Monthly Archives: April 2012

The Voice. Week 6. The live shows

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Finally! We can drop the whole, “We’re not the X-Factor. Honestly!” nonsense and get down to a reality sing-off that resembles reality. The good old BBC decided, of course, to do things a little differently though by just having two teams battle it out instead of all four.
Why might this be, I wonder? Surely, in the interests of fairness, everyone sings and everyone gets compared to everyone else- right?

I suppose the Beeb would argue that having twenty acts (I refuse to call them ‘voices’- you know why) singing a song each would make too long a show but Th’exfactor manages it with sixteen and they have commercial breaks to contend with.

It just seemed a bit odd.

This format basically allows all those poor deluded punters who literally can’t watch a program without picking up their phone, to vote four times as often. Think about it. What if your favorite wasn’t on tonight? Do you wait for them to appear next week and just try to enjoy this week’s show without a recorded voice thanking you on one ear? Hell no! You gotta vote, right? Pick another favorite and vote for them- go on! And remember, it’s just within each team so you’d better vote twice!
And what about the acts themselves? The weaker ones have had their chances of survival quadrupled from 20-1 to 5-1 in a stroke!

“Only two teams will compete this week and someone from each team is going home.” No matter what, so the weakest from a strong team will go even though they’re better than someone from another team who stays.

On ITV it’s a free-for-all and the act with the least votes goes home. It doesn’t matter which team they’re on.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the format but it STILL feels like they’re making rules up just to be different.

This week we had Team Will against Team Tom. Team Jones would have been a better name but that would have meant they were against Team ‘i.am’ and I think there’s already a pet food manufacturer sponsoring a bunch of tabbies with that name and we all know what a nightmare that can be. Just ask ‘Rhythmix- sorry, Little Mix.’

I’d hate to see a gang of highly trained pets who jump through hoops and roll over for treats having their name taken away because of… a load of cats.

Now don’t get me wrong. I was relieved that the wise old general public were allowed to take the wheel at last and do the right thing for a change. Until, that is. I saw Joelle standing there in the last two next to Sophie while Tyler returned, unchallenged, to his wind tunnel. At least she went through, and quite right too, but in the other camp we were left with cartoon Sam and Mattsuleen (I’m seeing them as one person now- it’s easier to think like uncle Tom that way) who are probably chuffed to get through in spite of missing out on this week’s goat sacrifice back at the ‘henge’.

Neither are as good as Sophie, I think, and yet this weird ‘team’ setup means they didn’t compete with her anyway.

The low number of songs meant a lot of filling was needed and Holly, bless her, try as she might to get anything like a decent conversation going, ended up wilting under the strain and held the microphone so low while Adam Isaac droned on about his ‘chipped bone’ in his arm that she almost gave him curvature of the spine to go with it.

It was sweet to see Tom filling up when he had to dismiss Sam but it was ok because Sam had been consoled by the overly emotional Holly just long enough for him to curb his bitterness in a final confusing flourish of, “I’m really gutted… but happy too.” Which was his way of telling Tom he’d had enough time in the arms of his first non-inflatable blonde to reflect on his dismissal and will, in fact, forgive him and not nail his quiff to the gates of Castle Sexbomb (Motto: Lie Bach and Prestatyn) after all.

Tom managed to pull his hard-assed, “look, boyo, it’s life. Someone’s gotta go and I’m afraid it’s you” act out of the bag in between a mere dozen ways to describe how ‘hard a decision’ it was, but Will bottled it!

When it came time to ditch Sophie he crumbled and basically promised her a recording contract regardless of being told, in no uncertain terms, that she was about as popular with the British public as Nick Griffin. (Not true of course, she’s a lovely and talented young lady with a bright future, I’m sure).

“Don’t worry, me and Dante and all my team will give you whatever you want.” He said, and I’m pretty sure he meant it so fair play to Willy, but as the weeks roll on and eliminations of more talented people than poor Sophie pile up, his other ‘team’ are going to wish he’d be a lot less sweet and a lot more ‘Sugar’ and just fire people without promising them their own pod with the ‘Peas’.
In the end, of course, the public did mostly the right thing and the eventual winners, Jaz and Ruth went through.

