Grockle Pop

Kids may not be creative but they are cruel...

2009-12-07T18:03:00.000-08:00

Entertain/distract yourself further when you watch Master Chef by considering this: Lloyd Grosman was teased at school enough for being called Lloyd, let alone the playground implications of his surname and extra ammo was provided by his stupid fake accent. What really got the kids bitching up an omelette was the fact that up close his balding (from 7, he used to wear a wig of dreadlocks, in tribute to his 87 generations of bald dutch ancestry) head is covered with a fine membrane and can be cracked like an egg. Indeed, a yoke like substance even trickles from the wound. That's why he still gets upset if people in the street yell:

"Oi four-eyed, spazzy voiced girls name, we can see your crack and it smells eggy. Gross-man! Master-chef this you toilet!"

Works every time. Cries like a girl. The wus.

(pronounced in perfect r.p.) "Get your kronk on my homie" http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/

2009-03-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

Feel free to peruse the above list of topics from stuffwhitepeople.com. Feeling a little hurt? I hope not. If so, you're missing the point young hipster.
I never said any of those things were wrong (95% apply to me), the whole site was forwarded to me by Tim Walker at the Independent last year when he was doing a profile on the new young liberal male who supposedly values a lifestyle over money and has a specifically evolved set of supposed 'individual' traits. He realised like these guys, like everyone walking around East London and matching parts of new york, San Francisco, Seattle and protesting their 'originality' a bit too much; that they had in fact very uniform traits/styles. I'm there: If you'd read half way down the list you'd have seen that white people claiming to like plays:

"It is not known if white people actually enjoy plays or if they are just victims of massive peer pressure from the 45% of white people who have acted in a play at some point in their life."

and 'old skool' hip hop:

"Apparently, once a music has lost its relevance with its intended audience, it becomes MORE relevant to white people. They will quickly tell you about how they don’t listen to “Commercial Hip Hop” (aka music that black people actually enjoy), and that they much prefer “Classic Hip Hop.”

...Is in all in there too. It makes me laugh because most of this gentle ribbing highlights how often when conscientious people, perhaps a little like us are thinking/trying to stress their originality over others, they are actually doing the exact reverse. And in some areas, like extreme liberal guilt prompting absurdly shallow protestations of interest in other cultures, impressing music taste on others, going to cultural events you don't REALLY like and being convinced to pay 50% mark ups on food produced by same corporations because it makes us feel better about ourselves (i.e. superior to those paying for non-organic options) - ripe for parody.

That said, I don't think most of it is cynical, rather if anything its pointing out cynicism. It's not as if there isn't something self congratulatory and comforting about these observations in themselves. The guy who's writing it isn't some right wing stiff but rather a complete liberal, apologizing, terrified 'white folk' like us. Lets be honest, we all know that we have no good reason to buy Apple-Mac products over less expensive PC products but we're happy to do so! When whole of Shoreditch is teetering on self parody, how can it not be a good thing to step back and laugh at this stuff we pressure/cocoon ourselves with. I'm off to awkwardly sit and laugh at the "Royal Tenenbaums" with my platonic female friend now....

Dirty Shorts from '08

2009-02-01T18:07:00.000-08:00

Our hill-billy entry for the Smoke and Mirrors 48 hour Film Challenge from October 2008. You're given the theme on Friday night and you turn in a completed film on the Sunday. Does it show, you decide...

Still Coming Soon, maybe.....

2009-02-01T18:04:00.000-08:00

Rasslin'

2009-02-01T17:56:00.000-08:00

The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky). 2008. US. – OUT NOW.

