Awesome Writer Dies

J G Ballard has died aged 78.

If there is one book you should read before you die, it is his autobiographical novel 'Empire of the Sun'.

It is a fictionalized account of his internment, at the age of 12, inside a Japanese prison camp in China during WWII. Surrounded by violence, starvation and death, Jim's spirits never fall and neither does his iron determination to cling onto life.

Self-pity is not in Jim's repertoire. Flies clog his sick gums and pus oozes from the sores that cover his body, but his black humour and ability to barter favours sees him live off a single mouldy sweet potato a day.

The Collins English dicitionary may define 'Ballardian' as 'dystopian modernity', but Ballard's writing in 'Empire' thrives on the man-made catastrophe of war.

Prostate cancer may have taken him, but I look foward to exploring his 15 novels and many short stories further.

• 'Empire of the Sun' was made into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1987
• 'Crash' was made into a film by David Cronenberg in 1996 and tells of a group of people who take sexual pleasure from car accidents
  

The Reader

1950s Germany: a teenage lad ends up knocking around with a sultry blond tram conductress. For some reason she gets him to read classics to her before she teaches him a new position. Although the reading is a bit odd at first, he enjoys it.

The affair lasts the summer and then she disappears. By the mid 60s the young man is a law student attending a special seminar on a war crimes trial. Who should be sitting in the dock, but his first love. She was a guard at Auschwitz.

The Holocaust and German guilt are major themes, but it is essentially the tragic love story which drives the film. We follow Michael’s relationship with Hanna throughout.

German actor David Kross is utterly convincing as the nervous besotted youth. But Michael holds his own and is soon rutting Hanna in bed with growing confidence. This is not child porn as some critics have argued. This is a fully consensual adult relationship. As with any relationship the power balance is in flux.

Kate Winslet is outstanding as Hanna Schmitz and fully deserving of her Best Actress Oscar. She’s hot, but at the same time mysterious and rather coarse. Her voice is dry with a hard edge – no cheap German accent here. The way she always calls Michael ‘kid’ is brusque yet affectionate.

Hanna is accused of letting 300 Jews die during a death march in 1944. She has a piece of evidence that may help her defence, but she is so ashamed of it that she keeps it a secret to the bitter end.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Hanna? Most of the film is shot from Michael’s perspective so his point of view offers a guide. He cannot forgive her for what she has done. But is it more the betrayal of his trust or the fact that she was complicit in the Holocaust? It is certainly a mixture of both and her betrayal becomes even more enormous given that she hid her terrible wartime past from him. Think about it, what if your first ever lover was a death camp guard? Wouldn’t that make you complicit?

Ralph Fiennes plays the grown-up Michael and is a perfect match for Kross. The make-up artists do a very thorough job of making Winslet look old as her character ages, maybe too thorough, since she looks like a decrepit zombie. But the overall artfulness of the cinematography lets them get away with it.

Ironically, the book by German author Bernhard Schlink is too cluttered by words. Director Stephen Daldry reads aloud with a clear voice and the emotionally heart of the story shines through.

April Rule of the Month

No rules this month! Anything goes!

Suggestions welcome for a killer rule in May.

‘Raising Sand’ by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

I’ve only listened to ‘Raising Sand’ once, but I love it. How many new albums can you say that about?

Call it Country, Folk, Bluegrass or Rock. Whatever you call it, this is sheer musical genius.

The laid-back vibe is tantalizing. Only two artists with such rich pasts could have assembled thirteen such amazing songs about love and loss to create a fresh new entity.

Plant leaves the rock star exaggeration behind to deliver perhaps his most rich and mature vocal performance to date.

Krauss arguably leads proceedings. Her beautiful clear voice shines out. She leads love songs that were originally written from the man’s perspective. There’s something exquisite about this.

Plant clearly learnt a lot from her. After all, this is more her musical territory than his.

T Bone Burnett’s backing band provides the perfect spaced out country vibe for the singers to shine. Instrumental highlights are songs with banjo by Riley Baugus and those with fiddle played by Krauss herself no less.

The magic really happens when they sing together. Their voices are distinct yet perfectly harmonious at the same time.

INTERVIEW WITH MUSICIANS

Metallica’s ‘Ride The Lightening’ – 25 Years On

A spotty 21-year-old James Hetfield howls ‘Flash before my eyes, now it’s time to die’. The year is 1984. It’s the album’s title track. No prizes for guessing what ‘Ride The Lightening’ is about. There’s a shiny electric chair on the album’s cover for God's sake!

If debut ‘Kill em All’ was a furiously fast paced statement of intent, then ‘Ride the Lightening’ sees Metallica take the thrash metal genre to a whole new level.