Next week it’s Danny against Jessie where I imagine the other Ruth will be given a series of golden envelopes and told to pick a key to avoid, Vince will be backed by the rest of the Lost Boys and Becky Hill will threaten to glass everyone in the country if they don’t vote for her.
Should be fun! Can’t wait.

I will be tweeting, live, through next week’s shows so join me @elywhitley… if you dare.

The Funniest Letter EVER.

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This is the funniest letter ever. We came across this on Facebook and just had to share it. It shows just how ridiculous people who discriminate and try to use religion as a weapon are.

The Xcerts: our last tour, we’re off to the studio | Music News

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Four days ahead of an extensive 25-date UK tour, Aberdeen alt-rock band The Xcerts have announced that this will be their last for a while. Speaking in an email to fans they said that the tour will be “the last full UK tour in support of the album (2010’s ‘Scatterbrain’) before we take some time out to work on new material, hangout with loved ones and lose our social lives to the hands of Netflix”.

The tour begins at the Tunbridge Wells Forum on 4th May and runs through to 25th May at Bristol Cooler, full details here.


Sundance London Film Festival 2012 Highlights

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Sundance London Film Festival 2012 Highlights

 

This year Sundance came to London with resounding success. Frost went along and has picked out some highlights.

Extranjero by Daniel Lumb & Crinan Campbell. This won the first ever Sundance London short film award, and rightly so. Well worth a watch.

The Return (Kthimi)

An amazing short film set in Kosovo. Everyone thought he died during the war but a man returns from being a prisoner of war and his wife, who he hasn’t seen in four years along with their son, has to tell him that she kept her rapists baby. Powerful and haunting.

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared.

Weird but kind of wonderful.

Tooty’s Wedding

This short film is hilarious. Especially when the lead actress tells her husband “Yesterday a man said my breasts were a 7, which is actually quite high”.

Under African Skies by Joel Berlinger

Highly acclaimed at the festival. Paul Simon’s historic Graceland album sold millions of copies and united cultures, yet divided world opinion on the boundaries of art, politics, and commerce. On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Graceland’s release, Simon returns to South Africa for a reunion concert that unearths the turbulent birth of the album. Despite its huge success as a popular fusion of American and African musical styles, Graceland spawned intense political crossfire. Simon was accused of breaking the United Nations’ cultural boycott of South Africa, which was designed to end apartheid.

 

I really liked this film. Very well-made and interesting story.


The Queen of Versailles
The Queen of Versailles premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and received the U.S. Directing Award for Documentary. Sundance Institute  provided creative support for the film at the 2011 Creative Producing Summit.

 

A very good documentary. Worth watching.


 

Did you go to Sundance London? What did you think?

 

New TALIBAM! video unveiled | Music News

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Brooklyn “no-school rap” duo TALIBAM! have unveiled the video for their new single ‘Step into the Marina’, which you can view here.

The band have also released a statement explaining their sound: “GONG ACCIDENT LEADS TO RAP ALBUM: If you went to rap school, you wasted your money. Talibam!’s #noschoolrap is the result of circumstance. They never studied old or new school rap. Rap found them. In 2009, a falling gong broke Kevin Shea’s bass drum foot in Torino, Italy. In a subsequent recording session, Shea adapted using his other foot on the bass drum. The ensuing beats, composed without samples or loops, inspired Mottel and Shea to flex their symbiotic verbal epiphanies within their self produced floral pop paradise.”

The London Mayoral Election – Can You Really Bring Yourself to Vote for Ken? 10 Reasons To Make You Think Before You Do

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It’s now less than a week to go to the London mayoral election and it’s is a two-horse race between the Conservative incumbent, Boris Johnson and the former mayor and Labour candidate, Ken Livingstone.

In the polls, Ken is behind, somewhere between 2 and 10 points behind according to the latest figures. This is surprising when the same polls suggest the Conservatives are 15 points behind in London and set to get hammered in the local elections. This is down to two factors, Boris’s charisma and Ken’s cronyism.