REVIEW

There are a number of inspired moments in Darren Aronofsky’s latest film ‘The Wrestler’ that see the line so blurred between that of the broken show-man and fighter in the script and Mickey Rourke’s own tortured journey from stardom to ruin, that the film feels like a beautifully shot ‘MTV: Diary Of’. Yet this is no vanity project for Rourke, far from it. Rumours of on set spats between the director and the star can be believed when you see the physical and emotional limits to which this film pushes Rourke’s performance as the gentle giant wrestler, Randy ‘The Ram’ Robertson. Yet, in many ways this tension between Rourke’s depiction of a man who is just looking for a good time but is in denial about the bed he has made for himself and the rapidly closing in world Aronofsky has created around him, is the key to the films success.
Many anticipate that this poignant warts and all tour de force from Rourke will win him his first Oscar and, like Daniel Days Lewis’ winning turn last year in ‘There Will Be Blood’, it’s a film thats success is hinged on this central performance. Also like PT Anderson’s movie, that performance is never bigger than the canvas against which it’s set. Ram is very much a product of his environment, a victim of it even.
Aronofsky’s unremitting gaze complete with long takes, the camera often lingering at a distance, is matched with the gruesome detail in which we see Ram nurse his injuries. It all combines to give these larger than life characters room to breathe and the audience a chance to smell the sickening mixture of blood and desperation long after the ringside screams have died down. The raw and beautifully underplayed performance from Rourke is also complemented and facilitated by stellar turns from Marisa Tomei and Rachael Evan Wood as the women in his life who are trying to love him. There are some who will see the poster for The Wrestler and watch this movie for an 80s themed nostalgia trip into the glory days of Prime-time wrestling and hair metal, and you have a feeling that had he told his own story, the Ram would’ve liked it that way and so perhaps would Rourke. Aronofsky though, had other plans; this is no Rocky Balboa underdog tale but rather a gruelling examination of one man’s pride, confusion and despite his best efforts, ultimate fall in the fight to hold on to who he is and who he once was, now he’s at the end of his life. The wrestling might be fake, but the hurt is very real.

TA

Spielberg minus Lucas equals Indy 4

2008-06-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

Finally I managed to find the time to drag my grotty ol' bones to the local picture house to see "Indiana Jones and the cling-film, school-play prop skull". I am glad I waited for the hoopla to die down and going in, that my expectations were so low. It felt like it was made by a great film maker, fallen on hard times who was held to ransom by a tyrannical, egotistical studio head/producer and forced to return to a beloved franchise, long since concluded. Even worse that Hollywood fat cat is a crashing bore and fancies himself as a writer,his script being a derivative retread of the talented directors original films and not even that. Of course, this film is largely an expensive piece of rot. Except for when the script and story are put to onside. Our director when creating the action sequences and set pieces & free to work outside the limitations of this soggy script, reminds the world that when he story-boards and shoots he executes with precision, flair and style. Every single frame tells a cracking story and marrying that to a beautiful period detail, witty sight gags, 1950s technicolor style photography helps to create some perfect cinema. Yet when we return to the talking, it appears out of contempt for what he finds himself doing to his beloved creation in this cruddy new guise; he sticks the camera on a tripod for 5 minute two-shots and uses the first take in which the boom doesn't fall in front of the camera. In short: the joyous film-maker that Spielberg will always be, minus the creative black-hole George Lucas has become, equals Indy 4.

Of course, in actuality this isn't what happened. The truth was Steven let his boring mate come over and play again because he's too nice to say no him after all this time. His boring mate is such a twat that people have stopped telling him to shut up when he 'imagines' stories that are all clearly nicked from early X-files plots. Even then, poor old George saw it a long time ago so it's a bit like a seven year old boy on a sugar high at his own birthday party excitedly retelling his understanding of the Matrix back-story to a room full of adults who are tolerating him but not listening to him. And that's actually how it worked because this autistic seven year old has enough money to finance 150 million dollar blockbusters without the help of a studio.... So the adults in the room really did have no choice but to nod along, as this gabbling child pays their inflated wages.

I have to say, I think overall, it is a movie still worth seeing because about a third of the film (the set pieces specifically) put most other big current movie makers to shame. It does this by making you realize that you can have all the money in the world but a great action sequence has to be clear and simple, and can not be created entirely through editing and effects (see Michael Bay). In the end, it is interesting that the worthwhile bits weren't the moments that were throw back gags/references but the parts of the film that hinted at what might have been had they been working with even a merely passable story and okay script. So yeah, big ol' shame. And for the record: Lucas is a tool. He just is, and he needs to be sent to bed early and his crayon-set burned.

