After threats by the North Korean affiliated organisation the Guardians of Peace and the cancelling of the New York première, followed by the decisions of major cinema chains in the US not to screen the movie, it was looking unlikely that The Interview would ever be released. The international situation has been discussed by people as varied as President Obama, who criticised the decision by Sony Pictures to cancel the release of the film (In typical fashion, Fox News incorrectly reported that Obama had banned the movie in the US), to Dr Evil, who made a welcome return on SNL. Finally, on midnight of Christmas Eve, the movie was finally released online in the United States, and it was rolled out to cinemas later that day.

Written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Dan Sterling, The Interview follows Dave Skylark (James Franco), host of the talk show Skylark Tonight, and Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen), the producer of the show. The talk show is vapid and focuses on celebrity gossip, much like if the gossip column of the Daily Mail took the form of a show. The movie begins with Dave interviewing Eminem, who is defending his controversial new lyrics about hating old people. It’s all strong satire and really funny, because this is what Rogen and Franco do best – This Is The End was just an entire movie of celebrities portraying themselves and lampooning American pop culture (but mostly themselves). Despite the popularity of the show, Aaron has high ambitions to do “real journalism” and make the show more serious, which can’t be achieved by reporting that Matthew McConaughey has just had sex with a goat or featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt stroking a group of cats (I must protest that an hour of watching him stroke cats is an excellent idea for a programme).

It is here that we find out that Kim Jong-un is a big fan of American TV, specifically the Big Bang Theory and Skylark Tonight. Well, there’s no accounting for taste. However this fortunate piece of news about Kim’s poor viewing habits leads Aaron to an idea – perhaps they can make the programme more reputable by conducing a serious interview with the elusive supreme leader of North Korea. Dave is interested: maybe Ron Howard will make a movie about them in the future, a reference to Frost/Nixon, an excellent film on the landmark interviews of 1977. The initial premise of The Interview can certainly be compared to Frost/Nixon: lightweight talk show host plans to conduct a serious political interview with an elusive leader (or ex-leader). However, this is not a Ron Howard movie. After some obligatory slow-mo frat party dancing to celebrate, a scene which is in every single Rogen and Franco film, they are contacted by the CIA. Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan) asks them to use this interview opportunity to “take out” Kim Jong-un. Cue extended scene of Aaron and Dave misunderstanding “take out”. Oh, to a party? Nearly every joke in this movie, no matter how funny, overstays its welcome. This is one of them.

Aaron and Dave fly to North Korea to meet Kim Jong-un (Randall Park). Dave and Kim get on famously, bonding over their love of margaritas and Katy Perry. Randall Park is great and a highlight of the movie. Whereas the rest of the film was filled with the usual hit-and-miss innuendos, dick jokes, and bad accents common to Rogen/Franco films (after their collaborations on Pineapple Express, This Is The End and the homoerotic Bound 2 parody I feel compelled to refer to them as a single entity), the depiction of the pop-loving crazy Kim Jong-un is actually pretty funny.

It’s a shame that there has been so much media attention on what is essentially a mediocre comedy. It never reaches the comedic heights of the Rogen and Goldberg scripted Superbad. There are some great characters, such as Sook (Diana Bang), a North Korean head of propaganda, and Kim Jong-un himself, but unfortunately the main characters, especially Franco’s smug Dave Skylark, are generally unlikable. There is also reliance on repeating the same juvenile jokes throughout the film, most of which fall flat. Let’s not pretend that this film was making a political statement. It’s not. It chose Kim Jong-un to lampoon, but none of the parody or comedy is political in nature. There is a very naive assessment of the political situation, just used as a foundation for Rogen/Franco to lay all their Lord of the Rings references and penis jokes on. Perhaps the best aspect of the film was the fascinating and embarrassing emails leaked from studio executives at Sony Pictures, as a result of cyberhacking in response to the film. However, putting all the degradation of international relations and the emails about Angelina Jolie and Leonardo DiCaprio aside, and reviewing it as just an ordinary film, it is simply a mediocre comedy. It is what I’ve come to expect from Rogen and Franco in recent years, which is a shame, since they’ve done some great things in the past. I expected casual misogyny, extensive innuendos, jokes that go on for too long, bad accents and celebrity cameos. Sadly, I got exactly what I expected.

★★★★☆

Gigs that are organised by Robert Smith are not for the faint hearted. Some more senior lead singers are happy with bashing out a few greatest hits, departing as fast as they can from the stage clutching a wad of money and leaving a crowd dissatisfied.

