I've never read a bad Michael Crichton novel, and I've read a lot of them. Having been impressed with the movie version of The Great Train Robbery, I picked up the source novel, and it was every bit as good. In fact, it was an ideal companion piece which expanded on the movie's story and filled in a lot of historical detail about the real robbery and about Victorian London in general.
Crichton's book is less a novel than a novelised account of real events - a bit like a TV docu-drama - with facts about the period (the mid 1850's) and the robbery sitting side-by-side with authentic dialogue - fiction informed by the copious research via newspaper stories etc carried out by Crichton. One comes away from a Crichton read feeling distinctly inferior to the highly gifted author, yet one is also left reeling from a thrilling story.
I found having watched the movie, reading the book was equally as pleasurable, despite knowing what was coming. Indeed, Crichton writes the book telling you the outcomes of the robbery, but the joy is in the detail of just how Edward Pierce carried out his audacious plan, and in the detail of Victorian London. There are interesting asides about the Crystal Palace, the vaguaries of London society for criminals, women and policemen, and about a massacre during an Indian uprising. At no point does the author let the pace of the plot waver when elucidating on these matters. The Great Train Robbery is as good a Crichton novel as Disclosure, Jurassic Park, Next, Rising Sun, Sphere, Congo, The Andromeda Strain, Binary, A Case of Need, The Lost World, State of Fear and Airframe... all I've read to date!
Last night we were in York for an evening's entertainment from Jay Brannan. Unfortunately, not many people were doing the same thing, which must have been a bit disappointing for Jay, but he never showed it - and I enjoyed the more intimate feel of the gig. To begin with, me and Andrew sat with our drinks, waiting for the singing to start (this time we'd got to the gig minutes before the doors even opened), when who should walk in but Jay Brannan himself! He asked us if we'd mind moving so he could sell his CDs (brought with him in a carrier bag) from the bench bit we were sat on. Of course we were happy to move.
Once the support act, Marbled, started, we moved nearer the stage and sat at the side, and then Jay Brannan sat by the side to watch too. I wonder how many acts watch their support before going on? The support wasn't bad, but I thought his lyrics were a bit lame. He sounded best when he came down off the stage with his guitar into the middle of the club, in order to try and encourage everyone to move forward towards the stage.
Once Jay came on, we did move forward, although the 'crowd' must only have been about 50 or so. Armed with just a guitar, Jay sang beautifully, emotionally and perfectly for a full hour, covering album tracks, a couple of covers and some new stuff. Between songs he was charming, witty and had a very cute laugh. I had an utterly wonderful time. After his set, Jay then came back to sell his CDs - I'd bought myself another copy of Goddamned earlier and now I got him to sign it, and me and Andrew both got our photos taken with him. Jay said his music is sad, but his emotive voice and skill with a guitar make me feel uplifted and reassured, and his lyrics are often witty and fun. A perfect evening.
Here's my attempt at a set list, though not in the order he played them, and probably with omissions:
- Can't Have It All
- Half-Boyfriend
- Soda Shop
- The Spanglish Song (a new one)
- Housewife (a personal favourite of mine)
- Goddamned (another favourite)
- Black Boys on Mopeds (Sinead O'Connor cover)
- Zombie
- Beautifully
- Ever After Happily (I think, could've been a new one!)
Outing number 2 this week was in Leeds, so no worries about getting home late. On Thursday we were at the WYP, our regular hang out, to see the comedy musical Spend Spend Spend! Another WYP production that I knew nothing about, and yet another home run, as it turned out to be a hilarious, warm, Northern true-life tale, with catchy songs and memorable dance routines.
Based on the true story of Viv Nicholson, a Castleford woman who won £152,319 on the pools with her husband Keith in 1961, Spend Spend Spend is a cautionary tale of what can happen when you a let a lottery-style win go to your head. Told through an interesting narrative device whereby Viv narrates her story, mostly through song, and interacts with the action as Young Viv and her 1960's family and friends show you how Viv came to be working in a hairdressers in the present(?) day.
I didn't know any of the cast, but the play was directed and choreographed by Craig Revel Horwood, and there certainly was a lot of dancing. It's one of those musicals where nearly everything is conveyed through song, with not much spoken dialogue. There were dance routines with lawn mowers, a stripping fireman, women and men dragged up as rough bunny girls, miners, mods and everything in between.
The cast were uniformly excellent, particularly Kirsty Hoiles' Young Viv, who was practically in every minute of every scene, and her on-stage husband Greg Barnett, who unfortunately as the character died, didn't get to be there all through, yet was a welcome addition whenever he was. I particulaly liked the northern humour and accents, as well songs like 'Garforth', 'Sexual Happening' and the exurberant title number 'Spend Spend Spend!' which featured the best dances. As with Britain's Got Bhangra, another musical we saw at WYP, it's a real shame there isn't a soundtrack album available.
It's been a busy week, with 2 gigs, a theatre trip, a work awards evening and a fantastic night of dancing. It all began on Tuesday night, with a trip to Manchester to see Swedish pop star Robyn, Andrew's favoured artiste. I liked her eponymous album from a couple of years back, but I've not really heard much of her new stuff.
I was pissed off at the beginning of the night. I really do think I'm too old for gigs at student unions! I don't get why the ticket says the doors open at 7.30pm, posters at the venue say Robyn was due on at 9pm and she didn't actually set foot on stage until 9.30pm. How is this acceptable?! Well because the gig organisers obviously have no regard for people who've been at work all day or are at work the following day. Thanks to the late start, we had to get the last train home, back after half midnight, and I like my sleep. So after standing around for 1.5 hrs (we weren't daft enough to turn up at the time on the ticket), enduring the awful DJing 'skills' of the female chav duo warm up act, I was not really in the mood for Robyn.
Thankfully, Robyn knocked my socks off with an incredibly energetic set that would put Anders from Alphabeat to shame. The set list ran as follows:
- Intro
- Fembot
- Cry When You Get Older
- Cobrastyle
- Hang With Me
- We Dance To The Beat / Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do
- Love Kills
- The Girl and the Robot
- Dancing On My Own
- Dream On
- With Every Heartbeat
- In My Eyes
- Konichiwa Bitches
- Be Mine!
- Dancehall Queen
- Show Me Love
A massive 16 songs, including 2 encores, as the crowd was mad for her, none more so than Andrew. Robyn bounded about the stage, munching a banana, looking like something from Live & Kicking back in the 90's, with a fab voice and a great deal of energy. A couple of the tracks from 'Robyn' had their music tracks tinkered with, and I wasn't so keen on that, though for the most part everything sounded great with a live band. I don't know the songs well enough to comment much more, but the evening, once it got started, was a success from where I was standing (just behind a very tall man).
I just finished The Three Musketeers, another Classic Adventures romp, this time through seventeenth century Paris, following D'Artagnan and his three friends, Athos, Porthos and Aramis as they become involved in court intrigues and war with England.
I enjoyed this book, although occasionally it took some concentration to work out who was tricking whom at some points, and despite the three musketeers having clearly defined personalities, I had trouble picking them apart, and remembering which one was religious, which was vain, etc - one reason for this I think is that although the book is named for them, it is D'Artagnan's story that dominates, the musketeers are his side kicks and supporting players.
Dumas writes with a dry sense of humour, and the plot moves on apace, with meetings between characters often not showing their import until several chapters later. The central plot involves a mysterious gentleman and then a mysterious lady, or Milady, who come to offend D'Artagnan. As the book moved on and storylines began to interweave more clearly, I very much enjoyed the caper. The French history lesson along the way is interesting too.
Having read about Let Me In, the new US remake of Let the Right One In, in this month's Empire, and since we're having a Swedish love-in with Wallander at the moment, the time seemed right to pick up the acclaimed horror movie, on Blu-Ray no less. So this marked the first Blu-Ray I've actually watched since getting a Blu-Ray player several months ago - up until now I've been using it to watch DVDs, although I've acquired about 10 Blu-Ray discs since then. I must say, you can see the difference - it's hard to explain, but the picture on Blu-Ray is just so much sharper.
But to the film... Let the Right One In is a slow burn, creepily effective take on the vampire myth, wih a tween spin. Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is bullied at school and ignored at home, so he's interested when Eli (Lina Leandersson) moves in next door. Eli isn't just a little girl, however, she's a vampire, with a minder who looks after her by murdering people and draining their blood for her to drink. Things go a bit awry when he's caught and pours acid on his face, before taking a tumble out of a window.
