Chimpomatic

Cape Wrath

Pilot

Channel 4

Promising opener for this new 7-part C4 drama. David Morrissey stars as the father of a family who move to a suburban gated community looking to make a new start. Soon transpires the gates aren't always open, and the plot thickens...

Stylishly done, it's a decent riff on witness protection schemes, that manages to steer just the right side of "dark/weird/ooh what's going on in this apparently normal cul de sac" plot without getting too wacky.

With Felicity Jones, Harry Treadaway, Lucy Cohu, Tom Hardy, Nina Sosanya, Melanie Hill and Don Gilet. Starts 10th July, C4, 10pm; already showing in the States as Meadowlands

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#chimp71

28th Jun 2007 - 6 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Five Days

(dir. Otto Bathurst, Simon Curtis)

When a young Hertfordshire woman disappears while buying flowers, her two children also go missing - as the police and media machine spring into action.

Superior drama from the BBC and HBO. The series has the high-quality writing and acting that the BBC has recently been more than capable of producing, with the production value of an American show. This however, is a distinctly British story - with none of the (sometimes) psuedo-Americanization seen in State Within, Spooks or Torchwood.

This is a complex and well-thought out script, that unfolds the story over 5 days (one day per episode) - using the interesting device of picking non-consecutive days (1,3,28,33,79) that are pinnacle moments in the case. That allows the writers to fill in the blanks with detail and hindsight, analysing the way that a case like this effects those involved, the community, the media and the general public.

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24th Jan 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Proposition

(dir. John Hillcoat)

19th century lawman Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) captures Charlie (Guy Pearce) and Mikey Burns. In order to save Mikey from hanging, Charlie is released and given nine days to find and kill their older brother Arthur Burns (Danny Huston), a grusume criminal.

This brutal narrative, penned by Nick Cave, gives a vivid impression of an early, lawless Australia. The oppresive heat, vast landscapes and ruthless characters add to the sense of drama here. The early signs of destruction of the Aboriginal peoples are here. Some have been tempted into the world of the settlers and others fighting to proetect their community and native culture.

Whilst all these components set the film up nicely the action doesn't quite live up to the potential. Certain relationships such as Winstone's with his wife (Emily Watson), and why he suffers from chronic head pain are only alluded to. Likewise, the dynamic between the outlaw brothers is never really uncovered. At only 1 hour 40 there was some room to expand on these themes further, but still an enjoyable and interesting experience.

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#CJ

15th Jan 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

(dir. Larry Charles)

20th Century Fox

Anyone familiar with Borat would no doubt agree that he is the funniest and most outregeous of Sacha Baron Cohen's 3 characters, and during his sections in the Ali G In Da USA show we were appalled and dazzled by his shameless interviews - and much like Ali G his ability to extract the truth from narrow minded middle America. This film is all that, plus a whole lot more. You get the normal encounters with people of such jaw dropping ignorance, culminating in a stadium full of Rodeo fans who cheer passionately when Borat greets them on the mic with words to the effect of "May your president drain the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq." You get livid feminists, furious commuters, angry aristocrats, man-eating Jews and Pamela Anderson.

Although his TV show was so successful, things like that often fail to translate well onto the big screen - and when stretched to 90 minutes they can become tiresome. But this got it right. The plot was good enough to sustain your attention and formed a believable platform for his comedy. It was a non-stop romp across the U.S and A and the comedy was pushed to it's absolute limit. There were moments of such shock and awe that provided images that will be burned on to my memory for ever. He got himself into situations from which most people would be hard pushed to walk away with their lives, but his masterfully acted naive charm got him through every time. The comedy was relentless and there were countless moments where the audience laughed until they had nothing left. Not all the jokes were necessary though and his constant attack on the Jewish community became too uncomfortable to snigger at towards the end - but it was the visual gags that worked so well, like the shocked faces of New Yorkers as Borat calmly masturbated on the street to a window full of lingerie-clad mannequins, or washed his underpants in Central Park, or opened a suitcase full of chickens on the subway.

It's all pretty stupid stuff and I did feel slightly embarrassed asking for two tickets to Borat when there were such heavyweights to be seen like The Departed or Romanzo Criminale, but who cares - I haven't laughed that much in years and continue to smirk to myself when images of naked male wrestling enter my mind. Pure genius. High Five.

