Jonsi, Vampires, Kevin Spacey and more....

Okay, time for the second of my new kind of experimental posts. Not as much cultural to report on this week as last, as pretty busy at work, but a few updates under the categories (no gaming time this week, alas) where something to report.

Music (of course)

Still in pre-High Violet frenzy, but it is dragging out a bit at this stage, and not sure if will make it all the way to 11 May with enthusiasm still at the early peak. Need more drip-feeds of clips and tracks to keep it going.

Also to be released in the meantime, but at a completely different level of enthusiasm (reasonable by any standards, just low compared to the National) is Josh Ritter's new album 'So runs the world away', due late April, and from which eMusic have made 'Change of time' available for download; it is a very nice song, with good martial drumming and lovely backing vocals towards the end, and I am confident the album, like all the others, will have a good few tracks to recommend.

I have also been listening, as mentioned last week, to the new albums by Oliver Cole and Jonsi. For the former, my favourite track from 'We albatri', by a mile, is 'Oh my girl', which may be a new example of the very rare species of classic Irish pop song I talked about a few weeks ago. The rest of the album has not measured up to that standard from the few listens I have given so far, but it may yet grow bigger and fonder. The original performance of 'Oh my girl' from TV which made me get the album is below:



I like the Jonsi album more, with much more pop accessibility than the glacial cool of Sigur Ros, and some very interesting rhythms, cool drums and eccentric instrumentation. The language remains both a differentiating factor and a barrier, as ever, but I do like it, and the stand-out track so far is 'Boy lilikoi', an unofficial video for which I found below:



Otherwise, the sun has come out in Ireland, and it always takes me a little while to readjust my listening habits to find something to listen to in the car which matches the sunshine after both internal and external darkness, but this week there has been quite a bit of Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown, which fitted the bill for now.

Books

I finished 'The strain', which I really enjoyed, despite never having much enthusiasm for vampire fiction, particularly the teen-angsty strain that has infected every book shop these day. I have not seen 'Twilight' but rather imagine those type would stand little choice against the animalistic monsters created when the foul virus infects humans in Del Toro's book. It ends rather abruptly, with many threads incomplete, but then I discovered that it was meant to be the first in a trilogy. This is both annoying on one level, and exciting in terms of future reading, but I was a bit frustrated when I first realised the game that was on.

I found a clip of Del Toro and his co-author discussing the book below:



And I found a trailer for the book below. I did not know you could have trailers for a book and I love the idea! There also also what seem to be lots of home-made clips and trailers for the movie on Youtube, which must be unofficial as the Internet Movie Database has no record of a film being produced of the book (yet). Just shows there are a lot of fans of the book out there with time and technology on their hands (how I wish I had more of both)!



I am now trying to finish 'Solar' (still not likeable in the least), but getting increasingly engrossed in Simon Singh's 'Trick or treatment', as he demolishes alternative medicine in a very well-written and convincing way.

Otherwise, mainly trying to exercise willpower to stop buying tons more books on Kindle (damn it for the astonishing facilitation it has brought to my buying books, and the temptations thus daily proferred), and restricting myself to downloading a few samples (a new biography of Dick Cheney, a figure of warped fascination for me, a book I saw ages ago about the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and some stuff a student recommended me by David Crystal on the English language - all on a list for the future).

Movies

Lots out I want to see (Green Zone, The Ghost, maybe Kick Ass) but no chance yet, alas. Hope to get to at least one before they disappear. Did watch a reasonably good movie with a good cast (Kevin Spacey, Tom Wilkinson, John Hurt) tackling a fascinating subject: 'Recount', about the Gore:Bush Florida election scandal of 2000. It seemed a lot like a product of liberal Hollywood having a go at the evil Republicans (who featured some of the strangest haircuts seen for a long time), and the story would be hard to make uninteresting, but the movie did a good job, and there were some nicely managed jumpcuts between the opposing camps which were well scripted and edited to make the contrasts as clear as could be. Laura Linney put in a brave and fairly mad performance as Katharine Harris, who was apparently just as daft in real life as she appeared in the movie. Kevin Spacey is always watchable, but this was one of his slightly smarmy, very smart, not very likeable roles, and Keyser Soze was a long way away (best place to have the psychotic murdering Hungarian devil!).

When in London last week I caught some of 'Four weddings and a funeral' on TV, which is still a very very funny film, and is still completely undermined (not ruined, but a close run thing) by Andie McDowell; one of my favourite movie critic lines ever (the source I unfortunately can't recall) described her as 'wood dressed as porcelain', which is just perfect. I also was interested to see the guy who played the wonderully evil Steve Fleming at the end of the third season of 'The thick of it' looking almost exactly the same as a groom in the wedding - no wonder he looked a little familiar.

TV

No time for 'The pacific' yet but it is still there waiting, and I am looking forward to it. 24 still keeping me interested, and I have managed not yet to go looking on the Fox TV website to read guides for the next few episodes to spoil the surprises (which I must admit to having done the last few times), so the totally ridiculous twists (how could Dana have possibly got a job at CTU with 2 different sets of secret history behind her?) do come as more of a shock/surprise this time around. Have watched the start of 'Battlestar Galactica: the plan', but it seems to be clearly more in the style of later/heavier BSG (season 3 on) than the earlier style I much preferred, but enough promise there that I need to get back to it.

Not much else to report. I bought a radio remote adaptor for my iPod today which was reduced in price by 75%; there had to be a catch and there was - it doesn't work with the Touch. Ho and indeed hum. Have been discovering (a bit late) some great Downfall parodies on Youtube, my favourite (for professional reasons) being the one here.

24 days to High Violet!!!