Peter Gabriel at the O2
Posted: Sun 28 March, 2010 Filed under: Music, Reviews(ish) Leave a comment »As has been mentioned before on here, I’m a bit of a fan of Peter Gabriel – not hardcore “all the way back to the 70s”, but I like far more of his stuff than I dislike, and I’ll usually go and see him live. Mind you, I’m gobsmacked that it’s now six years since I’d seen him live – although I did end up missing (OK, not going to) the concert a couple of years back at Blickling Hall in Norfolk.
Anyway, when I saw about tickets coming available for a concert at the O2, I was there. It was in promotion of the “Scratch My Back” album which hadn’t even been released at the time, but *shrug* I don’t worry about things like that.
The gig itself was always going to be slightly strange. Gabriel’s done away with the general band stuff, and instead gone with a total orchestra, stripping down the songs and then orchestrating them. It had been billed as being no support, an hour of the new album, an interval, then another session with older stuff. It didn’t work out quite like that – everything started late, there was then a short (three song) intro by Anna Lünd – who’s also doing a lot of the backing vocals in the rest of the show. At that point the lights went back up, an interval of about ten-fifteen minutes, and then into the Scratch My Back section of the show. A fifteen minute interval that stretched to nearly thirty, then back to the final “older stuff” section.
All that aside though, it was a really good gig. The visuals were really impressive, doing stuff I hadn’t seen before with multi-layered screens, and almost holographic at some points. The sound was fantastic, and the orchestra were stunning. Some of the songs were just fantastic – particularly his versions of Arcade Fire’s “My Body Is A Cage” and Magnetic Fields “Book of Love”. The entire album was done live, which is quite an achievement in itself.
The second section was more of the same, but orchestrated versions of older tracks, including the crowd favourites. There were a couple I wish he’d done as well, but I think that’s always the way when it’s a gig covering nearly forty years of music. But he played (among others) “Digging in the Dirt”, “Signal to Noise”, “Mercy Street”, “Darkness”. “In Your Eyes” and (of course) “Solsbury Hill”, which still managed to be as whimsical as ever.
I’d have loved to see Sledgehammer done in this gig, or Growing Up, but I guess they’d be hard to do in an orchestrated version.
All told, it was a pretty great gig – allbeit a very different one to most of the ones I see, and very different to the previous Peter Gabriel concerts. But still, fantastic to see.
Avatar
Posted: Wed 27 January, 2010 Filed under: Media, Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »After wanting to see it for a while, I finally went to see “Avatar” last night. I even managed to get to see the 3D version, which made it the first “Real3D” film I’ve seen.
In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting much from the film – most of the reviews I’d seen made far more of the technology and so on in the film than of the film itself – but I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, it’s a bit too long, could do with losing about 20 minutes of trite shite, and has some deeply vile sickly-sweet bits for American audiences, but overall it’s pretty damn good.
In fact probably my biggest bugbear with it was the name of the wondrous material that was being mined on Pandora – “Unobtainium”. I mean, please. It’s not unobtainable – it’s fucking difficult to get, fine. Call it “fuckingdifficultium” or something. But “Unobtanium”? Sheesh – just make up something new, don’t try for sounding cool – and miss it by a mile. I do realise there’s a cultural history for calling things Unobtainium – but for a film that’s trying to be fresh and new, it just seems to be something that harks back to the 50s/60s, an in-joke that’s just not very funny.
So yes, there’s little bits that irritate – and the occasional bit of “Look! It’s 3D!” that grates – but in general it’s actually a pretty good film.
The director, James Cameron, has brought in a number of his standard themes – particularly Evil Big Company going ahead with plans at the expense of other less capitalistic influences (survival, global dynamics etc. etc.) – which makes it quite interesting in the current situation with global warming etc., and the awareness of “Going Green”, which is itself quite a major theme of the film.
As for the effects, and the way it’s filmed, I think it probably is one of the more radical developments in film/cinema history – I found myself thinking back to it, wondering how some of the stuff was done at all. In that context, it’s remarkable – in a similar way to when “The Matrix” came out, with effects no-one had really seen before. Avatar’s the same – it’s not quite “the next thing from colour”, but it’s pretty remarkable all the same.
All told, it’s a good film. Not a great one- although that’s really what it aspires to be – but pretty good all the same.
Hunger Games
Posted: Sun 24 January, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Reviews(ish) Leave a comment »Over the Festering Season, I read a book called “Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. It’s written for young adults, but has a lot of levels to the story. For me it’s a better book than Twilight (and much better than the sequels) and with a lot more ideas.
The basic premise is based in an America that’s had some un-named armageddon, and is left with twelve “Districts” ruled over by “The Capitol”, which is portrayed as a decadent seat of government while the Districts are much poorer, but all their produce goes to support the Capitol. The Hunger Games themselves are an annual televised event where a boy and girl from each of the Districts is selected by Lottery to be the Champions for the District, and are then put against each other in an arena, forced to survive and kill the others until only one winner remains.
