Paperjam

At long last, Lars von Trier's Manderlay is out in the UK. But if you are planning to go and see it, act quickly because I doubt it will be around for long. That is if you are able to find somewhere showing it. Although the film is on release from yesterday, unless you happen to live in London, screenings are few and far between.

For all you Midlands dwellers, the only place showing the film around here is the Cineworld on Broad Street in Birmingham and that is not until March 24th.

I would certainly recommend taking the time to track it down though as the indications are that it will be well worth the effort. The middle part of a potential trilogy (following Dogville) the film delves further into the dark heart of human nature and satirises more of what von Trier sees as American foibles. This time the continuing character, Grace, attempts a bit of regime change in a town where slavery is still enforced. With, I imagine, unforseen and not all together successful results.

The film is shot in the same style as Dogville (ie on a blank soundstage with few props and little scenery), which previously added an unreal quality to the bleak drama as it unfolded. John Hurt also returns to provide the god-like narration.

You can find more details on the Manderlay web site, which also houses the trailer.

...for this, the most worthless error type message of all time. Hang on I'll just pop over to LA so I can watch that Morrissey video.

Wankers.

Here's the second installment of Adam and Lee's TV podcast, full of swearing and pain.

This week they have a pop at the televisual trepanning that is Hotel Babylon and the annual joy that is Making Your Mind Up, the pre-Eurovision Wogan-fest that features various desperately grinning soon-to-be-ex-popstars dredged from yesterdays Top 40.

Also they dig through the wonder of the Armstrongs (swearaholic Coventry couple own double-glazing firm and somehow manage not to go out of business despite drowning in ineptitude) and the relative series lengths of Ally MacBeal and Boston Legal. Is it 17 episodes? Is it 22? Gawd knows!

Needless to say there's lots of swearing and full-blown Coventry accents, so watch out for that.

One thing, possibly the only thing, actually, that Jim (Morrissey fan and grim indie-loving chap) and I (electrodisco-loving hands-in-the-air dance person) agree on in the vast and frequently stinky field of music is that LCD Soundsystem Are The Shit. Also James Murphy is the sort of frontman (35, slight paunch) that we feel we could be. End every line with a Mark E. Smith "...aH!" and mess your hair up a bit, there you go.

The LCD production wing, the DFA, seem to remix something every ten seconds, and somehow they all seem to be quality, if fairly similar. It goes like this : Take a track. Strip out most of the original music, leaving the vocals. Add impossibly funky but straightforward tight disco drums. Mix in some handclaps, agogos, bongos, and anything else you can find lying around in that school percussion box. Extend the track so it lasts about three weeks - the listener will have to make sure that they are ready to spend that time furiously dancing, until the finale when they are just leaping up and down screaming "COME ON!" as the whole thing judders to a squalling, climatic and hip-shaking finale.

Goldfrapp's "Slide In" is exactly like that, only imagine it taking place onboard a train to a particularly disco part of the Weimar Republic. Vocals are dispensed with after about five minutes, reflex arse-shaking will have kicked in after seven minutes, your mind will have shutdown after nine, and you may need hospitalisation when it finally ends, at 12 minutes 51 seconds.

Adam, the man who doesn't like anything says, "it's just too long", but it really isn't. It's really the ebb-and-flow that Murphy and Goldsworthy have absolutely nailed. The track doesn't consistently build, it quietens down, has a bit of a think, gets in a bit of a mood, sorts itself out and then brings the noise for the ending. I imagine they've set themselves a target, to try and out-epic the Patrick Cowley mix of "I feel love", and I think they've done it.

It appears on the b-side of their recent single "Ride a White Horse", although I can't guarantee it's the full version, which I know appeared on a promo 12". Have a listen to a chunk of it over at Juno.co.uk.

Really I'm not joking. Tom and I went last week and were distinctly underwhelmed. For a black-comedy/thriller it was un-funny, distinctly lacking in thrills and almost morbidly sentimental at times.

Brosnan was clearly having a great laugh playing an unpleasant character and seeing him waking up in a pile of shit was quite amusing (and strangely apt). However, the rest of the movie was as aimless as his accent, leading to a denouement that a blind rat locked in a box could have seen coming about a hundred miles off. Greg Kinnear playing some kind of latently psychopathic Ned Flanders character did not help at all. The whole debacle was thrown sharply into relief when I went to watch the excellent Good Night and Good Luck the next day.

As I am told that positive people end up living longer lets try and end this on a high by saying that the titles announcing the locale of various scenes are really very good indeed, full marks there. Plus the bit where Kinnear is giving his wife one on top of the washing machine is one of the more honest sex scenes in modern cinema, particularly his quality "vinegar strokes" facial contortions.

It was a very dark moment for me when my imac broke a few weeks back, and not just because it was the only light source at the time in my sad-looking room. First came denial - there were ultimately fruitless trawls through the techy backwaters of the online mac community looking for a miracle cure.

Next there was anger as the realisation that my hard drive had committed digital hari-kiri dawned, leaving me with a very expensive box that lit up and flashed a beautifully designed question mark at me but did fuck all else.

Finally came acceptance that I had completely lost everything and might as well take the computer in to the mac shop in the Bull Ring to get sorted. Their experts got onto it straight away, as you can see from the image the "Tobemeister" ascertained that the HD was indeed "Fuct" and they put a new one in, while managing to conform to every popular stereotype about IT support types. No complaints from me mind.

There is a reasonable happy end to the story as (despite Apple's evil DRM related attempts to prevent it) there is a way to rescue the many gigs of music off your ipod and get it back onto your mac. It is called iPodRip and it is worth its virtual weight in virtual gold, you can get it here.

Third time lucky for Adam and Lee's TV podcast, and we have some reviews of The Armstrongs, CSI:New York, Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe, The Wire, and Keen Eddie on DVD, which sounds pretty good actually.

Here's the link - Adam and Lee's TV podcast.

Black Ramps were kind enough to send me a copy of their Saucer Crash EP a few weeks back, due to the whole broken computer nightmare having a listen etc has had to wait. But I was able to admire the very nice bowling alley photo on the cover.

The Black Ramps are ploughing that melodic lo-fi furrow for all its worth; a bit scruffy but not really shambolic. Above all they seen to have been taking their Pavement tablets regularly, not necessarily a bad thing, it didn't do Blur any harm.

First track Saucer Crash is an audible Proust's Madeleine; A speedy rhythm section and crashing, clanging guitar over a yelped tale of alien-related girl enlargements, transporting me back to the staffs uni college road student union in the mid-nineties. Sonic Youth and Pavement are blaring out as I get pissed on cans of red stripe and conspicuously fail to arouse any interest in that bird with the tattoo and pink hair despite my dodgy donkey jacket. Oh well, Adidas t-shirt on and off to the Leek road disco nightmare for the next six months then.

Anyway, if Saucer Crash sounds reminiscent of Pavement, then Speak+Destroy sounds exactly like Pavement - a synthesis of Type Slowly and Transport Is Arranged. To my mind this is the best of the three tracks, but then I am a bit miserable.

Finally comes Rampenstein, which didn't do much for me, not as much fun as Saucer Crash and not nearly as dramatic as Speak+Destroy.

So there you have it, one for a bit of 90's nostalgia or for those who like a slightly rough edge to their indie -rock. I'm off to listen to Brighten The Corners. You can get more info on the nifty Black Ramps website, which has a rather cool Starsky And Hutch toy car on it and has other tracks to download plus the Saucer Crash video.