Review articles

Learn from my mistakes.

The Lake — Anna Coddington

The Lake by Anna CoddingtonHere’s a set of simple, affecting songs, beautifully sung and sympathetically arranged. The overall theme is Love Gone Wrong, the traditional singer-songwriter preoccupation. But Anna Coddington turns it into something that sounds great — “beauty exploding from despair”, to use one of her own lines.

I was looking forward to buying this CD, since I enjoyed Anna Coddington’s performance a few months ago. Even though it’s been quite a long time since then, I still remember quite a few of the songs. The songs worked really well live, with Anna accompanying herself on guitar; the fuller production on the album adds another dimension without ever overwhelming the basic voice and guitar structure.

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Horton Hears a Who!

Horton the Elephant

I had a great time at this big, fun and loud film about a big, fun and loud elephant. The story of Horton and the Whos is one of my 2-year-old son‘s favourite stories, so this was a good choice as his first ever cinema experience. He enjoyed it, and so did we. In the manner of kids’ films these days, there were lots of jokes for the adults. During the anime sequence I was crying tears of laughter. That doesn’t happen to me that often — maybe because I don’t go to very many films.

Anyway, this is definitely worth seeing. And it confirmed to me that any film is improved by watching it with a 2-year-old.

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Alec Empire and Nitzer Ebb

I was listening to one of the tracks from the new Alec Empire album “The Golden Foretaste of Heaven” the other day. I was loving it but it seemed a bit familiar. The relentless pounding beat; the hypnotic, discordant basslines; the snarled vocals; the overall claustrophobic intensity of the thing. Alec Empire is a German with an English-sounding name, but his music reminds me of an English group with a German-sounding name. Nitzer Ebb were big(gish) in the ’80s but I only really got into them a bit later. I seem to own all of their albums and quite a number of singles, so I must like them. They released a career retrospective compilation (Body of Work) a couple of years ago; I thought that marked the end of the band, but apparently it just marked the beginning of their comeback.

I was amazed a year or so ago to see that “Nitzer Ebb” were due to play a gig at a local venue here in Auckland. They will most likely release a new album this year. It will be interesting to hear what it sounds like. They started out 25 years ago with noises, shouting, fist-pumping and Futurism (that’s where the Alec Empire connection comes in) but moved more and more towards traditional song structures. Apparently they have already played some of their new material live and broadcast so I can’t wait to hear it.

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God is Not Great — Christopher Hitchens

Organised religion is a pernicious anachronism that should be abolished, according to Christopher Hitchens. His book is subtitled “How religion poisons everything” in case there was any doubt about his position. Organised religions are pretty much indefensible anyway, but his arguments are still worth reading — I learned a few interesting bits of history. And it’s bracing to see so many dogmas held up in such a cold and unflattering light.

God is not Great takes iconoclasm to new heights. Hitchens heaps scorn on the usual zealots, from Osama bin Laden to various Popes (including the current one). But his targets cover the full spectrum of celebrity, from the sublime (Mother Theresa, M. K. Gandhi, the Dalai Lama) to the ridiculous (Mel Gibson is memorably described as an “Australian fascist and ham actor”). The only famous exception is Martin Luther King, Jr, who manages to come out looking like a decent (if flawed) human being.

I enjoyed reading God is not Great, but I think it does miss the point a bit. In the conflict between Reason and Faith, Reason wins easily; but that’s because Faith isn’t playing the game. Some say that if people believe religious dogmas even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, then this simply confirms how marvellously strong their faith is. You just can’t use logic against this kind of position, but that what Hitchens tries to do. This approach only seems to work here because he is preaching to the converted. Or perhaps I should say unconverted.

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The Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell

Politics, cyberpunk (pseudo)science, philosophy, big explosions and scantily-clad nubile young women. Sure it’s only a comic, but it still left me as breathless as a frenetic action film.

This chunky book looks to be a compilation of several episodes of a series. The great thing is that they have translated only what they had to — the comic still reads right-to-left, and a lot of the Japanese writing (especially the onomatopoeia) is still there. They’ve done a good job of preserving the feel of the original manga while making it readable in English.

I bought this in Tokyo four years ago but only just got around to reading it. When I bought the book (at Kinokuniya in Shinjuku, I think), the shop staff covered it in the traditional plain brown wrapper, ingeniously folding it so I could read the book on the train without causing a scandal. Very handy at work: when the book is closed it looks like some sort of textbook. 🙂

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I Do (Prète-moi ta Main)

This French comedy, about a man who doesn’t want to get married (don’t read any further if you don’t want to find out what happens) but does anyway, was really quite good. It had a happy ending; it was hilarious, warm, and… French.

And we saw it at the Lido cinema in Epsom — oh how I love the Lido. Excellent coffee and an afghan before the film, comfy seats during, and friendly staff.

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Perfume

Now this was an excellent adaptation of an unusual novel. Very cinematic and dark and not at all blockbustery. It was about 6 years ago that I read Patrick Suskind’s novel, but I still remember it quite well and the film captured its tone nicely.

I saw the film with Joanne at the Sky City Gold Class cinema, which was quite appropriate: as we watched the film we were able to relax in our armchairs and enjoy the aromas of our chicken nibbles and glasses of wine.

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The Matsugane Potshot Affair

“The Matsugane Potshot Affair” is your classic Festival film: amusing, but also with many uneasy moments. Weird. A bit pervy. Very non-mainstream; even more so than its very different predecessor “Linda Linda Linda” (directed by the same gentleman).

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Razzle Dazzle

This film is a funny mockumentary about competing Australian children’s dance schools. “Mr Jonathan” the main character, was hilarious in an Alan Partridge sort of way. The whole cast including the kids were good and the tone was mostly pretty convincing. And there was even some pretty good dancing.

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The History Boys

This was both inspirational and nostalgic, inasmuch as one can be nostalgic for things that never happened. Such clever and learned teachers and classmates would have made school much more stimulating. I’d like to read the script of the movie (or the play it’s based on) sometime.

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