TN2 Low Res Issue 5

Transcription

TN2 Low Res Issue 5

Waltz with
David Polonsky
tn2
Josh Ritter Opeth Max Tundra Biographies E-books Trivium Swap shop Christmas drinks
25 November – 8 December, 2008
1
Calendar of fun
tn2’s pick of the most exciting things to
do in Dublin this coming fortnight
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
25
Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740-1808)
– A Life in Pictures
celebrates the artist’s
bi-centenary.
The National Gallery
until 15 February 2009
26
The Skriker by Caryl
Churchill and The Lonesome West by Martin
McDonagh can both be
seen in College ‘til Friday.
Samuel Beckett Theatre,
6 pm and 8 pm
27
Foals play tonight. They
are ace live, oh yes.
Ambassador Theatre,
8 pm, €23
28
For those looking for a
spot of quality
alternative hip-hop (or
whatever), Dälek should
do the job nicely.
Andrew’s Lane Theatre,
8 pm
29
Their last record may
have been slightly
disappointing, but Wolf
Parade are still rather
good live.
Vicar Street, 8 pm, €17.45
30
Tonight’s your last
chance to catch Waltz
With Bashir at the IFI.
Go on, the guy who drew
the pictures is lovely as
you’ll find on p. 12.
The Irish Film Institute
1
I was once in a production of The Plough and
the Stars in school. I tell
no lies.
The Pavilion Theatre,
Dun Laoghaire, 8 pm, €12
2
Meat Puppets are in
Whelans tonight before
playing All Tomorrow’s
Parties at the weekend.
How I wish I was going.
Whelans, 8 pm. €22
3
I was once told that A
Place to Bury Strangers are the loudest band
in the world. Surely there
are legal restrictions on
that kind of thing.
Andrew’s Lane Theatre,
8 pm
4
Working-class hero Billy
Bragg plays tonight.
Expect lots of down-toearth banterousness.
Vicar Street, 8 pm, €28
5
Lakeview Terrace is
out today. Why does
Samuel L.Jackson only
make movies that are
pants nowadays? Prove
me wrong, Sam.
Cinemas nationwide
6
Quality Irish electronica
from Chequerboard is
to be found tonight on
Rutland Place.
The Joy Gallery, 8 pm, €7
7
Regress into a child-like
state with some Snow
White puppet action.
Lambert Theatre, 3.30
pm, €11
8
Enda Walsh’s The
Walforth Farce is in the
Project until 20
December.
Project Arts Theatre, 8
pm, €18/24
xkcd.com
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Contents
Lost in the blinding whiteness of the Tundra
4
Josh Ritter
6
Into the mouth of hell we interview Trivium
7
Opeth’s Per Wiberg
7
Elsa Zylberstein
8
Chrimbo drinkery
9
The grape guide gets bubbly
9
Ui in review
10
BAS final year productions
11
Getting cosy with art director David Polonsky
12
Issue
5
Have you ever done that thing where you decide that you don’t like
something, like a book or a piece of music, and when it’s made apparent that everyone else likes it, you start to question yourself? In
my formative years, this happened quite a bit indeed, especially with
music. For example, I spent manys an hour attempted to develop a
love of Pearl Jam as a teenager, inspired by my older sister’s zealous
admiration for the grunge-peddlers. One day, though, I decided I’d
had enough, they were shit and that was the end of it. You see, it’s
important to stick to your guns, otherwise you’ll find yourself grimacing through sub-par anthemic rock for the rest of your life.
Maeve Storey had a similarly awkward situation this issue when
she interviewed Max Tundra after saying his new record is crap, despite the fact that the indie press were slobbering emphatically all
over it. Ten points to her, though, she didn’t give in and delivered
this week’s lovely feature interview without questioning her own
integrity. I did, however, take exception to her comments about
my beard, which may be slightly ginger, but is more luscious a facial
growth than she’ll ever produce in her life.
This is the last issue before Christmas, so I hope you all have a
delightful break and engage in all sorts of festive merry-making.
Ho ho ho,
Hugh
Editor
[email protected]
Q: What’s better than seeing your
favourite band live?
A: Why, seeing a tribute band play
their songs at a significantly
reduced price, of course!
tn2 have tickets to give away to:
The Stone Roses Experience
The Academy 19 December
The return of the Royal Hibernian Academy
14
Northern Stars and Southern Lights at the National Gallery
15
To e-book or not to e-book
16
The lives of others
17
A year in fashion
18
Gossip Girl boys
19
Swap shop
19
Reviews
20
tn2
Hells Bells (AC/DC tribute)
The Academy 5 December
Metallitia
The Academy 7 March
To enter, e-mail
[email protected] with your
name and a contact number
3
When the Tundra calls you
A few issues back, Maeve Storey controversially declared that Max Tundra’s
new record was rubbbish, so when the offer to interview him arose, she was a little
hesitant – unfortunately for Maeve, everyone else in the office had mysteriously disappeared
A
s a wannabe journo/hack/mudraker (maybe not)/Lois Lane style
reporter (minus the obsession
with super human powers and the
90s hair-do), I feel it is my job - no, my duty
to accurately review the CDs that are sent to
me by my lovely editors at the Trinity News
offices. If an album is bad, I’m definitely going to say it’s bad and if it’s really bad, then
I’m probably going to say it was the worst
record I’ve ever heard. Some of my friends
(what would they know anyway?) have
pointed out that my writing is too reactionary, too I-just-listened–to-it-and-here-aremy-exact-emotions rather than actually
saying anything about the music. It’s not
easy though, when you hear an album that
the online press blurbs and the band’s MySpace have told you is the next big thing and it
ends up sounding like a remix of the Cheeky
Girls by Peaches Geldof (back when she was
fat - oh, and a DJ). It’s hard not to take out
all your frustrations on some of the lesser
mortals of the music industry by writing a
really bad review. It’s just so easy to write
something cutting rather than complimentary, and forget constructive criticism - my
aim is to make it so cruel it could force a tear
from even the most hardened, or, as is more
likely in today’s celebrity world, botoxed of
faces (see Danni Minogue on X-Factor every
Saturday night). But the thing is that when
you’re sitting in your darkened smoke-filled
room at your creaky typewriter writing
scathing reviews of bands/singers/someone
you saw at karaoke just because you can,
you forget that you’re actually writing about
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a human being, who is probably a nice person. You never think you’re going to have
to come face to face with the person you’ve
just shamelessly slagged off for five hundred words or if you’re lucky enough to be
granted a whole page for your tasteless rant,
maybe even a whole one thousand. Let’s
face it, it’s fairly certain that he/she/they
are never going to read your oh-so-ground-
I wanted to create
something that you
can’t really describe.
You’ll hear flashes of
stuff that I’m into, but
hopefully, it doesn’t
sound too much like
anything else
breaking piece of music journalism in this
world-renowned and highly esteemed publication. It’s like bitching about the geeky
kid in your Popular Culture lecture who always asks the most obvious questions and
causes even the ever-diplomatic lecturer to
cringe - you enjoy it, relish it, revel in it and
he, the unsuspecting victim, never finds out.
Today’s society absolutely loves the anonymous bitching session. If we didn’t all those
celebrity magazines that point out Mischa
Barton’s cellulite wouldn’t sell the millions
of copies each week that they do. It is, for
most people and especially myself when it
comes to writing, the Perfect Crime.
Or at least it was - until yesterday, when
I got another of those mysterious text messages from an unknown source calling himself the Trinity News Music Editor. “Maeve”,
it said, “can you interview Max Tundra tomorrow at five?” I took a deep breath. Max
Tundra? I definitely knew that name. And
then it hit me: Max Tundra a.k.a. Ben Jacobs,
London based composer, producer, singersongwriter and the proud creative force behind the album Parallex Error Beheads You
which I recently described using terms you
wouldn’t even say to your worst enemy (if
they released an album, that is) and now I
had to interview him, in person, just me and
him. Oh shit. When I relayed this problem
back to mystery editor number one by text,
he was unsympathetic. “Glad you get to meet
your hero,” he replied wryly. Charming. Still
though, I’m a professional (or at least that’s
what I like to tell myself) and after all, there
was no way he could have read it. Unless the
production company that organises the interview sent him a copy of the paper so that
he’d know who was interviewing him or unless he clicked on the Trinity News website.
But what were the chances? A bizarre concoction of elaborate ways in which he could
have found out what I said about him, been
deeply hurt, angered and/or emotionally
scarred by it and now be seeking revenge,
came flooding through my mind. Don’t get
me wrong, I am not usually this self-centred
- I do not ever think that my articles, opinions or general off-the-cuff comments affect anyone even in the smallest way. I know
that what I say has little effect on the public
at large and probably even less on my closest
friends. But when faced with the prospect
of doing an interview with someone whose
brand new six-long-years-in-the-making album I mercilessly ridiculed, I was filled with
a wave of paranoia and remorse. Oh Ben, I
thought, I’ve done you wrong.
Here are some things you should know
about the man himself. As I said before his
name is Ben Jacobs and he is indeed a full
blown Cockney. He has been on the music
scene now for ten years having released
his first album in 1998 and since then has
released five more on two different record
labels. Why the name Max Tundra? His reply seemed a little rehearsed when I quizzed
him on this during the interview but then
again it was hardly a very original question.
By the slight grin of recognition on his face
I could see he’d heard it a million times.
“Absolutely no reason behind it at all. I do
like to make up a different story for everyone that asks me though.” With this he put
his head in his hands and started to think of
“a special answer” for me. I’m not a fan of
silence at the best of times, especially not
during an interview. That familiar wave of
awkwardness began to wash over me. Looking around feeling very confused, I hoped
and prayed that the moment would end.
Perhaps sensing this he lifted his head, grinning again. “Well,” he said with great pride,
“I once murdered a man called Max Tundra
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and stole his identity.” Oh Max, you are too
funny. I contemplated asking him about
the title of his new album (Parallax Errors
Beheads You) which is named in an equally
mysterious manner but I thought better
of it, fearing another lengthy pause in dialogue. Later, I read in his press release that it
has nothing to do with his music but rather
for his album titles he tries to pick a “semipoetic but oblique phrase.” A parallax error,
it seems , occurs when you take a photo on
a camera that has a separate eyepiece and
lens, so that when the picture is printed the
actual image is slightly lower in the phrase
than normal. Perhaps Ben got a thesaurus
for Christmas?
Despite my (unnecessarily cruel) jokes,
while talking to him, I did get a sense of
the kind of artist he is. Music is definitely
a huge passion for him and something he
takes extremely seriously. Throughout the
interview he talked articulately about the
complexities of music and the painstaking
processes involved in making it. The man really knows his stuff. When I asked him about
Frank Zappa who was listed on his MySpace
page as one of his influences, he points out
the amazing technicalities of his music, “the
strange time signatures” he uses. When I
hear frank Zappa I hear his often crude lyrics as he belts out songs about paedophilia
and makes fun of Catholic schoolgirls. I began to realise that I judged Ben too harshly.
His knowledge makes me look like a music
philistine. He seems so dedicated to his
work, treating it like an art form, working
for months on end to create just one track.
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“It’s like painting a beautiful picture. It takes
time.” In fact, just a single track for Ben
can take longer than it takes a lot of bands
today to produce an album, release it, do a
tour and be forgotten about. “It takes me
three to six months at least and that could
be for the words alone. If you listen to my
new album there’s layers and layers of really
complex music going on.” I can’t deny that
he’s telling the truth. Although I found his
album too chaotic, I can’t deny that there is
a hell of a lot happening in it and according
to Ben, that’s a very good thing indeed. “So
much of this so-called cutting edge music
is conformist and safe. People just don’t
really take risks. Some styles of music are
very limiting. I wouldn’t say that any of my
songs are one style the whole way through.”
Perhaps that was my problem with the music, that I just couldn’t listen to all those
sounds at once. Maybe I need my music to
be a little simpler, or maybe I just need to
open my mind to new things. After all, tn2
editor Hugh McCafferty has sworn to me on
numerous occasions that Max Tundra’s last
album was pure genius. But then again can
you really trust a man with a beard?
So if his music is as he says not just a cacophony of high pitched sounds and repetitive drum beats, then what exactly is it? Well,
even Ben doesn’t know. “I wanted to create
something that you can’t really describe. I
wanted to make something that exists for itself. So you’ll hear little flashes of stuff that
I’m into, stuff that I’m listening to at the
moment but hopefully it doesn’t sound too
much like anything else.” In most of the re-
views I’ve read about him, his music is generally described in the electronic genre, but
when I tell him this he disagrees. “I don’t
consider myself an electronic musician but
a lot of people that listen to me do. If you
listen to the new Coldplay album, there’s a
lot of technology on that but obviously it’s
a very boring record so people don’t really
notice. There are many songs on my record
If you listen to
the new Coldplay
album, there’s a lot of
technology, but
obviously it’s a very
boring record, so
people don’t really
notice
that I don’t use computers on at all, but because it’s just me recording in a bedroom
studio set-up people think everything I do
is computerised.” Making fun of Coldplay?
I knew then that I’d treated him badly - he
did know what bad music was. Next when I
asked him about the new electro-scene that
has emerged in the last couple of years he
replied with a chuckle “I never really understood what nu-rave was. It’s just people
wearing day-glow.” I’m really starting to like
this man. Perhaps our opinions on music
were not as different as I thought?
Regardless of the fact that his music is, as
I previously stated in much harsher terms,
not my cup of tea, I did leave the interview
with a great respect for the man. For the last
decade, he has dedicated his time to producing the music that he chose to completely
on his own. Just one man, in a studio, painstakingly working on each individual track,
going so far as to learn an instrument if he
just needs a single note from them. He even
learnt the cello for this new album, on top of
the seemingly dozens of other instruments
he has already mastered. Talent is not something the man is lacking. So what is a girl to
do? Should I retract what I said, tell you all
that his album is a masterpiece, that it is, indeed, an aural work of art? Having met him,
liked him and even admired him, I can’t say
that the temptation isn’t there to eat my
words. But unfortunately, on listening once
again to his album, I haven’t changed my
mind. I still find myself confused and even
annoyed after sitting through just one track.
