London-based indie rock band The Boxer Rebellion are proof that even in the fragile, fickle beast of the music industry, sometimes, with enough belief, a strong unity of purpose and most importantly a huge blessing of talent, the good does finally triumph. Russell Mardell interviews the band’s Todd Howe Independent since their only record label […]
Pop Goes Literature: The Decemberists
An authentic literary sensibility in pop music is rare but according to Ben Granger The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy has more than enough to share Pop music and literature are two separate miracles, the silent shout and the screamed secret, two wonders working to their own, different and divided rules. Each has seductive thrills of its […]
Civil Rites: A Play For Us By Us
Vanessa Liberad Garcia reports on Company of Angels, the Los Angeles theatre group committed to connecting with the community When one of my best friends, Baby Dewds (aka talented theatre actress Dani O’Terry), invited me to watch a play in Downtown Los Angeles called Civil Rites, I was excited. She and I are both staunch […]
Monster’s Ball: Trouble in the Congo
Greg Houle reviews Jason Stearns’ troubled history of the Congo Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa. In one of the final chapters of Jason K. Stearns’ significant new book Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War […]
Coast Guards: Laurent Gbagbo and the French
US Senator James Inhofe equates French involvement in Côte d’Ivoire with a history of colonialism. Greg Houle argues why he’s wrong For somebody who constantly boasts about his knowledge and understanding of the African continent, US Senator James Inhofe (R – Oklahoma) sounds shockingly naïve when addressing the recent events in Ivory Coast which has […]
Isn’t It Good? Norwegian Wood
Although not the first screen adaptation of his work, Norwegian Wood opens a potential floodgate of cinematic versions. Does Murakami survive or get lost in translation? Declan Tan finds out Anh Hung Tran’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s 1987 novel Norwegian Wood is one of those films that leaves you seeking out the source material. Perhaps […]
The Way We War: In Our Name
In Our Name is a contemporary British war drama starring a host of TV actors. Declan Tan assesses whether this works for or against the film Brian Welsh’s second feature, starring those recognisable but unnamable faces from a spectrum of Britain’s most loved/hated evening programmes, manages all the feel and finish of some of those […]
Chib Club: Peter Mullan: Neds
Declan Tan takes a second look at Peter Mullan’s tale of Glasgow gangs on the eve of its DVD release Neds (short for Non-Educated Delinquents) charts the viscous trickle of one gifted boy’s eventual adhesion to the 1970s Glaswegian gang culture, a fate that Peter Mullan (writer-director) now into his third feature, so narrowly avoided […]
Peter Watkins, The Universal Clock and the Monoform
Writer and director Peter Watkins has dedicated his career to exploring the limits of docudrama filmmaking. After the BBC suppressed transmission of The War Game in 1965, most of Watkins work has been produced in Scandinavia and British interest in subsequent films has been curiously absent. Declan Tan investigates why Peter Watkins’ directorial work, since […]
The French Connection: Grosso Point Blank
Real-life drug-busting narc Sonny Grosso was the inspiration for The French Connection, advised Coppola on The Godfather and cruised gay bars with Pacino. Story by Tina Bexson A dozen or so shiny, black suits and their flashy women were enjoying the exotic floor show of Manhattan’s Copacabana nightclub, whilst the slick-haired man at the head […]
For Your Eyes Only: The Illustrated Bond
Titan books have released their second omnibus of the Daily Express comic strips based on Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Francis J. Okolo gives the debrief A cursory flick through the illustrations in this wonderful collection sends you hurtling back to a pre-swinging-’60’s London of oak-panelled offices, old school ties and gentlemen’s clubs. John McLusky’s drawings prove a prescient […]
Ballard in Shanghai
Chris Hall revisits J.G. Ballard’s childhood and finds the future in the past The opening of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1984) has young Jim watching British war propaganda films with fellow choristers in the crypt of the Holy Trinity church in Shanghai, which was designed by George Gilbert Scott and built in the […]
Roberto Bolaño: Nazi Literature in the Americas
Published a few years before the works that made him a posthumous literary superstar, Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas is an evasive, hybrid beast. Ben Granger gets to grips with it This arcane curiosity of a book – first published in Roberto Bolaño’s native Chile a few years before more his more famous […]