Lars Ulrich’s drumming is frenetic yet so intensely focused that the double-bass roles seamlessly augment Hetfield’s violent riffage. The snare is so dry it has you gasping for water.

Rhythm-section other half Cliff Burton pumps his bass like a heavy calibre oozy throughout. Just listen to those belches on ‘Trapped Under Ice’ and the 9-minute horror instrumental ‘The Call of Ktulu’. It’s arguably the best mixed Metallica album – the bass riffage is clearly distinguishable throughout. Next album, ‘Master of Puppets’ maybe the bands seminal work, but it’s so damn heavy Hetfield and Burton are basically at one – aurally at least. Then Burton died in that crash and bass took a back-seat in the Metallica sound.

Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett departs from the pentatonic speed-blues soloing of ‘Kill em All’ to a rawer more haunting model attack. And where would metal be now, without the awesome guitar harmonies that feature throughout the album? They perfectly complement the move to longer more symphonically arranged pieces.

‘Fade to Black’ and ‘Creeping Death’ are the album’s classic groundbreaking compositions. The former was the first thrash metal ballad and the latter the nihilistic clarion call to metal heads the world over. For 20 years a Metallica set-list without ‘Creeping Death’ was like the arrival of the four horsemen without the apocalypse!

Ride the Lightening is when the Metallica sound was born. No such coherent force could be heard on early 80’s Slayer or Megadeth albums. It wouldn’t be until 1986 when ‘Reign in Blood’ and ‘Peace Sells, but who’s buying’ would be released and by then of course the brutal intensity of Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ was all-powerful.

Seven albums later, Metallica have been through a lot – MTV success with ‘One’, chart success with their eponymous album, an arty 90’s phase and a struggle to adjust to the disparate metal scene of the nought’ies. But last year’s ‘Death Magnetic’ sees Metallica back to thrashing good form. Death is undoubtedly their best muse. Ironically, thrash metal is never more alive than when death is in the air.

March Rule of the Month

This month will see a few short sharp posts all about music.

Enjoy!

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

OK, I know it’s March now, but it’s no leap year and I want to get one more Winslet piece in before I introduce my next rule of the month.

In 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' she plays Clementine Kruczynski an impulsive American chick always on the lookout for adventure. She meets Jim Carrey’s character Joel Barish at a beech party in New York State. Joel is a reserved sensitive guy who enjoys sketching crazy caricatures and keeping a journal for a hobby. So here you have two very different actors cast in each others’ typical roles: Winslet plays the wild one, Carrey the serious one.

If that isn’t interesting enough, the story itself is an amazing tale about human memory and falling in and out of love.

Joel and Clem find happiness together against the backdrop of a drab winter in their dull East Coast town. But at some point down the line they start to have arguments. Impulsive as ever Clem goes to a doctor who claims to be able to erase specific memories. She simply has the memory of Joel erased from her mind.

Joel finds out and is completely devastated. Carrey is totally convincing as someone who comes up against such an unfathomable crisis. Out of pain and maybe a helpless bid for revenge he decides to undergo the same procedure.


This is when the film really starts to play with your mind. Two geeks from the doctor’s company show up at Joel’s apartment one night to perform the procedure. Patrick (Elijah Wood) and Stan (Mark Ruffalo) hook Joel up to all manner of wires and a brain scanner as he sleeps. They’re great as the careless bumbling removal men! Kirsten Dunst plays Stan’s girlfriend, Mary, but is excellent as the innocent yet compassionate doctor’s secretary.

Meanwhile we see Joel transported back to all his memories of being with Clem – one by one they are deleted. But then he realises that some of the memories he wants to keep and makes a last ditch attempt to save them and his love.

It is a story of heroic hope against the odds. The film’s frenetic confusion is so gripping you won’t dare look away – you want Joel and Clem to rediscover their spark.

French director Michel Gondry seamlessly weaves the story together. The scene where Joel takes Clem back to his childhood to try and escape the memory erasure is one of the movie’s highlights. Gondry plays with the size of the characters – and even switches them for two little children at one point. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen such a funny yet poignant scene.

The film won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2005. Although it shares themes with ‘Being John Malkovich’, ‘Spotless Mind’ is a far more engaging piece from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Fair credit should also be given to eighteenth century English poet Alexander Pope who penned the poem on which the film is based. The beautiful title is directly taken from his ‘Eloisa to Abelard’.

Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Actress but lost out to Hilary Swank in ‘Million Dollar Baby’. For me it was easier to sympathise with Joel than Clem, but that in no way detracts from a brilliant performance by Winslet. Together Carrey and Winslet pull your heartstrings all over the place, but by the end the emotional gymnastics are most definitely worth it.