Revenger's well and truly... er, revenged.

2008-06-06T05:55:00.001-07:00

This week our production of the Revenger's Tragedy written by Thomas Middleton and this time around re-imagined by Melly Still (Coram Boy) opened to the public and the press to much fanfare. It plays in rep with George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (also well worth a look) until August in the Olivier, National Theatre, SE1.

Here is the trailer:

And one or two reviews from this the next mornings papers:

"Elliot Cowan is simpler and better as the duke’s heir, Lussurioso. He and Kinnear make a real success of exchanging knotty Jacobean lines like a couple of blokes bragging in a bar. John Heffernan and Tom Andrews, as the duke’s stepsons, Supervacuo and Ambitioso (the names point to the complexity of character the author was aiming at), are hilarious studies in not so much the banality as the weediness of evil."

Christopher Hart, Sunday Times. 8th June 2008.

Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre/reviews/the-revengers-tragedy-olivier-national-theatre-london-841251.html?r=RSS">click here
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article4076787.ece">
The Times: Click here

The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/06/06/btrevengers106.xml">click here

You bloody vidiot...

2008-06-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

Here are four steaming new clips from a forthcoming two man comedy pilot for BBC3 I am in, called vidiotic. It involves the inane ramblings of a couple of video shop, movie geek slackers with overactive imaginations (I had to dig deep for that one)intercut with kerrazy comedy clips such as these:

Easy like a Sunday... erm, evening

2008-04-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

Apologies for lack of posts but am busy rehearsing in the day, performing in the evening and crime-fighting around the clock... Until then, Antiques Roadshow out of the way, settle down with a nice slice of Battenberg and pour yo'self a cup 'o cosiness with the following musical short film nuggets featuring 'The National' courtesy of the consistently gorgeous Take Away Shows:

#40.4 - THE NATIONAL -Ada
Uploaded by lablogotheque

#40.3 - The National - Start a war
Uploaded by lablogotheque

SEEING SOUNDS

2008-04-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

N*E*R*D are back. Previewing new material at SXSW festival in Austin, Texas...

N.E.R.D. Live At The Levi's/Fader Fort from The FADER on Vimeo.

Classic performance from Hammersmith of 'Lapdance' with special guests, 2004. I was there...

FAVOURITE MOVIES: Dearly Departed...

2008-04-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

Flicked over onto sky movies two nights ago and caught the last 40 minutes of
The Departed (2006). I had forgotten just what a satisfying great chunk of beautifully constructed cinema it is and how well it stands up to the other Scorcese greats. Incidentally the movie has been back in the press this week as HBO announced that they are commissioning the guys behind the Wire to develop a show based around the same neighbourhoods and characters as the 2006 movie.. Anyway I also remembered that it was one of the few times, I liked a movie so much that I went home and wrote a review of sorts. Anyway I dug it up and here it is:

Review – The Departed (US. 2006) directed by Martin Scorsese.

By Tom Andrews

‘The Departed’ directed by Martin Scorsese is a Boston-set re-working of the acclaimed Hong Kong mob movie Infernal Affairs. Both films are about a promising Police cadet sent undercover into a local crime lord’s gang in order to discover who is feeding them confidential information. This story coincides and eventually clashes with the story of another promising young man, this time a gangster who signs on to join the Police planning to leak information back to the same crime boss. While Andre Lau and Alan Maks film was an exercise in minimalist cool in its dialogue and style and it’s taut plot and dynamic action scenes, Scorsese film is a different beast altogether. Taking the basic premise from the previous movie, The Departed invests considerable time in getting to know the neighbourhood, the Boston lives of its central characters. At first it feels a more sedate film in its depiction of working class Irish-Americana rather than the originals steel and glass modernity of Hong Kong mob life. But from the beginning it is made blatantly clear, for all the talk of honour and community these are cutthroat people. After Gangs of New York and The Aviator, in returning to the genre he knows best, Martin Scorsese has made his most consistent and best realised film in years. By relocating to Boston and away from New York, Scorsese also seems to have found his voice again as a filmmaker and ironically produced the most original and insightful example of the gangster genre in some time.

