Simian Substitute Site For June 2019: Monkey Menace
MONTH END PROCESSING FOR MAY 2019
Movies: It's a personal prejudice, I admit it. When Curzon Home Cinema releases a film on video-on-demand the same day as it comes out in cinemas, I think of it as a smart way of giving challenging movies as wide a release as possible. But when Sky Store does it, I tend to think "well, that's probably a shit film, then." That may be the case for, say, something like Final Score, the thriller that was literally marketed as Die Hard In Upton Park: but it's not true for Arctic. The tagline Sky are using to market this one is The Martian On Ice, which for some of us evokes the image of Matt Damon skating at the Empire Pool Wembley for a Christmas run. In fact, a more obvious comparison point would be All Is Lost, which had sailor Robert Redford battling with above-freezing-temperature water, rather than the below-freezing-temperature water Mads Mikkelsen has to deal with here after his plane crashes in the middle of the Arctic. It's a credit to co-writer/director Joe Penna that the storytelling is so clear, given how much of it has to be told in either pure images or Mikkelsen's semi-audible mumbling. Having Denmark's finest as your lead actor doesn't hurt, either, as his quiet determination keeps you with him every step of his journey. Obviously this would have been great to see on its microscopic cinema release - I mean, just look at this poster - but watching it at home works just fine. (Except that it looks like the film was removed from Sky Store today, which is why that link above doesn't work. It's available for download and on physical media from June 24th, so treat this as a heads-up.)
Music: Summarising Q2 2019 in ten tunes...
1. Have you ever noticed that the opening title sequences of all HBO's drama shows are exactly 100 seconds long? This is Nicholas Britell's music for the titles of Succession: it aired here last year on Sky Atlantic, which is ironic given that it's a thinly-disguised satire on the Murdoch family, and opens with their equivalent of Rupert pissing on the floor of his wardrobe thanks to Altzheimer's. I bingewatched season one in two chunks on recent flights to and from Asia, and I'm now officially on board for when season two turns up later this year.
2. How many times have Lamb split up and reformed so far? It seems have been happening at intervals of around five years since 2004. Even the title of their latest album, The Secret Of Letting Go, was apparently written while they were considering breaking up again. Well, as long as we get records this good as a result, I'm not too fussed about the emotional turmoil they're going through.
3. Yeah, I know I said the Simian pages would be free of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend references from now on, but that was before I saw the cast's live-concert special, now available on Netflix. It's also available as an album, hence Skylar Astin's appearance here, channelling his best Broooooce.
4. Ringo Shiina is back, and she's even more unclassifiable than ever: her new album Sandokushi was preceded by three digital singles, none of which appeared to have anything in common with each other stylistically. This track - the title translates as God, Nor Buddha, FYI - was actually the b-side of a 2015 single that passed me by altogether, which is why the rather fancy video is four years old.
5. Speaking of singles, I was whining in the last one of these playlists about how The Chemical Brothers seemed to be releasing single after single without any sign of an album. Well, No Geography is finally out, but let's feature one of the singles anyway - mainly because the breakdown in the middle is one of their most outrageous demonstrations of tension and release, in a career that's been built entirely on that sort of thing.
6. I really wasn't sure about The Divine Comedy's first single release from their upcoming Office Politics album: Queuejumper sounded just a little too quirk-by-numbers for me, a bit of fluff written solely to get into the charts, assuming such things exist any more. But this followup is lovely, balancing the warmth of its first two verses against the unexpected turn it takes in its third.
7. I've told you already, you guys, Kojey Radical is going to be bloody huge, and this single is just the start of the next phase of his world domination plan.
8. Coming soon: a new bit of Monoglot Movie Club, based around a magnificently incomprehensible film I saw in Japan. This track by Hanawa plays over the end titles: I'll tell you that its basic theme is 'Saitama prefecture is a shithole but we like it,' and let you work out the rest. After all, the chorus is virtually in English already.
9. If you'd told me thirty years ago that in the future I'd be looking forward to a live album by New Order, the band responsible for some of my most disappointing concert experiences of the 1980s, I wouldn't have believed you. But their MIF 2017 shows pulled in an orchestra of a dozen student keyboard players to beef up the sound, and the results I've heard so far are damn impressive.
10. Wreckless Eric turned 65 this month. I know this because I was at a gig he did at the 100 Club on his final day of being 64. If you're only familiar with him from the early hits like Whole Wide World, you've got 40 years of unexpected musical detours to explore - the new album Transience is probably as good a place as any to start. The live version of this track is notable for a keyboard-driven psychedelic freakout in the middle, although Eric himself notes that audiences outside the big cities tend to want him to 'cut out the Pink Floyd shit'.
Theatre: Even though I've been going to the theatre for the best part of forty years, I've somehow managed to avoid seeing Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman until this month, when I caught Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell's new production at London's Young Vic. As it's the first time I've seen it, I can't comment on the impact of their main casting decision - making the Lomans an African-American family - although it's obvious that it adds another layer to Willy's conflicts with his boss and his neighbours. The main reason we were there was for Wendell Pierce - Bunk from The Wire! - and his Willy Loman is utterly mesmerising. You gradually realise that Pierce's TV work is largely based around confident characters who know exactly what they're doing, and it's astonishing to watch him gradually reveal how much of that is a front in Willy's case. But the rest of his family - Sharon D. Clarke as Linda, Arinzé Kene as Biff and Martins Imhangbe as Happy - are equally great, backed up by an excellent supporting cast. The last time a piece of theatre hit me this hard emotionally, it was the Young Vic's production of A View From The Bridge, which suggests that this is a theatre that knows exactly what it's doing when it comes to Miller. Death Of A Salesman runs till July 13th: attention must finally be paid.
The documentary's been travelling around the festival circuit, and judging from all the laurel leaves on the website it's been doing quite well there. But now Javier wants to give the film a wider audience on TV, and to do that he's got to cut it to fit a one hour slot. He's in the final stages of post-production and needs a bit more cash to finish it off, so have a look at the crowdfunding page and see if you can help him out.
Speaking of festivals, expect to hear about lots of those in the coming months. Some of them we've covered here before, some of them are new to us. Some of them we've been to already and awaiting a writeup, some of them are still in our future. But if all goes to plan, this site will be fairly chocker with festival reviews until the clocks go back. This does, of course, assume that I can get back into the swing of posting stuff up here on a more regular basis than I have been recently. Feel free to berate me in the comments box below if that doesn't happen.
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