A mixed-up – yet highly watchable – comedy-thriller. The cartoonish lead makes it hard to believe this is a ‘true story’ (always a dodgy claim) more interested, as he is, in blaming someone than catching the serial killer-rapist. More incompetent than corrupt, his character arc to professional is hard to believe and the comedy’s too disruptive for the thriller to work.
But still a well worth watching 7.5 out of 10.
Vozvraschenie (The Return)……Ruang Rak Noi Nid Mahasan (Last Life in the Universe)

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Katharine’s spotted the weather girl who can’t be named (at London Euston). I know ‘weather girl’ is a little patronising, but hey, they deserve it (especially this one). I first mentioned this celebrity way back in March, when I’d only just started blogging and soon started getting loads of visits from (I imagine sad, older, male) people looking for naked, nude topless (you know). Then in early April I just happened to mention how surprisingly popular she is and now, well, there’s a definite spike in my stats whenever she’s on TV.

Ever helpful, I’ve added links to a dating agency to the original post.

Anyway. This is for those gentlemen who prefer the older woman. Katharine reports that’s she’s no different in the flesh and today she was wearing a flowery pink dress with pink cardigan. You be excited to learn that her companion was also an older blonde, this time in a raincoat. I’m afraid that in the absence of the photos you seek, you’ll have to ‘meditate’ on that.

Too honest for the weather……***** ******** naked… or nude perhaps……‘Celebrity worship essential’, say scientists

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Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s convoy made a grand (in a third world sort of way) sight on the lunchtime news as the old man headed for Najaf. An expert at keeping his powder dry, he always refused to meet Paul Bremmer when he ran Iraq for the US, saying the Iraqi people should decide the country’s future. Democracy rather than theocracy has seemed to be Sistani’s thing, with the other side to his non-interventionism being a toleration of young radicals, like Moqtada al Sadr.

But things have gotten way out of hand and forced him into play. Saying he wants no guns in the holy city (though his convoy was well protected), he’s called on Iraqis to march on Najaf. The idea of thousands filling the streets to break the siege and reclaim the temples certainly sounds Ghandi-ish. What fun.

Those other Iraq pictures……Getting some focus on Iraq war aims……US not godly enough for Iraqis

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Katharine and I come over all queer at the thought of camping so we commuted from Manchester to Staffordshire for the V Festival. And we were pretty pleased with ourselves: it took an hour (to the minute) to get the main gate and the same again from there to home (don’t tell plod).

Anyway. A festival’s strength must be that you get to see people you wouldn’t normally bother with and regular readers will know what I think of Pink, who happened to be on the main stage on our arrival. And she was good – if flawed – fun and got a good size crowd that more than justified her ranking. Pop was to be the theme for the day as we took the tough (some might say bizarre) decision to see Jamelia rather than Faithless (but then pop’s so much more ephemeral; it has to grabbed). And this was pop of the highest quality coming on to the near perfect Superstar and rattling through her set – including a version of Coldplay’s Clocks – with real confidence (although she didn’t have to keep reminding us it’s all on the album).

That led well into a faultless Human League set running from Lebanon to Don’t You Want Baby via Mirror Man, Love Action, Keep Feeling Fascination etc in a way that proved this is where electropop starts. Leaving the JJB Puma Arena we made our way to Tim Booth, former James frontman, on the Music Choice Stage. Last time we saw him it was at a sold out MEN Arena, but this was a more intimate what-do-you-think-of-the-new-stuff affair. Very James-like it was too and none the worse for that.

However, good though Tim was, abandoning the other tent was to prove a big tactical error. We couldn’t get back in for Kelis, with the crowd outside as large as that in. At a bit of loose end we wandered back past Dido who was offering the usual bland, but popular with fifty-quid man stuff, to see who was replacing a bereaved Jet. It was a popular Embrace. Not quite our thing, but we stuck around for a bit, before returing to the tent in the hope of making Basement Jaxx. But the crowd had swollen with at least three times as many outside the tent as in. V’s failure to get the billing right could not have been more stark.