Am I just too out of tune with the detailed
composition of his music? Is there some
glorious musical genius in there somewhere
that I can’t hear?
All I can say is - you’ll have to see for
yourself. If he almost managed to convince
me that I liked his album just by talking to
me, perhaps his music will be able to convince you. Plus, if he becomes famous, I can
always say that I interviewed him. If not, at
least I can say I thought he was shit before
everyone else.
5
A few words with Josh Ritter
The singer spoke to Henna Kokko about
expanding his live band, plans for his next record
and the virtues of taking things easy
J
osh Ritter assures me that he’s doing
very well indeed when I ask him, and
I can’t but believe him. Reached all
the way from New York over a crackling phone line, his voice is just as warm and
friendly as his songs. The Idaho-born singer
tells about taking a walk in the autumn NY,
hanging out around his house and making a
cup of tea, and suddenly I’m convinced – the
mundane everyday life can actually be quite
sweet. Especially if you are pretty much the
redeemer of the 21st century folk, that is.
He is definitely doing good – during the
course of the past seven years, since the
self-titled debut album in 2001, Josh Ritter
has put out five full-length studio recordings, and gradually established an eager fanbase in Ireland as well as a warm welcome
from the critics. After his highly praised album “The Historical Conquest of Josh Ritter” about a year ago, he has released a live
recording, been on tour and popped in to
play a gig in Electric Picnic. Now it’s finally
time to relax. “I’ve had three months of no
travelling and I have been able to hang out
with the band - they are good guys. It’s been
great,” he says and laughs, “just, you know,
making your own food.” However, for Mr.
Ritter, even the chill-out can be somewhat
productive: he tells me that some of his relaxation time has been spent in the studio
with his band, playing around with instruments, trying out different things and coming up with new material.
After five successful albums, of which the
latest has been praised to be the most adventurous and inventive, it might be quite a task
to come up with something life-changing
once again. Ritter is only just starting to work
on fresh ideas but I still dare to ask him if the
new material is going to be very different
and what the next album is going to be like
in relation to the earlier ones. The answer is
simple: ”Of course it’s going to be different.
The thing is that you are a different person
than you were at the time of recording your
earlier albums. I have to remind myself not
to put pressure on myself – I’m not trying
to make one of my old albums.” When we
start talking about influences, Ritter tells
me that he has lately been listening to jazz
and soul, music that he hasn’t listened to
before. It’s not clear, though, if his current
playlist will affect the music he is making:
“Sometimes you think you are influenced by
something but then people don’t even hear
that, and then sometimes they hear things
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you wouldn’t have heard yourself, things
that you wouldn’t have noticed or realized
that even influenced you. Like The Beatles
always wanted only to play Chuck Berry, but
they ended up playing The Beatles instead”,
he says, and then swiftly continues asking
me what kind of music I am listening to at
the moment. So genuine and heartfelt is his
interest that I’m left speechless for a while
and then, after a moment of subconsciously
deciding that he is the friendliest musician
- no, actually the friendliest person - in the
world, panickingly splutter out the words:
“Mostly yours.” Josh Ritter really seems to
appreciate his fans.
The singer-songwriter is coming to Dublin in December to play two already sold-out
gigs, and is looking forward to it. “I’ve been
playing gigs around the Christmas time for
the last four years. People are always so nice
during the holiday season. It’s beautiful.” He
says that for him Dublin is a place always to
go back to and, after a little prompting, admits that it almost feels like a second home.
However, Ritter will be bringing a new element with him to his “second home” gigs
– he is going to play the concerts not only
with his band but also with a full 24-piece
orchestra. The orchestra played with him
for the first time in Boston a few months
ago, and Ritter tells me he enjoyed the experience. “It’s exciting hearing all the volume
with your own songs,” he says, and when I
ask him if they still, despite the new composition, feel like his own, familiar pieces, he
goes on: “They are my songs, I claim ownership of them, but they do sound different
teamed up with an orchestra.” Ritter says it
is exciting to see how his music has grown
and changed. “It’s like meeting an old friend
and seeing how he’s changed, even though
he’s still the same person.”
Speaking of old friends, let’s go back a
couple of years, to those oh-so-sweet college days. Before his career in music, Ritter,
a child of two neuroscientists, followed in
his parents’ footsteps and attended university to study
neuroscience for a couple of
years. I ask him if there was
any outside pressure put on
him to go to college and he
says that there definitely
was, but not as much
from his family as
one might assume.
“It’s the whole
society, the things around you, your friends
as much as your parents. When I started
making music, I was making no money at
all and had friends who were doing law and
making the bucks. Sometimes I felt like a
loser,” Ritter reveals, and in doing so, gives
a whole amount of peer support to those
with artistic tendencies. “There wasn’t a
single moment of revelation that I’m going
to become a musician but I remember when
I picked up the guitar in high school, I knew
instantly that this is what I will be doing forever. I just love it.”
As he doesn’t have a background of having a Von Trapp-like musical family, Ritter
brings hope to all the burdened poets who
every now and then pour their aching hearts
out into a melancholic three-chord pop
ballad or two. “Hold on to doing what you
love and care about. You might not become
famous, but if you stick with it, what needs
to come, comes. You will have experiences
that you could never have had, and you will
meet people you wouldn’t have otherwise
met. You don’t do it for the money. You do it
because you love it,” he says, and again I’m
convinced that he means every word he says.
When asked for a last piece of advice for the
thousands of college kids roaming around
Trinity campus trying to find themselves,
Ritter gives a genial little pep-talk: “Enjoy it!
College is an amazing time. It is the chance
to realize that you know nearly nothing and
you have the whole world to learn about.”
Oh Josh, we will, and maybe when we grow
up, we’ll be
as nice and
friendly as
you are!
tn2
The fun factor
S
ince their formation in 2000, Trivium have gone from strength to
strength, certainly in the popularity
stakes. Most recent album Shogun
has cemented that popularity, marking a
return to their thrashier, more shouty roots.
“Musically, it just happened,” bassist Paolo
Gregoletto told me, “it was a very natural development. For the vocals, singing
just didn’t have the effect we wanted and
the screaming added cool dynamics that
weren’t there without it. Fans were missing
the screaming too.”
I spoke to Gregoletto a few days into the
Unholy Alliance tour with Slayer and Mastodon that took place a few weeks ago. He
seemed pretty happy with how proceedings
were coming along. “It’s been better than
expected. The crowds have been killer so
far and being able to play with Slayer is such
an honour.” The appearance of Mastodon
on the bill is interesting – a band who, it
would seem, have achieved the unthinkable
and become accepted by both metal fans
and indie rock critics alike. I asked Gregoletto what he made of this turn of events.
“I don’t really know, to be honest. I don’t
keep up with that. We’ve met them briefly,
though, and they seem pretty cool. We’re all
having a lot of fun on this tour. I guess they
have odd musical passages, kooky kind of
stuff that wouldn’t conform to the usual 4/4
Trivium bassist Paolo Gregoletto talked to
Hugh McCafferty about new record
Shogun and the joys of touring with Slayer
time signatures and stuff like that, which I
guess would appeal to the alternative indie
press.”
Whatever the case, the band are enjoying
themselves and in light of the rather impressive list of bands they’ve toured with or supported, that’s saying a lot. I asked the bassist
what the highlight of there touring career
has been so far. “Definitely the Maiden tour,
because, y’know, it’s Maiden. We won a lot
of people over playing to those crowds and
got to travel all over Europe. This tour is
killer too. Everyone’s fun to hang out with
and so far it’s rivalling the Maiden tour in
terms of the –,” he pauses, trying to think
of an apt word, “fun-factor, I guess” he fin-
ishes, seemingly regretting that he used the
term “fun-factor.”
Of course, the band never forget to have
fun and the previous week, front man Matt
Heafy played against a number of fans in an
online game of Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox.
“Yeah, Matt killed a lot of motherfuckers,”
Gregoletto enthuses.
Trivium come to Ireland in December on
the impossibly titled Into the Mouth of Hell
We Tour, er, tour. And after that? More touring. “We’re gonna have a pretty busy year.
We wanna show people that we’re fuckin’
back and we’ve got an awesome record that
people should fuckin’ listen to.” Indeed, and
why not?
A watershed moment
Hugh McCafferty wandered down to Vicar
Street last week to talk to the very pleasant
Per Wiberg of Swedish prog-metallers Opeth
S
itting backstage in Vicar Street
awaiting the arrival of Opeth’s
keyboardist Per Wiberg, I hear the
booming voice of lead man Mikael
Åkerfeldt as he gives an interview in an adjoining room. I wonder how a voice that
deep could deliver such hushed vocals.
Then again, Åkerfeldt is a man of two voices, one soft and articulate, the other, well,
metal. For those of you who haven’t listened to Opeth, they are very much one
of the most enduring and consistently
brilliant progressive metal bands of the
last twenty years or so. Actually, fuck it,
they are one of the most enduring
and consistently brilliant bands
of the last twenty years. Too often are acts that veer too close
to the loud side of the musical
spectrum relegated to “good –
as metal bands go” status.
Formed in Sweden in 1990,
the outfit has gone through a
number of line-up changes
and Åkerfeldt is the only remaining original member.
Taking aspects from traditional death metal (meat
grinder lyrics, double bass drum
kicks), folk (acoustic interludes
with hushed vocals), prog rock
(King Crimson-y mellotron departures) and, most recently,
jazz-funk (as evidenced on the
frankly bizarre keyboard interlude of recent track “The Lotus Eaters”), Opeth are rarely
predictable. In fact, there was
talk of Åkerfeldt appearing
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on a Scott Walker tribute album recently.
Swedish death metal vocalist does avantpop? Stranger things have happened on an
Opeth record.
When he arrives, a whole minute late, Per,
a very amiable man indeed, apologises affably for the hold-up, explaining that he had
just been off getting some food.
A fair enough concession for
a man who has been on
tour
a l -
most consistently since late April. “I like
touring; I don’t have a problem with it. I’d
be the last to whine and moan about being
on the road too much because to me it’s
very easy: if you don’t like it, stop doing it.
I’ve never understood how people would
just sit there and moan about how boring or
whatever it is. Of course, there’s an awful lot
of waiting around, but there’s always things
you can do, I mean, go for a walk or something,” he smiles.
Per has worked with the band since 2003
and has operated as a full member on their
two most recent releases, 2005’s Ghost
Reveries and this year’s Watershed.
The Watershed sessions were described as being a lot happier than previous
recording stints on
the band’s blog
and Per reflects,
“I think
we made that happen because we rehearsed
a lot before we went into the studio, which
gave us a lot more time in the studio to focus
on details instead of trying to learn a song
while in the studio, which is just a waste of
money.” Indeed, Opeth are known to have
gone into the studio a number of times having practiced new songs through only once
or twice. Remarkable, judging by the quality
of releases such as 2000’s Blackwater Park
– the sessions for which were particularly
traumatic.
Per is by no means a spring chicken, indeed, at this stage most of the band members are in their late thirties/early forties
and with wives, kids and girlfriends, I asked
the keyboardist what the future
held for the band. “It’s
really hard to say anything about, y’know,
what we’re going to
do in five years, but
I think, especially
since the album
was released not
too long ago,
we’re going
to take each
few months
at a time.
We’ve got a
lot of touring coming up and
we’ll just
see where
it goes from
there.”
With their
track record,
don’t be surprised if they
continue to go
on to bigger and
more interesting things.
7
La femme de film
Fresh from starring beside Kristin Scott Thomas in
I’ve Loved You So Long, Elsa Zylberstein spoke to
Conor Leahy at the IFI’s recent French Film Festival
S
he pauses, thinking deeply about
the question before giving her response. “It’s very mysterious what
one has inside. In acting, I know that
I can invade someone else’s mind, someone
else’s soul – in character, to be revealed instead of revealing [someone else].” If nothing else, Elsa Zylberstein is a pervasively
passionate woman. Recently seen on Irish
screens in Philippe Claudel’s superlative
French drama I’ve Loved You So Long, the Parisian actress has now established herself as
a major figure in French cinema. This emergence is hardly a surprise, as through films
such as Van Gogh, Mina Tannenbaum, Time
Regained and Little Jerusalem she has slowly
built up her reputation both in her homeland and European cinema.
Like many, Zylberstein’s life as an actress
is grounded in unassuming beginnings. She
studied classical dance throughout her adolescence, but ultimately chose to abandon it.
“As a child, I didn’t seem to want to do anything at all. I don’t know what drew me to
acting. But my father encouraged me to go
to drama school and, after one lesson, I told
him that this would be my life.” She sips
slowly from her white wine with fond recollection; “I was awfully shy as a child, but
things happened inside me when I went on
stage; there was a strangeness in my body. I
knew it was meant for me.”
In 1994, Zylberstein achieved widespread acclaim for her role in Martine Dugowson’s Mina Tannenbaum, but it is only
recently that international critics have once
again taken notice of her talents.
Introducing her new film, The Feelings
Factory, as part of the Irish Film Institute’s
recent French Film Festival, Zylberstein
drew a beguiled audience on the pretext of
her stunning performance alongside Kristen
Scott Thomas in I’ve Loved You So Long.
“It was a great experience and such a beautiful film,” says Zylberstein with genuine
affection. “Philippe Claudel wrote my character especially for me, so I feel it has great
honesty. “
I’ve Loved You So Long is a dense melodrama concerning the inescapable immediacy of the past. It focuses on the reunion
of two estranged sisters and the haunting
reconciliation of shared hardship, exploring
themes of family estrangement and personal
redemption. “It all runs very deeply on the
screen,” says Zylberstein. “Philippe finds
the right tone, the right balance, the right
pace. Like much of French cinema, it’s not
trying to be efficient; the film takes its time
– its unique rhythm is its quality.”
Zylberstein admits that she is - above all
- a method actress. She sees her work as her
life. “I’m always swayed by deep emotion
in a part. It takes time afterwards to go back
to life when one is so moved by a role.
