29 January 2012
So negativity is the new black, and as ever it is easier to cream the crap from the good, than list the best of the year. I saw 120 films in the cinema last year and 154 on DVD, of which it turns out about 131 were officially released last year. But I was a little more discerning, if such figures allow one to be discerning. Previously I was desperate to see the good in everything, and so would even subject myself to a Jennifer Aniston romcom to see if something decent came out of it. It rarely did. This is a disclaimer to say that it is quite possible that the films I am about to list are actually not the worst of 2011 at all, rather the worst of those I saw. So do not quake in your boots Paranormal Activity 3, The Smurfs or even the Horrid Henry movie. Russell Brand I am sure will be pleased to hear I missed Arthur, and whilst Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds have no reason to rest on their laurels – I didn’t see the piss-in-a-fountain body swap comedy the Change Up. Despite LOVING body-swap comedies.
So why thirteen? Well thematically there are a few films which crop up together, which means there will be ten entries – with some nice joint entries to try to decide exactly why the colour Green is so bad for films. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
25 January 2012
One of the pubs unfortunately missed from our ‘tween christmas and new year pub crawl, for to because it was shut, partly due I suspect to lack of passing trade over the festive period, but also to finish off their very nice renovation work, The Old Fountain, tucked away between Silicon Roundabout and Moorfields Eye Hospital, could secretly be one of the best pubs in London. OK, so it’s been in the Good Beer Guide for five years, but I think it’s massively come on even in the last 18 months. East London CAMRA have been praising it for a while, but it barely gets a mention in Hip Guides To London’s Great Pubs.
The beer is, of course, excellent, with usually 6-8 taps on, but they seem to really push the boat out in getting the specials from Darkstar, Brodies, Ascot and others, although occasionally this can lead to hop bomb overload, there’s usually a decent mix. The bar food is also pretty special, the salt beef sandwich (and I realise this may be regarded as heresy) is as good if not better than the Royal Oak’s, and certainly the equal of the erstwhile Wenlock buttie. They do pulled pork buns too, and a couple of other things, but i’ve never managed to order anything that wasn’t the salt beef…
Oh, and did i mention they usually have around FOURTEEN different kernel bottles in the fridge? it’s the biggest range I can think of that doesn’t involve visiting a railway arch…
You can see what they’ve got on the bar at @OldFountainAles
CarsmileSteve in FT /Pumpkin Publog • 5 Comments
(*in the English language since I read no others)
The disgraced children’s author William Mayne died in 2010, some 57 years after the publication of Follow the Footprints, the first of his more than a hundred books, none of them for adults. A final book came out the year of his death, Every Dog (puissant title in the circumstances), and I haven’t read it yet, though I will. I’ll talk a little about his downfall at the close of this post, and doubtless more later, but what I actually propose to undertake is a gradual reading of these books, such as I can track down, starting with a rereading of the 20-odd that I own and know. more »
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in FT • No Comments
The discerning televisual fan will be aware of the vacuum currently residing in the schedules between the 7.30pm end of Hollyoaks First Look and the 9pm commencement of Ghost Whisperer. There are only so many times one can flick between Puff Daddy jiggling next to the Lead Pussycat on TMF and the startlingly abhorrent animated pig on Hits!TV.
But there’s no need to wear out the remote! For a gleaming nugget of programming genius lies buried beneath the disappointing Dog Borstal on BBC Three. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Grime Scene Investigation. more »
katstevens • Do You See/FT •
66 Comments
#641, 3rd February 1990
Sinead O’Connor is one of the finest song interpreters not just because she thinks hard about the material and the feelings locked in it, but because she’s so good at placing songs into a situation. A great example of this is her version of “Chiquitita”, warm and homely where ABBA’s is melodramatic, replacing its theatrical flourishes with a cosy tick-tock rhythm like a parlour clock. In the video she makes you, the viewer-as-Chiquitita, a cup of tea and settles down for a chat, and it’s perfect: that’s exactly what her version feels like. more »
Tom • FT/Popular •
162 Comments
Everlasting Pop and Dexys Midnight Runners
There is pop, and there is popular, and then there’s popular. And there’s also “timeless”. Sometimes when people say that a record is “timeless” – let’s pick on, oh, a U2 album – they mean it will be listened to and loved say twenty years from now. What they secretly mean is that it will be listened to in just the same reverent way as now: taste to them is a stock market, and they’re keen to invest emotionally in records which promise steady long-term growth.
You can caricature the pop fan, too – their expenditure is without hope or desire of return, their passions are spent on mayfly records, and this hopelessly compromises their judgement in the eyes of their more sober peers. Particularly if, like me, they’re fool enough to try and write about those records. more »
Tom • FT •
8 Comments
#426, 23rd September 1978
On one level the ‘plot’ of “Dreadlock Holiday” is hugely important to any judgement of it. On another, not at all, but let’s recap anyway. The narrator is a tourist in Jamaica – he gets mugged for his silver chain and returns to the comfort of his hotel where a woman tries to sell him weed.
