CINEMA/DVD: STAR TREK -INTO DARKNESS (2013)/ PROMETHEUS (2012)/ DREDD (2012)

Okay, three Science Fiction movies, all dependent to an extent on what has gone before. Some spoilers, none too serious, will  inevitably follow though I doubt if any will come as a serious surprise to anyone who is remotely interested in them.

The good-

the bad-

 

and the frankly irrelevant-

albeit aesthetically pleasing.

Not as good as the first film which reinvented the Star Trek universe by changing the past. That doesn't, however, mean that similar things don't occur. But in this new universe, Starfleet is more militaristic and war is looming with the Klingons.Against this background, a rogue Starfleet officer John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) commits acts of terrorism and buggers off to a planet in Klingon territory with Kirk & co in hot pursuit. Harrison is (and this really is no surprise and it's given away in IMDB's credits for the film) the genetically created superhuman Khan (as in the movie Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan).

While it has its moments and it's certainly well made, I didn't like it as much as the first film. Simon Pegg's Scotty I just found irritating and I normally like Pegg. Alice Eve (see above) is all right and the bra and panties shot (see above) is just purely gratuitous and serves no purpose other than to titillate teenage males and a sixty-four year old blogger. There's not enough Uhura  thereby largely wasting the talents and beauty of Zoe Saldana.

But Benedict Cumberbatch is just brilliant as the villain. He exhudes menace, power, and authority and wipes the floor with anyone else onscreen with him. After this movie Hollywood will be at his feet. Thankfully he's more interested in good parts than money, though he's probably quite comfortably off by now, and has shown a canny eye for good roles like this one.

ST:ID isn't a bad movie and there's always plenty going on, it's just not as good as I was hoping for.

Is this a prequel to Alien? That was the question everyone was asking before it came out.

Spoiler answer: yes, it is. And it's a very good prequel to Alien. It not only provides the origin of the repulsive space monster we all love to go yeeurgh! at but also the origin of life on many worlds and human intelligence on ours.

Noomi Rapace (excellent) and her boyfriend find evidence that pinpoints the location of an alien race they call The Engineers and an expedition is mounted by Weyland Corp to go there. There's the usual mixed bunch of characters who are basically cannon fodder plus Michael Fassbender as an android. They believe, because of the planted evidence, that the Engineers will welcome their long-lost lost children. What they find is a bleak world, a massive building containing lots of dead dessicated bodies and that the Engineers are not what they thought. Neither is the building as lifeless as it first seems; cue lots of gruesome deaths.

Basically this a very grim piece of SF which fills in the background of the Alien universe and does in an intelligent, if rather gory, way. Ridley Scott amps up the suspense, piles on the twists (like where the hell is Guy Pearce who gets major billing in the opening credits), and builds to a climax in which humanity as a whole is threatened.

Great stuff. Just don't expect many laughs.

Karl Urban is Judge Dredd and, unlike Sylvester Stallone in the previous ill-thought of, but I rather enjoyed it, movie, Urban never removes his helmet.

This film is pared down to its basics. Dredd and a rookie Judge are trapped in a massive high-rise run by a ruthless gang of drug-runners led by Ma-Ma (a scarred and frankly terrifying Lena Headey). To get out, they have to destroy the gang. Cue lots of brutal bloody violence and lots of bad language that would never have been seen in 2000AD the original British weekly comic in which Dredd originated. (Though let's face it, we all knew what Drokk! really meant.)

There are only three characters who matter: Dredd, Ma-Ma, and Judge Anderson (a telepathic rookie on her first and possibly last day as Judge and excellently played by Olivia Thirlby).

For those who don't know, Judges are police, judge, jury, and executioner. When Dredd says, "I am the Law," he means it. No mercy, no compromise. This really is a nasty violent narrow-focus brutal piece of SF cinema. Yes, you're right, I loved it and really hope there's a sequel.

You really don't mess with this Ma-Ma.

Will she survive her first day on the job?

Hard to believe, but this man is not as nice as he looks.

CD REVIEW: U2: ROCK'S HOTTEST TICKET (1987)/ U22 (2012)

What, you haven't heard of these two 2-CD live sets? Perhaps a look at the covers might help.

Now obviously some of you aren't U2 fans and it would be unreasonable to expect you to have been aware of their existence. But I am a U2 fan, ranking them up with Neil Young, The Grateful Dead, Sandy Denny, and Bruce Springsteen up at the top of my musical favourites, and until a couple of weeks ago I'd never heard of these albums either.

The reason is that, unknown to the world at large (or maybe it's just me), every so often U2 release a live album through their fan club and available solely to its members. I only learned about them when reading U2s entry on AMG (All-Music Guide, the best music reference work on the web) and suddenly sat up and went WTF! And then: want, want, want!

The natural place to start looking was Ebay and, sure enough, I found a few. However, before I start detailing my adventures (me? use hyperbole? never!) in obtaining the two albums which are the subject of this post, here's one of the fundamental rules of economics: an item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. When I first started selling on amazon Marketplace a few years I put up a rare lavish Blues box set for £750 and that was the lowest price. I've gradually reduced the price since then and it currently stands at £120 and it still hasn't sold.

So I looked around and read reviews where I could. AMG suggested that Rock's Hottest Ticket was maybe the best of the lot but to be aware of boots and similarly titled albums which only consist of one CD. I finally found one on Ebay as a Buy-It-Now for £47.95 plus postage, from Holland, a seller with a high rating, and not a boot, honest meinheer. I swallowed and pressed the button.