Eventually we gave up and joined Muse on the main stage. They were truly dreadful, rightly commanding a far smaller audience than Pink had early afternoon. Failing to make the slightest effort to engage with the audience they went from near identical song to near identical song barely missing a beat. It was like watching a bunch of teenagers messing around with keyboards in a mate’s bedroom. So on to Kings of Leon, who had a reasonable crowd and were obviously more lively than Muse. Yet sadly with half-an-hour to go, the biggest crowd was in the car park.
V Festival 2004: Saturday……V Festival appears through the rain……Write songs like Pink

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Supermum’s gotten cross over the Daily Mail’s take on asylum. Yet by the Mail’s standards it’s a relatively straight piece. All the stuff that riles is between the lines. It’s all about rubbishing statistics in order to replace them with anecdotes (the anecdotal is easier for readers to relate to and even easier to manipulate than apparently slippery statistics).

Those anecdotes confuse refugees (blaggers) and economic migrants (scroungers) and tell how our schools are swamped, by these diseased folk who should be locked up as many are terrorists anyway. The paper then expresses surprise that people think asylum is a problem out of control.

But people don’t buy the Daily Mail for these stories. All the scary stuff is absorbed alongside the coffee break page, with its horoscopes, crosswords and more importantly femail; women readers are the Mail’s backbone despite the heavy traditionalism of its editorial. And this is where Daily Mail Watch (which missed the asylum story) goes wrong. This front page is actually an example of the high quality journalism that’s placed the Mail at the top of its tree (the Mail’s one the few papers to invest heavily in editorial while flagging rivals, like the The Express, have cut back). Here we have a sympathetic treatment of the nation’s fallen hero (including great photo) with a five star human interest story; (Michael Buerk’s father was a bigamist: wow!).

Vengeful tabloids……Express dumps Tony… but who knew they were friends?

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V didn’t hit the ground running quite as quickly as last year, but it did the business nevertheless. We arrived to find our near neighbour, Damon Gough, on stage in Badly Drawn Boy guise and a little too folksy for me. Then came the disappointment of no-show Roni Size. I don’t know who it was who came on in his stead and mumbled ‘No Roni Size’ before doing something reasonably interesting. But the crowd weren’t having it; half walked out the others booed (all a bit unfair, but there you go).

That did mean that we caught The Thrills (who were most pleasant), before heading on to a very overcrowded NME Stage for the Scissor Sisters, who sounded great even from the distance. This was only the first time a major organisational flaw in this year’s V Festival was to be revealed. Too many acts were on the wrong stage at the wrong time: Scissor Sisters’ crowd stretched right back to the Strongbow Rooms (DJ sets). I could write an ‘I was wrong’ (and may still do) on the Scissor Sisters, because my first reaction to that initial strangled Bee Gee offering was far from positive. But they’ve more than grown on me; it’s good fun, but intelligent dance music that works well live. They’ve been easily dismissed after being compared to the wrong people: like glam rock icons Roxy Music (who they’re nothing like) rather than the B-52’s (of whom they sound and look like direct decedents).

N*E*R*D also went on to surpass expectations and to easily dominate the main stage. This was hip-hop with rocking guitars and that’s what made the transition to live so convincing. And after that it was left to The Pixies to harden things up in preparation for The Strokes. And while this band’s New York sound unmistakably owes a huge debt to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, there’s nothing retro here. Lead singer Julian Casablancas’ patter was a little heavy on the ‘God bless yous’, but this was a relaxed and commanding performance.

V Festival 2004: Sunday……V Festival appears through the rain……‘Celebrity worship essential’, say scientists……Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love

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Goldie Lookin’ Chain’s Guns don’t kill people, rappers do is a bit of fun, but I can’t help wondering if there’s some inadvertent truth in the humour. I’m listening while reading HM Government’s Preparing for emergencies (e.g. what to do when al-Qaeda hit this place) and thinking of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine: the one with Bush saying, ‘Today the Justice Department did issue a ‘Blanket Alert’… in recognition of a general threat… etc.’.

Bowling for Columbine’s often read as a simplistic anti-gun movie, but Moore goes elsewhere. Canadians have even more guns than their neighbours, he explains, yet don’t shoot each other in the US sty-lie. In Moore’s world it’s a culture of fear that breeds violence; stranger-danger, it-could-be-you… kill or be killed. Similarly, while I often enjoy hip-hop from the safety of my middle class life, there’s no doubting that it does explore an often violent culture and that exploration can be mistaken for celebration.

