Demob Happy

Jackson Toth waves his Wooden Wand goodbye? 8/10 FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT: Previously leader of the New York-based experimental jazz-folk collective Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice, James Jackson Toth’s solo debut is a lush take on alt-country informed by blues, soul and, occasionally, punk. Whereas Wooden Hand … was very [...]

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The road to salvation 7/10 Rose Tremain’s Orange Prize-winning ‘The Road Home‘ is a compassionate if somewhat conventional novel about a migrant worker from Eastern Europe who seeks a job in England to provide money for his family. Opening with a quote from The Grapes of Wrath, ‘The Road Home’ is a contemporary take on [...]

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More CGI and not enough trompe l’oeil 4/10 It seems an odd condition of contemporary cinema that two films on such niche subjects could be released almost at the same time. Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Prestige’ (which I haven’t seen) and ‘The Illusionist’, both about turn of the century stage magicians, were released very close together. [...]

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Notes on Notes On A Scandal 7/10 I resisted seeing – or indeed even reading about – ‘Notes on a Scandal‘, as I had wrongly assumed it was the kind of tasteful, Oscar-baiting ‘Quality British Drama’ that I loathe. With Cate Blanchette in tow, I thought I could smell theatre-honed, BAFTA-approved method acting a mile [...]

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“Christmas time … mistletoe and [lots and lots of] wine” 7/10 I’m not going to try and summarize the tangled human relationships that characterise Arnaud Desplechin’s striking ‘Un Conte de Noel’ (A Christmas Tale), so fiddly and time-consuming that it would be. The premise is an extended and admirably dysfunctional family gathering for Christmas in [...]

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Journey to the ends of the Earth (and back) 9/10 The fifth Paul Theroux travel book I have read (i’ve posted reviews of ‘The Kingdom by the Sea’ and ‘The Old Patagonian Express’ here and here), ‘The Great Railway Bazaar‘ is in fact his first and arguably most rewarding. If you are familiar with Theroux’s [...]

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“He’ll get by without his rabbit pie … run rabbit, run rabbit, run run run” 9/10 ‘Rabbit, Run‘ is the first in a quartet of novels by the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist that revolve around the varying fortunes of a former high school Basketball champion Rabbit Angstrom. All four novels were written at the end of [...]

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Fine revisionist Western 8/10 ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford‘ is a thoughtful and atmospheric film about the American outlaw myth. A careful and occasionally brutal revisionist western in the mould of Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece ‘Unforgiven‘, Andrew (‘Chopper‘) Dominik’s epic has been crafted with a painstaking, sometimes self-consciously meticulous eye. Like [...]

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The Empire strikes black 8.5/10 Micah P Hinson’s fourth album – the first I’ve heard since his powerful debut ‘Micah P Hinson and the Gospel of Progress‘ – is an accomplished work and the sound of a prolific artist heading for an artistic peak. Produced by alt-rock mixing guru John Congleton, renowned for the dark [...]

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A river runs through it 8/10 ‘South of the River‘ is an insightful and often moving novel revolving around the lives and loves of several inter-connected, mostly South London-based characters. It looks specifically at the changing fortunes of these individuals against the backdrop of New Labour and Tony Blair, from the landslide election night to [...]

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