Demob Happy

War of the worlds 7/10 At War with the Mystics – The Lips’ 12th – is not the concept album the title might have you beleive. While it sees them continue to try and push the boundaries of their sound with varying degrees of success, it remains to be seen if it has the longevity [...]

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What in tarnation? 6/10 Jonathan Caouette’s highly personal film lends itself more to installational video art than to cinema or even documentary. Its frenetic visual style, using splices of camcorder and digital video footage taken over a twenty year period, often detracts from what might be of interest on camera itself. There is too much [...]

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Once upon a time in Mexico 9/10 I’d never been greatly compelled to read a book in such a typically cinematic genre, but this is incredible. It combines the bloodthirsty epic sweep of the great Sergio Leone spagetti westerns with the harsh realism of later revisionist works such as Unforgiven. All this described in a [...]

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Small town affairs 7/10 John Updike’s ‘Villages’ savages US suburban life with its depiction of computer programmer Owen Mackenzie, the neighbourhood cuckold whose entire life seems to drift by in a succession of extra-marital affairs. As you would expect from Updike, this book is brimming with insights about middle-class America, told with the knowing wink [...]

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Walks the line 7/10 Walk the Line is an enjoyable, even if by-the-numbers Hollywood biopic that rests largely on the strength of its central performers Joacqim Pheonix and Reese Witherspoon, who are both excellent. And I don’t mean they are good simply in the sense that they are able to sustain a credible impression of [...]

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Geishas go to Disneyland 3/10 Memoirs of a Geisha represents the Disneyfication of Japanese culture and the utter debasement of Arthur Golden’s fine book. Although the book is written in English by a westerner, that does not excuse the lazy stereotyping in this film: the variable accents, the use of popular Chinese actresses (as if [...]

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On ‘On Beauty’ 7/10 Having never read Zadie Smith’s ‘White Teeth’ or ‘Autograph Man’ – put off by the ubiquitous trendiness of the former and ambivalent reviews for the latter – I read On Beauty without the baggage of preconception and felt it to be a strong piece of work. Zadie Smith is clearly a [...]

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