The Departed is an exercise in sustained and precise but at the same time visceral and sporadically shocking filmmaking. Considering the budget (a rumoured $140 million) and the ridiculous star cast, it is to the filmmakers credit that it in its setting and characterisation, The Departed is so evocative in its depiction of its particular microcosm of East Coast criminal life. There is no directors ego running amuck, no dramatic pivotal moments to be savoured, no Michael man heightened effect bombastic use of music and cutting. This film is instinctive, believable, and at once complex yet clear in it's characterisation, motives and depiction of cops, robbers and human beings. There is no clever-clever ‘who's good’, ‘who's bad’, "aren't we all a little of both?” subversive cinematic cliché. The Departed foregoes the twists and final reel reveals that make us think 'about the characters and ourselves in a new light'. There is only one star who can be accused of show-boating (Here's Johnny!!) but the director is smarter than that and you grow to realise in time that Jack Nicholson’s manic crime boss Frank Costello is just another person caught in the mess, flapping his wings and making noise in the hope that he might last a little longer, know a little more than any other poor bastard trying to make a living, make a name in this world. In this film the city is bigger than anyone and you can spend your life fighting against it but you will never beat it. You find yourself wondering was Nicholson in on this or was it inspired casting by Scorsese? Perhaps a little of both. Sadly, he's the only one who'll probably win an Oscar, and that would be criminal (no pun intended). Matt Damon, Martin Sheen and top of the list, in fact, top of any acting list I could muster up, Leonardo Di Caprio excel. The most brilliant dramatic moments, the 'Oscar moments' can only be found by really pulling apart the film in hindsight. In Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) and Billy Costigan (Di Caprio) are two young characters at once totally relatable, yet carrying out tasks, enduring ordeals more extreme than you and I can imagine. So beautifully sustained and absorbing is Di Caprio’s performance that you feel within half an hour you're totally on his side, yet never able to predict his next move. Scorsese’s story does not patronise the audience in its characterisation of these criminal archetypes. Like the superb Syriana earlier this year, The Departed presents a view of contemporary Western living where anyone can become a winner but everyone is screwed. It's the story of intelligent people fucking over intelligent people. Di Caprio convinces from the outset. I found myself, never stopping to marvel how such a fresh faced shrimp of a man can convince as a bona fide bad ass, in fact only stopping to think it at all until long afterwards. It's a film critic cliché but these characters are so rich because they are both a product of their environment, no more or less than their environment is a product of them. Character, the nature of these people dictates the plot not the other way round. Good cinematic thrillers often thrive on the gimmick of a new set up/concept, a new scenario the audience has never seen before, an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation, 'what would you do?’ The Fugitive: 'Dr Richard Kimble was wrongly accused of killing his wife' etc.

The 'Departed' is an unholy mess of double-crosses and erratic violence. The twists and turns of the films plot are caused by the friction, the events set in motion by a series of characters not trying to kill, or save lives because of their psychological profile: The Megalomaniac crime boss who was never loved as a child etc; But because they are intelligent people trying to make a name, a crust. Their only allegiances are too themselves and as a result the only thing that can be taken for granted, is these 'smart guys' will fight like dogs to ensure their own survival. The American's make these stories better, because that story of each subsequent generations survival and rise up the socio-economic scale at any cost, IS the story of America.

The best movies, the best thrillers are where you CARE about the characters because they're your only link/hope/chance of getting to the bottom of what the hell is happening. But intensified because they know no more than you. It's a story but it's played as real life. Scorseses style, the costume, photography and again the acting are never intrusive. Again it's about excruciatingly maintained and sustained tension. The director removes all ego from the proceedings. His touch, his voice is never felt. David Lynch, Michael Haneke’s director of the superb Hidden; their trick is to call into question the very mechanics of storytelling, toy with the relationship of trust between the audience and the storyteller. They're winking (I said winking!) at the viewer, knowing from the start what the audience and often the characters do not. Scorsese lets the story play out at a pace dictated by the characters, his artistic touch/trick is to create a believable world and leave events to unfold themselves. To make his presence felt as little as possible.