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7th Nov 2006 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Cadence Weapon

Breaking Kayfabe

Upper Class Recordings

Imagine if you can: it's the year 2040 and the music scene is in a state of crisis. RnB rules the charts and is all that's allowed to be played on the radio. Since the earliy naughties the hip hop section of the record store became known as 'Urban' and most rap albums had to incorporate some form of RnB just to make sales. Artists such as Common and Kanye West who were targeted by the RnB militia to spread this evil seed in the hip hop community eventually buckled under the pressure and stopped recording altogether. Rumor has it that Common was set to release an album called Strictly Hip Hop but it never saw the light of day due to death threats to his family. So the genre formerly known as Hip Hop disappeared from the public's view completely. But an underground resistance refused to die out and continued to filter quality beats to those in need. There was a great war and the resistance was nearly quashed so in order to put an end to this they developed a group of cyborgs known as The Anti Pop Consortium and sent them back to the year 1985. Their mission was to kill a little boy called Craig David who would go on to popularize RnB in Europe. The mission was accomplished but unfortunately made absolutely no difference to the future at all. The resistance analyzed the growth of RnB and noticed that instead of it being attributed to the evil of one person it was born out of the apathy and boredom of the world at large. So a new plan was formed and a new cyborg crafted, better, stronger, faster. His name was Cadence Weapon.

Canada was selected as the best place to start this attack as the glare of the RnB Eye was firmly focused on America and Britain. Sent back to the year 2005 he unleashed his first wave of destruction, a devastating mixtape called Cadence Weapon Is The Black Hand and then so as not to give the RnB militia time to recover he hit them again in 2006 with Breaking Kayfabe, a collection of hip hop cuts so strong and so forceful that it sent shock waves throughout the world. Breaking Kayfabe (Kayfabe being the Resistance code for RnB scum) was designed using the original blue prints of The Anti Pop Consortium mission. The sound was hard and electronic so as to allow no fertile ground for the RnB 'Good Singing' germ to grow. This new model of machine was equipped with enough skills to become a one man army and the whole Breaking Kayfabe project was crafted by Cadence Weapon himself, from the sterile, impenetrable and chest-stomping beats to the venomous lyrics spat out with such force and machine-like precision.

For a while the enemy was crippled due to the force of this attack but they soon regrouped and retaliated with a double fist. Both Lamar and Usher released records of such dazzling vocal beauty that the world was gripped by their evil tales of perfect love making. Luckily Cadence Weapon's arrival was strong enough to wake many hip hop warriors, including Busta Rhymes and LL Cool J, from their RnB sleep and the war was won. RnB was forever kept under wraps being confined to young girls and those genuinely gifted at love making. There was a brief uprising in France but that was no biggy.

The facts: Cadence Weapon is 19, from Canada and this album is really, really good. Best bits: Oliver Square, Black Hand and 30 Seconds. There's no stopping this kid, it's what he does, it's all he does.

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1st Nov 2006 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Nathan Fake

Drowning In A Sea Of Love

This is a surprisingly beautiful release from the Reading based artist Nathan Fake, on the Border Community label. I say surprising because I really haven't been buying this type of music for a while as the market got so saturated with it. Drowning... is a blissed out, synth-electronica album not unlike something you may find on the fabulous German label Morr Music. It's warm electronica with soul. It's dedicated to creating soundscapes and moods rather than minimal bleep, glitch displays. He manages this by slowly building the structure with simple beats awash with ever increasing layers of synthesizers, cymbals and the occasional sample. The first track, 'Stops' is the highlight. The beats trickle down like water over the top of a slightly unnerving sample of breathing. A delicate beat fades in and the melody begins and sparkles with such vulnerability it could almost collapse. It is like someone has fitted an iPod to your head while you are deep sea diving and all you can hear are these tiny drops of beats and your own breath.

While no song quite tops the opener it is a very satisfactory experience, changing mood often from meditative to almost dancy-electro-pop. Fake isn't pushing any boundaries here and is walking in some very well trodden footsteps but is certainly doing them proud and filling them well.

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11th Jul 2006 - Add Comment - Tweet

Dark Days

(dir. Marc Singer)

Thanks in no small part to Michael Moore and his healthy appetite for regime change in North America, feature length documentaries have become something of the new rock and roll lately. Recent heavyweights such as Bowling for Columbine, Touching the Void, Super Size Me. Etc. all left their mark at the box-office and generated their own headlines. One that may have slipped through your radar is Dark Days, released in 2000.

Literally straight from the New York City underground, Dark Days spends time with a group of people who, each for their own reason, call the subway tunnels around Penn station home. And home is exactly what they have, individual shelters with locked doors, some with gas cookers, others shaving with electric razors.

What is remarkable is how the residents of this underworld community adapt to lead such apparently ordinary lives; playing darts with buddies, painting doors, wrestling with pet dogs etc.

But this is no utopia. Cat-sized rodents share the neighbourhood, a crack addict has her shelter burned down over a bad debt and a DJ Shadow score keeps things suitably atmospheric. As one-time resident Greg remarks when trying to figure out how he got so low (no pun intended) as to live in the subway for five years, "Those were dark days man."

Engaging, interesting, funny, sad and deep (intended). Watch it. and you'll get to thinking what's really going on beneath your feet next time you pound the streets.

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#chimpovich

31st Oct 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet