The Wild Bride (WYP, 19/11/11)

basics...
Last Saturday's stint of volunteering had me watching The Wild Bride, a tragi-comic drama from the Kneehigh production company about a young woman's experiences with her father, the devil and a princely suitor. 

brilliant...
I knew even less than I usually do when I go into a play, mainly because since I didn't choose and pay for the ticket I had done no research into the plot or company behind The Wild Bride. It's an excellent way to go into a performance, unhindered by any preconceived ideas or prejudices. As such I thoroughly enjoyed this particularly grim(m) fairytale, told in an imaginative, kinetic fashion with songs, jokes and even audience participation. The central female character was played by 3 different women at various stages of her life, and each brought new nuance to the part - Audrey Brisson's Girl was delicate, innocent and made you feel the pain when her hands were cut off; Patrycja Kujawska's Wild was a stark depiction of despair and madness that was complemented by innovative props work; and Éva Magyar's Woman showed a strong side, with enough life-taught mettle to refuse the devil. Stuart Goodwin's dual role as unfortunate Father and optimistic Prince were imbued with great humour - he and Stuart McLoughlin's Devil had the lion's share of the dialogue and narration to deliver opposite the mostly mute female trio and they were both magnetic. I particularly enjoyed Goodwin's Scottish, slightly camp Prince, and his mother, represented by an old Renaissance-style painting of a noble-woman, with arm holes for the actress behind. The humour was well balanced against the tragedy and bleak outlook for the Girl, and it stimulated an electric atmosphere in the audience. The Wild Bride ticked many boxes for me - drama, humour, music, and sheer exuberance of performance - so was an unqualified success.

but...
I was volunteering at the other side of the theatre to usual, where the view isn't great, so I didn't get to see the whole stage. It didn't impact much on my enjoyment though.

briefly...
A wild ride full of excitement and new ideas melded to a classic fairytale, simply wonderful.

Bad Monkeys (Matt Ruff, 2007)

basics...
Following the weighty Sophie's World, which took me about a month to plow through, I wanted to read something fast and funny. So I picked up Bad Monkeys, one of those books on my shelf that I bought based on the front cover, title and blurb alone. It sees Jane Charlotte narrate to a police doctor the events that led her to be arrested for murder. The story takes in her initiation and subsequent work with the Bad Monkeys, a group tasked with killing evil people with guns that shoot heart attacks...

brilliant...
Bad Monkeys is bonkers, and I loved every minute of it! The reviews on the back are not kidding when they compare the story with The Matrix - Ruff's tale is cinematic, action packed and a bit of a mind-fuck as twists pile on twists and you question everything that has gone before - before the rug is once more pulled from under your feet. I really like the way the novel evolves from a seemingly normal criminal situation, to a possible unreliable narrator who is proved to have been mistaken, and then the whole conceit of the interview is called into question... Jane Charlotte is a flawed, believable hero, but can she be trusted? Revelations about her brother and her allegiances build quickly through the final third of the book, but never once do any of the twists feel forced or implausible, considering what else has happened. This book is going to be a keeper, I intend to devour it again with the knowledge of the ending to try and properly work out just what the hell was going on.

briefly...
Bad Monkeys posed even more questions than Sophie's World, and was a great deal more exciting while it did so. Stunningly imaginative and inventive. 

Sound of Noise (2010, Leeds Town Hall)

basics...
The third and final film we saw at the International Film Festival, Sound of Noise is, like the film the previous night, difficult to describe without sounding insane. It's a Swedish crime drama, about a gang of anarchists who terrorise a city by... playing unusual pieces of music on a hospital patient, in a bank, using heavy plant machinery and on electricity powerlines. Oh and everything the group play on is rendered mute... for music-hating detective Amadeus Warnebring (Bengt Nilsson). See how hard this is to describe??

brilliant, but...

It would be a little unfair to compare Sound of Noise with Detroit Metal City as they are very different prospects, united only by an unusual approach to music and comedy and my having seen them on consecutive nights. However, Sound of Noise suffers in comparison as although it has a lot of inventive content, it takes itself far more seriously than DMC. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy Sound of Noise - I think part of my resistance is that it was a busy work week, with 3 subtitled movies one night after another... I could have done with something a bit lighter to finish the trilogy. The cast underplay the roles, keeping everything low key, not even questioning the preposterousness of the film's premise, which really helps the audience buy into the odd reality in which Warnebring and co exist. The musical compositions themselves are the movie's highlights, ingenious sequences of novel music-making that actually work as melodies. There are not enough moments of musical exhilaration though, and the characters can be frustratingly laid back.

briefly...
A weird Swedish hybrid of comedy, crime drama, musical and romance that would work better with a greater degree of knowingness.