“I’m not interested in actors and actress-
8
es that don’t get emotionally involved with
characters. When I look at people like Meryl
Streep or Sean Penn acting, I can see soul in
their eyes; I can see life. I know they draw
deeply and honestly from their bodies, and
that’s all that interests me. I observe them,
and it feeds me, it nourishes me. Everything feeds me - all life feeds me, but when
I watch a single scene over and over again
featuring someone like Meryl Streep, it is
inspiration, and I swim in it like the sea.”
In an industry that is dominated by English-language cinema, it is inevitable that
Zylberstein must work in a very specific
French context. The internal preconception
towards “foreign language” film ultimately
detracts from her chance of global fame.
“My dream is to take more English-speaking roles,” she says, “and to work with the
great directors of today: people like Mike
Leigh, Jim Sheridan, Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s not that we don’t have great directors in France, but I feel I am variable and
I love working with new directors - it’s like
diving into someone else’s universe.”
Zylberstein’s new film with director
Jean-Marc Moutout, The Feelings Factory,
centres around the cultural curio of “speeddating” and is an ironic commentary on the
superficiality of most human interaction.
Though less emotive than I’ve Loved You
So Long, it is another outstanding vehicle
for Zylberstein, who features in almost every frame. “I think The Feelings Factory
offers a very cold perception,” suggests
the actress, “but it bears true witness to the
state of the world today. It shows the hard
solitude of the heart, which is universal. It
has such deep characterisation, such deep
honesty.”
Since both I’ve Loved You So Long and
The Feelings Factory were screened at the
Berlin Film Festival this year, Zylberstein
has been busy not only with promotional
work, but also with an influx of new offers.
“These days, I have no spare time. What
has always been hardest in the profession,
is sharing a career with a personal life, but
I’m obsessed with my work. I might rest in
January, but probably not.” Most recently in
France, she played the mother of directorial
titan Ingmar Bergman in Enfances, a fragmentary film examining the formative years
of six major world directors.
“Lately, I’ve also had to turn down a lot
of stage roles because I’ve been so busy with
films. I can’t wait to return to the stage, but I
don’t see acting in the theatre and acting on
screen as the same work at all. Sure, we still
say lines that are not ours, but the projection
is different. It’s harder physically, and any
true emotion will really only affect the first
four or five rows. Even if I’m passionate,
the result will be diminished, because it’s all
so distant. With film, it’s more intimate and
direct.”
Zylberstein expresses no wish ever to direct; she is a woman completely devoted to
her craft and utterly enamoured of its power. “Sometimes I’m astonished with what
I have inside me and with what I can do,”
she says slowly, after careful consideration.
“Sometimes it’s like another person. But ultimately, no matter how deep the emotion,
it is always something coming from me
alone. I believe that acting is always linked
to the person you are, to what you have in
your own character. Even if I’m not aware
of what I have or what I have not got on the
inside, I will always know there’s a whole
market down there, waiting to be brought
to life.”
tn2
In festive spirits
Melanie O’Reilly considers some suitable
libations for the Christmas season
M
y, how time flies! It seems like
it was only yesterday when we
were telling you to whip out
your LBDs, stripy shirts and
jean, and now you have to up the ante and
turn out show-stopping statement outfits
night after night, in order to keep up with
the festive season party regime! Do not expect anyone to feel sorry for you when you
wake up the morning (afternoon) after, and
lament the fact that you have another party
to attend.
And, as we are sure you all have numerous dinner and house parties, club night
outs, and a few more formal nights to attend
over the festive season, we have decided
in the spirit of all things festive to help you
along the tricky path that is wining and dining. Mainly the wining - being a Christmas
baby (you may all wish me a happy birthday)
means that I get particularly excited at this
time of year, which is surprising given four
years in retail constituting a fierce attempt
to dampen my spirits (in a non-alcoholrelated way), but I am proud to admit that
it has not succeeded, apart from the twitch
I get once I hear the few first notes of “All I
want for Christmas” (in particular, the Mariah Carey version).
So, in order to ensure that everyone else
enjoys the vacation as much as I plan to (21
on the 21st), I have spent many an hour preparing cocktail recipes (and even one or two
food recipes) and trying to create a party
“pick’n’mix” that will get you as hyper as the
candy variety did when you were younger.
There will also be recipes for different
drinks appearing on the Trinity News blog
until the end of Michaelmas term, so why
not give the blog a quick once-over before
you host your Christmas house party or to
help you to impress your family over the
Christmas vacation?
Now, I know Christmas drinks brings to
The grape guide
T
hat time of year is here again when
the staff parties begin and the
Christmas spirit can be felt buzzing in the air. This year may have
forced many to tighten the purse strings
but why not party in style with some fine
sparkling wine? Don’t fret! You don’t have
to re-mortgage the house. Sparkling wine is
made in most major wine producing countries and in countless lesser known regions
making it virtually impossible to cover
them all here! One benefit from this is that
sparkling wine can be enjoyed cheaply
these days and without losing any of that
much sought after panache, even if it’s not
Champagne.
First of all, we should dispel an old myth.
Sparkling wine isn’t carbonated like CocaCola or 7up. The wine goes through a second fermentation in the bottle. This creates
a lot of carbon dioxide which dissolves in
the wine under pressure, creating that crisp,
long-lasting effervescence.
Champagne is quite undoubtedly the
most renowned and best of sparkling wines.
The very name evokes up the snobbery in
all of us. Sometimes, however, if the wine is
lacking richness, it is sweetened. This often
spoils the character of the wine and has had
the effect of tarnishing Champagne’s sterling reputation over the last few years.
What often confuses people about Champagne is the seemingly endless list of terminology. Once you get your head around this
then a simple glance at a label should tell
you everything you need to know.
tn2
Most Champagne is a blend of two or
more vintages (the year’s grape harvest) and
is therefore called Non-Vintage. The quality of Non-Vintage Champagne has varied
considerably and some released in 2005 was
generally thought unacceptable. On a lot of
the labels you will find ‘Brut’ which means
the wine is dry. Extra-dry denotes, funnily
enough, a style less dry than Brut.
Single vintage Champagne is generally
only made in the
best years (‘95,
‘96, ‘00, ‘01 and
‘02 are some
worthy ones)
but
during
the 1990s it
was thought
that
too
many were
declared so
don’t be surprised if you
get a mediocre
bottle!
S o m e
Champagnes
are Blanc de
Blancs,
which
is an elegant and
light style of Champagne and made
solely from the
Chardonnay grape.
Blanc de Noirs is
Champagne made
mind champagne, cava, prosecco, or any
spumante wines, but there are a good few
other traditional option, including the ever
faithful mulled wine, or cider, and eggnog.
These traditional festive drinks always go
down a treat, but there will be a few other
festive options available to our student body
on the blog: the Rudolph cocktail, the veryeasy-to-make Bellini, a Christmas champagne cocktail, and cranberry punch. But
before I dazzle you with my sophisticated
recipes, it is high time I mention a few quick
pre-party wine and bubbly purchases that
will go down a treat no matter the event,
and cater to the student purse strings.
Here are some suggestions of the light
red variety: the Chivite Gran Feudo Navarra
Crianza 2002, is a light and subtle Spanish
red wine that goes down a treat with lamb,
and at €9.99 there is no need to break open
your piggy bank.
This wine is widely available, from
Dunnes Stores to Carvill’s on Camden
Street. Mission Saint Vincent Bordeaux
2001 is a snip at €7.99, and is available from
Molloy’s Liquor Stores, and would be a
handy little number for parties as it is quite
nice on its own.
We’ll be posting more cocktail recipes
on the TN2 blog at www.trinitynews.
ie, but here’s the Rudoplh to get your
noses glowing in the meantime.
INGREDIENTS
1 part vodka
4 parts cranberry juice
6 morello cherries, pitted(if possible)
1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar
1 orange wedge
1 clove
(feel free to add a cinnamon stick or
more cloves: this is a cosmopolitan take
on mulled wine)
Place all the ingredients in a saucepan,
over a very low heat, stirring gently.
When it begins to steam, take off the
heat and stand for a minute. Strain
the contents to remove orange, clove
and cherries into a cocktail glass, and
garnish with a cocktail cherry or a cinnamon stick.
Another option is simply using a
sparkling wine and adding grenadine or
cranberry juice and serving in a flute.
Max Henderson
Shane Quinn sorts bubble from trouble in this
tour of sparkling wines from around the world
entirely from red grapes, either Pinot Noir,
Pinot Meunier, or a combination of the two.
In Spain, the word for the traditional
Champagne method is Cava (pronounced
Caba, if you want to show off ). Although
not exclusively, most Cava comes from Catalonia. The unheard-of grapes Parellada,
Macabeo and Xarel-lo are used but often
complimented with Chardonnay or Pinot
Noir. Cava
is the bargain that will
save you a fortune
this
Christmas.
The youngest Cavas are the fruitiest and will con
any unsuspecting guest at a
house party!
Spumante
(sparkling)
or Frizzante
(semi-sparkling) are
Italian sparkling wines.
The word
Spumante
means ‘foaming’ and, contrary to popular
belief,
the French
didn’t invent spark l i n g
wine; the
Romans, more than two thousand years ago
were drinking the world’s first ‘foaming’
wine! Spumante is made to sparkle either
by the traditional French method or by the
metodo charmat. i.e. not in the bottle but in
the tank.
Lambrusco is an extremely popular red
fizz in Italy and the Emilia-Romagna region
is noted for producing this. It’s great with
salami or buttery cheese sauces. Prosecco is
a popular white grape, grown in Veneto and
is often used to create soft, scented Spumante.
Australia produces blends using grapes
from various areas but regional characters
are beginning to emerge, most notably Tasmania. Some Australian fizz is made with
Shiraz (or Syrah) which has a fascinating
(and seductive) alcoholic edge to it.
In the USA, California has some rather
good examples of how the traditional method can be used outside of Champagne. Oregon has also shown itself to be a worthy
contender but in general the States aren’t a
favourite of mine for fizz.
This Christmas try out the exemplary
aperitif, Codorniu Reserva Raventos Cava.
This Non Vintage won’t be too sore on your
wallet at 16.99 (O’Brien’s). The Non Vintage
La Pieve Prosecco is even cheaper at 13.99
(O’Brien’s) but definitely superior coming
from the world class winemaker, Mionetto.
Soft with peaches and pears, this is a great
party drink. For the wealthier among us,
Bauchet Selection Non Vintage Champagne
at 24.99 (O’Brien’s) is still relatively cheap!
9
Ui: An Epic
Extravaganza
After last issue’s interview with lead Tom Vaughan Lawlor,
Kathy Clarke had a look atThe Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui
at the Abbey and was rather pleased indeed
B
recht is the love of my life - sorry,
that just came out. My love in fact
runs so deep that any production
of his Excellency’s work is destined
to fail when set against the backdrop of my
enormous, insurmountable expectations.
At the close of The Abbey’s current version
of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, therefore,
I was left a shell of my former self, having
been bludgeoned and bombarded by the
sublime brilliance of this Brechtian extravaganza, which not only exceeded my wildest
hopes, but blew them completely out of the
water.
For those who don’t know the play, shame
on you. Brecht’s finest play chronicles the
rise of Arturo Ui, a fictional ‘30s Chicago
mobster, and his attempts to control the
cauliflower trade by ruthlessly disposing
of his opposition. Consciously satirical, the
play is an allegory of Hitler in Nazi Germany,
whose rise Brecht represented in parallel to
that of Ui.
All the characters and groups in the play
had direct counterparts in real life, with Ui
representing Hitler, his henchman Ernesto
Roma representing Ernst Rohm, Dogsborough representing Paul Von Hindenburg
(a pun on the German Hund and Burg), the
fate of the town of Cicero standing for the
Anschluss in Austria and so on. In addition,
every scene in the play is based on a real
event.
In accordance with the ideals of Brecht’s
Epic Theatre, this production assumes
that the purpose of a play, more than entertainment or the imitation of reality, is to
present ideas and have the spectator make
judgments on them. Characters are not intended to mimic real people, but to represent opposing sides of an argument, archetypes, or stereotypes. The audience should
always be aware that it is watching a play,
and should remain at an emotional distance
from the action (no suspension of disbelief
allowed).
It was like being a chocaholic at a Butlers’
free for all. The stage was set for a Brechtian
masterpiece - exposed lighting, minimalist representational set, politically allusory
backdrop in the form of an American flag:
epic theatre at its finest. We didn’t need the
flag however to draw our attention to the
10
parallels with the contemporary political
and economic climate: Brecht’s play is more
relevant today than it has ever been (although I’m sure that’s been said a thousand
times). The context of the play is so relevant
that it’s almost shocking, an uncanny resonance between the current financial crisis
(focused mainly on America) and what’s
happening on stage. No analogy has been
forced or tacked on; it all seems natural (or
unnatural as the case may be).
Despite engaging and notable performances from supporting actors, the show
doesn’t really begin until the infamous Ui arrives, with the ensemble staging designed to
frame the gangster (played by Tom Vaughan
Lawlor) as a sensitive, solitary figure who
holds all the metaphorical cards. Lawlor
establishes himself as a sensational character actor, his Ui referencing Shakespeare’s
Richard III and of course Hitler. He writhes
and contorts his seemingly fragile body to
extreme dramatic effect, and those who say
he’s overdoing it are nut jobs with no understanding of the Brechtian aesthetic.
The most notable scene, though it is all
but impossible to pick only one, surrounds
Ui’s lesson with an image consultant: the
ridiculous teacher gives him advice on
walking, sitting and public speaking. Lawlor participates in something of a slapstick
masterpiece, frolicking, flailing and prancing around the stage like an idiot doing the
goosestep.
His facial features relax, his hunched
frame unfurls and suddenly, without warning, he strikes a recognisable pose in the
form of a salute - familiar yet bizarrely poignant and shocking, and the Irish audience
is silenced (not that that makes a change:
they wouldn’t miss a beat were Barrack
Obama to swan onto the stage, so fixated
they are on that proverbial fourth wall).