Nobody comes out of the story well: the song’s parent album was called Bloody Tourists, and the narrator is a simp, trying and failing to fit in (“concentrating on truckin’ right”) and then fleeing to the hotel at the first sign of trouble. But the island isn’t exactly a welcoming place either, more »
Tom • FT/Popular •
103 Comments
The Secret History Of Band Aid
Everybody remembers Band Aid. And – despite everything – most people remember Band Aid 2. And now we have Band Aid 20. Which rather begs the question – why does nobody ever talk about Band Aids 3 to 19? Take a trip down memory lane as NYLPM reminds you of the charity singles we all forgot.
Band Aid 3: Recorded in a secret corner of the Hacienda, “Baggy Aid” in 1990 melded social conscience with a wah-wah break and found Shaun Ryder offering to feed the starving his melons. That Line was sung by Bobby Gillespie, but nobody heard his reedy mewlings and the single flopped.
Band Aid 4: Top One Nice One! Altern8, Shaft, The Prodigy and many more superstars got together to give the classic tune a new boshing 90s sound – though it was B-Side “E For Ethiopia” that found favour with the DJ community. But a secret orbital party for famine relief was busted and the marketing juggernaut found itself turned back at a police roadblock. more »
Tom • FT/New York London Paris Munich •
5 Comments
20 January 2012
Some time in the mid-70s, I went on a school trip to the Ludlow Festival, to see (I think) Cymbeline: six kids crammed in the back of a teacher’s little van, five in their late teens actually studying it for A-level, and me, experimenting and showing off. So naturally they were all having fun amiably teasing me, and hit on POP as a topic to trip me up. As a gamble — early version of a dodge I make to this day — I declared my Young Person’s admiration for my dad’s favourite singer: Eartha Kitt. Which paid off — they’d none of them never heard of her, and with no comfy take, to needle or muddle me with, preferred to chuckle a bit at my weird obscure tastes and went back to earnest Sabbath-chat.
Funny thing is, I grew up and through a life writing about and categorising music, exploring and improving histories, and still Eartha feels more like a handy prevarication move than a name to conjure with: someone people kind of know about, for sure, and maybe like (maybe a LOT), but without a set place, or role, or handy symbolic meaning. more »
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in FT • 5 Comments
Back in the Summer of 69. And the Spring, Autumn and other bits too. A missing Popular year poll for you to keep your spirits up while Tom regroups. Tom’s standing orders are:
I give a mark out of 10 to every single featured on Popular. This is your chance to indicate which YOU would have given 6 or more to, by whatever standard you wish to impose. And if you have any ‘closing remarks’ on the year to make, the comments box is your place!
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admin in Popular • 48 Comments
15 January 2012
10 January 2012
Hi, I’m Lauryn Hill circa my breakthrough role in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit, and it is a real pleasure to be able to present to you the top ten FreakyTrigger tracks of the year. When my mother told me I couldn’t join the choir run by a fake nun, I got really surly and pouted a lot – which some of you may recognise from my recent career. Later in the film I stepped up to the plate and delivered this inspirational, hip as 1993 could ever be, version of Joyful Joyful. But enough of my career highlights, back to the FreakyTrigger top ten of 2011.
Its a real privilege to reveal to you that this top ten is entirely female, so much so that I might be inspired, much like Whoopi Goldberg inspired me in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit to make a comeback and win next year. I’ve got a soup tureen full of Grammy’s you know.
more »
katstevens in FT • 34 Comments
9 January 2012
“I am mullet-progeny Miley Cyrus and in 2011 I was totally on the telly loads instead of making music so let’s forget all about my dodgy birdcage video, shall we? Here’s a Miley FACT: You know that if you type in ‘Miley Cyprus’ in to Wikipedia it goes STRAIGHT TO ME? I call that ‘conflict resolution’. Am I a UN ambassador yet? If so I hope it won’t interfere with my upcoming starring role in the major motion picture LOL: Laughing Out Loud.”
I’m sure it won’t Miley. Let’s have a look at entries #20-#11: more »
katstevens in FT • 17 Comments
“Hi! I’m serial tweeter Kanye West, and despite all evidence to the contrary I have enough marbles to introduce this section of the FT Reader’s Poll Results! I’ve even listened to a few of them and everything. I like the ones with me on best. Hang on… there must be a mistake here. WHERE AM I???”
Cheers Kanye. Tracks #30-#21 under the cut! more »
katstevens in FT • 5 Comments
7 January 2012
“Hi! I’m Pop Idol winner and all-round charming individual Will Young, here to introduce the next batch of delights for this year’s Reader’s Poll. Sadly I’m not among the tracks below (possibly due to my recent habit of sporting an inadvisable cowlick) but I’m sure they’re all lovely nonetheless! P.S. Watch my dog video.”
Thanks for that Will. Poll results #40-#31 under the cut! more »
katstevens in FT • 5 Comments
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