Detroit Metal City / Detoroito Metaru Shiti (2008, Leeds Town Hall)

basics...
Our second trip in 3 consecutive days at the Town Hall's Film Festival saw us settling in for a Japanese comedy-musical about Soichi (Ken'ichi Matsuyama), a young man who dreams of singing trendy pop songs but somehow ends up lead singer for a death metal band who sing about rape, killing and gore.

brilliant...
I had no idea what to expect from this - the blurb in the Festival programme made us want to see it but didn't explain a lot - and I'm still not quite sure what it was! Whatever Detriot Metal City is it's utterly hilarious - Matsuyama is alternately adorable, gormless and, when made up as DMC lead singer Johannes Krauser II, terrifying. The plot is wacky, unpredictable and oddly touching, while the rest of the characters are either bat-shit bonkers (DMC's sadistic manager, who likes to put cigarettes out on people and likes it when the band's music get her 'wet'), a celebrity cameo (Gene Simmons of Kiss plays DMC's biggest rival for death metal icon status), or sweetly adorable (Soichi's mother, who seems oblivious to everything but knows much more than she lets on). Full of day glo pastels in Soichi's perfect world, muted soft focus in his childhood home, and black dystopian goths in the metal clubs, Detroit Metal City is a visual treat. 

but...
It could have been shorter, losing some of the running around and overlong battle in the finale. 

briefly...
An odd delight, Detroit Metal City is daft and it knows it, which just adds to the enjoyment. I've not seen anything this camp and scary since Lordi won Eurovision.

Gnarr (2010, Leeds Town Hall)

basics...
A documentary that follows comedian Jón Gnarr's entry into the Reykjavik election for mayor and his subsequent landslide victory that saw The Night Shift's Georg assume assume in 2010. Shown at the Town Hall for Leeds International Film Festival.

brilliant...
Gnarr is the funniest documentary I've seen. If I didn't already know the events depicted really happened I could easily have taken the film for a clever satire or mockumentary. Beginning low key with Gnarr addressing his web cam (looking very different to his Georg character), the movie continued in a low-key, student-project type style. There were no talking heads or voice overs, just the odd onscreen caption to identify the key players. Gnarr created the Best Party in the wake of the financial and volcanic disasters that gripped Iceland in the years before 2010, and his refreshing take on politics resonated with a public fed up with a city council they perceived as old fashioned and grid locked. The film shows Gnarr making up policies on the spot, from acquiring a polar bear for Reykjavik zoo to getting parliament drug-free by 2020, and being as surprised as everyone else at how his campaign got traction and propelled him to greater fame and power than before. As the film is made with Gnarr's total cooperation there is little critique of his progress or balance, but the whole documentary is an inspiration to people fed up with politics and is damn funny too. 

briefly...
Almost too good to be true, the story of Jón Gnarr is one that has to be seen to believed. A funnier documentary I am yet to see.

Sophie's World (Jostein Gaarder, 1991)

basics...
Sophie is a 14 year old school girl who receives a letter with a lesson on philosophy in the mail. What follows is a history of the subject told alongside a mystery that could affect Sophie's whole world - who is Hilde, and is she real?

brilliant...
This is one of those books I got as a teenager, started, and then put to one side. Catch-22 was a similar tome, and after trying a second time to get into it I gave up on that one as a bad job. Sophie's World, tackled as an adult, is a more enjoyable experience - it's far too hard going for a young reader. And to be frank, at times it had me scratching my head. The best part of the book was the bits that weren't long treatises on specific philosophers or eras, where Sophie tries to figure out a) who the hell is sending her these mysterious lessons, b) why they have picked her, c) who Hilde is, and d) whether she even exists. I enjoyed the plot for the sheer gutsiness of what Gaarder does with his young protagonist, and these parts really zipped along.

but...
Unfortunately, try as he might, Gaarder's passages on philosophy slow the book down in places. I know this is the book's raison d'etre but still. Sophie's World is not really a great book to pick up at bedtime after a hard day's work. It's a book that you have to take time to dive into and think about later. There's too much info coming all at once though and I did not keep up and take it all in as Sophie does. 

briefly...
A great idea for introducing people to philosophy, if only those lessons were as interesting and compelling as the actual plot. 

Top Boy (2011)

basics...
A four part drama set in the murky world of a London estate, complete with drug dealers, revenge killings and flat-based marijuana farms. It ain't Pride & Prejudice.

brilliant...

I liked Ashley Walters in his brief one-series stint in Hustle a few years ago, and he's part of the reason I was intrigued by Top Boy, spread across 4 nights on Channel 4. The series made a change from the usual detective shows, comedies and American dramas that litter the schedules, and presented a fresh, modern take on the gang and drug culture of some of the dodgier areas of London. Populated with interesting characters who are often only involved in this culture because they see no alternative, Top Boy does little to glamourise the subject. Drug dealing is shown to be cut throat, as well as finger-chopping and chest-burning, and with very little happiness. It was inevitable that some of the characters wouldn't survive the series, but it was never clear which of them would be unlucky enough to make an early exit, and this really heightened the drama. Walters was a part of a largely unknown ensemble of young black actors, and although it's a shame that black casts are reserved for gangland crime dramas (or stereotyped Caribbean natives as in Death in Paradise), at least these characters are sympathetic and human, not mere ciphers.

but...
Ra'Nell, the adolescent who features in one of the main storylines, was a bit dull at times, and his relationship with his troubled mother could have been better explored. Some of the violence was a bit too much as well, although it needed to be to deglamourise it. 

briefly...
A gritty, devasting drama that provides excellent antidote to the Downton mania of recent months.