Special mention must be made of the
set. Designed by Conor Murphy, it primarily consists of industrial recesses filled with
vegetable crates and random debris, meat
hooks hanging from above, attached animal
carcasses swaying in the light. The aesthetic
appeal of this production is unrivalled by
anything I’ve previously seen on the Abbey stage, with the space opening out into
a warehouse for a shoot-out scene and rain
effects making the atmosphere cold and detachedly foreboding.
Jimmy Fay’s vision is flawless (and I
never say that, especially when it concerns
Brecht). At a running time approaching
three hours, the action never lets up or tires
and the cast are a triumph right till curtain
down. Quick paced and laden with hysterical momentum, the show will both amuse
and haunt you for days. Tom Vaughan Lawlor is at the heart of what is great about it,
and I hope to see him back on the Abbey
stage in the near future. I’m sure it wouldn’t
take too much persuasion from the administration. “Extinguish Ui” by all means but
let’s hang on to Lawlor.
tn2
A scene from Caryl Churchill’s Hot Fudge. Photo: Muiris Woulfe
And for dessert...?
Bachelor of Acting Studies students’ presented
their final year productions earlier on this month
and Frances Beatty was there, front row
T
he evening of 5 November didn’t
feel like an evening for cynicism. It
wasn’t the evening to have a newfound optimism pricked by the relentless nastiness of Caryl Churchill’s social
critique. Churchill doesn’t like Americans
very much.
Ice Cream with Hot Fudge, as the English
writer calls her pair of one-act black comedies written in 1989, is a scathing, livid attack
on citizens of the Thatcher-Reagan 1980s
on both sides of the Atlantic. Ice Cream,
the hour-long main event, and Hot Fudge,
its twenty minute curtain raiser comprise
a series of unexplained, snapshot vignettes
of acidic verbal wit and obliquely referred to
events. The large dramatic twists – a body
count of three (cut to two in this production) in Ice Cream alone – are confined to the
shadows offstage. The “drama” is understated to the extent that it becomes a prop
to enable the progression of the dialogue.
Churchill makes a concerted effort to focus
the audience’s attention on sound.
This is unsurprising for a playwright
who started her professional career writing short plays for BBC radio and who has
been praised for her parallels to Pinter’s
linguistic style. Churchill’s Pinter-esque
use of word, rhythm and gesture are innate
features of her dramatic language and were
highlighted brilliantly in this production by
Annabelle Comyn’s direction. The use of a
jaunty beat during the regular scene changes gave a rhythmic echo to the dialogue and
pace of the scene itself.
The essence of the characters and the
tn2
dramatic situation is reflected through
Churchill’s verbal trickery. Punctuation,
pauses and overlapping lines are all intended to communicate meaning, emotion
and action to audience alike. Although the
director appreciated this, the actors of Hot
Fudge didn’t. The dialogue was rushed and
punctuation was merely pause for breath.
Churchill’s theatrical bile and black humour
was not given the space it needed to elicit
the gut reaction that it aims for.
In one particular scene that highlights
Churchill’s rage at the rampant greed and
consumerism of the 80s, even the once romantic calling of travel agents can now be
calculated in brutal business terms. Everyone in the world is either “a potential
customer” or, as part of the holiday destination’s ambience, “a potential commodity.” Of course, the actors could not exploit
this scene to make a significant political
moment. The whole point is that to the
characters, this is their everyday reality.
However, the dialogue should not race to
the next scene change. Racing to the next
scene change acted not only to undermine
the scene itself but also the shift in tone and
setting from the economic, boastful, public
arena to the private world where the wage
slaves actually live. The play’s final scene,
set in a living room, exposes the sadness of
the individual who has to shoulder the pressures of compulsory mercenary success.
The tragedy of Ruby and Colin’s psychological destruction failed to move because not
enough had been invested in their characters in previous scenes.
The actors of Hot Fudge were brilliant at
creating a striking visual scene, especially
given the wealth of scene changes and the
rapidity of the scenes themselves. In many
respects they had a more difficult task than
the cast of Ice Cream who had a much longer running length in order to explore their
characters.
Not only this, but Ice Cream’s actors had
far more obvious ways in which to create an
identity for their characters. John Currivan
and Kathryn O’Hart, who play the American
leads, nailed the American accent. Having
achieved this, the task of playing stereotypical Americans abroad seemed to follow
naturally. Furthermore, the humour also
worked on a superficial, less vicious, level
than that of Hot Fudge. The very title of the
play, Ice Cream, is a joke on its characters’
linguistic and cultural differences. The
different levels of humour seemed more
successful at engaging the audience and
worked to give the black humour a greater
resonance.
The Americans-abroad set-up lends itself to classic situation comedy. Jack and
Vera are middle-aged Anglophiles searching
for familial roots in the British countryside.
They find these roots in a chance encounter
with brother and sister Phil and Jaq, Lance’s
two English third cousins. Phil and Jaq are
alienated punks living in the dark underbelly of Thatcher’s economic boom. The situation rapidly melts into farce with a Hitchcockian twist (reminiscent of The Man Who
Knew Too Much).
Ice Cream was superbly acted and di-
rected but the play itself is predictable. The
American horrors that Jaq and Vera are subjected to are about as original as a teen horror flick. The lecherous men and doomsday-obsessed evangelicals are caricatures
of an obsolete and quaint Middle America,
cardboard cut-outs rather than the result of
direct observation.
The final play of the evening, Three More
Sleepless Nights, was the highlight for this
critic. The actors accomplished Churchill’s
linguistic style of overlapping dialogue. It
seemed that they learnt exactly what words
of the previous line that sparked their response. The result was extraordinarily
natural dialogue that not only highlighted
the class differences between the first two
couples but also demonstrated two different types of arguments, the one where you
say nothing at all and the one where you
can’t stop talking.
Particular credit for Sleepless Nights goes
to the lighting designer, Ciarán O’Melia.
Diegetic lighting, using bedside lamps,
combined with evocative stage lighting to
reflect the intimacy of the relationships but
also their self-destructive nature.
I left wondering what the three plays
had in common that gave them all the same
mood and allowed them to share a two and a
half hour performance without jarring. The
only answer I can come up with is that they
share the idea of things failing to live up to
expectations. However, I have a feeling that
if Caryl Churchill had been watching tonight’s performance she’d have found her
plays more than a little dated.
11
Moving pictures
With the acclaimed Waltz With Bashir coming to
the IFI this month, Michael Armstrong caught
up with the film’s art director David Polonsky.
T
hrough films such as Syriana and
The Kingdom, we’re often shown
Hollywood’s version of the conflicts in the Middle East. Only very
rarely in Ireland do we have the opportunity
to get the perspective of those who have
lived through war and chaos, and have the
scars to prove it. When Ari Folman, director
of Waltz With Bashir, set out on a personal
journey to remember his experience of the
1982 Israel-Lebanon War, he was faced with
the problem of how to combine the talking
head documentary footage he had compiled with his own surreal memories of the
events.
His unorthodox solution was to animate
both the documentary footage and the fantastical recollections of the war described
by his comrades. The result was a stunning
work of cinema, and a contender for the
Palme D’or at this year’s Cannes film festival. All this was made possible, however, by
the work of illustrator David Polonsky. On
his first ever trip to Dublin, I had a chat with
the film’s art director. A friendly and intelligent man, I recommended a few of the city’s
better pubs, and we began by talking about
what first attracted him to the project.
“I found the possibility of bringing to
life other people’s memories and hallucinations a very juicy topic. To be frank, the opportunity just to make an animated feature
was also a consideration, as in a small scene
like there is in Israel, it comes only once in
40 years.”
12
Jumping at the chance to give his illustrations are bigger audience, Polonsky began
the long process by which Folman’s investigation could be transformed by his vivid
imagination.
“The whole film existed as a straightforward talking heads documentary before we
started animating. We had the sound as a
basis, but we animated the interviews based
on the video. Not drawing on the video, but
looking at it and trying to catch the character, so that the film wouldn’t consist of two
different realities.
“There were two teams, I was the head
of the illustration team, and Yoni Goodman the head of the animation team. The
technique of the animation is cut-out animation, which means animators don’t draw
each frame anew, they manipulate existing
drawings which are broken into hundreds of
little pieces, and then move them about. So
the drawings are as they are when the originals were produced. I practically drew physically most of the drawings, around 80%,
which as you can imagine was hundreds and
hundreds.”
Unsurprisingly then, the project took
over four years to complete, and halfway
through the process life imitated art in the
most tragic way, with a new war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006.
“That was just a crazy moment, as regardless of the topic you are working on, you kind
of get absorbed in the work. Even if you are
drawing images of war, you’re still just mak-
ing drawings, so you escape out of your daily
political reality. But then it comes up again.
It was crazy, as part of my job was collecting
references, and I knew these buildings and
these places and here they were again being
bombed on TV. It was a very claustrophobic
feeling, seeing the same stupidity repeating
itself.”
I asked if he believed the new war gave
added pathos to the movie, much in the way
that thinking of the current war in Iraq is unavoidable in films such as Jarhead, but Polonsky believed the Israel-Lebanon conflict
to be even more tragic: “You know the saying of history repeating itself, but what do
Regardless of the
topic you are working
on, you get absorbed
in the work. Even
if you are drawing
images of war, you’re
still just making
drawings
you call it when it’s the third time around?
How long can you go on when it’s becoming
more and more absurd?”
Thankfully, the team kept going throughout the war, but the creative process was
far from easy. The differences between the
2005 original pitch and the finished film depended as much on the frailty of Folman’s
memory as they did on artistic licence.
“His recollections of the period are re-
ally very vague. So we focused on his pursuit
of stories from other people. Naturally we
were more committed to conveying their
stories as exactly as possible, as Ari is still
trying to make sense of what he remembers
and what he doesn’t remember, so a lot of
his input was shifted about during the process of the film.
“The first half or two thirds of the film are
concerned with Ari’s personal experience.
Then everything gives way to something
that is trying to be a hardcore documentary,
as much as that can be acheived.”
In fact the film climaxes with real documentary footage of the Sabra and Shatila
massacre, a decision that was taken as early
as the script stage. Throughout the film
however what stands out are the moments
of imagination and surrealism in the tales
of the Isreali veterans, and I asked how he
settled on the eerie and beautiful look of the
film.
“For me the interesting thing always is
to come up with a new mechanism of visual
narration for each project, for the text. Here,
however, it was pulling in two different directions. One was extreme artistic expression, and that was the way Ari was pushing,
trying to make it as expressive as possible. I
was trying to pull it in a more impressionistic direction, trying to keep it as real as
possible, to have as much compassion as we
could in the film.”
This compassion stemmed from his
personal understanding of the peoples and
cultures of the region. Born in Kiev in 1973,
Polonsky emigrated aged 8 from what was
then the USSR, starting a new life like many
Jewish people in Israel. I asked how this affected his development as an artist, but he
found it hard to pinpoint exactly where his
passion for drawing came from.
tn2
“It’s kind of like asking ‘what if?’ I’d say
the immigration itself had much more of
an effect on me on a personal level, I have
no recollection of the war even taking place
because I was busy in my own little world
with the kids at school, with this new world
to play in. My experience is always of the
personal, not the political, but it’s very hard
to look at yourself from the outside and say
how ideological indoctrination affects you
as an adult. It’s a big issue, and as you come
to terms with it you form a sense of greater
responsibility for how you live your life. This
is an interesting time for Israeli culture right
now, as we have to deal with pressing issues.
In order to be a good artist you have to be
honest, and in Israel you can’t be honest if
you’re disregarding the politics of the situation. So that’s always in the background,
and sometimes it makes for better art, as it
prevents you from focusing on form.
“For me, going to art school, I always
learned from the West, learning from European and American illustrators, and often
it’s always focused on the form. But when
I come to make a drawing for an article, I
feel compelled to relate to my immediate
environment, to the conflicts in my culture.
Truth be told, there are no conflict free cultures. The difference in Ireland is your possibility to avoid the pressing issues, or the
complications. It’s an economic question,
as if your market is big enough, and there’s
enough prosperity, you can do nice drawings and spend your life that way. But when
the market is smaller, eventually you’re going to run into something difficult.”
I made the point that Ireland isn’t exactly
facing economic prosperity anymore, and
has a history that can hardly be described
as conflict-free, but Polonsky saw the problems in the Middle East as much more difficult to solve.
tn2
“Unlike here, where the Troubles lasted
at most 50-70 years, in the Middle East it’s
more like 500. The people there have existed side by side for a very, very long time. The
history of Israel is only 100 years old, so you
can see the introduction of what might be
called the Jewish people to the Middle East
is very new, and very controversial.
“I think that we are living with all our
past conflicts, maybe even too much. I’m
not advocating forgetfulness or whatever
David Polonsky on his visit to Dublin.
Photo: Michael Armstrong
but I think that what I take away from making the film is realising how important it is
to try to reach the personal level. For one
scene, trying to draw some Palestinian kids
in an orchard, I had to dress them right. Because it’s 1982, one would have a Star Wars
T-shirt, another would have fake Adidas
shoes. When you’re feeling compassion for
what you do, you realise that if there is any
hope it is on that personal level.
“Having said what I said before I really
don’t think there is a strong distinction between personal and political, I think I’m a
bit Marxist that way. Of course the only solution that there will be will be political, but
the deeper issues, what lies behind the tensions, will require much more, and it’s hard
to imagine how they will be resolved.”
Polonsky didn’t care to speculate more
on what solution he would propose, but as
a teacher of both animation and illustration
at both the Shenkar School of Design and
We’re living in a
time where things
are changing, the old
dogmas are obviously
not holding on, but
there’s both hope and
conflict. The best we
can hope is that this
is the darkest hour
before dawn
Bezalel Academy, he gave his professional
advice to any young artists at Trinity:
“Don’t look for personal style. It’s a must
to copy. The idea is not about drawings
themselves, but to draw people and places,
or ideas and situations, and not be bothered
about the motivation to make something
new. The only way you can innovate is if you
go to places that really bother you or move
you, and that can never be achieved through
stylistic means. There’s no point trying to
draw a character in a different way, because
there are no different ways. The story is
what is changing.”
