They Now? file. Maxwell’s third album came out almost four years ago, and not a semi-quaver from him since. One of the artists at the vanguard of the Nu Soul movement of the mid-90s, Maxwell’s mixture of 60s vocals, lush 70s arrangements, and a splash of 80s rawness created a sound that sounded reassuringly familiar and sparklingly new at the same time.

Bobby Womack – Lookin For a Love (The Best of 1968–1976) – What can I tell you? It’s Bobby Womack. It’s great. He certainly doesn’t need me bigging him up. The music speaks for itself. Classic.

SINGLE OF 2004 - Twista – Slow Jamz – This would win purely for rhyming “Vandross” with “pants off”, but this valentine to the quiet storm soulsters of the 80s combined with furious wordplay from the ubiquitous Kanye West has been played regularly in the AKA crib for the whole year. We have a winner!

Other than that, I’ve been leaning on old standbys for most of the year, with lots of Joni Mitchell (Blue and The Hissing of Summer Lawns) Stevie Wonder (mostly Fulfillingness' First Finale) and Curtis Mayfield (mostly the Right Combination album he did with Linda Clifford).

A caution on a worrying trend I spied at the end of 2003, which has been maintaining a dangerous pace this year – The evils of Fogey Jazz. Yes, I do mean this hideous Jamie Cullum, Katie Melua, Michael Buble stuff we keep getting. Jazz, like hip-hop 20 years ago, always used to signify innovation and flexibility. Now, its just tired rehashes, and white folks doing black music without any of the flair or creativity. Just a bunch of unnecessary covers foisted on us with depressing regularity. If I hear Rod Fucking Stewart massacring another standard, I will break his beak, shave his spiky head, flay his fake-tan hide and feed him to a leopard. Where’s Courtney Pine when you need him?

Oh, and I loathe the Scissor Sisters. Stop lauding them. 'Tis shit.

AKA Year in Review: The Movies

Right, I was going for a Top Ten but, being an ornery critter, I couldn’t whittle the list down that much. So I’m going with a Top Twelve. For the sake of fairness, I have deliberately rejected any films I saw in a professional capacity. If I reviewed it elsewhere, it was immediately disqualified for inclusion.

For those with memories longer than that of your household goldfish, you will know I’ve already unveiled four of the twelve. (That would be Kill Bill Volume 2, Man on Fire, Oldboy and The Punisher).

Time to stop you from waiting any longer. Here, in absolutely no order whatsoever, are the rest of the AKA 2004 Top Twelve Movies. Have at thee!

The Cooler – I’ve discussed this film on the blog before, so I won’t repeat it all here. Nevertheless, one of the all-time great Vegas movies.

The School of Rock – I wish I had been eight-years-old when I saw this, so it could have changed my life. All family movies should be as brilliant as this. (Having said that, I wish all Jack Black and Richard Linklater movies were even half as brilliant as this.) Rockin’ good fun.

Lost in Translation – In retrospect, maybe it is a little po-faced and pretentious. But the two central performances are fantastic, and it was funny, touching and beautifully shot. People who complained that there was no story should be locked in a Karaoke Bar with their ear lobes stapled back for all eternity.

Spider-Man 2 – I’ll come clean. I was one of the only people on the planet who thought the first Spider-Man movie was a bit, well, average. Having suitably lowered my expectations for the sequel, I was absolutely thrilled with this. Stan Lee’s most famous son faces off against Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus in THE Marvel Comics movie of 2004. (Which more than compensates for the truly dreadful Blade Trinity, which managed to unleash a heavy stream of piss all over the first two movies and Wesley Snipes, whilst producing a fantastic performance by Ryan Reynolds at the same time.)

Hellboy – Ron Perlman and Guillermo Del Toro weave wonders with Mike Mignola’s creation about a demon raised by the Allies to fight-the-forces-of-evil in the wake of the Second World War. Apart from the abrupt ending, this was sweet perfection.

American Splendor – A different kind of comic-book hero. The inspiring life of loveable curmudgeon Harvey Pekar and his stubborn refusal to change his ways for anyone, whilst all the while he plugs away at his life’s work, the underground comix of the title. Paul Giamatti should have won the Best Actor Oscar for this.

Infernal Affairs – Makes Michael Mann’s Heat look like a straight-to-video cheapie knock-off. A Hong Kong crime epic that will be neutered by its forthcoming Hollywood remake. The most rich and complex crime movie since L.A. Confidential.

Dawn of the Dead – This should have been awful. A Hollywood remake of one of the most beloved cult zombie classics ever. Somehow, it worked. Replace Romero’s shambling Undead with 28 Days Later’s souped-up Infected, stick some cannon fodder in a mall, and let rip. Resplendent in all its awful beauty, and genuinely scary.