It’s got a lot of very subversive ideas within the book, and I was really impressed by it, so I’ve also bought the second part of the trilogy, called “Catching Fire“, which I’ve just finished. Again, very subversive, continuing the themes of the evil Government that cares nothing for the people involved, just for keeping the status quo, and keeping the security of their own privileged positions.
What’s annoyed me more though is that the final part of the trilogy won’t be published ’til at least August this year. And I really don’t want to have to wait that long to find out how it all works out in the end.
Henry Rollins, Norwich UEA
Posted: Wed 20 January, 2010 Filed under: Reviews(ish) 1 Comment »I’ve been a fan of Henry Rollins for a very long time now, so seeing him doing a spoken-word gig at Norwich UEA was always something I’d be at.
Rollins is one of the hardest working people on the gig circuit – you only have to look at the schedule for this tour to realise that – which always makes it an interesting gig when he talks about his insane travelling plans, along with his life, ideas and experiences. In this gig, he talked about the fact he’s going to be playing a significant role in Season Two of Sons of Anarchy (fantastic news, in my opinion) as well as Thanksgiving, America, elections, being friends with William Shatner, giving speeches at Sonoma University in California, and travels to Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, India and many others.
I like the Rollins attitude, which was basically described as “Someone tells me a place is dangerous, I want to go there and find out for myself“. In other words, do things for yourself, don’t just believe what the media/politicians/other people tell you.
In fact that was pretty much the theme for the entire gig – some two and a half hours of it, too – to do your own thing, don’t just sit back and let other people do the talking/doing.
I’m already looking forward to the next Rollins tour.
Sherlock Holmes
Posted: Tue 5 January, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Reviews(ish) Leave a comment »On Saturday we went off to see Sherlock Holmes, the new film by Guy Ritchie. In fairness, I wasn’t expecting much from it – so we were really pleasantly surprised.
Robert Downey Jr is the star, and makes a fantastic version of Holmes. A much more physical version than the classic Jeremy Brett one, but a believable one all the same – and I have to say, a version that I really liked. Jude Law as Watson is also fantastic, and the pairing of the two is fantastic, with a fairly believable interaction and relationship.
It’s quite obvious that they expect to make at least one more Sherlock Holmes film – the storyline in this one is pretty good, but does a lot of character-building and so on, ready for a larger sequel.
All told though, good fun.
Marcus Brigstocke, Norwich Playhouse
Posted: Sat 26 September, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Reviews(ish) 2 Comments »On Thursday, we went to see Marcus Brigstocke‘s “GodCollar” tour in Norwich.
We’ve seen Brigstocke on TV a few times, but really had no idea what to expect from him live – and I’d made a positive effort to not read any reviews of the show at all. We’ve been disappointed by other shows where we’ve seen most of the material before (Frankie Boyle in particular) so we didn’t want that to happen again.
We needn’t have worried. The show was fantastic – although definitely not for those with a lack of humour about religion. It’s not offensive per se, although I can imagine some people might find it so, but more about Brigstocke’s thoughts around organised religion, and trying to find his own beliefs and thoughts about God.
He’s scathingly rude about most aspects – which in my opinion is always a good thing – and particularly about Richard Dawkins, iPhones (and users of iPhones) and plenty of other things besides.
It made for a fantastic two hours – both very funny and thought-provoking.
I’d happily go and see Brigstocke again – well worth it. But definitely not a show for the faint-hearted or easily offended.
iPhone Hassles
Posted: Sat 1 August, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, iPhone, Reviews(ish) 1 Comment »Yesterday, Herself went out and got an Apple iPhone from Carphone Warehouse.
Initially I was fairly impressed with it, there’s some nice interactions and stuff going on.
However, today we (OK, I) updated it to the latest version of the operating system, version 3.0.1. And since then the new iPhone has been a nightmare.
Firstly, Herself always has a lockcode set on the phone, so when you turn it on, you enter a four-digit PIN. Normally, no problem. However, as part of the upgrade to 3.0.1, the iPhone needs to connect back to iTunes, and iTunes can’t do that with a lock code set. Oh, and the iPhone wouldn’t do anything except say “connect me to iTunes”. Nothing else, no way to enter the lock code.
Cue a call to O2 to find out what needs doing, and then one to Apple. Which resulted in…
Factory Reset Number One. Yep, roll it all the way back to how we got it, loss of any settings we’d sorted. Square One. And an OS upgraded to 3.0.1.
And all was well. Um, except for not having any access to wi-fi settings (as in “Not installed” rather than “Not available”) or Bluetooth®. Totally greyed out, nothing there at all.
So a few resets, and another call to Apple.
Half an hour later, Factory Reset Number Two – and still no improvement.
So tomorrow we’re off to Carphone Warehouse, armed with an Issue Number from Apple, to get a replacement iPhone.
Let’s hope that one works better.
I’m not slagging off the iPhone per se – however, my experience with it so far has emphatically not been the most positive one. We’ll see how things go with the second one before I write up a valid review of it…