|
March 2010
The Archives
-
03.31.10Johnny’s Naked ApocalypseWas just watching David Thewlis as Johnny in Mile Leigh's 1993 film Naked from 1993. Can still remember the first time I saw it. Scared me half to death. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/N90sl94g7PE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] Here's a chunk of the interview we did in 2007: Like Ralph Fiennes in ‘Spider’, one can sense something of Beckett’s mad mutterers in Thewlis’s role as Johnny in ‘Naked’ (he later played Clov in Conor McPherson’s adaptation of ‘Endgame’). That film, like most Mike Leigh projects, evolved through a long process of workshopping and improvisational rehearsal sessions, rather than working from a script. “There isn’t a finished ...
-
03.31.10Blast from the past: GodspeedTen years ago this month we first wrote about Godspeed You Black Emperor. Eagle-eyed J the R readers might spot significant cross-references with page 142 of the novel. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/-aLjup934Rk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] IN GODSPEED You Black Emperor's book of revelations, the end times will arrive in slow, beautiful, deafening waves; a tsunami of sound heralding seas on fire, skies charred with chemicals, sinking land masses circled by beady-eyed seabirds, and a thousand teary newscasters all chorusing, God help us all . . . Jesus, what is it with these Canadians? In the 1999 movie Last Night, Canuck director Don McKellar documents ...
-
03.31.10Bohemian RhapsodyJust Kids By Patti Smith (Bloomsbury) It's likely that Patti Smith will be remembered not as an incandescent original, but a tough and resourceful little mongrel. The kinetic prose-poetry/beat-punk fusion of her 1974 debut single 'Piss Factory'/'Hey Joe' and that eruptive first album Horses exploded the possibilities of both rock 'n' roll and literature, a riot of garage band glossolalia and hallucinatory street rap, delivered with near religious fervour. It's hardly hyperbole to suggest that she single-handedly forged a hybrid strain of art, one that that surprisingly few performance poets, hip-literate rockers or MC battlers have fully capitalised or expanded upon since. Her ...
-
03.30.10Even Better than the Surreal ThingHop on a train into London and get off near St Paul's Cathedral, trot across the Millennium Bridge over the Thames and into the Tate Modern and take the lift to Level Three. There you'll find an exhibition entitled Poetry and Dream. Consult your programme: "The large room at the heart of the wing is devoted to Surrealism, while the surrounding displays look at other artists who, in different ways, have responded to or diverged from Surrealism, or explored related themes such as the world of dreams, the unconscious and archetypal myth. These displays also show how characteristically Surrealist techniques ...
-
03.28.10After the FloodThe great James Lee Burke discusses the origins of his novel Jesus Out to Sea. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/_GvaNnhqYkg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
-
03.26.10The Man FridayThe Rev Murphy will be appearing in the forthcoming Art Lives documentary 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Gavin Friday', due for broadcast on Tuesday April 6th 2010 at 10.15pm on RTE One. http://www.rte.ie/tv/artslives/ Here's an interview with Mr Friday in the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/mar/25/gavin-friday-virgin-prunes [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/53QQE-DV2bs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
-
03.25.10J the R on MarsDelighted to see 30 Seconds to Mars recently earmarked J the R as book of the week on the Echelon Attack blog. http://echelonattack.blogspot.com/
-
03.24.10The other BruceLooking forward to The Rum Diary, Bruce Robinson's adaptation of Hunter S Thompson's novel, starring Johnny Depp. Here's some prime Robinsonia. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/qc0hq-vrXLM" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] [kml_flashembed [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/vzVY63TEUnw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/O95jIOu_SpA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
-
03.20.10In the Time of NickWriting a 1970s memoir 30 years after the fact is, one imagines, akin to playing private detective with your own past. For the first half of that decade Nick Kent led a charmed life, reporting on the era's most mercurial acts for the NME: the Stooges, the New York Dolls, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. Iggy Pop saved his life. Chrissie Hynde was his first long term girlfriend. Lester Bangs tutored him in journalism. But some time after Kent's short-lived stint as guitarist with the embryonic Sex Pistols it all went belly-up, culminating in an assault at the ...
-
03.13.10The Sounds of the BeyondTerry Riley's A Rainbow In Curved Air from 1967, set to the Stargate sequence from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/apxuRKWmEJs" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] And its rowdier spiritual twin, The Who's Baba O'Riley performed at the Concert For New York City, autumn 2001. Not a dry eye in the house. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/cG_uDDEnzC4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]