WORST FILM OF 2004: Elephant – When Gus Van Sant was being reviled for his unnecessary shot-by-shot remake of Psycho, I just shrugged. So what? It was just an art-house conceit welded onto a Hollywood classic. Superfluous? Sure. But maybe that was the point. Well, Gus, I’m not going to fight your corner anymore. This film SUCKED! A meandering, directionless meditation on Columbine, this broke the cardinal rule of cinema: it was boring. Elephant dung.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS: The Incredibles, Northfork, Jersey Girl.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

As the 342nd day of the year begins, and magazines and websites fill themselves with those extraneous “Best of” and “Worst of” the year lists, I find myself co-opting this most unoriginal of ideas and embracing the arbitrary breakpoint of one calendar year to have a look back, as I cast my jaded and bloodshot critical eyes over 2004’s movies, music, comics, books, television, current events…all manner of pop culture detritus that has floated through my thoughts in the last (almost) 12 months.

Critics always try to make connections where, often, none exist. They try to find trends where only coincidence resides. After all, they have copy to file and only a finite number of interesting things to say about any given piece of work.

Frequently, trends exist solely due to imitative behaviour. “Well, if that worked, then we should do it again and again and again, until we hammer it into the ground and suck every last penny out of it!” That’s why there are so many sequels.

2004 has seen the resurgence of the zombie film; the continuing success of the superhero movie; and the nascent birth of Hollywood’s move to remake all manner of Asia Extreme oddities (by sucking out whatever made them unique in the first place, and blanderising them in the name of Money, Money, Money).

Next year, I predict less zombie movies, more superhero movies, and a heaving warehouse full of American studio movies based on Korean and Japanese mini-classics.

But I digress. For me, THE movie genre of the year has been the full-blooded return of the Revenge Movie. And I do love to have me a good revenge movie.

The Bride’s mission finally ended in Kill Bill Vol. 2, Thomas Jane strapped on an armoury that would make the toughest mobster’s bladder void itself in The Punisher, Denzel Washington showed us a neat trick with exploding suppositories in Man on Fire, and Min-sik Choi topped that with an even neater trick with a live octopus in Oldboy.

Now, a lesser writer would try and find some tenuous connection between this surge of bloody retribution splashing in crimson arcs across cinema screens the world over. Shit like: it’s a sign of the increasing shift to the right in America. Or: it satisfies a need for catharsis stemming from the events of 9/11 and the War in Iraq.

But that’s all a bunch of crap. Tarantino has had a love affair with the revenge movie most of his life, the Marvel Comics character The Punisher dates back to the early ‘70s, the script for Man on Fire has been bouncing around Hollywood for a couple of decades, and Oldboy is the middle chapter in Chan-wook Park’s revenge trilogy that has been gestating for a while now. The fact that they all turned up at the same time is a simple matter of coincidence.

So, to that Wild Bunch of anti-heroes, to Beatrix Kiddo and Frank Castle, John Creasy and Oh Dae-Su, I salute you all and your endlessly inventive ways of dispatching evildoers. Even though not a single one of you could be excused of your own evildoings, you doomed death-dealers.

And every one of these four movies sits comfortably in my Top Ten Flicks of the year. AKA says check ‘em out.

Acronyms Kick Ass

I use “AKA” as my online moniker, because, conveniently enough, those three letters are my undeniably cool initials.

Coincidently, of course, those three letters denote “alias” in and of themselves. As in “Also Knows As” or “Another Known Alias”.

Lesser known (and, consequently, far less useful) acronyms include: “Asociace Komunikaèních Agentur” (the European Association of Communications Agencies) and “Attack Cargo Ship” (Auxiliary, Cargo, Attack). Avast, me hearties! I can definitely groove on some of that pirate patter.

Incredibly useless acronyms for a slew of clubs that I would never be a member of: “American Kennel Association”; “American Killifish Association”; and “American Kitefliers Association”.

No, I don’t know what a “killifish” is either. But further research tells me that it is “Any of numerous small fishes of the family Cyprinodontidae, including the guppy and mosquito fish, inhabiting chiefly fresh and brackish waters in warm regions.”

So, now we all now. Knowledge is power.

In Japanese, depending on where you put the accent, “AKA” can either mean “red” or “demon”. That’s right, laydeez, I’m a veritable Hellboy.

I’ve left my favourite until last. It’s something that I’m sure I should be dishing out more often. “Above Knee Amputation”.