From our brief discussion, I got the sense
that the story of Polonsky’s career may only
be at the beginning. After years working on
Waltz With Bashir, there are several authors
waiting patiently for him to illustrate their
novels. Most interestingly however, he is
currently in talks with Ari Folman about
another animated collaboration, this time
taking on one of the science fiction stories
of Stanislaw Lem. The work of the Solaris
author would be a complete change of tone
from Waltz With Bashir, but there are similar
themes to explore, notably the idea of hallucination. Polonsky has also been working
on a graphic novel adaptation of the film,
reusing and editing the same frames in a different form.
“It’s a very interesting experiment, as
you learn much about the two storytelling mediums, especially the importance of
sound, or the lack of it. In cinema you own
the audience, but with books it’s completely
reversed, you are at their mercy, constantly
trying to recapture the reader’s attention.”
Polonsky seemed confident that his talent for creating provocative images will
help with his new projects, however different they may be, and is also relatively optimistic about the future of the world, despite
how bleak things may seem.
“We’re living in a time where things are
changing, the old dogmas obviously are not
holding on, but there’s both hope and conflict. The best we can hope is that it is the
darkest hour before dawn. But it’s still dark,
you know?”
A fair point, but if artists such as he can
continue to be creative in the most difficult
of circumstances, it may not be long before
we’re all a little bit more enlightened.
13
RHA renaissance
T
he Royal Hibernian Academy has
finally reopened its doors to the
public after a year of refurbishments, and much has changed in
the gallery on Ely Place. Bigger and better
than ever before, the R.H.A has re-launched
itself, getting underway with its 178th Annual
Exhibition showing a staggering 550 works
from a mixture of established and up-andcoming artists of all disciplines.
The R.H.A has been an integral part of
the Irish arts for many years. It is an organisation run by artists from a wide range of
specialities, including Painting, Sculpture,
Photography, and even Architecture, for the
promotion and education of budding and
established Irish artists, giving them a platform to exhibit their work to the public. As
well as this the R.H.A tries to introduce international artists to the Irish Art scene.
The Academy has come a long way since
its establishment in 1823. After its Lower
Abbey St premises burned down in the Easter Rising the gallery was left homeless until
1939, when it moved to its present location
at 15 Ely Place. Plans to renovate the ill-suited spot had been trying to get of the ground
since the 1970’s and after many false starts it
has finally been achieved.
When compared to the dull and outdated building that was there before, the
overhaul is even more impressive than expected. The new exterior is fresh and clean,
clad with smooth white Portuguese limestone with The Royal Hibernian Academy’s
name standing out against a panel of green
glass. A glass porch houses a small unassuming bookshop and a new café run by the
renowned Unicorn restaurant.
The asymmetrical entrance hall leads
into a bright two storey atrium space in the
centre of the building. Natural light floods
in from a double height window wall, and a
stairway descends from the first floor down
to the atrium. This large airy space leading
off into the Ashford gallery is a far cry from
the disjointed and badly laid out interior of
the former building. In the vast Charles Gallagher gallery on the first floor the removal
of the old main staircase has opened it up
into a vibrant space, blank and white; ready
to display anything from the smallest painting to the biggest installation.
The new renovation uses a range of materials – stone, glass, steel, concrete and timber all seen coming together harmoniously
in the atrium. This diversity of materials
mirrors the variety of artists and mediums
that are brought together for the Academy’s
Annual Exhibition now in its 178th year and
boasting the biggest collection to date. The
Annual Exhibition was the foundation of
the R.H.A and still takes pride of place as its
most important show of the year. Usually
held in the spring, it was pushed to November this year so it could be the opening ex-
Siobhán Power on the re-opening of the
Royal Hibernian Academy on Ely Place
hibition of the new building. Running until
the 13th of December, the exhibition fills all
the wall space in the gallery right up to the
ceiling with many forms of art on display
together side by side. From photography to
glass sculpture to plasticine and even little
plastic men, there is something for everybody in this exhibition whatever your taste.
There are no prevailing themes or ideas
running through the exhibition and yet all
the works merge together to make one coherent display.
Familiar names in Irish art such as Pauline Bewicke, Geraldine O’Neill, Martin
Gale, John Behan and Dorothy Cross can be
seen among lesser known (for now) artists
such as Darren Murphy, whose work merges
elements of Japanese print and landscape,
or Stephen Forbes, whose canvas is buzzing
with activity and colour.
In no other exhibition in Ireland is it
possible to see such a comprehensive collection of contemporary Irish art all in the
same place.
Upcoming exhibitions in the R.H.A
include “Between Us” by Eileen Neff, an
American photographer, beginning on the
8th of January. Neff explores the transition
from camera to computer in photography
through her landscapes inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Henry David
Thoreau. Another exhibition starting on the
same day and running until the 15th of Febru-
ary is that of Ciarán Lennon, an important
Irish artist who has pieces in the Hugh Lane
Gallery and has had solo exhibitions in the
IMMA and numerous galleries all over the
world. Through his painting Lennon looks
at painted objects and their relation to the
real and the material. Lennon plans to create a unique installation of his work for the
new gallery space.
Stephen McKenna, president of the
R.H.A. foresees that its new look will be a
turning point for the Academy, hoping that
“the building in its new form will enable the
Academy to realise all of its potential as a
positive force in the visual arts in Ireland.”
A new hub of Irish art has been created,
now more accessible and welcoming to all
manner of visitors and indispensable to
Irish artists who can make use of the numerous new rooftop studios that have been
built as part of the R.H.A school which will
be fully operational in 2011.
Already a great place to spend an idle
hour wandering around if in town, the
planned auditorium will attract even more
visitors, offering public lectures on concurrent exhibitions as well Irish art in general.
The significance of the renovation of the
R.H.A may not be fully realised at once, but
it will hopefully go further than ever before
in encouraging artists to produce and exhibit art; and the viewing public in seeing it
in its dynamic new surroundings.
Photo: Siobhán Power
14
tn2
From Fratricide - Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1897); Ateneum Art Museum Central Art Archives / Jukka Romu
A land of myth and mountains
Caroline O’Leary visited Northern Stars and
Southern Lights: The Golden Age of Finnish Art
at the National Gallery of Ireland
F
or many people, the word “Finland”
evokes images of rolling Nordic
landscapes and snow topped mountains. Finnish art may seem like an
unusual choice for the newest exhibition
in the National Gallery of Ireland “Northern Stars and Southern Lights: The Golden
Age of Finnish Art 1870-1920”. Unlike last
year’s Polish art exhibition, Finland has few
cultural or population based connections to
Ireland and the country itself did not fully
come into its own until it achieved independence from the Grand Duchy of Russia
in 1917. However, like Ireland’s own history,
Finland’s late independence caused them
to strive for a national identity of their own,
combining their people, landscape and mythology within art to create an image and
style that is unique to their country.
The exhibition focuses on the various
sections that evolved within Finnish art between 1870 and 1920 – the Finnish “Golden
Age”. Much of the work that emerged was
influenced and inspired by the Paris art
movement of the time, where the Realism
movement had inspired artists to venture
outside the studios into the natural world
and paint en plein air, which quickly led
to the development of the Impressionist
movement. The influence of these various
styles can particularly be seen in the Naturalism room, the first room of the exhibition. In keeping with the idea of en plein air
production, most of the works focus on the
Finnish countryside and the large peasant
class that inhabited it. The room is laid out
beginning with the Realism-based works,
which are a striking depiction of the harshness of peasant life at the time, as the untn2
flatteringly honest depiction of both figures
and the surroundings strike a cord with the
viewer. Particularly moving is the painting
Orphan by Albert Gebhard, a desolate portrait of an abandoned child in a dark room
who peers out through the gloom at the
viewer with her striking yet unfathomably
deep blue eyes, and Eero Jarnefelt’s Under
the Yoke which depicts soot and ash covered
peasants burning scrubland for farming.
This haunting painting combines naturalism and realism in its depiction of the foreground figures but suggests Impressionist
influence in the coloured background as
the scorched earth fades to reds, blues and
purples.
The exhibition as a whole rests heavily
on the works of two of Finland’s most renowned artists: Albert Edelfelt and Akseli
Gallen-Kallela. Both artists came from different backgrounds and focused on different themes in their painting, yet both were
instrumental in establishing Finnish art in
their own country and abroad, especially
in Paris. Edelfelt came from an aristocratic
background and spent much of his career in
Paris. He painted in the style of Realism and
was acclaimed in the Paris salons, winning
numerous awards. Edelfelt was a prolific
portrait painter and nearly the entire second
room of this exhibition is dedicated to his
renditions of French and Finnish high society figures. Particularly striking is the portrait Virginie, a Parisian actress rumoured
to have been Edelfelt’s mistress and mother
to his two children, who seems to glow with
happiness as she languishes over the back of
a chair. The whole scene is one of relaxation
and contentment, from the opulent materi-
als and furnishing in the room behind to the
figure’s large liquid brown eyes that gaze
serenely out from the canvas. Critics have
suggested that due to Edelfelt’s aristocratic
background he was never able to truly identify with the peasant figures in his naturalist
work, yet in his portraits and also his landscape work he is very much at home and the
true beauty of the figures and landscapes
shines out.
In contrast in Edelfelt, Gallen-Kallela
came from a peasant background and remained proud of his roots, presenting a less
idealised version of peasant life than many
of his contemporaries. Though his paintings
included naturalistic and landscape work,
Gallen-Kallela’s most famous works are
large-scale paintings depicting the Kalevala,
an epic poetic work of Finnish mythology,
and the paintings featured are the first real
insight into Finnish cultural history. The
most famous work on show is Aino, a huge
triptych that illustrates scenes from the story of Aino, a young girl who drowns herself
rather than marry an old man. Most of these
realism-based paintings are beautifully
rendered in shining oil paints but the most
interesting works in the room are several
scenes painted in tempura paint – mineral
based earth paints that add a flatness and
illustrative character to the work. These are
a stark contrast to realistic oil works that
surround them, and offer a totally different
perspective on both the mythology and the
viewer’s perception of it.
The final room in the exhibition represents modernist Finnish painting to 1920
and is a disappointment after the previously
viewed works. The information provided
on Verner Thome’s In the Borely Park comments that the first modernist works were
created in reaction to an unfavourable review of a Paris salon show, accusing Finnish
painting as being stale and unprogressive.
This rather uninspired beginning seems to
be evident in the works which rely a little
too much the influence of Cézanne and the
Fauvist movement. It’s a disappointment
that given the obvious talent of the Finnish
artists, they could not branch out develop
more of their own style than continuing to
follow popular Parisian trends.
Surprisingly it seems that the most interesting part of the exhibition could be
easily missed, located in the hallway across
from the mythological room. This is a collection of etchings by Gallen-Kallela and
watercolour paintings by his protégé Hugo
Simberg, who was inspired by his master’s
mythological works to create his own fantastical images of Finnish life. His works
combine peasant life with devils or images
of death, but instead of images of fear and
dread his paintings are whimsical scenes
of bright colours. They vary from humorous scenes of The Farmer’s Wife and the Poor
Devil where a devil down on his luck appeals
for help, to more moving scenes like Death
Listens where the spectral image of death
stands listening to a young boy play the violin as an old woman lies in the background,
possibly waiting for the end of the song and
her life. These images are unique and imaginative, combining Finnish mythology with
unique illustrative techniques to create
work that is truly original and provides Finland with a style that is all their own.
This exhibition has plenty to admire, and
showcases the talents of Finnish artists of
the time. Finland itself is beautifully represented by landscapes and the poignancy
of its people. The Finnish artists were undoubtedly accomplished and created some
wonderful and striking works. However so
dominant is the Parisian influence on the
work that, except for the works by GallenKallela and Simberg, we see nothing of a
unique Finnish style. The ultimate goal
of the “Golden Era” never seems to materialise, a shame considering the tantalising suggestion of real innovation peers out
from the work, just out of reach.
15
Photo: Chris Howard
The digital divide
Saviour of time or the murderer of an art form?
Rebecca Long and Jean Morley debate over the
pros and cons of the e-book
W
e’re on the verge of a
literary revolution. Forget
post-modernism, postcolonialism and, definitely
post-feminism, are we soon going to be
post-books? Thanks to the concept of the
E-Book reader, the major change won’t be
what we read, but how we go about it. Judging by the rapidity at which major publishing houses are converting their books to
digital format, and the anticipation of the
Sony E-Reader on this side of the water,
digital books appear to be coming into
force. Sci-fi writer Robert J Sawyer best
summed up the post-paper fervour, predicting the disappearance of paper-books
“except as an art-form”. From HomeEconomics workbooks to Ikea instruction
manuals, who knows what we’ll decide to
frame for our walls.
Of course, the rise of the E-Book may
be grossly exaggerated. To Sci-fi writer Ray
Bradbury, the E-Book smells like “burnt
fuel”. Despite the advance of the E-Book
being predicted in 1990s, it has failed to
permeate public consciousness in the same
way as the i-pod. Instead of defining a hip
generation, E-Books are the preserve of academics and science journal enthusiasts. So
are they merely a shortlived fad, or the inescapable fate of our future lives? TN2 staffers
go head-to-head to debate the technology.
In Praise of the E-Book (Jean Morley)
From people cursing the concept of writing,
and believing that there were demons in the
printing press, to current university lecturers’ detesting the online Blackboard sys-
16
tem. The idea of a word changing its form
never fails to sour public opinion. Given our
human propensity to rate tradition over invention and beauty over necessity, it’s easy
to understand the ambivalence toward the
E-Book. But from an ethical, practical and
cultural point of view, the electronic device
far exceeds its paperback cousin.
Supporters of the E-Book have the ultimate twenty-first century ethical argument
on our side. With the rise of deadly carbon
emissions, we can’t afford to keep chopping
down the lungs of the Earth. Books have
surpassed Christmas trees as symbols of
destructive decadence as thousands of forests get churned into pages. Ironically, the
same books extolling the virtues of nature
are sucking the life out of its leaves. We all
knew Wordsworth was a murdering fiend.
People worry that the digital word will reduce the integrity of the idea of a book, but
who first demanded that books be a mass of
bound paper? Most likely, a monk in some
hut on the Skelligs. For the same reason we
have made the transition from pony trap to
automobile, our conception of literature
needs to progress. In an age of electronic
empowerment, the E-book makes sense.