Crucially this is what makes The Departed so compelling. Instinct and blind luck is all that separates good guys and bad guys or more crucially the living and the dead. The stakes are as high as they can be, you feel both sides could fail or die at any time. In its depiction of violence it is at once shocking in the casual brutality of these characters; yet it never lingers on the gore, it is never sensational, never glorifies. Scorsese film is all the more compelling because it doesn't focus on the violent act itself but that flip moment where it suddenly erupts. People are dispensable and disposable but we as the audience never become numb to it. Every shot fired, punch thrown comes as a shock. The events that unfold are generated by characters that are wholly selfish. They have no 'cause' to speak of, there are no grand 'themes' in Martin Scorsese's 'The Departed' and the film is all the more affecting for it. I've tried not to reveal plot details because I want you to see this film and judge it for yourself. You will either be taken in or you won't. And take what you will from this movie, make your own conclusions but I defy you not to at least be thoroughly entertained. Breathtaking cinema.

Gypsy Cabs...

2008-04-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

Even better than Wes Anderson's Gypsy cabs is Black Cab Sessions, an online UK phenomenon currently tapping into Londons ever-eclectic and fast moving music scene and the talk of the town... Besting tired ol' Rocker-Billy Jools Holland for the most diverse and cutting edge selection of greatest and latest musicians touching down in ol' London town. Each act is given the honour of performing live and unrehearsed in the back of a hackney carriage. The results then filmed and beamed up to Davie Bowies world wide interweb for your viewing pleasure. Achingly hip but also beautifully spontaneous and simple, with a delightful knockabout spirit. Here are a few of my favourites so far:

Cold War Kids

Killa Kella

The Kooks

Benjamin Zephaniah

Excerpt from BOOK OF THE WEEK

2008-04-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

This week it's the turn of my friend: the wonderful actor, humanitarian and star of ITV 1's 'Rock Rivals' James Anderson with his long awaited photographic memoir:

“Smell it, Act it but don’t ever Touch it… Photos and Reflections on a life in the Arts” by James Anderson

( additional material from Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson)
Ladybird books. £2.99 (hardback)

Chapter 4 - New York, New Me!

James 'Goes Native' (1963) by Steve Guttenberg

Here we see a rare shot from the private collection of Cookie Mugabo, life-long man servant to humanitarian and acclaimed British actor James Anderson. After Jim rescued Cookie from a live of poverty and violence living in Hackney and working in a Mega bowl, they travelled and worked side by side for over five decades. In the later years of the revered actors life and amidst much rumour, J-Bone moved into Cookies flat in Kings Cross after his third wife left him and there they remained until James’ death last month. Cookie has recently published his memoirs detailing his life with the popular Thesp, the moving and often hilarious "Hiding My Banana and finding my Love, two men on A Vespa - My Life with James".

This photo, taken from said volume shows a young James getting into character for one of his toughest and most overlooked roles: that of Mickey Dice, a confident young English Aristocrat who's pursuit of gambling, women and Jazz finds him sleeping rough & battling substance addiction on the Streets of New York in the movie "Jazz on yo Hands" but known in Europe as: "Hobo Eyes". The film was directed by Jock Piazercoochie an avant-garde street artist who claimed he had fled from Cuba during the revolution and was there at the beginning of Andy Warhol’s Factory but was later exposed as a solicitor from Grayshott, Surrey in England and a former schoolmate of James’.

James was quoted in his infamous Wogan appearance from 1986 where he heckled pop act Level 42 and showed his ball-bag to Joan Collins, as claiming this film was the one time he had tried: "that method shit". Cookie, his manservant claims James "lived and breathed" the part. As the photo shows he wore his roughest pair of boat shoes, chino's and an Oxford Shirt that Cookie "hadn't even ironed properly" - so determined was he to fit in with the other New York homeless. In his Wogan Interview he claimed: he "took a shit in a bag, and found another guy eating it". Clearly it was an experience that changed Anderson. In the 14 hours (8am to 10pm) he slept rough, the actor endured many hardships (he left when it got dark but only because one particular Meth Addict apparently recognised James from Rock Rivals and our man wisely feared this might lead to violence).

