I am not cynical, I simply know better.

[alexsarll]

I think I may well abandon my leisurely progress through the critically-adored comic Love and Rockets. At the very least, I think I'll start skipping Gilbert Hernandez' contributions; I've never enjoyed his stuff as much as his brother Jaime's, but with Poison River he's finally lost me. It feels like I've seen everything here before, except done with a lighter hand, and with mildly less ludicrous breasts on the women. That said, Jaime's on probation; his characters' breasts increasingly seem to be rivalling those on Gilbert's women, and the whole lesbian adult baby subplot in Wigwam Bam seemed to owe an awful lot more to his own interests than to the demands of the story or characters.

Watching the Depeche Mode documentary 'Sometimes You Do Need Some New Jokes' I realise how few albums there are about which I'd watch a whole programme, and then what a small proportion of those albums are ever likely to get such treatment; somehow I suspect nobody will ever make a film about the making of Jack's Pioneer Soundtracks. Music for the Masses is one of the few albums to fulfil both requirements. It was the moment of Depeche Mode's ascent to the highest level, or rather, the last gate through which they passed before reaching that destination, because the programme runs up to the enormous California concert filmed as 101, and it's then that you see the transfiguration, the moment that the Basildon boys who've been making puzzlingly dark and powerful heavy pop for some years finally emerge as Stars. And then, though it's barely stated outright, you see them realise that now they've won, what do they do next? And right there, I think you have the genesis of Dave Gahan's near-fatal substance abuse issues.

After all the fuss made by Love SWP Music Hate liberal democracy Racism et al over David Cameron's clumsily phrased but hardly random complaints about violent lyrics in hip hop, I was pleased to see Sway in today's Metro saying that he broadly agreed with the strangely smooth-faced Tory leader.

Finished the first season of sweary Lovejoy western Deadwood last night. Like most HBO dramas, it's an ongoing lesson in just how good TV can be, but even having been brilliant throughout, the last episode somehow managed to go up a gear. The strange thing is, the last thing that happens in the final episode is something we've known will happen from pretty much the first episode - and yet, it still feels dramatic. Plus, in the meantime we've had various other plotlines set up, laid out, and then drawn together at the end, catching the viewer up like some stealthily-planted net. The performances are uniformly excellent, but even so, none of the actors is carrying a weakly-scripted character, or a mere plot function; like Charlie Brooker says, everyone here is a totally believable character. Believable, but larger than life; for all the grime and squalor in HBO dramas, they are never merely 'grim'n'gritty' like Mike Leigh or somesuch drivel. They're about the highs and the lows of human experience, the greatest and the worst of which we're capable, and above all about how the two aren't as separate as we might like. Well, except for Sex & the City, which was mainly about shoes.

Comments

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Deadwood seems fantastic from what I've seen. I'm waiting for Screen Fvcking Select to send me playable discs of episode 4 onwards.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You mean, your original copy was defective?

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

Well, I rented disc 1 off them, that worked, disc 2 arrived the other day scratched to fvck. I HATE other customers of online DVD rentals things. Some inconsiderate cvnt who left the disc on the table overnight, no doubt.

[the-roofdog.livejournal.com]

I both love and am terrified by your icon.
But yes, it amazes me how people manage to scratch these things when in practice it's really pretty difficult to do so, even when you're trying. We're not talking about vinyl records here.

[the-roofdog.livejournal.com]

And regarding SATC, I refer you to this.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

FEAR.

[(Anonymous)]

love shaun wright-phillips??????

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Who?

[spyinthehaus.livejournal.com]

Sway broadly agreed except he felt that Cameron had targeted objets prooduced by black Britons rather than any number of art forms funded and produced by less obviously dusky Islanders. That's quite broad.

Aat this point I want to see Kim Howells and David Cameron kissing. That woould end hip-hop once and for all.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It would also end any chance of my ever sleeping again. But Sway, yes, he objected to some aspects of what Cameron said, and rightly - without claiming that hip hop was wholly blameless, as many have.

[fille-a-paris.livejournal.com]

Come on. Shoes and typing cliched questions into a computer whilst smoking a fag and drinking a cosmo (really, I've seen it done - I own all the series).

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I did like it at first, for a series or two, before it became all relationshippy and baby-addled.