MONTH END PROCESSING FOR JANUARY 2019
Comedy: "It's not shit, despite what you might have read" is, let's face it, an entirely typical way for Daniel Kitson to introduce one of his odd spoken word shows. And Keep (which has just finished its run at the beautifully refurbished Battersea Arts Centre) is odder than most, presenting Kitson in a more experimental mode. He makes his plan perfectly clear up front: he's made a complete inventory of every item in his house on several hundred index cards, and for the next two hours he's going to read them all out for us. Now that it's all over, I think I can reveal that it's not too long before he starts deviating from the plan, leading to the wild digressions and delightful turns of phrase we've come to expect from him: though as The BBG noted, part of what makes the conceit work is the suspicion that Kitson is actually capable of a stunt like this. My one concern is that that opening line about 'what you might have read' doesn't come out of nowhere: the reviews for Keep were bewilderingly poor, almost as if Kitson had just read out the entire contents of his house. Did he do a wildly different performance on press night? Or were the reviewers in on the gag themselves? It's a mystery and no mistake.
Movies: It's a challenge to write about the Japanese film One Cut Of The Dead, which has just about finished a short UK theatrical run and is now available on home video. We can talk about the start, I guess. A director is shooting a low-budget zombie movie in a creepy location that has a history: the sort of history that makes it not entirely surprising when the set is invaded by a horde of actual zombies. Which leaves the director with a dilemma - should he get his crew out to safety, or should he grab the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shoot gore scenes that are way outside his budget? Beyond that, it's best for you to find out for yourselves, but the trick is not to write this off as a simple zombie movie: there are layers that only come to light gradually. You could even, at a pinch, see it as a satirical take on the lengths film people will go to to get that one, perfect shot. After years of Adam from Third Window Films getting screwed over in various ways, his distribution company now has a proper hit on its hands, so give him - and the film - your much-deserved support.
Music: You young kids wouldn't know anything about this, but back in the seventies we did most of our racism in the form of television sitcoms. In retrospect, Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Width was probably one of the more benign ones: it told the story of an Irish tailor and a Jewish tailor going into business together, and managed to sustain their cultural differences for the proverbial six seasons and a movie. It starred Joe Lynch as Kelly, and John Bluthal as Cohen. Lynch managed to stay on telly for many years after as a comic actor with an occasional sideline in singing (my dad used to own a copy of this album), while Bluthal (among other things) became part of the regular repertory company of Spike Milligan. Bluthal died in November last year, around the same time as I decided to make him and Lynch the cover stars of my Pick Of The Year 2018 compilation. Which is a roundabout way of telling you that 'John Bluthal' was the correct answer to the competition to win a copy of the CD. I posted up the question at noon on Christmas Day from our festive hotel room in Cardiff, a little before we headed out for our Christmas dinner. You want to know when Dave sent in his winning answer? At eight minutes past two on the same afternoon, while you were all sat on your fat arses watching Christmas Top Of The Pops. This is why he is better than you. Try harder next year, people: and congratulations again, Dave.