Recommended

I watched a documentary tonight on the recent history of western civilization. It was meticulous, lively, ambitious, humorous, irreverent and, through its inspired use of animation, broad in appeal. It's entitled “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” and is available in the Kids section of your local video rental outlet.

Never Ever Actual Witches

Charlie Brooker dismantles The Sun in two minutes flat.

Critical Morass

And then of course you’ll always get the film reviewer or critic who loves nothing more than to fawn over a “performance”. Glenn Close is incredible, Philip Seymour Hoffman is unbelievable, Sean Penn gives a stunning performance. It salvages the film.

A top level movie star giving a convincing performance is the minimum you would expect. That’s a given. I fail to understand how a performance can save a poor film. The synthesis of character, plot, pacing, mood, dialogue, photography etc. make a film good or bad.

You wouldn’t go to see a band you thought were shit because it contained one accomplished musician; “ Now these lads are fuckin’ dire but keep your ears peeled for the drummer, he always gives a stunning performance”

Just One Letter, That's All It Took

Friday on The Late Late Show a woman (Camille O’ Sullivan?) sang Nick Cave’s The Ship Song. The song contains the line “come loose your dogs upon me”. It is a great line and a great example of the songwriting genius of Nick Cave, ye olde English deployment of the word loose as a verb effortlessly gives the whole song a rich tone and historical context.

But our friend on The Late Late Show didn’t like this line so she sang “come lose your dogs upon me”. Which is not wrong, it is spectacularly wrong. What happened here? Is this her own “interpretation”, did she think “lose” works better than “loose”, or did she mistakenly think Nick Cave sang “lose” on the original version? Giving her a large benefit of the doubt and presuming it was the latter was there nobody around during the rehearsal and preparation of the song to correct it, were the definitive lyrics not sourced to be consulted and checked?

Or are we looking at a possible third scenario too awful to contemplate; that the singer assumed that the audience would not understand the word “loose” in this context, that they would think it was a mistake and so it was decided to change the word to “lose” to make it more readily comprehensible to the audience. I wonder how Nick Cave would feel about having his work butchered and misrepresented in this way. To have a word so pivotal to the theme and impact of the song discarded in favour of a thoroughly meaningless one. The slippery slope indeed.

These things matter, the details matter. Ryan Tubridy in his intro or post performance summing up failed to make any mention of Nick Cave by the way. He has probably never heard of him. He could tell you everything there is to know about Michael Bublé though.

There ain’t no fuckin troika gonna save us now.

Smoke Alarm

When giving up smoking it is helpful to conjure up an image every time you feel tempted. It is the marketing meeting – the smug, suited corporate types with their white boards and their flip charts analyzing the demographics. And there you are, the centerpiece of the presentation, the schmuck who got hooked early and has been an unwavering customer ever since. The poster child, the loyal subject, the star of the show.

You don’t like these marketing types and their heathen gibberish. You have more going for you than they have – you know more about music, you have read more books, you have travelled more, you are a more rounded and decent person. You are their moral and intellectual superior and yet there they are chortling away at your expense in Meeting Room B.

Keep the image close, because if this doesn’t stop you nothing will.