Ken has brushed off Labour supporters voting against him (up to one in five is expected to vote for Boris). ‘They are only voting for Boris because he makes them laugh’, says Ken. This is only partly true. Yes, Boris’s charisma and flair are a factor, but so is Ken. Many voters simply can’t bring themselves to vote for Ken because they don’t trust him and you can’t blame them.

Whatever side of the political spectrum you come from, it’s vital that we hold our politicians to account. In my eyes, Ken has been slippery and divisive at best. A self-confessed political nerd, he is everything which is wrong in modern politics today. He will do or say anything to win. It says a lot that many senior figures in the Labour party not only won’t offer their support for him, but are actively risking their own standing in the party to campaign against him.

“In my opinion he is a driven, power-crazed egomaniac who will do anything to regain the power he once had,” says Lord Sugar.

He is “quite a tricky sort of customer” who has “espoused some disastrous causes,” says another Labour peer, Robert Winston.

Here’s a top 10 of Ken gaffes, cronyism, hypocrisy and champagne socialism:

  • Ken was heavily criticised in February 2005 for remarks made to an Evening Standard reporter. He compared him to a Nazi concentration camp guard, after the Jewish reporter had tried to interview him. Ken refused to apologise or retract the statement after the reporter let it be known he was Jewish.
  • In December 2007, the Evening Standard published news of an investigation into grants worth £2.5 million paid to organisations in which Ken Livingstone’s adviser Lee Jasper was involved. It is confirmed that some of these grants were paid directly by the mayor’s office. An independent report into the affair by auditor Michael Haworth-Maden in July 2009 found no evidence of “misappropriation of funds” but noted “significant” gaps in financial paperwork.
  • Livingstone was criticised following a 21 March 2006 press conference at which he is alleged to have said of David and Simon Reuben — two Indian-born Jewish businessmen involved in a property development project — that “if they’re not happy they can always go back to Iran and see if they can do better under the Ayatollahs.”
  • Following Livingstone’s defeat in the 2008 Mayoral Elections, the Daily Mail reported that “eight ‘cronies’ of Ken were to receive £1.6 million in pay-offs following his defeat in the London mayoral elections.”
  • Livingstone has been criticised for his links to Islamic extremism. He was heavily condemned for inviting Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi to a conference. Al-Qaradawi has been accused of supporting “female genital mutilation, wife-beating, and the execution of homosexuals.”
  • In a meeting, Ken is alleged to have said that he did not expect the Jewish community to vote Labour as votes for the left are inversely proportional to wealth levels. He supposedly suggested that as the Jewish community is rich they simply wouldn’t vote for him.
  • Ken has been accused of hypocrisy over his tax affairs. He was very critical of wealthy Londoners who used companies to lower the rate of tax they were paying. It subsequently transpired he was doing exactly the same himself through the company Silveta Ltd.
  • Ken used private healthcare despite claiming to be a strong proponent of the NHS.
  • Ken cried over a campaign film of ‘ordinary Londoners’, arguing why they wanted Ken as mayor. It subsequently transpired the film was scripted and made using paid actors. Both of which Ken knew about.
  • Ken’s trip to Cuba and aborted journey to Venezuela in 2006 cost Londoners £30,000 according to assembly figures. Just one of many wasteful incidents.

The Labour party fearfully nominated Ken as their candidate and it may cost them. They still have bad memories from 2001 when they didn’t give Ken the nomination and he won a stunning victory against them as an independent.

They feared Ken running as an independent again, splitting their vote, and handing Boris an easy victory. Nevertheless, the decision to choose Ken may yet haunt them. One can’t help thinking that any other half-decent candidate would have had a very good chance of beating Boris. Figures like Ken have no place in modern politics. If we vote for them, we get what we deserve.

 

The Avengers Assemble – Movie Review

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It’s become almost traditional, if not formulaic, to kick off each summer blockbuster season with a superhero movie.

Over the years we have seen Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and even the Hulk take centre stage in their own films, so on paper at least, the coming together of these iconic super hero superstars in Avengers Assemble sounds like every comic book fanboy’s wet dream.