It turned up, well packed, in a reasonable time, and as described. The case and inlay are a bit worn but the discs are fine. It was produced in Italy, presumably under license or by the Italian branch of the fan club, and it doesn't feel like a boot. It's an entire concert recorded in Chicago on April 29, 1987 and it's great. 

I then went after Go Home, an Irish concert recorded a few years later.  A seller had one up with no minimum bid and no bidders. So I put one in to find out that there was a reserve price. After going up to £25 I sent a message to seller asking what the minimum bid was. She replied: £65.00.  Good luck with that, I thought. When I checked a few days later it hadn't sold. I went after another copy, minimum bid £8.00 and stopped at £13.00 when I was the highest bidder. Now obviously I didn't expect to get it for that price so what I decided to was wait until the last 20 seconds and slam in a bid of £32.00. Nobody else would be so clever. Except in the last 20 seconds two people outbid me and it went for £39.95.

In the meantime I'd put in a minimum asking price bid of £27.95 (plus postage) for U22, and, much to my surprise, I got it and it arrived this morning. Advertised as new, it was exactly that. But what I didn't realise was the sheer size of it. When I first looked a the unopened packed I thought, bugger me they've sent a vinyl version. But it wasn't, the booklet was simply the size of an old LP.  Slim, not long, with large effective photos and comments on each track by the bass player. A very attractive package. Unlike RHT, the tracks here are from a variety of shows across the world from 2009-2011 and from a choice of 50 songs played during the long tour, the 22 here were selected by members of the fan club voting for their favourites, rather than the band picking them and it seems to have worked.

Okay, finally, the music. I like live albums and have them by the other artists I mentioned above, perhaps too many by The Dead but what the hell. Neil Young on stage with Crazy Horse just blows the walls down. With U2, many of their songs are anthemic anyway and suit a large stadium. The live versions are often looser, have more guitar, and are usually longer. There's a sense of space about the playing while Bono draws in the audience and, let there be no doubt about it, he has a powerful distinctive voice though he well knows a whisper can sometimes be more powerful than a shout, and immense charisma. I'm familiar with nearly all of the songs and just looking at a title I can hear it in my head but these live version add something different and it's the closest most of us will get to a live show bar watching a DVD which isn't the same.

Anyway, enough is enough. Given the cost of these albums I think I'll stop here.

Well, maybe if I can pick up a copy of Go Home at a reasonable price...

Update.

And suddenly I'm tripping over live U2 albums. I discovered Live From Paris, a 1987 concert released as an Itunes download (for a mere £7.99) in 2008. Of course, I've bought it but that really is the last one for a while.
 

POLITICS: THE (IR)RESISTIBLE RISE OF UKIP

I always, when dealing with something as sensitive or important as politics or whether you prefer The Beatles to The Rolling Stones (yeah man, I'm a 60's child), prefer to set out my stall before proceeding. Now, on the surface I am a mild-mannered, middle-class, animal-loving (in a good way) retired librarian -the type of person UKIP would love to have on their books- but, scratch the surface and I stand revealed as a libertarian lefty -I positively froth at the mouth at the thought, or even a sniff, of capital punishment, racism, sexism, homophobia, blood sports, corrupt capitalism (like all of it, man).

So you can imagine that I'm not going to say anything nice about the fragrant flowers of UKIP.

And I'm not going to disappoint you.

A moderate view is that they're a mild-mannered harmless bunch of Little Englanders -the kind you have a good laugh at, at their naivety and their outdated and old fashioned attitudes.

But, bluntly, after the recent council election results they're beginning to scare the shit out of me.

They do this for a couple of linked reasons and none of it is meant as a compliment.

Basically, what's happened recently has stretched a small-time party beyond its limits. In terms of organisations when compared to the three main parties it's like a corner shop compared to Marks & Spencer. It's party organisation consists of half a dozen people which means it's impossible to vet all the would be candidates and sometimes it's even hard to find candidates at all. But what worries about me this is that, even though would-be party members are supposed to declare if they've ever been members of those loveable rascals (a euphemism) the BNP (Bloody Nasty Party) and EDL (English Dimwitted Louts), it would be all too easy for extreme right wing racists like those loathsome morons (an understatement) to infiltrate the more respectable UKIP.

Not that UKIP needs much help. In reading up on UKIP for this post, it seems that some of UKIP's policies are actually more extreme than the BNP's which is something I'd never have imagined. Okay, so many are to left of my favourite bunch of racists, but somehow that still doesn't manage to warm my heart. Many of their policies on the economy are blueprints on how to bankrupt the country if they went ahead.

What really bothers me is that almost every member has no useful political experience and they simply don't have the brains or experience to form a government and it's frighteningly possible that they could hold the balance of power (replacing the Lib-Dems as the choice of the disaffected voter) after the next General Election. But my worst fears are that if they ever did attain real power we'd see an authoritarian government with blatantly racist policies, policies which would severely threaten the weakest members of society, and worse and that their leader Nigel Farrage (who I'm sure is genuinely well-meaning) would find he has a tiger by the tail.

It chokes l'il ole lefty me to write this, but faced with a choice solely between the Tories and UKIP I'd vote for the former every time.

The moral of this tale is: don't vote UKIP, you know it makes sense.

No similarity between the two images is intended except satirically. I did, however, find them on the same Google Images page when I typed in UKIP. I honestly don't know who the clones are supposed to be.

 

 Would you seriously vote for someone who looks like a stupid twat?

This (unim)partially political blog has been brought to you by blah blah blah.

TV: DEFIANCE (2013)

This is the new Science Fiction series on Sy-Fy (or however they spell it this week, stupid name that it is). As it's only one double and single episode in I'm not going to review it yet as such. Just a brief outline and one pedantic grumble.