Clearly, I have far too much time on my hands today.

Gutted

Four more years. Four more motherfucking years.

Shit.

Now the insanity will begin in earnest. Ragnarok is coming. The last four years was just the warm-up act.

This is a dark, dark day, with the Smiling Satanic Simian flinging faeces at us from his Big White House.

I am indescribably depressed at this news.

War of the World

Ohio, oh-me-oh, oh-my-oh. Damn, this is a tight race. As tight as the garrotte pressing against the throat of our planet, a sliver of red spotting at the seam of tension from the coil of razor-sharp red tape. So tight that we all hold our breath waiting for the outcome and I, for one, am going blue in the face.

When I get home this evening, I’m going to dig out my unread copy of Jake Tapper’s Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency, (the exhaustive look at the dirty tricks behind the Bush-Gore 2000 Rumble) and my well-read copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.

Very, very exciting. The unfurling of history. But I don’t think there will be a definitive answer any time soon.

City Lights

The London Film Festival began on Wednesday.

I LOVE the London Film Festival. Two of my favourite things, London and Film, rubbing shoulders, ripping each other’s clothes off and violently bringing each other off in a fortnight of frenzied, hungry rutting, with blood, sweat and celluloid sprayed in all four corners of Leicester Square.

This is the first time in four years that I haven’t had press accreditation for the festival. I couldn’t really justify it with the new job and new baby. But I used to love the whole thing. In the lead up, there’s two weeks of back-to-back press screenings, three movies a day, starting at around 9.30am, leaving you on the verge of deep vein thrombosis by the late afternoon, squinting into the icy winter sky over the South Bank.

And then when the festival begins, there are more screenings. And interviews. And far too much coffee. And parties. And free beer. And you end up starting the day at 9am, and finishing at 3am in an after-hours dive in W1, arguing about movies with your peers, in slurred, nonsensical, fractured sentences. And sometimes, there’s a bit of journalism thrown in there too.

I’m going to miss it.

But to mark this occasion in my own special way, I’ve been reflecting on great London movies. And I’m struggling. It’s much easier to think of the London movies that suck.

Notting Hill is a bad, bad London movie. So is Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. None of those films are any kind of London that I know. It’s dishonest fakery, a counterfeit London for an international audience who don’t know any better, and don’t care either.

And the Carry On films and the Ealing comedies and Brief Encounter are all interesting in an historical sense, or as entertainments, but it’s a London that predates me, and it doesn’t matter how much I like Sid James or Terry Thomas or Trevor Howard, these aren’t people I recognise from my London life.

So, here are the top three London films that I can think of at the moment:

An American Werewolf in London – It took the objective eye of the great and underrated (American) John Landis to conjure up this perfect confluence of horror and comedy. The gore and laughs are piled high to dizzying levels amidst some of the great London-on-film moments, like the werewolf’s-eye-view of a rampage around the London Underground, or the porn cinema showing “See You Next Tuesday”, where David is confronted by all his victims (in reality the now-closed ABC cinema on Piccadilly which is currently a ticket booth that I never, ever see anyone using), or the decapitated head bouncing down Piccadilly.

28 Days Later – Not strictly a London film, but this is up there for the startling opening shots of Cillian Murphy wandering around the abandoned zombie-ravaged capital, all shot on the fly, guerrilla-style, in the early hours of daybreak by Danny Boyle. Burning cars, littered streets, and toppled-over double-deckers. Just like the real London after the Poll Tax riots.

Dirty Pretty Things – “We are the people you do not see. We are the ones who drive your cabs. We clean your rooms. And suck your cocks.” My favourite London film ever. Superficially, it’s a thriller. But it resonates because it's really about how we live our London lives today. Stephen Frears has a meticulous eye for detail, and every scene rings true. This film opened the London Film Festival a couple of years back. And I do believe that is where I came in...

Writer's blog

One of the advantages of the multifarious Sucker Punch, for me at least, is that it helps to kick loose the inarticulate, the inchoate and the incoherent from my seething psyche, and strings it all together into a series of sentences that perpetrate the idea that I am a witty and intelligent man. Sometimes.

This blog frequently helps me win the battle against procrastination and, that bane of all wordpeddlers, writer’s block. It can be a pretty handy warm-up before the more arduous workout of my “professional” writing: the film reviews, the feature articles and, when I’m really rolling sevens, the contributions to books. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. But it ain’t always easy.

