Kicks - released 4 June

Of all the developments to come out of British society's recent fixation on celebrity culture the rise of the ‘wag’ is surely one if the most profoundly depressing. Young, usually glamorous wives and girlfriends solely defined by the wealth and fame of their sporting partners. Girl power it certainly isn’t, but apparently hopping into bed with a bloke with good ball skills has become to a lot of 21st girls a viable career path.

This grim reality of modern life is tackled sympathetically and without judgement by writer Leigh Campbell and directed confidently with no small amount of wit and charm by Lindy Heyman.

Focusing on two Liverpool girls’ (Kerrie Hayes, Nichola Burley - both very good) shared obsession for a Premiership footballer, Kicks attempts to uncover the desperation and stifled dreams behind the champagne cocktails and VIP parties of the local football aristocracy.

It is only partly successful. While the first half of the film - propelled ably by Ladytron’s melancholic electro - is an engaging tale of two lost souls sneaking in and out of clubs and wondering what to do with themselves; the second half- when they actually meet and take their hero hostage- is sadly disappointing.

The defining act of kidnapping the star player seems unlikely and even unnecessary to the story as a whole and even threatens to devalue the strength of what went on before. The two girls are at first seen as normal girls tainted somewhat by the regrettable disease of celeb worship, but never the less normal. In the second half they are borderline psychos; playing mind games with the captive winger and taking weird pics of him on their mobiles. An added element of horror yes, but one that detracts from the well balanced social commentary of before and not something that rings true of two ‘normal’ 15 year girls.

That aside, Kicks is an interesting and enormously relevant film and one that it is encouraging to see being made in this country.

How to 'make it' in the music biz

To the undersigned I think I might sign this;
A scripture or a picture
Not worth painting
The gallery hangs...
Above us
And the similes
Sound like quiet or loud desperation.
If (at all) aware of imitation
Then at least make it interesting
Tick boxes
Lick boxes
And become a part of everything you hated
When you still had sense.

Other than that, play 3 chords loud (or quiet)
And remember that imagination
Can be yo muvva of invention.

Victoriana; the Sins of My Fathers

Victoriana and the Sins of My Fathers
Out of my window the streets are still bleak.
The unforgiving highways and byways of this dark and unpleasant land –
Built upon Roman roads,
Ancient tracks, Sassenach Cul-de-sacs
- Remain caked with filth, muck and ground in grime.
The labours and Miss Demeanours – “Pray tell. Have you seen her?”
Of the City’s already dead show up like fresh scars
On the slippery-when-dry
Cobbled streets of old Queen Vic’s London.
Sparkling like shit in the not there sun,
Rich on pain,
Insane, fat and bloated on the toil of the conquered,
In India, Africa and over here.
Dear old London.
Dear old London.
How did we get here?

*
And thousands of miles away
After a few gin and laudanum cocktails I see it:
Eyes glinting like the fires of Hell
6 and a half feet tall
16t of prime BSE British Beef
The word ‘Dangerous’ tattooed in blood on its sweaty forehead.
Slaughtering and raping through village and town
Killing without remorse in jungle and desert.
Bayonet and cutlass
Rifle and blade
Extract the succour of wealth where they find it.
And send the money, wealth and self regard straight home to Blighty.
The blood red uniformed machine –
Is shouting “Progress! Progress!
For Queen and Cuntery
I shall kill so that you may live in Glorious Technicolor.“

*
Middle class guilt and the feeling of dread
200 years ago it’d be off wiv my head
I’ve taken all prescriptions for historical wins
And studied reparations of colonial sins
What it comes down to isn’t worth shit
Things are more concealed now but only a bit:
“O, we’re so sorry for what we have done
In the torture gardens and under blood sun
And we’re so sorry for acting like men
Never again, we promise, never again,
Cross our hearts and hope to die
Jesus is going to buy us an alibi”
For Christian soldiers march ever on
Fighting violence with violence, bomb with bomb
Our brave boys, when will they come home?
When the beast is sated and we have our New Rome.

*
Because let’s not kid
We’re still empire building
Except this time they call it ‘peace keeping’
Different masters, same shitty pay packet at the end of the month
With a built in tax on foreign affairs,
Pointless crusades and
Dodgy geography
Same circle of despair, same pictures of misery
Same cycle of abuse that has been going on
Since we left the hunting/gathering pack
And settled down with our farms and towns
With our pills and Dancing on Ice
We’re just defending what with got.
What’s wrong with that?
This ‘Great Game’ will never be won
But while it continues we've already lost.

*
Waking up now, through brightening eyes
Forgotten smiles, hazy sun-rise and inflammatory headlines
And an impenetrable smoky hangover
I see the streets filled with the noise and the bustle
The giving and the getting
The taking and the receiving
The dying and the grieving
The power and the glory
The bullshit stories
And another dead marine
In the year of our Lord Mamon 2010
All human life is here
Where’s the war?
Over there.
Who’s war?
Ours!

New Spoken Word Tracks

I have put some new tracks up on Last Fm - they are free to download if that's your cup of meat.

www.last.fm/music/Robot+Monk/Dead+Letter+Days

Paranormal Activity - DVD out 22 March 2010

Paranormal Activity
Released on DVD and Blu-Ray 22 March 2010.

The horror phenomenon of 2009 makes its appearance on DVD with the suspense, originality and most importantly, the scare-factor all intact. In fact, in some ways the conversion does the movie a favour - viewed in one’s home the movies subtleties and old-school chills come out into their own. One more point on this, the soundtrack is integral and deserves to be heard through a decent speaker system if the viewer is lucky enough to have one…

The plot itself is a fairly familiar tale of haunting and possession. Barely leaving the middle-class suburban house that is central to the film, the story follows a young couple’s nocturnal disturbances with a seemingly demonic presence that centres upon Katie, a student who has past experience with the paranormal.

Where the film differs – although sharing mood, atmosphere and some stylistic tricks - from a past classic such as Poltergeist or The Exorcist – is that Katie’s boyfriend Micah chooses to film the couple’s sleeping patterns on his fancy new camera in an attempt to understand what is going on. It is his footage that makes up what we see on screen.

Of course, this sort of ‘real’ footage as well as the police notes at the beginning and end of the movie (and the use of the actor’s real names) brings to mind another earlier horror phenomenon, The Blair Witch Project. Many sources have drawn unfavourable comparison between the two; and there is no getting around the fact that Activity borrows heavily from that film. Even some of the initial hype and Internet based marketing campaigns were similar. Certainly, it cannot be claimed that Activity is anywhere near as original as that previous movie.

However, for my money it is a more effective horror movie. Director Oren Peli is clearly a fan and in effect what he has done is a stripped down, minimal version of Blair Witch. In the final analysis it completely works as a scary movie - it produces enough jumps in its 90 minutes to fully deserve its reputation. The fixed set-up of one camera focused on a sleeping couple with unknown threat lurking is what stays in the memory. Like all great ideas it is a seemingly simple one – and one that probably every aspiring filmmaker wishes they had had first.

Note. The DVD comes with an alternate ending added as an extra. (This is Peli’s original ending which Spielberg’s producers decided to alter when it was realised that it ruled out the possibility of a money-spinning – and almost inevitably crappy sequel (PA 2 is being made by the bloke that did Saw IV. Nuff said…) There is also another version of the ending haunting the internet as well.)

Robert Monk