CDs/DVDs
CD: J Mascis - Elastic DaysSaturday, 10 November 2018
“I don't peak early / I don't peak at all,” goes the wryly self-aware line in the opening song here, “Take me to the Movies”. Thirty-five years since he started releasing records, Mascis isn't interested in peaking, progress or much else beyond... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Hitler's HollywoodFriday, 09 November 2018
Apart from Leni Riefenstahl’s insidiously seductive celebrations of Nazism and the propaganda excesses of Veit Harlan’s Jud Süß (1940), the films that were made in Germany during the Hitler period have been air-brushed out of cinema history, almost... Read more... |
CD: Olly Murs - You Know I KnowThursday, 08 November 2018
Olly Murs has done alright for himself. After finishing second in 2009’s X Factor, he’s managed to forge a successful pop career and made a genuinely decent fist of TV presenting (most recently as a mentor on The Voice). ... Read more... |
CD: The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Merrie LandWednesday, 07 November 2018
Pram are an experimental pop band from Moseley in Birmingham, who specialise in creating quirky soundscapes, eerie songs and whoozy instrumentals using all manner of strange instruments. They are also unlikely to ever achieve a mass following. The... Read more... |
DVD: Anchor & HopeTuesday, 06 November 2018
There’s a lovely feel of folk freedom to Carlos Marques-Marcet’s second film, which sees the Spanish writer-director setting up creative shop resoundingly in London – or rather, on the waters of the city’s canals that provide the backdrop for Anchor... Read more... |
Album: Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - The Capitol Studios SessionsMonday, 05 November 2018
Wow, this is truly infectious! Feel-good music played so well and by a guy whose day job is as an actor. And not a bit-part player – this is the man who gave us David Levinson in Independence Day and Dr Iain Malcolm in Jurassic Park and who made his... Read more... |
CD: Marianne Faithfull - Negative CapabilitySaturday, 03 November 2018
There are many layers of allusion that come with Marianne Faithfull’s powerful new album. The title is drawn from Keats, his formula for great poetry as opposed to instructive morality, and it’s towards a poetry of experience rather than the fixed... Read more... |
DVD: Children's Film Foundation Bumper BoxFriday, 02 November 2018
The Children’s Film Foundation was founded in the early 1950s. Funded by a levy on cinema tickets, its mission was to provide wholesome Saturday morning entertainment, specifically "clean, healthy, intelligent adventure". On a miniscule budget, the... Read more... |
CD: Barbra Streisand - WallsThursday, 01 November 2018
If there's anyone on this godforsaken planet who is fully entitled to emote their way through a mash-up of “Imagine” and “What a Wonderful World”, it's Barbra Streisand, right? This, after all, is the woman who was able to deliver “Life on Mars” as... Read more... |
CD: The Prodigy - No TouristsWednesday, 31 October 2018
One of the major abiding musical memories of the late 1990s for many wasn’t so much five Mancunians ripping off Beatles’ songs, but Keith Flint of The Prodigy, growling “I’m a Firestarter/Twisted Firestarter” while all kinds of electronic battery... Read more... |
DVD: Reinventing MarvinMonday, 29 October 2018
You have to turn to the brief interview with director Anne Fontaine that is the sole extra on this DVD release to discover the real source of her film Reinventing Marvin. Though Fontaine and Pierre Trividic’s screenplay is credited as original, it... Read more... |
CD: Rosanne Cash - She Remembers EverythingMonday, 29 October 2018
Forty years on from her eponymous debut album, the eldest child of Johnny Cash and his first wife Vivian Liberto returns after a near five-year gap from recording with a collection of songs that walk the hyphen of country-rock. Hardly surprising for... Read more... |