I can come on here and spray paint my graffiti on the electronic wall without any of the performance anxiety of the other writing in my life, and sometimes I surprise myself with stuff on here that is far superior to the supposedly “real” writing that I sign my name to. And I’ve been wondering why that is. Partly, I suppose it’s because there are no limitations here. I can write as much or as little as I want, as often or as infrequently as I want, about whatever I want, without the straightjacket of editors, or house style, or deadlines, or anxiety about my professional reputation (such that it is).

Another factor must be subject matter. On here, I invariably write exclusively about topics about which I have an opinion. With, for example, a film review, I sometimes find that I have nothing that I really need or want to say about a movie, but I still have 500 words that I have to fill, and I hate to just hack something out if I can avoid it, so I punch it repeatedly in my mind until it acquiesces and says something vaguely meaningful, informative or entertaining.

You see, lately, I’ve been able to come to the blog, write away happily, post an entry, and then I go off, fire up a Word document, and gaze at a white screen for a long time waiting for some kind of inspiration. Admittedly, the demands of fatherhood make it difficult to think clearly sometimes, but this is something I’ve noticed before the arrival of the little poo-factory Buttercup.

And in some ways, the blog becomes another avoidance tactic to postpone the other work clamouring for my limited mental attention.

Not sure that there is any conclusion or solution for this one. I’m just thinking out loud. But I really am going to go off and try to finish a feature article I should have put to rest months ago.

By the end of the week.

Maybe.

You’ll Believe a Man Can Fly!

“Say, Jim! Whoo! That’s a bad outfit!”

Towards the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, I would have been in the early stages of my sixth year on the Planet Earth, around the time the last son of Krypton crash-landed into my life. Whilst my peers were obsessing over George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, I was awed by a different fantasy. To this day, Superman remains the finest superhero movie ever made, and I’m convinced that, regardless of advances in technology, it will never be bettered.

From the jagged, opaque, crystalline refuge of his Fortress of Solitude, to the urban sprawl of Metropolis and the spinning globe atop the offices of the Daily Planet, everything was perfectly realised as a world just like ours, but not. And the moment that crackled along my synapses and irrevocably changed me, in the split-second when I pledged my heart to the cinema forever: The bumbling, well-meaning Clark Kent rips his shirt asunder to reveal that S, before diving into a telephone booth and appearing in the bold red, yellow and blues, his cape billowing in the city night. And then his feet leave the ground.

“Easy, miss. I've got you.”
“You, you've got me? Who's got you?”

Perfection.

And it wasn’t perfection because of the now-primitive special effects, or the word-perfect screenplay, or the confident, assured direction, or the all-star cast, or the point-of-view of a six-year-old boy witnessing miracles (although all those things played a part). It was all down to Christopher Reeve. He was Clark Kent. And he will always be my Superman.

For someone as insanely devoted to comics as I am, I’ve never been into Superman comics. The character on the page never did it for me. I was spoilt from a tender, young age, because I saw the real thing. A bulletproof man who could jump buildings in a single bound, and was more powerful than a locomotive. Part of me never stopped believing that Christopher Reeve was really Superman. Clark Kent was just another fake identity in Superman’s Russian doll identity. When you peeled off all the layers of artifice, Christopher Reeve was a genuine superhero.

In 1995, the man who could fly was no longer able to walk. When he appeared at the 68th Academy Awards ceremony on stage in his wheelchair, I cried in a mixture of delight, joy, and sadness. Since then, he fought tirelessly for medical research to help cure the causes of paralysis, with limited, but by no means insignificant, success, hamstrung by political bureaucracy.

And now he's gone. And I can't think of a suitable goodbye that will do him justice, or that won't sound trite. But maybe I'm just not ready to say goodbye to him yet. So I'll leave it with these words from Jonathan Kent to his adoptive son, that could just as well apply to this greatest of American heroes:

“You can do all these amazing things, and sometimes you think that you will burst wide open unless you can tell someone about it, don't you? There's one thing I know for sure, son. And that is, YOU ARE HERE FOR A REASON. I don't know what it is, exactly, but I do know this much: it's NOT to score touchdowns.”

Always Greener

Dammit, I can’t sustain the unfettered hatred. I almost enjoyed today. I spent my lunch break sitting in the park, the sun blazing down causing little trails of condensation to swirl down the side of my ice-cold Dr. Pepper, reading a book (Joe Queenan’s The Unkindest Cut, for those who care about such things). I was the only one in the entire park. Green Park, it ain’t. But I did like it. I was chillin’ like a villain.

But I have no doubt that today was an aberration brought on by a pleasurable weekend and the unseasonably awesome hot weather we are having.

Oh yeah, you should all go and see Spielberg’s The Terminal this week. There are loads of reasons for this, but you can discover what they are for yourselves. Go. Watch. Enjoy.