The replacement of books with electronic displays will excite even the wariest readers. A book can become an ever-expanding
dialogue far more exciting than a stinky yellow tome. Confused about Russian politics?
Discussion forums, encyclopaedia entries
and recommended books will be one button-push away. Bored by Dostoevsky? Just
click centre screen for some puzzles and
games. The E-Book will be the ultimate aid
to procrastination, and I can’t wait.
Most importantly the E-Book will revolutionise people’s perception of reading.
Literary classics will be lifted from coffee
tables, instead being pulled out on the bus
as items of pop-culture. The i-pod made it
cool to love esoteric music – having a penchant for West Hungarian Polka Music has
become socially acceptable. Imagine offering your friends the text of the Odyssey. Being proud to say you’ve got 150 books in your
bag. I can’t either. But wait for the advent of
the E-Book reader.
The Incontrovertible Disadvantages of
the Electronic Book (Rebecca Long)
In order to read some E-Books you’ll find
you have to shell out a fair quantity of your
hard-earned - okay, earned anyway – cash;
not only for the purchase of an electronic
device but possibly also the peripheral software on which to display it. It is certainly
more than you’d spend for your average
book, for the set-up alone.
So let’s say you’ve purchased the aforementioned electronic device and you’re set
up in front of your little digital screen with a
cup of tea and a biccie. Your battery is fully
charged, or so you think, and you become
completely engrossed in your newest EBook saga. Then out of nowhere your battery dies and you lose your place. Only it’s
not quite so easy as flicking back through
the last few pages until you find the sentence
you were in the middle of with the E-Book,
is it?. You have to get up, find your charger
thingy, come back, plug it in, etc. and then
you realise your tea has gone cold. Not quite
the relaxing read you had in mind hmm?
Or even worse! Your hard disk drive fails!
Now I freely admit I’m not exactly technologically savvy but that sounds pretty bad to
me. How easy do you think it’s going to be to
find someone that can fix that little beauty?
Okay here’s another scenario. You’re
a careless person - like me - and you leave
your latest paperback book in Starbucks.
Hours later you rush back, hoping against
hope that some evil person with a chai tea
latte obsession hasn’t spirited it away because you actually have to know what happens in that climatic final chapter. Odds are
it’s still there. Now let’s try that scenario
again, only this time you’ve left your uber
expensive electronic reader device thingy
behind. Do you really think it will be there
when you get back?
What about the smell and feel of a new
book? The action of physically turning
the pages? Or the character and charm of
second-hand book? Curling up with a good
book on a rainy night is a most exquisite
pleasure, and one that just doesn’t translate
to the idea of sitting down in front of a good
computer.
Okay, I’ve done enough preaching about
the sanctity of the paperback and the travesty that is the E-Book. I’ll leave you instead
with what one website gleefully informed
me. Apparently I can now, with the appropriate and of course suitably expensive
technology, create “amazing 3-D page turning Ebooks in minutes with new software,
such as Desktop Author.” Oh, Please. That’s
what’s known as a real book, thank you very
much.
tn2
The lives of others
What makes biographies so very interesting?
Looking at some popular examples, Jean Morley,
Kara Furr and Liz Farrelly attempt to find out
W
hat cosmetic procedures has
Jordan undergone? What
brand of milk does Parkinson use on his cornflakes?
What makes one time ex-factor judge
Sharon Osborne tick? We need answers
to these questions, and fast. So fast, the
biography section of most bookshops cannot cope with the amount of publications
coming their way. A recent visit to Hodges
Figgis exposed a biography section nine
shelves long by five shelves high; at least
20m worth of confessional ramblings.
But what makes biography such a popular form? That’s easy. We need to see the
ordinary man mythologised. We need to believe that Mr Joe Soap can invent the Model
T Ford, buy Man United, marry Angelina Jolie and own a Labrador dog. Maybe we want
to learn from others’ experiences; through
a complex analysis of stars’ lives to date, we
realise what we should, or most definitely
should not be doing. Maybe we just want to
laugh as we flick to photo insets, of the gaptoothed toddlers to the dodgiest mullets.
Given our fascination with the form, we
had a lot of fun reviewing biographies and
autobiographies this week. What do Barack
Obama, Russell Brand and Jeff Buckley have
in common? They’re all available and cheap;
about €12.95, at a bookshop near you.
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Crown
Publishing, 2006
Okay, I may as well admit now that, being overjoyed to call Barack Obama my
next President, I may be a bit biased when
it comes to his autobiography. I was quite
excited, on being asked to review it, at the
prospect of curling up with Barack Obama
(now, now, let’s bring our minds out of
the gutter, shall we?). Having read it, I was
pleased, but not surprised, to discover that
it was quite good! This autobiography is far
from traditional; rather than accounting his
own life, he uses the book as a forum for discussion about the issues he sees in the political system and society of America, using
examples of his experiences to illustrate his
point. Using a highly conversational tone,
Obama considers the strengths as well as
the pit-falls of politics in the US, casting a
critical eye over even the dealings of his own
party.
The book contains chapters on, among
others, politics, the US Constitution, faith,
race, and one especially interesting chapter
entitled “Values”. The theme that is brought
up continually through these many chapters
is what Obama sees as the dangerous divide
between Democrat and Republican, “conservative” and “liberal”, which pervades
both the politics and everyday life of Americans. He sees this as threatening the historitn2
cal ideals of what he has always emphasized
as the United States of America. The man’s
intelligence and dedication to his dream of
America are apparent in his detailed writings on how to mend this rift.
Perhaps this is not a book for every reader, but if you find yourself interested in the
thoughts of the next President of the United
States on the direction his country needs to
take, The Audacity of Hope is an honest and
thought-provoking account. Kara Furr
My Booky Wook: The Autobiography of
Russell Brand, Hodder & Stoughton,
2007
Poor, poor Russell.
What with the recent spate of anti-Brand
sentiments flying about the place, I felt
a certain pressure when asked to review
his autobiography, My Booky Wook. As an
unapologetic fan of Brand and his antics,
I knew I could not let this influence what
should be an objective view of the autobiography. However, by the same token, I
vowed not to hop on the media bandwagon
by criticising Brand for doing exactly what
the public have spent near on a decade encouraging him to do: act up. Over the last
few weeks, Brand has become a manifestation of everything that’s awful about life in
the public eye. He has spent his entire life
pandering to the base whims of the masses,
and created his entire persona out of the attention they’ve given him, positive or otherwise. Brand’s disgrace (which was not his
first, and certainly will not be his last) has
served to highlight the capricious nature of
his viewing public more than his own indiscretions.
Though I digress, the central point is that
when dealing with autobiographical material, the reader’s attitude to the author can
often be the essence of the reading. Is My
Booky Wook a good autobiography? That
completely depends on you. At times, his
book can be truly disturbing. There is no
point in pretending that his descriptions of
his experience with hard drugs are not outrageous, regardless of the length at which
he discusses them. Some issues are dealt
with in a surprisingly poignant manner, taking into account Brand’s self-fashioning as
a contemporary village idiot. However, for
the most part, it sounds like a best-of collection from the most debauched confessionals around the country. Brand’s incessant
use of pseudo-dadaist writing techniques
can be tedious, but is perfectly representative of his exhausting but relentlessly entertaining self. As a piece of literature, My
Booky Wook is trifling and inconsequential,
but as an autobiography of Russell Brand, it
couldn’t be more appropriate. The book is
rewarding, but only if you are patient. It can
also be hilarious, but only if you understand
Brand. The essence of My Booky Wook can
best be summed up in the title itself. If you
find it endearing or even vaguely amusing,
go for it. If you see it as a meaningless piece
of whimsy or have completely missed the
cinematic reference, then Brand’s peculiar
piece of verbose, indulgent writing probably wasn’t for you to begin with. Elizabeth
Farrelly
Dream Brother, Fourth Estate 2001
Who was Jeff Buckley? Reading Dream
Brothe, David Brown’s portrayal of the
young soul legend, won’t answer this question. As with any post-humus biography,
we will never be able to gauge the accuracy
of the identity recounted. However, going
by Brown’s book, Jeff Buckley was a knotty
bundle of contradictions; a man who, even
in his most lucid moments, could not attempt to truly know himself.
Most of us know the sketchy facts. Jeff
Buckley, born in California, was famous
for his five-octave spanning voice and the
release of the near-perfect album, Grace, in
1994. Of course he’s just as famous for being
the son of Tim Buckley, the ill-fated young
crooner, who died in his twenties of an accidental overdose. Jeff is usually discussed
as an echo of his father; set to reach musical heights with his album, Sketches for my
Sweetheart the Drunkard, he was killed in a
drowning accident in the Mississippi.
But Brown supplies us with what we
probably didn’t realise; Jeff ’s complete
disjunction from his father. Having been
the product of an accidental teenage pregnancy, he was abandoned by Tim and grew
up on the other side of the States. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, Jeff sought to sever ties with
his father’s memory, announcing complete
apathy towards the man and his music.
Given Brown’s recognition of Jeff ’s antipathy towards his father, it’s quite ironic
that he insists on paralleling the two men’s
lives. The book constantly interweaves
episodes of Tim’s life with Jeff ’s life story,
making them into a larger master narrative.
Even the happiest moments of Jeff ’s life are
squished into the “ill-fated life of a sensitive
artist”.
Of course, depictions of Jeff ’s vulnerability are undoubtedly alluring. From his
‘haunted, wounded deer-look in his eyes’
to his gaunt cheekbones and thrift-shop
clothes, Brown makes us want to believe in
Jeff, the gentle bohemian. But even the most
devoted Jeffites would have their doubts.
After all, Jeff managed to secure a one-million dollar deal with Columbia records and
was famous for hiring and firing bandmates
with a brutal efficiency. But seeing as we will
never fully know the truth, we can clutch
at this gorgeous, sepia-tinged legend. Jean
Morley
17
2008: a style odyssey
Ana Kinsella evaluates the fashion highs and
lows of the past twelve months and wonders
how they’ll be remembered in years to come
A
s the days get shorter, the nights
get darker and another year draws
to a close, it’s time to take a look
back at the past year and try to determine how this year will be remembered
in the annals of sartorial history.
The high fashion industry spent the year
in the shadows of two major ethical debates:
size zero and the role of black models. This,
combined with an incoming recession
which will hit the abundance of high-end
brands, as well as up-and-coming designers,
might lead one to think that there would be
few risks taken in such a tense atmosphere.
But designers are often reluctant to play it
safe – this is fashion as Art, remember - and
so we saw feisty upstarts in London show
eye-catching and sensational collections,
like Gareth Pugh’s hard-edged and dark industrial designs, or the gaudy neon-meetsplaid mess of House of Holland. Down the
line It’s likely that these designers will become quite representative of 2008’s catwalk
stylings, overshadowing the pretty, elegant
and above all wearable collections from the
likes of young designers like Zac Posen and
Phillip Lim. Established high-end fashion
houses like Yves St Laurent and Balenciaga
put out collections seeped in references to
futurism whilst retaining the kind of simple,
clean and flattering tailoring for which they
have become revered. Referential ideas in
a collection is high fashion’s favourite way
to be cautious in a tumultuous market, and
this was seen too in Chanel’s Autumn/Winter ‘08 collection, with Karl Lagerfeld’s continuing reinvention of Coco’s classic looks
and motifs, using them to reflect modernday sensibilities and trends.
Gucci hedged its bets in its Autumn 2008
and Spring 2009 collections by appealing directly to the recession-proof, with the kind
of showy, glossy, hippie-luxe dresses and
bags that are so favoured by the jet-setting
wives of Kensington financiers and Russian
oligarchs.
Away from the catwalks, 2008 will be
remembered as the year that style went to
the streets – street style blogs exploded,
resulting in random people on the streets
taking the places of Hollywood actresses
or pop stars as modern-day style icons.
Trends emerged not from clever celebrity
red-carpet product placement but from
the creative minds of art students in east
London or teenagers in downtown LA, captured on blogs like theSartorialist.com or
Facehunter. It’s because of this that we’ve
seen trends as unexpected as 1990s revival
bloom this year. Denim jackets, grungey
plaid shirts, tube skirts and tight body-con
dresses ruled the music festivals and clubs
this summer, along with straw hats and the
now-ubiquitous Ray-Bans. In terms of accessories, 2004’s boho chic got revamped
18
and updated with a more modern edge in
the form of over-the-knee stockings, headbands, statement necklaces and gladiator
sandals.
Over the past few years, shops such as
Penneys have been lauded for the ability
of their products to be blended with high
fashion and vintage accessories to create a
unique look. 2008 saw the likes of American
Apparel and Uniqlo take the place of Penneys at the forefront of hip, with their clean
cuts, simple colours and good quality material used to form excellent foundations for
experimenting with edgy separates or accessories to create a look that stands out.
Other high street favourites like Topshop
and H&M continue to push their own limitations and, in turn, our own as high-street
consumers, with H&M releasing a new capsule line from bonkers Japanese radicals
Commes des Garçons this month, while
Topshop continue to pilfer almost scarily directly from the catwalks of Chanel and
Chloe in print dresses and chiffony shapes.
The style icons of the year often represent what is considered cool by the average
culturally-aware young person, and this can
be seen in the choices of girls on the street
in 2008.
The likes of Alexa Chung, the girls of Gossip Girl, Pixie and Peaches Geldof, Kirsten
Dunst, Lauren Conrad and, perennial favourites, the Olsen twins are frequently cited the girls that regular girls want to dress
like. All of these girls mix a variety of different styles to look on trend and laidback at
the same time.
However, a quick straw poll of my own
male friends did little to shed light on a
possible male style icon of the year. While
names like Barack Obama, Daniel Craig,
Casey Affleck and Chuck Bass from Gossip
Girl all got bandied around, there was no
unifying man whose style was admired by
guys this year.
In terms of fashion in general, young
men in this part of the world have grown
more confident in choosing varying styles
of jeans or hoodies, although outside of
that there has been, predictably, little more
experimentation. The trend for guys wearing super-skinny girls jeans has, thankfully,
died, with a looser, slouchy straight-cut
style gaining in popularity.
