Bright Young Things Odeon George Street Friday 10-Thursday 16 October Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things spend a lot of time at parties. In fact, they don’t really have much else to do. And going to lots of parties is really rather dreadful you know, and one gets awfully tired of it, and one feels rather like a media whore when one is always on the front page. The main problem facing this film is that lots of people would quite like to spend their time going to parties. Unless, that is, you’re Stephen Fry, who finds it all a bit trying, or Evelyn Waugh whose novel, Vile Bodies, this film is based on. The fact that you emerge from the cinema sympathising with the harsh reality of being young, bright, but really not rich enough to keep yourself in cocaine from week to week is one of the main achievements of this film. In the opening sequence, the camera pans through the kind of red-lit debauchery you really wish you found more of at Oxford before homing in on Emily Mortimer’s Nina: “I’ve never been more bored in my life”. It’s an effective technique; the social whirlwind of the society scenes contrast starkly with moments when the perky jazz music fades. Particularly poignant is when we are left alone in the distinctly unaristocratic apartment of the short-lived Lord Simon Balcairn. The music is replaced by a vitriolic condemnation of the people who sustained and then excluded him as the camera whirls faster and faster over the jiving masses. The party scenes serve as a structure for the earlier part of the film, each bathed in a different light. Indeed the film as a whole is rather beautiful, cleverly using the light of flashbulbs and candles to set scene. Its motifs may not be the most subtle – angels puking onto the hero Adam Symes’ novel and later singing about Jesus as we watch the party hostess snorting coke – but they are visually striking nonetheless. The Bright Young Things are “all to pieces” as the Hon Agatha Runcible points out, but they’re witty enough for enjoyable viewing and are surrounded by a cast of famous British actors. Richard E Grant, Jim Broadbent and Simon Callow all do their best to put on their silliest accents, which is always rather jolly. The main plot concerns Symes’ attempts to marry Nina, an event which is hampered by the continual disappearance of Broadbent’s drunken Major with the cheque that will make his fortune. The moral is that spending your time at parties doesn’t pay and money doesn’t make the world go round, but the film steps back from Waugh’s pessimistic satire towards a soft focus happy ending. Not quite what Evelyn Waugh intended, but if you can’t afford to throw a decent party you could do worse than going to watch Bright Young Things.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Young Adam Phoenix Friday 10-Thursday 16 October The discovery by Ewan McGregor’s Joe, of a young woman’s corpse in a Glaswegian canal sparks off a self-appraisal and insight into his seemingly directionless life. What’s there is darker than the coal he ferries around in Ella and Les’s barge. A story of failure, adultery, dirt and lies, all presented with lashings of sex. Based on Alexandre Trocchi’s cult novel, the film manages to convey all the nihilistic themes characteristic of 1950s beat writing. Departing from the moment the corpse is discovered, the narrative slowly takes us forwards and backwards to reveal how Joe’s attitude to life affects all those around him. The viewer is left wondering, until the very end, about this strange man’s motivations and the repercussions of his actions. All the actors shine against Mackenzie’s grey and desolate Scottish background, and in McGregor’s case this can only be a very welcome rescue from the talent-less vortex known as Star Wars. Every scene buzzes with intensity, from the metaphoric slow shots of the canal bed to the perverse homemade custard sex sequence. It’s all about real people flowing along familiarly absurd courses; surely these are the only young bright things worth watching.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

The Italian Job Odeon Friday 10-Thursday 16 October Approaching the Italian job unprejudiced by memories of the seminal 60s original, the remake starring Mark Wahlberg comes across as another passably enjoyable action film. The car chases are slick, the Minis shiny and the assembled cast consists of decent actors who haven’t quite reached leading man status. Edward Norton’s villain, Steve, has absolutely no charisma at all, which undermines the main plotline slightly. Stealing gold bullion from a baby with a bum-fluff beard can’t be that hard after all. Charlize Theron looks good and adds the requisite romantic interest, but although she gets to drive as fast as the boys you still feel she’s been drafted in merely to help sell more Minis. Although the opening heist takes place in Venice, the filmmakers have made every attempt to take the original blueprint and make it their own, transplanting the subsequent action sequences to the LA rush hour. The problem is that everyone (apart from me) remembers the original Italian Job for the cars and the characters and although the cars perform their stunts admirably, the actors in the remake just aren’t memorable. It’s strange, the Italian Job is a decent film, but you can’t help feeling like you’ve seen it all before. Even if you haven’t.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Bad Boys Two Odeon Friday 10-Thursday 16 October What you have to remember about this sequel is that is was inevitably going to be made , since the first film earned (to employ the language of Will Smith’s character, the irrepressible Mike Lowrey) “a huge fucking pile of dough” for Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer, and all others involved. So after this long wait of eight years, what are we left with? A dazzling cinematic display, with some skilful camera direction by director Michael Bay, including a jaw-dropping car chase to rival anything from The Matrix Reloaded, as well as an original continuous circling sequence of Smith and Lawrence in a shootout with some Jamaican yardies, plus a pretty sketchy plot involving a crazed cuban drug lord, the Miami PD, the DEA, FBI, CIA (anybody beginning to notice a Bruckheimer theme?) and about $150 million dollars of Dutch Ecstasy. The two leads bicker incessantly, and while at times the wisecracks are witty, the constant “getchur black ass outta my face nigger” becomes tiresome. An improbable chase out to the Caribbean, total destruction of Miami city centre, and the littering of the streets with morgue corpses is a tad too much even for the Bad Boys and after two and a half hours the ugly morality and misogyny of this film becomes tedious.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

