Demob Happy

On race and ‘invisibility’ 8/10 Ralph Ellison’s debut novel is a startling and unforgettable vision of racial tension and inequality in 1950s America. In a sprawling and unpredictable narrative, Invisible Man veers between surreal, near-farcical episodes and shocking realism. As much as Ellion’s nameless protagonist seems to slip in and out of visibility, so does [...]

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Out of Africa 6/10 This adaptation of Giles Foden’s book is a fairly conventional thriller set in a historical context. Forest Whittaker is undeniably brilliant as the ogreous Idi Amin; in all his explosive, unpredicatable idiosyncrasies. Like Uganda’s people, James McEvoy’s flippant young doctor is swept up by the African dictator’s powerful charisma and becomes [...]

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Break for the border 9/10 Cormac McCarthy is a unique voice in American fiction. His flowing polysyndetonic prose forms a poetic vision of the American West that is almost Biblical in its rythmns. The Border Trilogy is a fable about a last generation of cowboys – John Grady Cole and Billy Parnham – drawn into [...]

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The thrill of the chase 8/10 Mel Gibson might have alienated a core part of his audience by choosing to film in a dead Mayan dialect, but Apocalypto’s cinematic conceit is universal: this is a chase movie, and a very good one. In fact, anyone who has watched a movie in foreign language will have [...]

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A life of the mind 7/10 With Human Traces Sebastian Faulks takes on the unenviable task of making a palletable story out of the birth of psychiatry. It is a vigorously researched work that traces neurological science from its grizzly Victorian infancy, with one of its principle characters Jacques Rebiere inspired by Charcot’s famous lectures [...]

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Beck at his best 8/10 Unless you are a die-hard fan, of which I suspect there are many, Beck’s prolific career seems to slip in and out of my musical radar. 2002′s sombre, sometimes po-faced, Sea Change was the last time I bought a Beck album, one which I now feel hasn’t stood the test [...]

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