Refractions In The Looking Glass: Peter Weissman
Like many of his generation Peter Weissman recalls the ‘60s as a halcyon period of his life and, like his peers, came of age during this revolutionary era marked by social, cultural and political change, relayed in the memoir, I Think, Therefore Who Am I? Dolly Delightly investigates Peter Weissman was involved in both the […]
Imaginary World: An Interview with Sade Adeniran
Nigerian author Sade Adeniran self-published her first novel, Imagine This, and went on to win the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel. She took time out from working on her second book to tell Mary-Claire Wilson how she did it, what inspires her and why she prefers Mills & Boon Imagine a self-published book by […]
Reflections On An Omnivorous Visualization System: An Interview With Matthew Ritchie
This dialogue between Matthew Ritchie and Thyrza Nichols Goodeve first appeared in the catalogue for the artist’s exhibition Proposition Player, organized by Lynn M. Herbert, December 12, 2003-March 14, 2004, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in association with Hatje Cantz Publications Many thanks to Thyrza Nichols Goodeve for permission to republish I always thought the best […]
Matthew Barney 95
SUSPENSION [Cremaster] SECRETION [pearl] SECRET [biology] by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve “…what others call form I experience as force” – Roland Barthes LAYER 1: SUSPENSION Begin with iridescence and force. A force without form or home or convention, almost more like “a diagram without a will” (1) – suspended and hung. Send it at a line, […]
Correspondence: The European Peripheral
A Letter from Malmö by Maria Tonini Some time ago, on a cold Saturday evening, a friend suggested to go and see Momus, the Scottish singer and provocateur, who was holding a gig in the tiny basement room of a popular bar. The room was really, really small, and I had not heard about the […]
Correspondence: Borrowed Memories of Tibet
A Letter to Lhasa by Tsering Norbu In exile you are bound in time with endless knots of history and fate to live in the distant memories of your land and people. Borrowed memories of vast expanses of green pastures where yaks and sheep grazed under the clear turquoise sky where cranes flew with the […]
Gender: Sexual Minorities In India: A Political Issue
A report on the changing nature of sexuality in India by Maria Tonini The status of sexual minorities in today’s India is in a state of transition after homosexual sex was decriminalised in 2009. While the legal judgment can be framed as a move towards a more inclusive and secular society where religious beliefs against […]
Giving and Taking: Arts Funding and Philanthropy
In the wake of this month’s funding announcements by the Arts Council of England, Joseph Spencer offer an American perspective on the philanthropic model for the arts As the arts in Britain undergo significant changes to their funding structures, debates are sparking up as to alternatives that could save the hundreds of galleries, orchestras, theater […]
Media and Tech: Data Exhaust and Consumption Tracking
Vanessa Zainzinger follows the breadcrumbs to tomorrow’s tracking trends Chances are high that you have already used Google today. As you typed in what you were looking for, scanned through the results and clicked on the link you needed, you provided Google with plenty of valuable information. To an extent, you have influenced which links […]
Creative Industries: Bookbinding: Saviours of The Lost Art
Jeanette Hewitt learns about a different kind of book technology from Judith Wiesner In a time where digital technology appears to be taking over the world, I deemed it necessary to pay closer attention to a more hands on, artistic approach to our crafts, to find out if our paper bound books are a dying […]
Ben Kono: Crossing (Nineteen Eight Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger Nu-jazz, purportedly Asian influenced owing to multi-instrumentalist Kono’s (Japanese, I believe) heritage, however my immediate overall impression was of a fairly straightforward Western blend. ‘Castles and Daffodils’ opens the record to rambling effect; originally a paean to a downcast Stanley Kunitz poem, the originally effect was scrapped and re-engineered as an […]
Runner Runner: Runner Runner (Capitol Records)
Reviewed by Eric Saeger More depleted pop soil for the grind from the latest entry in the endless procession of SoCal mall-punk bands, a resource more abundant in nature than carbon emissions from cow farts. I don’t spend a lot of time smoking joints in the back seat of mom’s Toyota these days, but I’m […]