It's set about 30 years after a motley collection of several alien races arrive on Earth and ask us to share our planet with them. This doesn't go down too well with us humans who tell them to sod off back into interstellar space. This doesn't go down too well with the several alien races who are going to make Earth their new home and sod the what the humans (us) think. After fifteen years of conflict (or something like that -there's so much going on, not all of it revealed, that it's hard to be sure) we're stuck with them and the humans have to adapt to a changed environment as well as living with several alien (but all humanoid) races. Fifteen years later (or something like that, et cetera) our story starts.

A starship crashes and our mature hero and his adopted alien daughter (well played by British actress Stephanie Leonidas, I forget his name) attempt to loot it but disturbed by a bunch of aggressive aliens who want to loot for themselves. Hero and adopted alien daughter have to run away, get menaced by monsters in a forest but are saved by the sheriff of Defiance (the new name for the remains of St.Louis and you can guess where the rest of this series is going to be set) where several alien races and human live in relative (relative being the important word) harmony. There are two rival families, one human and one alien (husband and wife played by British actors Tony Curran and Jaime Murray which gives the show some class). Also giving the show some class is Julie Benz as the newly appointed mayor.

It's actually all very promising, the special effects are good as is the acting (and not just by the British cast members) and there is quite a bit of scope in the scenario. Of course it is early days and it could fall flat on its face. I hope not because, although I'm still uncertain about it, there's enough good stuff that I want it to succeed.

However, this isn't what I wanted to write about here. What's happened is that the several alien races have altered Earth's environment introducing new species (presumably) animals and plants and also altering it physically -most of the original St. Louis is now underground. This is consistently referred to as terraforming. Sorry, let me emphasise that a little more-

Terraforming

Now, as I understand it, terraforming actually refers to altering conditions on an alien world so as to transform into conditions that make it into an earth-like environment.

This is exactly the fucking opposite of what has happened on Defiance!

Earth has partially been transformed into an alien environment. There may or may not be a word for this but I do know it isn't fucking terraforming.

Okay, here are some pictures taken, from as always, Google Images.

Jaime Murray (alien)

Tony Curran (ditto)

Stephanie Leonidas (alien), Hero (human) (I can't be arsed to look up the actor's name but he's American. Or Canadian).

Defiance (city).

Julie Benz (one of my favourite American tv actresses, see Buffy, Angel, and a shitload more. She's wonderful, beautiful, okay I have a crush on her.)

Group shot of the main characters.

This may not be the last you read about this TV series in this blog. Hopefully not as a major disappointment.

SCIENCE FICTION DVD REVIEW: TRANCERS THE ULTIMATE DETH COLLECTION (1985-1994), TRANCERS 6 (2002)

Back in the mid-80s, Science Fiction fans discovered a gem of a low budget sf film called Trancers and took it to their collective hearts as did fans of oddball cult movies everywhere. 

Set around 250 years in the future, a megalomaniac called Whistler has found a way to mentally dominate suggestible people into obeying his will and, when the need arises, turning them into frothing at the mouth homicidal maniacs. Our hero is Trancer-hunter Trooper Jack Deth, trenchcoat-wearing, heavy-smoking, hair-greasing (who can forget his immortal line "Dry hair's for squids."?), tough cynic. Deth is played by former comedian Tim Thomerson who should be as big a cult name as Bruce (and if I have to add a surname, you're reading the wrong blog -"The toolshed!") but for the fact the he either didn't get the breaks or he was happy making a modest living from low budget crap, though he has had minor roles in major movies and works regularly on TV. But, dammit, he should be huge!

Anyway, our bad guy has gone back in time ('down the line') to the then present day LA inhabiting the  body of an ancestor from which he intends to kill the ancestors of the ruling council. Deth follows him and finds himself very conveniently incarnated in an ancestor who looks identical. His ancestor's new BF is Helen Hunt before she became Oscar-winning Helen Hunt!! Deth is helped by a cigar-chomping cop from his own time ('up the line') whose incarnation is a pre-adolescent girl. The young actress (Alyson Croft), I should add, is absolutely terrific in the part and also appears 6 years later in the first sequel and in same role and is even better. Croft seems to have worked steadily in TV ever since.

So Deth, to whom LA is Lost Angeles where he goes to sit and contemplate on the shore of the drowned city, has to find his way around, find and save the council's ancestors, and survive the attacks of Whistler's trancers. Just to make things harder, Whistler is incarnated as the police chief.

Add in a barrel-load of characters, sharp dialogue, and a good pace, with limited but effective special effects and you have a load of fun.

Alas the picture quality was pretty poor which rather spoiled things. The good news is that it improved with each successive film. The bad news is that the Trancers sequels also follow the law of diminishing returns.

It took six years before they made Trancers 2 which, despite being pretty much a rerun of the first film with a similar cast and a different villain, isn't too bad and is worth a look. In Trancers 3, the basis of what trancers are is changed into a combination of drugs and mental domination to create super soldiers. Helen Hunt now appears in little more than an extended cameo (contractual obligation perhaps?). 

In Trancers 4 it all changes again as Jack in accidentally transported to a medieval world (aka a castle and a forest in Bulgaria) where trancers are more or less soul-sucking vampire types. It also includes the Castle of Ultimate Terror which, as you can imagine, is a prime case for contravening the Trades Description Act. It does have one very funny moment. In previous films Deth has a watch which can activate a long second whereby he is speeded up by a factor of ten. On this world it slows him down resulting a scene where the villains stand and amusedly watch him moving in slow motion.Despite being written by the well-regarded novelist and comic book writer Peter David, it's still pretty crap.

Trancers 5 (or, as it should be called, Trancers 4 pt 2) follows on directly to no great improvement.