James told Wogan all those years later that whilst "on the street": he was made to eat monkey brains and at one point fell through a hidden door in his chamber and ended up being chased by an Arab gentleman in a mine cart. Detractors have claimed that Anderson has remembered this wrong and he was in fact referring to the plot of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Cookie, who stood by James throughout the ordeal, insists to this day that he was telling the truth. In his book Cookie also reveals that just to keep his friend and mentor from starvation he offered himself to the leader of the tramps: a gentleman and known thief called ‘Sick-beard Fagin’ for repeated violent sexual favours. All this, in return for a small bottle of Evian and a packet of Cookies. Oh, the irony....

Shake-yo-ass-peare, Billy don't be a Hero...

2007-08-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

I performed in a piece of highly regarded "Car-park Shakespeare" this summer. It rained a lot, a number of audience members tried to initiate dogging during my most chilling monologues perhaps in tribute to when Rupert Everett played the role. Or maybe because I played the entire role with my park turned on them and speaking in a hush....I'll never know. I'll tell you this: I left with a pocket full of broken dreams but with a new best friend: Bill Shakespeare.

The play incidentally was Much Ado About Nothing. The title was originally meant as a sarcastic riff on the little seen "Much Ado about Nuttin" - Christopher Marlowe's ill-advised foray into the Soft Porn/Hip Hop Musical Genre. Released in the early days of video, it was a victim of it's own pioneering spirit, as it was released on the ye olde Betamax format. We're talking 1983 here guys....It was rubbish by the way, you've missed nuttin. Ha ha...Coincidentally Snoop Dogg's more successful beats and booty effort "Doggystyle" was an adaptation of Billy No-Mates 'Twelfth Night' and was released in 1998 on Laser Disc. The video format of the future. Jazzed up a bit, the plot remained more or less the same as Bill's wacky comic book original, save for the bit where Viola pretends to be her brother Sebastian so she can get into the mens locker room at the castle and spy on their merry bits...... Anyway back to our play, , say what you like, but Shakespeare did not know his hardcore grot from his elbow and the whole she-bang was short of virtually any pornographic content at all unless you get yer rocks off to a nice piece of slippery when wet ye olde verse or pigs tits(don't we all?) But it was fun I'll say that, and in its memory here is a little video shot one afternoon in a horse box that sees us doing our best to pay tribute to the spirits of these wonkey old gents and their fuddy duddy-nonsense writing...

2007-08-09T16:25:00.000-07:00

First up is my chum Orlando and mine's entry into the Straight 8 short film contest for this year and was screened as part of the Lions official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. Say what you like but this heartwarming tale of broken dreams and soaring dreams is destined to become as cherished and beloved a Christmas day telly staple as Diddy Dudley Moore playing an Elf. Drunk. Which in fact was another particularly moving piece of cinematic nostalgia as Dudley Moore was actually my Dad.

Put a Badger in a £1000 Pound suit, and he still looks like Badger. You wouldn't respect him anymore than before. But would he respect himself?

2007-08-09T15:38:00.001-07:00

Putting the world to rights is bound to take time. In the next month this blog will be up and running properly. The fact that I am setting an advance date for making plans to sit in the dark and cry onto my keyboard is a bad start, I know. But a date, whereon I intend to commit long term to sitting in my own filth and ranting on the web about the state of the nation, the ingrained racism and snobbery of our fair Isle, of the fall in moral standards and values and of course the best site on the web to watch Gypsies have sex with a pig for a fake passport made out of twigs, spit and two slices of old cheese. (see what I did there? Double bluff and..Oooh Satire! Wait for the bit where I dissect America's foreign policy using the metaphor of the death of Jazz the politically (in)correct and patronising as f*%k break-dancing robot in the Transformers movie. "Jazz was a good Soldier". No he wasn't Optimus Prime. He was a tit.)

Anyway with further due here are some bits and pieces to get 'the party started'. That's the kind of cool thing Jazz would say right?! I don't know what's happening but I gotta get me to a Toys R Us....