Anyway. Watch the video…buy the record.

Avril Lavigne songwriters paid by the word?……Scared and scary

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US election spend tops $300m; result a big fat zero. Both Bush and Kerry should be gutted at the finding that their $300m adspend has bought them nothing. But what could be more naïve than following a popular, yet lazy strategy, that has tended to fail more times than it’s succeeded.

That strategy is, of course, the negative ad campaign. (And it doesn’t matter if Bush supporters started it with a look at Kerry’s war record or Michael Moore did it.) It’s popular (and self indulgent) because we all like a bit of knockabout with our rivals and politicos can’t resist revealing ‘truths’ about each other. But say McDonalds ran a ‘truth about Burger King’ campaign and BK hit back with the ‘truth about McDonald’s’. The most likely winner would be KFC. Outside of politics marketers concentrate on positive reasons to buy and politicians need to learn from that.

For the politically active, politics is life and few understand that those outside their world live to a different beat (and they need to recognise that the non-political aren’t stupid). As Michael Wolff told the FT here, (back in May when positive European campaigns were promised, but didn’t happen); ‘They (the main political parties) talk to themselves and advertise at the other party. It all goes swirling by most people.’

If Bush gives America half a dozen reasons not to vote Kerry and Kerry gives America half a dozen reasons not to vote Bush, all America’s left with is a dozen reasons not to vote. And on this side of the Atlantic it’s what drives people to new whacko parties like UKIP/BNP.

Naïve Marketing Strategies#5: Pet owners aren’t stupid……Chocolate Hobnobs: luxury or standard issue?

McDonald’s Salad Plus……R.I.P. McDonald’s Vegeburger – long live McDonald’s Quorn Premiere

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Daily Mail Watch is on the lookout for contributors after running short of steam fairly early on. This is a shame because I think there’s definitely a market for a blog like that. Of course in Manchester we have the Evening News, which often makes the Daily Mail look oh-so-moderate.

The M.E.N. was on the paedophile trail long before the nationals, publishing names and addresses in first editions and getting photos of the angry mob in time for that day’s final. Less informed readers may have thought it was following the Mail’s lead last Saturday with its own condemnation of Primrose (wife of mass murderer Harold) Shipman’s pension. But the M.E.N. has always gone further. On Harold’s suicide the paper printed numerous photos of the family and made sure anyone who might be interested knew where they live, his son’s university and other stuff for the misguidedly vengeful.

Yet the Manchester Evening News is not what it was. There was a time when its profits kept the Guardian going, but now its name’s gone from the company letterhead (Guardian & Manchester Evening News is now Guardian Media Group). Circulation’s failing as it concentrates on the curmudgeonly older reader: complaining daily about young people, public art and that things ain’t-wot-they-used-to-be (thank goodness). It’s a shame for such a youthful and forward looking city to be saddled with such a mouthpiece.

Before there was blogging

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…I’ve very much enjoyed the New Yorker’s dismissal of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves, for which I must thank Gordon McLean. It’s very brave of Truss’s publishers to go stateside (I guess they’re emboldened by huge success over here) because Americans have far higher standards of English. The New Yorker rightly questions the value of a book supposedly written to uphold British English to an American audience and then explains that where Truss has attempted a comparison, she’s often got the US usage wrong.

I’ve been lucky enough to work for a number of American businesses and, unlike their British counterparts, they pay real attention to detail and many can actually write themselves. Over here you get directors (often within FTSE100 companies) suggesting stuff be placed in quotes for emphasis (I’ve been tempted to ask why we’re so unsure of ourselves). But Americans know their stuff and you can’t get away with anything. Tell them that’s the British usage and rather than run away, they expect an impromptu lecture (to which they listen attentively… oh dear).

Anyway. The New Yorker article moves on from demolishing Truss to a good discussion of the writer’s voice and Gordon (whose blog’s clean design is to be very much admired) ask how hyperlinks can be incorporated into punctuation. I think it would be good to see rules developed here, but suspect that hyperlinks will remain a question of style rather than grammar for sometime to come.

BOOK REVIEW: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

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