As with Wallander, the pace is slow, allowing the gorgeous snowy, Swedish landscape to draw you in. Eli's real identity is teased and revealed slowly, and there are great moments of sudden, bloody violence, as she leaps, catlike on to victims - these are vampires like those of True Blood, not Twilight - when they bite, it f*cking hurts! Here the vampirisim is seen as a sort of disease, as Eli passes it on to a victim she doesn't have chance to kill - when the victim chooses death over life as a vampire, she deliberately combusts in a ball of fire, in a very spectacular scene. Another memorable scene sees cats leaping on and attacking the newly created vampire, it's weird but chillingly effective. A scene I'd rather forget sees Oskar look in on Eli changing, revealing her *ahem* nether regions to the viewer - I've no idea why.
Let the Right One In is a true horror classic, much better than any gore-filled teen-slasher pic beloved of Hollywood (and unfortunately the public in general), as it really gets under your skin. When Eli walks into Oskar's flat unbidden, and begins to bleed from her scalp it makes you wonder at those movies that present vampires as an aspirational lifestyle! The finale in the swimming pool is suitably gory but the camera is restrained. I'm interested to see the US remake, mostly on the basis that the Empire article assures me it's not an absolute travesty.
The Water Clock is a pretty standard crime read, though an enjoyable one all the same. Set on the Cambridge Fens, the central mystery surrounds a body that is dredged up from the river in the boot of a car, and the connection it may have to a second body found on the roof of Ely Cathedral and a service station robbery from decades past...
Philip Dryden, a reporter, is the book's protagonist, which makes a change from traditional police investigators, and the book is peopled with interesting and quirky characters. There's Dryden's taxi-driving friend, a fat man who spends pretty much all of his day in his taxi, learning languages on tape. Dryden's wife spends the book in a coma, and the mystery behind the car crash that caused it forms a sub-plot that Dryden uses to gain leverage with the police. It's a taught little mystery, with splashes of British humour and memorable characters.
It's years since I've seen Mystery Men, one of the first DVDs I ever bought and re-watched, and Andrew hadn't seen it, mostly because he doesn't like Ben Stiller. I made him watch Zoolander, thinking it's one of Stiller's better movies (I'm not a massive fan) but it turned out he didn't like that either. Thankfully, it turned out that Mystery Men was a hit - maybe this was because, made in 1999, Ben Stiller wasn't a big a-list star then.
Rather than a Stiller vehicle, Mystery Men features a top-notch ensemble of indie comic actors, such as Hank Azaria, William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Greg Kinnear, Geoffrey Rush, and an early movie role for Eddie Izzard. The Mystery Men are a rag-bag collection of wannabe superheroes, whose special skills include throwing forks, fighting with a shovel, and going invisible - but only when no one is looking. With this cast and this premise, the film rarely fails to raise a chuckle at the very least. The look of Champion City, where Captain Amazing keeps the piece, and the Shoveller, Mr. Furious and the Blue Rajah just get in the way, is reminiscent of Batman Forever or Batman & Robin, all futuristic and dark, but with day glo edges.
It's been a while since my last update, but then my new job hasn't afforded me the luxury of spare time to write entries, or the energy of an evening to do so either. Added to that is the fact I've not finish many movies, TV series, books, etc in the last couple of weeks. On TV there are new seasons of things starting, so it'll be a while before I comment on Merlin, Ugly Betty or True Blood.
The last theatre trip we made was to WYP once more, to see Billy Liar, a play by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall that is celebrating it's golden anniversary. Going in I knew nothing about the play, and yet again the WYP has come up trumps with a wonderfully acted (and cast), funny, and ultimately enjoyable piece of theatre.
Billy Fisher is a fantasist (read: liar) who lives with his parents and grandmother, and the play takes place over a period of about 24 hours, in the Fisher's front room. The set was full of great period detail, and even had a staircase, a kitchen, windows... It always astounds me the level of detail that goes into a stage set, although anything shoddy would be shown up in such a small, intimate theatre as it was showing on, plus we were only 2 rows back. There's not a great deal of plot to the piece, mostly it's about the interactions between characters - from what I remember Billy is work-shy and has a couple of girls on the go at once, and when his lies begin unravelling (and his girls meet) his parents wash their hands of him, his grandma dies (though not as a result of Billy's actions) and he decides to leave for London.