Then I learned of a Trancers 6 which didn't have Tom Thomerson in it. I checked it out and found it going for around £15 which was too much for something that was probably crap anyway. Not long after I saw it on Ebay with a starting bid of £6.00 (plus £1.20 postage). I put in the minimum bid and promptly forgot about it until several days later when I learned I'd got it.  Well, despite having the original writers, it is, as you'd expect, not much cop. The acting is poor, the budget looks tiny, and, brief clips from older movies aside, no Thomerson. Instead the lead role is taken by the now-adult daughter whom he fathered on Helen Hunt in his ancestor's body. A mousy astronomy enthusiast, she's immediately transformed when Deth takes over her body. Not physically, you understand, just her attitude. And here the actress, Zette Sullivan does a very good job. Despite being an elfin five foot nothing she manages to convince as Deth. Apart from one earlier minor role in an erotic movie, I can find nothing else about her. Did she get lost in drugs or become a soccer mom or what? She definitely had promise and is the only really good thing in it.

So, my recommendation: skip this lot, buy Trancers, and maybe Trancers 2, as separate discs.

Here's a selection of stills I've nicked from Google Images.

DVD: THE EMPEROR AND THE WHITE SNAKE (2011, Blu-Ray)

Revised from an Amazon review.

This is also doing the rounds in the States as Sorceror and the... This is more appropriate but still misleading. A more accurate title would be The Buddhist Abbot Who Uses Buddhist Magic To Fight Demons. Admittedly this lacks a certain something as a catchy title, like not being catchy. No matter.

If you like Chinese fantasy movies you'll certainly like this one. If you aren't familiar with them you may find it a little strange as Chinese myth and folktales are very different from their European equivalents. Also, don't expect much in the way of martial arts either. What you're actually getting is a romantic fantasy. When one of two snake demon sisters (who can wear human form, half human, all snake, and all giant fucking big as Godzilla snake) surprises a nice altruistic young man into falling off a cliff into a lake, her white snake sister saves him from drowning by kissing him which causes them to fall in love. Meanwhile, Abbot Jet Li and his young brave but dumb assistant the comedy relief) are hunting down nasty demons and consigning them to another dimension where there's nothing to do but meditate on their sins and seek salvation. Susu, the white snake, pursues our young hero and they get married. When Jet Li finds out all hell breaks loose as a demon is a demon and they aren't meant to fall in love with humans because it won't work.

About halfway through the assistant gets bitten by a vampire monster demon and begins to turn into one and that's the last we see of him apart from his saving his ex-colleague monks from drowning during the climax and again in the final scene where he encounters Jet Li who, it implies, has actually managed to learn something new. 

This film manages to do several things and mostly quite well. It's a nice romantic story with teasing gentle humour (at least in the early stages). It's also a monster-fighting action movie. It's other things as well but to say what they are would spoil it. The acting is standard for this type of Chinese film. The special effects and cgi are mostly pretty good and the climax is spectacular. It's not too long either with the end credits starting at the 87 minute mark. Absolutely no extras, not even a trailer.

Perhaps not the best introduction to Chinese fantasy but fun for afficionados. 

No, it isn't what you're thinking, this is a 12 rating and they're sisters.

Married life can be a problem when your wife can turn into a large snake.

BOOK REVIEW -SCIENCE FICTION: GREAT NORTH ROAD by PETER HAMILTON (2012, 1087pps)

So how could I resist an SF novel with large chunks of it set in Newcastle 130 years from now, especially with a title like that?

(For newcomers to this blog, I should explain that I live in the City of Sunderland, a mere 12 miles south east of Newcastle. Both cities boast prominent football teams which are arch-rivals, particularly their fans and just last weekend Sunderland, the under-dogs, beat their rivals 3-0 away at Newcastle. As a result a few hundred Newcastle fans trashed their own city centre which gives you an idea of the mentality of the Newcastle United supporter. This has nothing to do with the review, I just wanted to mention it.

(On the other hand, the Great North Road refers to the A1 which starts down south and continues all the way up to Scotland. The Romans built the first one nearly two thousand years ago. In this novel, however, it also refers to a road that leads to another planet on which the rest of the novel takes place.)

You may have noted the page length of the novel. This does not include those pages devoted to the timeline prior to the start of the novel nor the list of key characters and their functions (e.g. detective). It's a very long book which took me only five days to finish.

As I don't do long reviews -I write reviews not criticism- it's very difficult to briefly summarise the plot. But I'll do my best. 

It's triggered by the discovery of a body, one of a clone family of industrialists, who has been murdered in a unique way that was only seen once before and the woman found guilty of the early murders, which included another clone, is still in prison; also the clone can not be identified. A local detective is put in charge of the case and what is discovered prompts a military expedition to a colonised world, which provides vast quantities of bio-fuel, in search of a previously undiscovered deadly alien species and is accessed via the Newcastle gateway.

Woah! That's not bad even if I say so myself. 

Of course it doesn't begin to even hint at the richness and complexity of this terrific piece of SF. There are so many things that Hamilton does so well. 

His portrayal of the not quite near future is comprehensible and accessible. My view of the future is that it's not unlike the present only with twiddly bits. Not that many years ago I took my first look at Sunderland's new bus station from which is visible a new shopping complex and it looked like the future as seen from 1950's illustrations. And yet in between bus station and shopping centre were several buildings which have remained pretty much unchanged in nearly 60 years or more. The future, with twiddly bits. People still go to pubs and chat up women while every dust mote is a camera watching everything. Well, almost. Many car accidents are caused by drunks who won't let the car drive itself.