Menswear, like womenswear, has been
adopting a 1990s slant, with plaid shirts
and parkas heralding an end to the oversize
hip-hop stylings – think huge white tees and
baggy jeans - of the earlier years of this decade, and it will be interesting to see if this is
a trend that will develop next year.
The 2000s will undoubtedly be remembered as a mash-up of different styles, and
in 2008 that can be seen as the democratization of style, as high fashion has begun
to leak down to the masses in a way never
before seen. People are less afraid to push
boundaries and to think outside the box
– girls who shuddered at the thought of a
leather biker jacket two years ago are now
never seen without them.
However, the flipside of this is that we’ve
seen massive missteps and faux pas that’ll
be making us cringe at photographs in twenty years’ time.
Personally, I have definitely secondguessed myself when latching on to this
year’s trends. Coloured skinny jeans? Headbands? Shoe-boots? Metallic leggings? 25
years down the line, will my children be
pointing at pictures of me and saying “God,
Mum, you look ridiculous!”.
While this is something to keep in mind
when diving head-first into something
you’ve only seen work on the pages of magazines or street style blogs, I think that ultimately these years will be remembered as
an exciting, fun and (probably) just-a-littlebit-crazy era, and so to play it safe with what
you wear would be a waste of these inspiring
times.
tn2
The kids in America
Gossip Girl is by no means just for ladies –
boys could take some fashion tips too
as Cillian O’Connor explains
N
ot only is each and every one immensely wealthy, immeasurably
privileged and well - go ahead
guys, you too can admit it - inordinately handsome, they also sport astounding style. Suave and sophisticated’ couldn’t
possibly suffice to describe the aesthetic
of Gossip Girl trust-fund triumvirate: Dan
(Penn Badgely), Nate (Chace Crawford)
and Chuck (Ed Westwick). Initially acclaimed for the sartorial styling of its female
leads’ ‘It Girl’ Serena (Blake Lively), ‘Queen
Bee’ Blair (Leighton Meester) and ‘Li’l J’
Jenny (Taylor Momsen) the exceptionally
successful TV show Gossip Girl is now considered an authority on menswear.
And rightfully so. This show - often referred to as The OC’s sexier, wealthier sister - has bagged the best stylists around
and if you considered the guys from Mad
Men sharp, then you’ve not seen anything
yet. Chuck Bass, for example, well knows
the difference between his Helmut Lang
and Tom Ford. Devoting the vast majority
of his waking hours to the sexual predation
of the Upper East Side’s hottest girls, Bass
is a busy man (when he’s not attempting to
quell his insatiable desire he’s establishing
Gentleman’s clubs) yet turns out immaculately, always.
His truly idiosyncratic style is composed
of the bare basics - well-cut trousers and
I’ll swap ya
O
K, so being the fashion editor
and, let’s not lie, a law student,
I occasionally feel the need to
put on some airs and graces –
the kind that would fit right in on The Devil
Wears Prada/Amanda of Ugly Betty. Things
that cause me to drop the cool, sophisticated, somewhat cynical and occasionally
downright cold façade include (useful) free
gifts with magazines I regularly buy anyway, MAC limited edition ranges, American
Apparel’s unisex circular scarf and a swapshop in Dublin.
Now that the formalities are over with,
can we get back to how excited I am?
I’ve already registered for my ticket at
[email protected], I can’t wait
to pay my €5 and raid my wardrobe for five
items in good, clean, wearable condition.
tn2
I’m already imagining turning up at Powerscourt and having the lovely girls take my
old stuff away and give me tokens for bright,
shiny, new old stuff. There will be bartering
and rummaging for the type of things you
see on other people and wonder where does
one buy things like that?
As if that’s not enough (!) the lovely
people at roughgem are providing cakes and
punch! There will be a make-up artist! Not
to mention a DJ, but more importantly; a
photo booth – to take photos of this excitement in action! (I am aware of my over-use
of exclamation marks, but really, if you were
looking at me right this second, you would
know I’m actually toning it down.) There
will be a stall stacked high with vintage and
handmade clothing and accessories – and I
have been solemnly promised that not one
blazers in neutral tones, the slightly ostentatious - a scarlet red morning coat and an
ivory tux with ink-black piping, as well as
the downright individual - an abundance of
crazily patterned silk cravats and bow ties.
Camp, you say? Not in the least - well, a tad but the sheer number of ladies he beds may
disprove any theories you’ve already formulated.
Then there’s “lonely boy” Dan, the
token cynic who - in a vain attemp to
provoke laughter - blabbers profusely, and
supposedly wittily, on matters such as writer’s block and the advantages of the affluent as well as relentlessly brooding over the
equally infuriating Serena.
However, his whining is marginally easier to ignore when he steps out - in true manabout-town style - in an array of razor-sharp
suits in deep black and dapper waistcoatshirt combos. Dan typifies NY casual cool,
often donning lightweight jumpers, plaid
shirts and military-style jackets in earthy
hues. He may be a touch goofy and undeniably head-wrecking at times but admiring
his smart choice of grungy, laid-back clothing makes the perpetual sarcasm and cynicismthat bit more bearable.
And finally, Nate. You may have heard of
this one before - girlfriends, sisters, mothers even are often more than infatuated
with this rich kid so reminiscent of the 90s
boy band stereotype.
His usual dress, however, doesn’t exactly
correlate: you’ll find no bombers or pudding-bowl cuts here. The Archibald really
belongs in a Ralph Lauren advertisement.
In conservatively styled blazers, golf attire
and flawless formalwear in - what could be
deemed - ‘business-meeting’ blues he’s the
epitome of Americana.
Yes, the characters can prove irksome
but where else do you find the sufficient degree of preppy pomp blended so seamlessly
with understated masculine elegance? Eh,
not One Tree Hill anyway.
Patrice Murphy wandered down to last week’s
swap shop in the Powerscourt Centre
item on this stall shall cost more than a
mere €10!
In case you all don’t know/are in denial,
there have been a few rumours circulating that we’re in a credit crunch, a financial
pickle, ie, the shit has hit the economic fan.
Also, it seems that we are, in fact, the generation of the future, and are supposed to
be all “environmental”, “eco-friendly”, and
generally “green”.
Combine this with the fact that apparently everywhere from Penneys to our
beloved Topshop uses child labour, consider that Lindsay Lohan was using her
popularity(?) for the greater good this summer - to promote Visa Swap Shop in Covent Garden - it seems that swap-shopping
is not only unbelievably inexpensive, but
guilt-free and ethical. And, clearly, all the
cool kids are doing it.
If you want an example of such cool kids,
see bluebirdsaresonatural.wordpress.com;
it’s the blog of the two lovely lovely ladies
who masterminded and organised and single-handedly (excepting the hands of their
many friends) the Dublin swapshop.
Fall a little bit in love with both Katie and
Ailbhe and their musings on fashion, music,
Dublin and occasionally even life in general.
And if you didn’t manage to make it to the
swapshop, have a look on there on the third
Saturday of every month – where the girls
put a few items up for grabs on the website
and all you have to do is get there first, claim
it and find something to send to them in return.
Aren’t they nice?
19
Restaurant reviews
e
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tions Off
c
ina
After many a high brow and pretentious exchange with a vegetarian friend
about the relevant merits of living a life
minus the flesh of our fellow creatures,
I decided to eat ‘healthy’ for a change
in a highly recommended purveyor of
vegetarian food. Govindas is located at
4 Aungier Street and is owned and managed by a Hare Krishna devotee. The
name Govinda means ‘protector of the
cows’ to all you citizens of morondom
out there. Guffaw!
Indeed vegetarianism is a natural outgrowth of the Hare Krishna philosophy
of life, bluntly summarized as “friendliness to all living entities”. Dispense dear
diners with any fancy notions of pigeon
meat burgers, deep-fried panda spring
rolls or ostrich egg soufflè. Throw off
the cold, cynical, narrow mindedness
of a meat eater and get some greens into
you.
The sort of crowd that frequents
Govindas are the standard ‘cool types’
that include students, bearded men,
hippies, and guys that work in the Laser
a few doors down. The layout is basic
enough with uniform tables and chairs
giving a very definite canteen feel about
the place. Even with vulgar blue paint
on one wall, religious iconography on
another, it detracts little from the overall simple and pleasing aesthetics of the
place.
The á la Carte menu lists the day’s offerings that include Moussaka, Veg ‘au’
Gratin, and Gauranga potatoes. I simply
French
address
No1 Fade Street (just off George’s Street)
phone
(01) 675 3708
recommend the following: a bit of everything, ideally on the same small plate.
There is something perversely satisfying about piling food high. Arming yourself with only a fork to get it in you as
you cling desperately to the last screed
of human dignity, it’s satisfying to know
that it’s the cheapest main course option at €6.95.
Water is offered free of charge with
every serving. Score! For those to whom
water isn’t fancy enough, Govindas also
has a rather nice selection of yogurt
smoothies if liquidation and intermingling of yogurt and fruit is your bag.
All dishes are caffeine, garlic and
mushroom free, stamping out any
chance of hyper-activity, passion and
ignorance. Take that mushrooms! Zany
dietary injunctions aside, each recipe is
simple in its parts and presentation but
big on taste.
There is a positive effusion of flavour
garnered from traditional eastern and
western ingredients that juxtapose each
other to create dishes that leave a lasting
satisfaction. If you’re intent on subjecting your body to more masochistic punishment, ask the friendly lady behind
the counter to lob some Samosas (fried
pastries with spicy pea filling) into the
behemoth of culinary delights. Govindas serves simple and tasty vegetarian
food at reasonable prices, plus its quick
service makes it an ideal lunchtime spot
for those students and hippies with very
busy lives. Conor Henry
I
ce
(01)4750309
cuisine
ff
phone
T
4 Aungier Street
L’Gueuleton
Fast becoming one of the hottest spots
in Dublin, L’Gueuleton is the restaurant
à la mode. Certainly, it’s up there with
the best, and what makes it so superior
is that unlike the majority of Dublin’s
most established eateries, it doesn’t
try: it is a French restaurant that serves
simple, well executed dishes inspired
by provençal cuisine. It is its simplicity that makes it so glorious - from the
décor to the dishes; it never tries to be
too clever, and accordingly the focus is
on the most important part: the gueuleton (nosh up), which is by all means
exceptional.
Décor-wise, it is what you could call
bistro-chic. The red and white stripped
awning outside give it that French feel,
as do the blackboard menus and closely
set wooden tables and chairs. For dinner, low lighting and tea lamps scattered
among the tables set the mood.
Walking past you might not even
notice that such an enterprise existed
if it wasn’t for the enormous queue
snaking around the block. This is because L’Gueuleton employs a no booking policy, meaning that in order to get
a table you have to come at 6 o’clock
and put your name and number on a
list with your preferred time of dining.
Then, depending on when the tables become free, you get a call. Invariably, this
means that you cannot ensure exactly
what time you will get a table, but it does
mean that if you queue early enough you
will always get one. And it is definitely
worth the wait.
The menu boasts a varied selection of both rustic and more polished
French dishes, teamed with a well chosen, if rather pricey, wine list. To start,
I chose French onion soup, a classic,
but definitely not one for a first date, or
indeed, a second, third, or thirtieth. In
fact, not even marriage could really excuse what happens once that spoon unknowingly delves into the bowl of sweet
oniony delight, discovers a plateau of
gruyere-soaked crouton and naively
tries to transfer it to one’s mouth. There
is no fathomable way to bring spoon
to mouth without cheese being strung
around everything and everybody in
reaching distance. (In fact, the only way
to maintain that your fellow diner does
inations O
address
II.1
nity New
Tri
s
name
am
Vegetarian
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cuisine
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Govindas
Exa
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not desert you for a less embarrassing
dining companion is if they turn away
whilst you attempt to strategically stuff
the entire stringy content of your bowl
in one greedy mouthful.) Or you could
opt for the warm wood pigeon salad with
poached pears and toasted almonds- a
far more sociable, and equally delicious
choice. Both starters were without fault,
the former big enough to have just as a
main whereas the latter was a perfect
and subtle introduction into our delectable dinner.
For the main course, I chose steak and
chips. Already a match made in heaven,
but once it is teamed with a béarnaise
sauce and caramelised onion relish, it
transcends to a whole other level. Otherworldly you might say, and arguably
the best steak and chips this side of Paris. We also had a grilled hake fillet with
pinto beans, chorizo and baby spinach
which was by all means a success- although the chorizo slightly overpowered the delicateness of the fish, which
was cooked to perfection. The beans
were the perfect accompaniment, helping to balance the dish and exonerate
any real complaints. To drink, we chose
a Beaujolais blanc to start that was light,
dry and exceptionally good, followed by
a bottle of Simon Joseph, a more tannic
carignan from Languedoc.
The dessert menu is relatively short,
but by all means complete. Feeling rather rotund by this point, we went for what
seemed like the lightest option- the
crème caramel with biscotti and apricot
vodka compote. The biscotti verge on
life-changing thanks to the combination
of cherries, grapes and pistachio nuts,
whereas the crème caramel was good
but needed to be a tad sweeter.
On the whole, I can not really fault
a single thing- the service was efficient
and the food consistently excellent. And
due to popular demand, the restaurant
has now doubled in size, ensuring that
there will always be space to indulge any
insatiable appetites. Furthermore, the
newly established bar next door, rather
conspicuously called “the bar with no
name”, is quite possibly the best bar in
Dublin with stripped wooden floors dotted with sofas. Why go anywhere else?
Jo Monk
11 November – 24 November, 2008
tn2
Film reviews
director
Barry Levinson
starring
Robert DeNiro, Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci
running time
104 minutes
it
rin
tn2
tions Off
c
ina
There seems to be a trend in Hollywood
at the minute for introspective films, taking a look at the people behind the industry. But while Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder
took comic potshots at those in his own
line of work, there is a gut-level sadness to
What Just Happened that all the characters
feel. Watch hard enough and you feel it
too. Some of the characters cry, but most
of them don’t. It’s the wise ones who cry.