But The Cure are no such band. Despite being an entity for nearly forty years, their setlists have only ever grown. And the first of their three night residency at the Hammersmith Apollo is no exception.  The band clearly cares about their fans. Yes, they played hits. ‘Lullaby’ was hypnotising as ever. ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ prompts the usual vocal imitation of the bands trademark guitar riff . ‘Pictures of You’, no matter how many times I’ve seen it performed, is always beautiful and tear jerking. But this mammoth forty song, three-and-a-bit hour set is packed with rarities galore. Casual and dire-hard fans are appeased alike and neither can complain that they don’t get their sixty quid worths of live music. ‘A Man Inside My Mouth’ makes its first funky-synth live debut ever at the Hammersmith. “It’s nice to play some different stuff”, Smith quips in a brief remark to the crowd as he takes a brief break from his adorable teddy-bear like dancing. The Cure have toured pretty much constantly since 2011, but it’s so refreshing to see a classic band not rattling through the same set gig after gig. For once, there is an element of surprise for an audience used to being able to check setlists with a swish and a flick of a Smartphone.

There’s something here for everyone, songs from every album of their career appearing at some point in the set. I mean, with four encores, how could their not be at least one of your favourites played at some point? As a lover of their earlier work, it was great to hear ‘M’ and ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ finally make their way back into their set after a lengthy and unjust absence. Likewise, 1981’s standalone single ‘Charlotte Sometimes’ sounded sublime, oozing with gothic delight as the stage fills with dry ice and the dirge-like synth kicks in.

However, admittedly, listening to The Top played in full was not quite as enjoyable. The band have always steered clear of playing the majority of the album live since it was released. “We haven’t played this one since we last played here in 1984”, remarks Smith before breaking into yet another such track. And as ‘Give Me It’ closes the main set, I understand why. The album has some great songs, performed to a tee on the night. ‘The Caterpillar’, with it’s chaotic piano is heart-warming, whilst ‘Shake Dog Shake’ works great as a wickedly sleazy opener to the night. But playing the whole thing in one night? A bit too far I thought at the time.

But then Smith comes back on stage wielding a child’s spinning top. I thought I’d tripped out momentarily or died and gone to a Cure themed heaven. I mean, seeing any fifty-something year old man bearing a child’s toy is a somewhat odd sight, let alone when it is brandished by a lipstick-wearing musical genius on the stage of the Hammersmith Apollo. He holds it to the mic, cranks it up and the haunting desolation of ‘The Top’ begins to unfurl before us. The song is lament of desertion, of isolation in a barren and empty world. I’ve waited years to hear it live. Not only do I finally understand the pun in the title now, but I realise that someone else must feel the same way about other songs I don’t particularly like myself. As well as clearly enjoying themselves throughout the entire set, the band make a huge effort so that everyone there enjoys themselves. Yes, the set was eclectic and bizarre in places, but so well preformed I could have happily stood there for another two hours and basked in their blissful musical beauty. Although, please, please don’t shout ‘Lovesong’ next time, Rob. It’s a romantic number, not a football chant.    

In 1995, The Notorious B.I.G. released a B-side called ‘Who Shot Ya?‘ and hip-hop changed. Two months earlier, friend-turned-rival Tupac had been shot five times in a robbery in Manhattan, and despite claims from Biggie that the song had been recorded before the incident, there was no escaping the implications in the song’s lyrics (“Who shot ya? Separate the weak from the obsolete” and “I’m Crooklyn’s finest/You rewind this, Bad Boy’s behind this” – hardly subtle). Tupac responded with a diss of his own, and the most famous feud in music was born.

The 90s were the glory days of hip-hop rivalry. Before the bullets flew, infamously, between East and West Coast, it was lyrics that made or broke careers. If earlier beefs involving the likes of KRS-One and LL Cool J had been the birth of the diss track, songs threatening serious violence like Tupac’s ‘Hit Em Up’, Mobb Deep’s ‘Shook Ones Pt. 2’ and ‘Who Shot Ya?’ represented its baptism of fire, pushing things in a new direction. Tupac vs. Biggie, Death Row vs. Bad Boy Records, Suge Knight vs. Puff Daddy; aggression was the new flavour of hip-hop, and it didn’t exactly hurt record sales either. Over the next 20 years, the players would change but the game would remain much the same.

Interestingly, perhaps the most notorious diss released after Biggie and Tupac’s deaths – Nas’ ‘Ether‘ – wasn’t aimed at the other side of America, but at fellow New York rapper Jay-Z, by then well-established but yet to release The Blueprint. A song of extreme vitriol which dripped homophobia and misogyny, ‘Ether’ nonetheless eviscerated Jay. With a hook consisting of a distorted sample of Tupac shouting “Fuck Jay-Z” between verses in which Nas accused him of stealing from KRS-One and hijacking Biggie’s legacy, the song was released on Jay’s birthday. It was the seminal, classic diss.