He doesn't lay it on with a trowel but global warming has given the north of England long winters full of blizzards and snow drifts and short hot summers.

The main foci of the novel are the detective and his team trying to solve the murder and identify the victim and the story of the woman, who was found guilty of the original murders and claimed it was an alien, who goes to the alien world with the military expedition. In one sense it's a mystery novel set in the future with both plot strands essentially being attempts to solve a mystery which ultimately has one solution.

Hamilton uses his flashbacks well, revealing only part of an incident which suggests one thing only to show something different when it is continued. Characters who appear to belong to different subplots are revealed to be closely connected. Sometimes they're even the same person.

Frankly I stand in awe of the author who juggles so many different things yet manages to bring them all together in what is finally revealed as a gloriously woven tapestry.

If you want a book to lose yourself in, this is it.

TV: IAN'S TWO TV TREATS OF THE WEEK.

They aren't Dr Who, though it's pretty darn close, or Game of Thrones -I'm about to watch Season 2 on DVD and am recording Season 3. They aren't Casualty or Holby City though I never miss an episode. They aren't Dexter, which is running out of steam, or The Good Wife (ditto), though I still watch them. They aren't Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, a sharp and sexy series set in Australia in the 20's, or the supernatural thriller series Grimm which I find fun for very different reasons, or Arrow the superhero series that isn't. And the excellent three part BBC zombie series didn't last long enough to quality.

They aren't profound and they aren't particularly serious. In fact they both have a lot in common. Let me see: two different protagonists who nevertheless like each other, one is a cop and the other isn't, the cop has two supporting likeable junior cops, the cop is female, there is a small but good supporting cast as backup, there is a lightness of touch which doesn't preclude darker elements, both are police dramas (though I suppose that's obvious by now). They are both on Alibi.

Anyone familiar with cop shows will have guessed what I'm writing about and that's assuming you haven't noticed the incredibly glaring images below.

There are more images of these two than you can shake a stick at and it was really hard to pick one. I almost went, out of sheer awkwardness for this piece of fan art-

The show is very popular with lesbians -see the websites After Ellen and Dorothy Surrenders- and while there's no doubt there's a lot of shipping (Kirk-Spocking for SF fans), it's just wishful thinking as the two characters are totally straight. It's more The Odd Couple meets police procedural. Coincidentally, there was lesbian sub-plot in the most recent episode shown in the UK. The out of town lecturer-professor mother of the young sharp black cop and her female younger lecturer professor roomie (plus young son) have come to visit him and as soon as I saw them I went roomie, yeah shure, and winked sardonically. I don't know why I did that as I was on my own. They'd come to try and tell him that they were partners and were getting married. The subplot weaved in and out of the murder something about a retired-injured athlete murdered by his best friend for reasons I can't be arsed to go into) before the son finally finally admitted he'd known about them for ages and he was delighted.

Anyway, (Jane) Rizzoli is a senior homicide cop with a large Italian family some of whom work for the police. He mother is played by Lorraine Bracco whom I last remember seeing as the female lead in a 1980's movie with Sean Connery (Medicine Man?). She's tough, competitive, and funny. (Dr Maura) Isles is a forensic pathologist who goes out to every murder scene then dissects the body later. She's quirky with a dark past she only recently discovers (gangster father, mother who thinks she's dead, neither of which she knew when the show started. They're best friends and the chemistry between the two actresses is terrific.

L-R: cop, brother, Rizzoli, Isles, cop.

The main supporting characters are the young black computer expert cop and the gruff but good-hearted older cop who form her team. Then there's her younger naive beat cop brother who wants to be a detective and her mother. There are several others who weave in and out of the storylines. The acting all round is of a high standard and the dialogue is sharp and funny. The murders they have to solve are almost a distraction.

NB It's based on very different in tone books by Tess Gerritsen.

Currently on its fourth season (still showing) and if I can get them cheap enough I'll pick up the box sets to keep me warm while waiting for the fifth to start.

It came as no surprise to me that the next one should be a success seeing as it stars the one and only -

And if you don't know who this is go and get hold of Buffy Season 7, Firefly the complete series, and Serenity. For starters.

Nathan Fillion has more charm than any actor since Cary Grant and could probably charm his way out of Hell itself. Anything he's in is worth watching but especially-

 

The premise is this: he's a popular crime writer who, through the influence of his good friend the mayor, gets attached to a three-person murder detective team lead by Kate Beckett (Stana Katic who had a quick cameo in Skyfall recently). It works so well that he's now been on the team for five seasons. This one is a will-they, won't they police procedural. Katic is a real find who can hold her own against perennial scene-stealer Fillion and, as with Rizzoli and Isles, it's the chemistry between the two leads (plus good dialogue and good supporting cast) which has made it so successful. 

Castle is so inspired he writes a series of novels about Detective Nikki Heat based on Beckett. You can actually buy Nikki Heat novels by Richard Castle. I tried one and it read too much like a novelisation of a series episode.

The dark aspect to this series is Beckett's attempt to find out who murdered her mother some years earlier and it gets murkier and more complex the more she discovers.

Here's some of the main cast. A number of supporting characters arrive, leave, come back, or never come back.

L-R: Boss Cop (gone), mother (over the top self-absorbed actress), daughter (student), Castle, Becket, pathologist, team cop (Latino), team cop (white) good buddies.

In the current season (5), the question -will-they? won't they?- has finally been answered. They will, as often as possible. But it has to be kept secret as people on the same team can't be on the same team.