Robert De Niro plays Ben, a struggling
Hollywood producer whose new movie, it
is known with terrifying certainty, is about
to bomb.
The director is Jeremy Brunel (Michael Wincott), who has in effect made
a gangster film to make up for that film
Guy Ritchie has always promised us, a lost
masterpiece. Brunel is a Cockney druggie
moviemaker, and the fact that his film is
scheduled to fail is one of the few comforting realities in this story.
A preview audience walks out in disgust
at Brunel’s film, in which Sean Penn and his
dog are brutally shot. Of course, Brunel’s
film, in itself, is a piece of ineffectual hijinks - the shooting bits are supposed to
be “the good bits.” But its relation to What
Just Happened is pretty artful; it’s not just a
McGuffin to get the story rolling.
It is said that for true tragedy you need
both pity and terror. Between the two of
y Ne ws
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What Just Happened
them you get catharsis, which while harrowing, offers an opening for future events.
Well, Brunel’s film is all terror, and the rest
of What Just Happened is all pity. It’s as if
things like the gangster film are needed to
provide real jolts of pure sensation in the
sad world of What Just Happened, where in
fact nothing – or at least nothing truly cathartic - happens.
Instead Ben bombs around Los Angeles conducting Hollywood business from
his jeep, dropping the kids off to school,
and getting in tangles with his ex-wife and
soon-to-be-ex-wife. We see all the accoutrements of contemporary American and
European upper-middle-class life; the angular “modern” mahogany furniture, the
dinky little personal coffee machine in the
morning, and so on. Ben argues in a foolish
sentimental way about his current wife’s
re-upholstery of a chair. It becomes a standard contemporary “eye-catching” red.
It’s partly because of all this junk that
there can be no real terror; life goes on
comfortably enough despite Hollywood
squabbles and family troubles.
Stylistically, the film attains to a
bleached-out elegance, but aspires to the
beauty of David Lynch’s view of Los Angeles in Mulholland Drive, all lights at night
and grand highways. But there is none
of the weirdness that genuinely changes
things in Lynch’s films.
There is, though, a moment of lucky
sublimity at one point of the film. Ben is
bombing along in the jeep again. And Nina
Simone’s lovely “Mr Bojangles” comes on.
This is a real opening – a clear demonstration of the divide between the spiritual
poverty of Ben’s everyday struggles and
something better. One of the people at
the preview of Brunel’s film patronisingly
says the film’s music was great. But I don’t
mean it as a backhanded compliment
when I say that this piece of music was the
best thing in What Just Happened.
It reminded me of an even better moment in The Shawshank Redemption when a
recording of a duet from The Marriage of
Figaro is played by Tim Robbins. Morgan
Freeman, whose commentary we hear,
says he doesn’t know what the women are
singing about, and perhaps it’s better that
he doesn’t know, but that all the prisoners
listening there were, for a brief moment,
free.
As that moment shows, the standard
notion about artistic beauty being a false
escape from the constraints of reality isn’t
the full story. The sadness of What Just
Happened is that the music takes up just a
brief few moments on the road. The great
thing in The Shawshank Redemption is that
the moment of beauty is related to some-
Exa
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title
thing else, the beyond that Robbins and
Freeman reach at the end of the film.
The other points of happiness in this
film are equally chancy, but within the
realm of normal Hollywood business.
Brunel re-cuts the film so that it has an
inoffensive ending. And everybody is over
the moon. It turns out to be dependent on
Brunel’s taking massive amounts of a drug
called Placidium. But everybody’s still
over the moon. (It’s a nice name, but not
as good as Don DeLillo’s comment that
psychiatric drugs are named after the gods
of science fiction: Seroxat, Zyprexa…)
Bruce Willis, playing “himself,” refuses
to cut off his beard for a new role, protesting: “I’m not cutting off my beard! What
about my artistic integrity!” There’s other
good stuff like this, as good as the producer
John Self in Martin Amis’s Money explaining to Spunk Davis why his name might
not go down so well in England. (“It’d be
okay if you were working with an English
actor called, I don’t know, Jizz Jenkins or
something…”).
There is lots of good stuff in this
smoothly done film, but the problem is
that it doesn’t centre around an event,
happy or disastrous, that shapes things
to come. It would be better called (along
with most ordinary life), Stuff That Happened. Rory O’Connor
21
Film reviews
e
22
tions Off
c
ina
Ever since the ultra-realist approach
of Saving Private Ryan, movies about
war have run the risk of presenting such
graphic images that they de-sensitize
their audience, diminishing their impact. Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir
avoids this trap by telling the true-story
of the director’s experience of the 1982
Israel-Lebanon war through animation.
Using this device, the unique documentary explores the fragile nature of our
memory, and seeks to provide an honest
account of the Israeli troop’s involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre,
which occurred shortly after the fall of
Beirut.
At the beginning of the film Folman is
talking with an old friend in a bar about
a recurring dream his friend keeps having, tied to his memories of the war. The
conversation sparks an interest in the
filmmaker to explore why he cannot
remember much of his own wartime
experience, and so he sets off on a trip
to interview old comrades and piece together his past.
Part of what makes Waltz With Bashir
so effective is that, because these people
and events are real, there is no possibility of the archetypal characters often
present in war movies. That is not to say
the figures interviewed are unrecognisable, as the movie presents the psychology of young men with a rare depth and
honesty. The potent mix of sexual desire,
boyish fears and the pressure to prove
one’s masculinity explains the actions
of the young men, while also showing
their lack of understanding towards the
conflict. They play air guitar with their
Fernando Meirelles
starring
Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover
running time
120 minutes
rifles and sing songs of their exploits,
while at all times the threat of death and
destruction hangs over them.
Part of the credit for achieving this
complexity must go to art director and
illustrator David Polonsky, who creates
a visually arresting world that pulls you
into the story. The animation is on a par
with films such as A Scanner Darkly and
Persepolis, an impressive achievement
given the lack of any source material to
work from. The beauty and detail of the
images are often enough to keep you entertained, in particular the flare-lit flashback sequence that recurs throughout
the film and is instrumental in Folman’s
desire to remember the past.
Indeed at some points the images are
a little too stunning and intellectually
stimulating, neglecting the emotions
involved. This could be because it iss
not about the conflict itself, but the psychological consequences that traumatic
events have on us. It wouldn’t suit the
project of the film to try and tug on emotional heartstrings, as the focus here is
on our memory, not on objective truth
or any political standpoint.
In fact, just at the point where there is
a risk of becoming numb to the rich imagery on display, the film switches to real
footage of the massacre, underlining the
seriousness of the subject matter. This
change of mediums also provides a resolution to the film, subtly demonstrating
that both the soldier and filmmaker in
Ari Folman have come to terms with the
massacre. This personal progress provides the perfect ending to a truly engaging work of cinema. Patrick Gray
III
ce
90 minutes
director
ff
running time
T
Ari Folman, Ron Ben-Yishai, Ronny Dayag
Blindness
There should be a rule against film
adaptations of great literary works.
They never seem to live up to expectations. Surely having such source material should yield likewise quality films,
yet this is rarely the case. In 1974, with a
screenplay penned by Francis Ford Coppola, The Great Gatsby was brought to
the big screen with Robert Redford, Mia
Farrow, and Bruce Dern as the lead actors. Sounds good on paper, but the final
product, while not a bad film, failed in
comparison to the classic novel.
The trend in filmmaking today seems
to be the desire to continually look backwards. Half the movies made nowadays
are remakes, sequels, or book adaptations. Outside of a few interesting directors, mainstream cinema seems to be
stuck in a maelstrom of mediocrity with
no end in sight. With Blindness, Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant
Gardener) adapts Nobel Prize-winning
author José Saramago’s 1995 novel of
the same name and the resulting product, like 1974’s The Great Gatsby, is not a
bad film, but rather bland and lacklustre
when compared to the original text.
The opening of the film is oddly presented through gross overacting as we
are introduced to a mysterious epidemic, a “white blindness”, which is passed
through contact with infected individuals. As you can imagine, the few cases
of blindness quickly become a total
outbreak before the government reacts
by containing all infected persons in
an abandoned mental institution. The
film focuses on the unnamed “Doctor”
(Mark Ruffalo), who loses sight after
inations O
starring
II.1
nity New
Tri
s
title
am
Ari Folman
y Ne ws
Ex
director
it
rin
m
Waltz With Bashir
Exa
title
examining a contaminated patient, and
his wife (Julianne Moore), who, for an
unexplained reason, is immune to the
epidemic. They are the first to be transported to the containment area, and as
the film spends most of its time inside
the institution, we witness the deterioration of morality and civilisation as
more infected individuals arrive, with
the loss of sight correlating to a loss of
identity. A rivalry within the institution
is sparked by the violent actions of the
Ward Three inmates (led by Gael Garcia
Bernal), who, after stealing all the food,
demands jewellery and women from
the other wards. This back and forth between good and bad continues turgidly
until it is revealed that the gates to the
outside are open. The Doctor, his wife,
and a small group of others make their
way through the now apocalyptic city
until reaching their house, where, after a
few days, one man – the first to lose his
sight – regains it, thus suggesting hope
for the rest.
Blindness wants to be thought provoking, but how can it be when the film
doesn’t ask the audience any questions?
All the film really does is make the viewer ask when it will be over. Other than
that, the film plods along and loses the
quality that made Saramago’s novel brilliant. Blindness feels much longer than
its two-hour running time suggests. Perhaps this is because of the plot’s predictability: from almost the first scene you
can anticipate what is to come. And, if
this can be any sort of consolation to the
viewer, you will most likely be right with
your guesses. Christopher Kelly
tn2
CD Reviews
Los Campesinos!
title
We are beautiful, we are doomed
label
Wichita Recordings
myspace
myspace.com/loscampesinos
ity Ne
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artist
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Airbourne. Like Metallica but not successful. This heavy rock band, whose
sound is cited on Wikipedia as “pub
rock”, seem to have carefully constructed themselves in Metallica’s image. The
band’s logo is suspiciously Metallicalike, as is their appearance and music.
It seems impossible to envisage how
anyone but sweaty, paunchy, middleaged men who wanted to be rock stars
back in the 1980’s could ever listen to
this music. I am presumably one of the
few people on this planet who has had
the aural misfortune to listen to Runnin’
Wild in its entirety. Every track sounds
exactly the same, they are the same
tone, usually in the same key, use the
same monotonous riffs and all feature
mindless and repetitive drum-bashing.
The only marginally entertaining
feature of this album are the lyrics, and
by extension, the song titles. They veer
from the unintentionally ironic: “Too
Much, Too Young, Too Fast”, to the
inappropriately abbreviated: “What’s
Eatin’ You” to my favourite: “Cheap
Wine and Cheaper Women”. If a mem-
min
myspace.com/airbourne
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myspace
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Roadrunner/EMI
ations
label
min
Runnin’ Wild
xa
title
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Airbourne
crash-bang-wallop of brutalised bass
and guitar. It’s about as far a cry from
‘Death To Los Campesinos!’ as you can
get, a song whose excessive chirpiness
made me concur oh so loudly with
its title. They don’t sacrifice melody
entirely, though. ‘Heart Swells/Pacific
Daylight Time’ is all sumptuous drifts of
strings, ambient effects and perfectlychosen piano notes. It’s a moment so
grown-up musically that you could be
listening to Sparklehorse. But the shrill,
the manic and the chaotic is what Los
Campesinos! are all about on this LP.
Time-signatures fight amongst themselves, harmonies jabber like seagulls,
and the lyrical punchline (‘Your
parents/Your disgusting parents’) are
all worthy of The Young Knives at their
most acerbic. Closer ‘All Your Kayfabe
Friends’ disrupts the tone of the album
by trying to revisit the happier territory
of their debut, but We Are Beautiful, We
Are Doomed is too assured a follow-up
for this to ruin proceedings. Given that
the sessions that spawned this LP were
meant to be for B-sides, album number
three should be a real killer. And, at the
rate they’re going, it’ll probably come
out next week. Tim Smyth
s
artist
E
Every bit as hyperactive as their fondness for shouting and glockenspielbashing would suggest, the Cardiff
septet lash back with a second LP a
mere eight months after their debut.
But if Hold On Now, Youngster… was all
Enid Blyton-y frolics (‘Seven Get Overexcited In The Studio’), then this one is
more like ‘Seven Ease to Lead Singer’s
Love-Related Lamentations’. If that
was all there was to it, though, Gareth
Los Campesinos! might just be a betterfringed Brian Molko. A first glance
seems to bear that out: songs have titles
like ‘Documented Minor Emotional
Breakdown #1’, and the album’s opening couplet runs ‘I think it’s fair to say
I chose hopelessness/And inflicted it
on the rest of us’. But in fact, he has
become an altogether more Hamlety
and interesting character over the last
few months. In place of tales of mischief
is a disturbing fixation on blood, vomit
and the revolting bodiliness of being.
Musically, too, things have gotten far
more compelling. They’ve developed
a new love of rupturing the sort of
smooth, bright textures they were so
fond of on their debut. ‘Ways To Make
It Through The Wall’ opens with a
I
ber of Airbourne wanted to pay for sex,
I would imagine that he would find it
impossible to get someone to sleep with
him for less than the price of a cheap
bottle of wine. This logic seems beyond
Airbourne, who energetically scream
out this phrase over and over again, lost
in the dream of rock ‘n’ roll excess that
died out circa 1986 and survives today
solely in the form of Steve Coogan’s
Saxondale box set.
After listening to the entire of Runnin’
Wild, the average listener might have
had enough torture to content themselves. But Airbourne are evidently concerned that 34.40 minutes of unoriginal
heavy metal may not be enough, so they
include a special bonus DVD as well.
Seeing as well as hearing is even worse.
Stick to the CD if you must at all. This is
the sort of music that they must use for
torture in Guantanemo Bay. It is mindless, outdated and utterly unoriginal. It
is rare to describe an album as torturous,
but if ever there was one, this is it. If you
like this, there is something seriously
wrong with you. Catriona Gray
23
24
tn2

TN2 Low Res Issue 5

Transcription

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