Around the same time, Eminem was changing the game. Unafraid to attack and offend pretty much anyone, including non-hip-hop targets like Moby, Christina Aguilera, Dick Cheney and, famously, his ex-wife Kim and his own mother, Em’s disses would often call out multiple figures in pop culture over the course of perhaps 16 bars before he turned his attention to something completely different (the best-known examples being ‘The Real Slim Shady’ and ‘Without Me’: “You waited this long, now stop debating/Cos I’m back, I’m on the rag and ovulating/I know that you got a job Ms Cheney/But your husband’s heart problem’s complicating/So the FCC won’t let me be/Or let me be me, so let me see/They tried to shut me down on MTV/But it feels so empty without me”).

It was this hyperactive, shameless assault on what seemed like anyone who came into Slim Shady’s consciousness as he rapped that made him so popular, though that’s not to say Eminem couldn’t lay down something more traditional and less erratic. He proved that during his feud with rapper/producer Benzino and The Source magazine during Benzino’s tenure as editor via ‘The Sauce’, a track often credited with destroying the publication’s credibility.

Nowadays the double effect of worldwide success – with the hundreds of millions of fans and also significant respect from other rappers that it entails – has meant that Eminem has toned things down and pretty much retired from sparring (with an unbeaten record, incidentally). Though his protégée 50 Cent has resolutely carried on his feud with Compton rapper Game, things are quiet at Shady Records these days. It’s a younger generation who provides the drama in hip-hop now.

In a sense, things are different from before. The most sensational “diss” in the last couple of years was Kendrick Lamar’s infamous verse on Big Sean’s ‘Control’, which wasn’t exactly a diss but more of a call-out to pretty much every young rapper on the scene right now in one breath (J. Cole, Big K.R.I.T., Wale, Pusha T, Meek Mill, A$AP Rocky, Drake, Big Sean, Jay Electronica, Mac Miller and Tyler, the Creator, to be precise). The internet suffered paroxysms of joy when the verse came out, followed by further joy at the responses of a number of the rappers named over the next few weeks, rising to Kendrick’s challenge. The verse was good-natured, though, if competitive, and to find real venom one has to look elsewhere.

Enter the G.O.O.D. Music-Young Money beef. Originating between veteran Common and YM golden boy Drake, their respective labelmates Pusha T and Lil’ Wayne were quick to get involved. The feud has bubbled under the surface for a few years now, surfacing openly every now and then to produce quality disses like Wayne’s ‘Ghoulish’, and Pusha T’s ‘Don’t Fuck With Me’ and ‘Exodus 23:1’. Pusha seems to go in harder than the others, for some reason (“Fuck you playing games for?/ Don’t be scared, get everything you came for/They got you talking that big shit/Little do you know we don’t miss shit/Them n****s using you as a pawn/You see they never loaded their guns/Now you out here all by yourself/Ask Steve Jobs, wealth don’t buy health”).

Common kills it on ‘Sweet‘ too, though he finds it hard to find new material to diss Drake with. After all, the Toronto rapper is hip-hop Marmite – you love him or you hate him – and he has beef past and present with almost everyone around. Everything that can be said against him already has, numerous times. Including open and veiled attacks in the media and on wax, Drake’s been dissed by Chris Brown, Common, Pusha T, Ludacris, Jay-Z, DMX, Kanye and even labelmate Tyga (“I don’t like Drake as a person. He’s just fake to me.”). Tyga’s attack, which extended to Nicki Minaj, is symptomatic of YMCMR’s tendency to fight in-house – Wayne’s rapidly-escalating dispute with label head Birdman is only the latest in a series of not-so-veiled shots within the label.

Where Pusha T is keeping the traditional diss alive and well, there are others dragging the proud tradition of hip-hop beef through the gutter. Self-proclaimed Queen of Twitter Azealia Banks has managed over the last two years to perfect the art of attacking other artists despite not actually releasing her debut album until this November. Of targets including Angel Haze, Action Bronson, Kreayshawn, T.I., Nicki Minaj, Jim Jones, A$AP Rocky and Iggy Azalea, only the last two really justified any attack from the vituperative rapper, and Bronson’s reaction to her was one of ridicule rather than any serious consternation. Most of the others pointed to her lack of a major hit besides ‘212’. Banks is proof that rappers can embarrass themselves by launching attacks, too.

Beef is an integral part of hip-hop. Much like how technology advances fastest during periods of warfare, so rappers improve and write better when they have something to prove and someone to put back in their place. That’s not to say advocating rivalry equates to advocating violence – the two biggest names in the history of the genre both had lives cut tragically short allegedly as a result of the East-West Coast feud, but even then it could be argued that their fame was enhanced thanks to it.

Ultimately, Kendrick has the right attitude on ‘Control’ – competition makes you raise your game and calling out those other rappers raised not only his profile but theirs too. It benefits everyone, not least fans of those involved, and should be lauded for happening now as it happened twenty years ago. Jay-Z put it best when he reminisced about Biggie in a 2012 interview with MTV, “You’re just as good as your competition around you. You know when someone else pushes you to really step your game up? That song, it was so crazy. It just had an effect on everybody. The world stopped when he dropped ‘Who Shot Ya’.”