The Chemical Brothers are clever men. Despite the history degrees. They’ve been waving glow-sticks long enough to warrant this ten-year retrospective, holding the limelight as their more artful cohorts drifted back into the dance Underworld. The secret of their continued success: celebrity mates. By borrowing the recognition factor of rock vocalists, the Chemicals extend their reach outside the dance aisle of HMV. ‘Setting Sun’, still their best track, relies more upon Noel Gallagher’s voice and lyrics than on the horde of air-raid sirens that he is trying to mend. Similarly, the new single, ‘The Golden Path’, would be nothing special without Wayne Coyne’s hippyfied rewrite of the lyrics to Tenacious D’s ‘Tribute’. On ‘Out of Control’, Bernard Sumner slips easily back into his flat-voiced role, whilst his hosts pay homage to New Order so openly that, were Sumner not involved, someone’d end up in court. ‘Let Forever Be’ is similarly derivative, sounding like the Beatles, sitting in a curry house, watching Ringo have an epileptic fit behind a drum kit. Not to say this is bad; just that it occasionally feels like the dancing-up of guitar records you already own. Still, ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ proves that the Brothers can do hard dance without breaking a sweat. The only real problem is the apparent lack of development in the music; why haven’t the Brothers taken more advantage of advances in shiny new guitar technology? Expect another album like this in 2013. Vocals aside, it’ll probably sound the same, but that’s no bad thing.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Iggy Pop: Skull Ring Out now Iggy Pop’s first recording in years, unashamedly superb, being packed with the original beauty of rock. Greenday helped out, and though the opening three songs don’t showcase their input, the vitriol I was ready to berate them with turned to amazement. Opener ‘Little Electric Chair’ reeks of ‘White Light / White Heat’, and I’m too young to remember who sounded like this first, Iggy or Bowie, but Skull Ring is like a tour through all that was, and is, good in rock. The end result? Fucking good. Skull Ring keeps its momentum for sixteen tracks as well, which is no mean feat. There’s a definite nod towards the White Stripes et al, which is to be expected in the current climate but the haunting semi-camp vocals of Iggy Pop remind you that he did all this before the ice age and still knows where the sweet spot is. Age certainly comes before beauty in the production of this first rate rock album.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

The Webb Brothers: Webb Brothers Out now The third album from the Chicago born Webb Brothers, sons of the famous 60s singer/songwriter, brings together all the threads of musical originality exhibited in their first two albums. Self-produced by the three siblings Justin, Christiaan and James under 679 Recordings, home of The Streets and discoverers of the Polyphonic Spree, the eponymously titled new album is unashamedly home-grown. Songs like ‘A Funny Ol’Kind of Music’ and ‘Heaven Never Letting Me In’ show off the band’s own brand of wit and jollity. The melodies, beats and generally noviced tone of the album are typical of the likes of The Strokes, The Doves and perhaps even creeps towards the sound of The Thrills. Even the sickeningly named ‘Who Wants To Get High’ survives its unfortunate moniker thanks to its confidence and freshness. The current single, ‘Ms Moriaty’, also impresses, exemplifying the ease with which the Webb Brothers make near perfect pop music. Definitely a vast improvement on their amateurish last album, Maroon.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

S Club 8: Sundown Out now Formerly known as S Club Juniors; like S Club 7, but with a higher ratio of girls to boys, and without a fat one who secretly wants to be in a nu-metal band, S Club are back. Their record company seem to have decided it’s alright for them to record a song about going out on a Friday night, complete with a bit where two of them sing a duet which hints that they might be having their first tentative fumbles in a burnt-out Ford Focus. The song’s fine, but it has great potential for the disruption of society; it’s also very attractive material for lazy Entz reps. Don’t bother buying this, you’ll be hearing it every weekend until your JCR stumps up for a new set of CDs, some time in 2009.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Turin Brakes: 5 Miles Out now The Proclaimers, once wrote a song called ‘500 Miles’. Simple mathematics shows us that it was approximately 100 times better than this. There’s a line in this about “jet planes flying too close to the ground”; it makes you wish they’d fly a little lower. Take David Gray’s worst song, remove all the charm and it’s still better than this. Turin Brakes isn’t an anagram of “tonedeaf pig-buggering fucktards”, but it should be. Didn’t really like this one tiny bit.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Blur: Good Song Out now Despite naming this song to preclude negative reviews, you can’t not like this. It’s very simple. A gentle, shuffling beat, with the rudimentary acoustic guitars, floating over the top of a bassline that sounds like ‘Walk on the Wild Side’s much happier brother. A few keyboards come in later, but really, this goes to show that Blur’s new, shambling persona is to be welcomed with open arms. The voice is the voice of a man who’s been out on the razz, and woken up with no real memories of the night before, just a general feeling of calm contentment. It’s certainly worth a few quid.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003