In the most recent episode, they manage to get away to Castle's place in the Hamptons. (Beckett (amazed): "How rich are you?" Castle: "Not James Patterson but I get by.") When a man staggers onto the grounds and dies the police are called in. The local police chief thinks Beckett is a hooker which is a very fun scene. Castle can't resist investigating, dragging an unwilling Beckett alone with him and he has to liase with the two guys back home without them finding out their boss is with him. They've been trying to vainly to track down Beckett's mystery boyfriend.

(Yes, one episode was a noir set mostly in the 1940's.)

If you aren't watching either of these two series, you are depriving yourself of enormously enjoyable slick light entertainment. Fuck art, let's dance.

BOOK REVIEW: ROCK CHRONICLES (2012)

An Amazon 2* review.

Neither nowt nor summat.

Or, in English, it is neither one thing nor another.

Basically, this book tries to do too much and fails as a result. It attempts to present an overview of each of the world's best rock acts. To do that it spreads its net wide to encompass: alternative, blues rock, classic rock, country rock, experimental, glam (glam is rock?), grunge, hard rock, metal, folk rock, new wave, pop rock, progressive, psychedia, punk, rocknroll, and soft rock. It also, worthily, includes a number of bands from non-English speaking countries many of which most readers will never have heard of. By trying to cover all the bases it never satisfactorily covers any and numerous worthy artistes are omitted. Two examples: Stephen Stills isn't in (but Neil Young's there as is Buffalo Springfield), Echo & the Bunnymen aren't but The Teardrop Explodes/Julian Cope is. I'm sure any reader will find their own examples.

The book also lists the years active which in some cases is highly misleading. Example: Buffalo Springfield is listed as active 1966-2011 which is just ludicrous. They were only active for a couple of years and were really a springboard for Stills and Young. A couple of late reunion gigs don't, or shouldn't, count. Also 'active' is not a synonym for 'creatively viable'. Many artists are still trundling on doing live gigs where they play their greatest hits from many years ago. Example: As a creative force Chuck Berry (a truly great artist)was played out by the end of the 60s.

The overviews themselves aren't bad but you can read better on the website All-Music Guide.

It's a book for people to borrow from libraries rather than buy for themselves because it just isn't worth the money. 

MARGARET THATCHER

It would seem to be impossible to hold an objective opinion about this late ex-Prime Minister. There would appear no room for any middle ground: one either loves her or hates her. Just to make my own standpoint clear for anyone not a regular follower of this blog; I am someone who falls roughly into the category of the libertarian left with an emphasis on the left. In other words, a socialist.

But it isn't that simple. When our recently retired member of Parliament Chris Mullin first arrived in Sunderland in the mid-80's I considered him a good guy but a little too much on the left compared to my views. By the time retired, I had moved from a central position to the left of centre-left (if that description actually means anything) while he was more to the right of centre-left. Confusing, isn't it? Oh, and when I retired I also had to resign from my position as departmental union steward which I'd been for the previous five years.

There's no question that, as she believed, for the greater good of the country she destroyed entire communities. I suspect that wasn't her specific intention but that was just one of the many prices the British people paid in her quest to modernise Britain and put it on a sound economic footing. Unfortunately she threw the baby out with the bathwater. What she did to the mining community was far worse than even the demagogic leader of the Nation Union of Mineworkers Arthur Scargill feared.

While always a supporter of unions throughout my working life, I did believe that in the 70's they had grown too powerful to such an extent they could dictate the way the economy went. Closed shops were wrong because it is unfair to force an individual to join. But without it... Thatcher castrated the unions and her successors continued, with ever restrictive legislation, to hack at the body of unionism which was weakened further by fewer and fewer people joining. I found out just recently that in the nearly five years since I left, Sunderland libraries has not had one union representative, no-one to speak up for them, to defend the interests of the individual worker.

The Thatcher era transformed Britain's economy from one dependent on manufacturing to one based on service industries with a more flexible working approach. From the point of view of workers' rights this is not necessarily a good thing, though it does have its advantages.

There are many justifiable reasons for many people to detest Thatcher and the legacy she left behind. Nevertheless no-one can argue that what she did she did from conviction that it was the right thing for this country. She was, and this is something rare these days, a conviction politician. There are many things she can be hated for but does she deserve the demonisation accorded to her by so many people?

For example, because she opposed sanctions on South Africa she was labelled as being pro-apartheit. This is very far from the truth. She opposed sanctions because she believed they simply didn't work and that it was the wrong approach to force concessions from the SA government to the black majority. Behind the scenes she worked to bring about the end to apartheit, to legalise the ANC and to free Nelson Mandela. Since his release Mandela has been open about his respect for and gratitude to Thatcher, not just for what she did to help change in South Africa but also on a personal level.

And then, of course, we have the war against Argentina over the Falklands. Those opposing the war argue she went into it for self-aggrandisement and as a vote-winner at the next election. Personally I have trouble accepting this. The Argentine government sent troops to take over islands which have been British for over a hundred and fifty years and whose own claims to legitimacy of rule over the islands are dubious at best. Thatcher decided that this wouldn't do, sent the task force half a world away to Argentina's back yard and they won. Many forget the huge sense of national pride engendered at the time.

I remember at the time listening on the radio every morning of reports from the conflict -this was before breakfast TV, if you can imagine such a thing- and being fascinated by it all, by every victory and every disaster.

This brief account of mine is obviously superficial. It has to be. There are many areas I'm not qualified to write about and have no intention of trying. I am writing to put in perspective my own reaction and the reaction of others to her death. I'm as repelled by the overblown tributes from the right as exemplified by the Daily Mail as I am by those opposite reactions of the hard left and the morons who are literally dancing on her grave. They are celebrating the death of an old woman who had been ill for some time and this leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

I have no doubt that Margaret Thatcher was a great British Prime Minister. Whether or not she was a good one will be for history to decide.

Barry Spence commented:

A pretty excellent presentation of a very balanced rundown on Thatcher - almost all of which I find I agree with you on.

 

Why are you bothered about meaningless labels for yourself (and Chris Mullin) involving pointless and very variable concepts of left, right and centre? Depending who runs the show, definitions change monthly so as to eliminate all sense and reason from pigeonholing. During Thatcher's spell in charge, her mocking schoolboy minions developed a Norman Tebbit expression into a supposedly effective label. ANYONE not 100% behind Her Ladyship was "a raving leftie loony", and that was repeated to the stage of terminal over-use. As a label, it actually embraced half or more of HER party's "centre" Tories, yet New Labout branded those very same Tories as "Right wing tyrants"!

 

Lord Tebbit made a serious error of historical fact the other day. He correctly said that - with one exception - Blair reversed NONE of the changes Thatcher had made (denationalisation, sell offs, council house buying, as a start). He named that one exception as the Poll Tax, omitting the fact that Blair didn't do anything about that either - it had already been scrapped by Tebbit's pal Hesletine some time before Blair got in!

 

Some media material has been questionable: George Galloway as a start - how ironic is RESPECT for the name of a party when he shows zero of it but buckets of hatred and contempt? HE stated that she called Mandela "A terrorist; I was there and I saw her mouth move". It turns out that she actually said that SOME of the ANC were terrorists but named nobody. My complaint is not about his lies - I just object to the way papers repeat these as if they had to be true.

 

She destroyed manufacturing industry but personally fought to get Nissan here.

 

She was a devoted pal of Pinochet the butcher, presumably admiring his proven remedies for removing communism?

 

She never learned the difference between "socialism" and "communism", always presenting them as the same thing. I presume that Germany's famous raving leftie loonies were Hitler and his National SOCIALIST Party, and Stalin's "Soviet SOCIALIST Republics" was politically identical in her tiny mind. She commented on the busy bulldozers ripping the Berlin Wall down as "the end of socialist" - no, you ignorant bitch - it was the end of Russian-style communism!

 

She may have been wrong (only in MY opinion) over several things, but I admire her determination and sincere confidence in her own beliefs. She genuinely acted to make needed change for the better - "better" in her opinion, that is.

 

She said, "There is no such thing as 'society'", but her worshipper Cameron fantasised about a "big" version of something that doesn't exist - or is he contradicting her?

 

As far as being an old woman who died goes, these dancing hypocrites should have justifiably worked the hate out of their obsessed minds way back when the gutless conspirators disposed of her. For over 20 years, she had no direct effect to do good or bad and was well and truly politically dead. Now that the actual person has died, I find it very distasteful that many revel in that as a cause of celebration - as if her dying changes anything?

 

I read yesterday - do not mock METRO - that the illiterate cretins who twattytwitter, and find labelling needs no spaces between words, were alarmed that the singer Cher had died. They understood a string of unpunctuated letters "nowthatchersdead" as "Now that Cher's Dead" - I have no sympathy for them at all. LEARN ENGLISH, then we'll all understand it!

 

And finally, I will let HER have the last word. You must allow for her maybe being in whatever stage of Altzheimer's, or she may have been more astute than most  When asked about her greatest acheivement, she answered. "Tony Blair".

 

I look forward especially to SPIKED!

 

 

George "Xenophobe" Grovellaway, leader of The Contempt Party

 

 

CD REVIEWS: DION -A TANK FULL OF BLUES (2011), YO FRANKIE! (1989), HEROES -GIANTS OF EARLY GUITAR ROCK (2008)

(Note: I'm reviewing these in the order I bought and listened to them.)

I was just old enough to be aware of Dion and the Belmonts in the late 50's but by the time I was old enough to start really getting into pop music it was the early 60's and The Beatles and pop music itself was about to explode so I never really paid any attention to Dion Dimucci for the next fifty years when I heard I Was Born To Cry on a budget sampler from Ace Records (UK) (probably the greatest reissue label in the world) and thought to myself  -wow what a voice- and promptly went back hunting for new Ace Blues reissues. Some time later I learned that Dion had released three Blues albums. I tried one, liked it, bought the next and one thing led to another and I began to discover that Dion hadn't faded away after the early 60's. Actually I knew he hadn't and that he'd had a late 60's hit with Abraham, Martin and John in the singer/songwriter/folkie vein. But this time I dug a bit deeper.

I tried an Ace compilation of his gospel material (Dion is profoundly Christian) but the message was more important than the music which didn't appeal to little ole atheist me. A compilation of his 70's material had a little more appeal (70's: From Acoustic To The Wall Of Sound) but by then I'd moved on to another mini-fad. 

Two or three years later and two weeks ago the third of his Blues albums came up in Amazon's recommendations so I listened to samples and bought the CD.

This was a back to the basic approach, a bass player, a drummer-percussionist, and himself on vocals and all guitars. Dion had always been associated primarily with singing but he's always played guitar and is actually very competent. He's also always been a songwriter and he wrote or co-wrote all but the one cover on this album. I think the reason I didn't buy this at the time I bought his other Blues CDs was because I mistakenly thought it was acoustic. It isn't. It's electric, it's raw and Dion's voice is as strong as it ever was. It would be easy to use the phrase at his peak but that would be misleading because he's actually as good as he's ever been. And as a white Blues singer, he may have peers but not many of them.

To be technical, this isn't strictly a blues album, maybe blues-rock, but it really straddles genres. The final track -A Bronx Poem- is spoken, stream of consciousness, flowing one thought, one word into the next, almost rap, heartfelt and surprisingly effective.