But does more necessarily mean more? Or have Marvel – who admittedly have done a terrific job so far in bringing their comic book pages to life – bitten off more than they can chew?

Well in one word, the answer is no. Like the childhood Christmas present that gets played with lovingly to near destruction once your get your eager hands on it, to see Marvel’s movie at long last is incredible, but at the same time is both brilliant in its script and in its execution. As such, just like that Christmas present, it keeps on giving and in the process provides ample reasons for fans of the comic books and films to rejoice.

A film nearly seven years in the making, fans have slowly, patiently, seen the formation of this film through the little clips that occurred at the end of the credits of each previous movie.

First you had Iron Man (played by Robert Downey Jnr) being approached by Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), then the story of Captain America (Chris Evans) and how he ends up taken in by SHIELD. There’s even Thor’s film, (the main role played by Chris Hemsworth) which in many ways sets up the plot for this movie and even clever references made in the last Hulk film. Each provided subtle clues towards where the plot arcs were going to lead.

After such a wait, no way was Marvel and director Joss Whedon going to disappoint fans. A superb opening set-piece puts the storyline and reasons for these characters coming together firmly in place. ‘The Tesseract’ (last seen in Thor and Captain America) is a cube of immense power that both sides are trying to unlock. However, it has opened a door to another world, which Loki (played truly impressively by Tom Hiddleston) comes through with his original intention of ‘ruling us all’. But worse than that, he’s brought a whole bunch of bad boys with him. Who else are going to put a stop to his plan other than the Avengers?

Indeed, as each of these superheroes could take on enemies of immense power, it has to be a near-on war to cause them to come together and Mr Whedon has no intention of holding back his vision of what a superhero movie should consist of.

Thankfully, Marvel did not go about this movie without getting the right funding in place, so nothing is watered down and all of the super powers, transformations and adversaries (of which there are hundreds) are embellished with as much attention to detail as if they were in their own movie. The end result is pretty much what you would expect from the comic book on screen and it has to be said some scenes are jaw-dropping. Avengers will probably set the standard for future superhero movies to come.

None of the special effects would work in isolation unless there were proper characterisations. Joss Whedon and the screen writers should be applauded for continuing to build upon each individual’s complexities; Tony Stark is still as brash and arrogant as he has ever been, Captain America still has the heart of someone who would sacrifice himself for others, but just follows orders. Only Mark Ruffalo’s interpretation of the David Banner / Hulk is different to his predecessors in that he is more edgy and unpredictable. I do have to say I preferred Ed Norton’s version, however Ruffalo does an excellent job nonetheless. New characters that open up in this movie are Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) which are both portrayed as brooding counterparts which hopefully further movies might build upon.

3D or 2D?

Watching this film in 3D provides just an average experience, which is a shame as they could really have done more to open up the experience and give it that extra wow factor. As it is, besides a few set pieces, I found it made little difference. 3D is a medium I feel should be pushed more, especially when it can really create some stand out moments for the audience when utilised well.

My Verdict

A great kick start to the summer blockbuster season and a fantastic movie in its own right. Cant wait to see what next is in store. Oh yes, that will be Spider-Man less than 8 weeks away. Don’t you just love summer?

9/10

 

The Magnetic Fields – Love At The Bottom Of The Sea – Music Review

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The Magnetic Fields are magnificent. Always have been and probably always will be.

Still best known for 1991’s 100,000 Fireflies single, in this album the band are back on form – back to their mid 90’s best. It’s not that the group have been poor, but when you hit the highs that The Magnetic Fields have, it’s tough to keep hitting them.

They can’t be judged in the way other bands do because other bands pale into insignificance. The Magnetic Fields are very, very good. If you don’t own a copy of their 1999 album ’69 Love Songs’, then your record collection has a hole in it.

Love At The Bottom Of The Sea is an album that is almost The Magnetic Fields by formula. It’s to type, but that type is marvellous. It’s all synth, strings and strums with great subject matter – my favourite track, the electro-jolt of “God Wants Us To wait” tells the story of a religious cock-block. The Magnetic Fields are the thinking man’s Flaming Lips.  Buy this album now – you’ll not regret listening to me.