And once again, one thing led to another. I looked him up on All-Music Guide (AMG) one of the best, if not the best, online sources about music. One album caught my attention, I listened to samples, bought it.

This latter day (1989) album is definitely up my street in that it's straight forward AOR. It's superbly produced by multi-instrumentalist Dave Edmunds (except for one track produced by Bryan Adams who was so enthused by the prospect of collaborating with Dion that he not only produced, wrote it, sung, played on it, he also brought in k.d. lang on backing vocals). Guest artists also include Lou Reed and Paul Simon who are open in their admiration for the man. Dion himself wrote or co-wrote seven of the ten tracks. You can tell the quality of an artist by the quality of those who want to be associated with him. (Dion has also shared a bill and a stage with Bruce Springsteen who has openly sung the man's praises.)

The songs themselves are generally pretty good. The seemingly braggadocio strut of King Of The New York Streets has a sting in the tail. Written On The Subway Wall has a Mark Knopfler guitar sound (Edmunds). And The Night Stood Still has echoes of Springsteen. Not all the songs are as strong but the overall standard is pretty high. If this isn't one of the best albums of the 80's, it's still a pretty good one. Kudos to Ace Records (UK) for re-releasing it. AMG informs me that it only made 130 in the Billboard charts. It deserved a much wider audience.

Then Amazon recommended to me an album very different to the two above.

This is a tribute to his peers of the late 50's, the foundations on which rock'n'roll is built. They are people he knew, whom he shared bills with. Here he revisits some of their greatest songs to magnificent effect. Dave Marsh the veteran rock music writer who told Dion while on air that he believed three of his albums of the 21st century were the best he's ever made. This, for which he supplies the liner notes, is one of them and it's impossible to disagree. He sings songs by Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Elvis, by Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly and Richie Valens, Eddie Cochran and Del Shannon. He jammed on guitar in hotel rooms with several of them. 

Somehow, while mostly sticking to the original arrangements, he makes them vital again, not modern exactly, but refreshed by adding his own subtle twists, and, of course, one of the greatest voices of popular music.

Now in his early seventies, Dion has been writing, singing, playing music for over 50 years and unlike any other rock star I can think of is still creatively viable as he makes some of the best music of his long career. He's got old, he's not got stale. 

Still the cool tough Italian kid from the Bronx.

MUSIC REVIEW: CANNED HEAT -LIVING IN THE PAST and UNDER DUTCH SKIES 1970-74

Canned Heat have been on the road for decades. Or rather versions of the band have. My agrument in this review is that the original band and the only one worthy of the name died when co-founder member Alan Wilson (above, left) died. 

I now have three albums of theirs, those named above and the superb and definitive (accept no others) compilation Uncanned which has an excellent accompanying booklet, packed discs of all their best known material plus oddities and unreleased stuff.

The vocals were shared by Bob 'The Bear' Hite (he was big and hairy) and Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson (who couldn't recognise a friend from two feet away without his glasses and I know exactly what that feels like). Hite's voice was gruff and bluesy the way you'd expect a big hairy monster to sing like when fronting a blues band. But Wilson had a very high falsetto, was a talented slide guitarist, but a fucking brilliant harp (as in harmonica, but you knew that already) player. Had he lived past 27 he'd probably be acclaimed as one of the world's greatest ever harp players. His fills when accompanying John Lee Hooker on the superb album Hooker'n'Heat sends chills down my spine.

A double vinyl album released in late 1968, it's now on a 2-disc CD. Unlike the original vinyl, this allows you to listen to both sides of the live 40 minute Refried Boogie Parts 1 & 2 without have to leave your chair, unless it's to run screaming out of the room. Only joking; it's actually better than I was expecting, but I'll get onto their endless boogie later.

The first seven tracks (side one) are a mix of blues covers, rewritten blues standards, and originals and in general it's pretty good. It opens with a good version of Pony Blues sung by Hite which is followed by My Mistake an original and haunting song written and sung by Wilson to terrific effect. Also included is their massive hit Going Up The Country. It's all very solid enjoyable stuff.

Parthenogenesis, the final track (side 2 of the vinyl), is 20 minutes long and one of the most astonishing pieces of music to come out of the 60's rock and blues bands. Consisting of nine segments, it's mostly instrumental and begins with a couple of pieces with Wilson on jaw's harp (the polite name for the jew's harp) which are dark moody sonic pieces concluding with and unbelievable version of Rollin' and Tumblin'. Wilson's up front again with a jaunty piece where he overdubs his harp playing four times and accompanies himself on guitar. Then there's Hite singing accompanied by John Mayall on piano. Swiftly passing over the drum solo, Henry Vestine overdubs his lead guitar five times for a slow feedback-laden piece which segues into a melancholy instrumental with Wilson's expressive chromatic harp accompanied by a sitar. The penultimate track is the full band playing behind Vestine's Albert Collins-styled lead guitar and it all ends where it began with Alan Wilson's atmospheric jaw's harp. The whole thing is just amazing as it shows how much subtlety and variety the band could play with and how they could go places you'd never expect. Much to my surprise, it isn't the pretentious load of crap it's been accused of but is in fact highly accomplished and I just love it.

Less than two years later Alan Wilson was dead and Canned Heat just wasn't Canned Heat any more. What you had left was this.

Canned Heat had always been known for their raucous adaption of John Lee Hooker's boogie which is fine and had its place but it wasn't all they were known for by a long long way. With the moderating influence of the immensely talented Wilson, they displayed a versatility and musical accomplishment. Wilson added the light and shade, a diversity of styles. Without him there was nothing but unsubtle renderings of blues-rock and boogie, endless, endless boogie.