Exit Through The Gift Shop

I fear this film has been sold incorrectly. Terms like documentary, satire and “Oscar nominated” are battered about this film, when in reality it is much more comedy drama than anything else. This film took me by surprise and is one of the freshest, genuinely witty comedies I’ve seen in years.

The film begins following Thierry Guetta, an eccentric, obsessive compulsive Frenchman who films everything. He quietly follows various “street artists” and his indoctrination into this underground circle is an entertaining little flick all by itself. Thierry is comic perfection, bumbling about pretending to be real deep when really he is much more of a mad man than a genius. The various, throwaway facts the film lays onto him are brilliant, for example he purchases poorly sewn clothes from Eastern Europe, imports them into America and sells them as designer.

This rather foreshadows the amazing second act. Under the recommendation from “Banksy”, the mysterious artist who directs the film, Thierry sets about “making his own art”. It starts innocently enough, but soon he is holding a pompous art event with the worst knock offs of street art imaginable. The joy of this film is watching an utter buffoon completely destroy the art industry. In one scene a “customer” phones up looking for an “original” from the exhibition, without even looking at any of his non-existent work. Lazily Guetta has someone else photoshop another crude picture, print it fresh and sell it for thousands. It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s fake, I’m fairly certain Guetta himself is a fictional role, but it certainly looks like the “exhibition” was a genuine success purely from a con. Even if this film absolutely bombs, I’m sure the stunts alone have made Banksy absolutely minted.

This is to art what Spinal Tap was to rock, only much, much better. There may be less “turn it up to 11” worthy dialogue but the long list of hijinks and the likely hood that too much of this is true than there really should be makes it better than some daft Stonehenge skit.

This is on Channel 4 tonight if you’re interested, and if you think it sounds too pretentious, trust me, it’s not.

The First Three Years-Frank Turner

It’s kind of a faux-par for me; best of albums. They just look wrong in your collection and you don’t quite get to see how the band develops as an artist. Then again, I’m not really trying to sell Frank Turner as an artist. Far more than just a musician Frank Turner is a personality, a nice guy who sings songs. That’s not to say he can’t sing, on tracks like “Worst Things Happen At Sea” he both intimately moans and passionately screams. Frank sums himself up better than anyone on “Nashville Tennesse”; “Yes I play in 4/4 time, yes I right cheap, cheap rhymes . . . but I try to make them sound my own”.  It’s this sentiment that sums him up the best.

Frank’s style is modest, ever so British folk, but not in the clichéd, tired sense normally associated with the genre. He’s an ex-punk, charming, honest bloke who sings about politics, society and love. “Thatcher Fucked The Kids” manages to be catchy as Mr. Turner fits the best part of a politics essay in between the chorus’. Elsewhere on “I Really Don’t Care What You Did On Your Gap” he shows a sharp sense of humour and the album highlight “Photosynthesis” is a roaring, fun ode to youth and rock and roll.

So why a “best of” instead of his finest album? Because that’s the greatest way to prepare you for seeing him live. He frequently tours the U.K and the warmth and fun in his shows makes him one of my favourite live acts. No jokes, the way the whole crowd embraced middle class rebellion and sung their hearts out was great, I easily rate him up there with Slipknot, and he didn’t buy a busload of theatrics.

I can’t say I entirely agree with his views all of the time, but it’s nice to have an artist whose views I can disagree with. The man has a talent for writing great songs, I’m looking forward to his inevitable song on the riots, but in the time being his live show and albums will tide me over.    

Talk Talk Talk – The Psychedelic Furs

Even if you don’t recognise the name, you’ll instantly know the first track on their second album; Talk Talk Talk. “Pretty in Pink” was given a gaudy, cheesy reworking for the film of the same name and shows up time and again in tampon adverts and the like. On this album though the song is presented more restrained amongst a batch of poppy, post punk gems, layered guitars and distortion. When you listen to it without something being sold to you, “Pretty In Pink” is a pretty dark song. It could be about boys preying on a helpless girls emotions for sex. Regardless, with less saxophone the lead singers sneering “Pretty in pink, isn’t she?” is plain creepy and threatening.

The Psychedelic Furs are a dark band and Talk Talk Talk is a compilation of anti-love songs. Both “Into You Like A Train” and the brutally honest “I Wanna Sleep With You” bypass romance in favour of looking at the darker side of relationships. The bass rumbles and the saxophone cries all over their songs. There is a paranoid quality to everything too, the superb final song, “All of This & Nothing”, starts with a false intro, fading out before bursting into another song. If there is a theme on this album, it would be that things are not what they seem.

The real star here is Richard Butler who croons and mumbles vicious, nihilistic lyrics while staying a cool customer. “Dumb Waiters” is a flat out mean, biting number that reminds me of Dylan crying out against society.  The lyrics are steeped in surrealism and snap back and forth between good cop/ bad cop.  On “So Run Down” Butler spends a chorus naming household object before yelling  "now I'm left with all of this, a roomful of your trash.

So why is this a pop album than? Simply put the drums have a swing that is perfectly danceable to. The band is also amazingly proficient at coming up with killer hooks. The repetitive, incessant beat that propels these songs is pop dynamite. Layered over this is unbelievable cool; not 80’s leg warmer cool, but charisma and effortless that hasn’t aged a day.

Unlike pure post-punk bands the spit and polish makes ugly tracks a breeze to listen to and even kind of enhances the creepy theme of “love is ugly”. Unlike pure pop this album packs heady thoughts and an emotional punch into good riffs and fantastic beats. This album is pretty unlike either category and is worth checking out just because of its bizarre, two faced nature. I think that’s what the cover represents, indeterminable emotions not concerned with what is happening around them. And at the same time it could just be a cool pop cover.

Splinter Cell Conviction

Anyone could make a unique game. Here, I’ll make one know, it’s called Mixy Advenutres and you direct a dying rabbit through the woods and into suburbs, in search of a vets. Along the way your senses slowly decrease and I’ll right the whole thing off as a metaphorical critique of capitalist society. I’ll get Johnathon Coulton to add an ironic, feel good pop song finale and I’ll use communist colouring to appease the art crowd. Sorted.

But making an action game in 2011 that not only works but is fantastic is quite another thing. The market for shooters is far beyond saturation and the ultra-competitive world of triple A video games mean taking this risk could ultimately bomb your entire studio.

 Conviction is the latest entry in the popular stealth franchise Splinter Cell, following Sam Fischer foil a coup on America, y’know, like every other Tom Clancy game/book/film/board game. This title however updates the formula, you no longer have to be stealthy, but playing loudly will get you killed quickly. It’s a fantastic pay off instead of being forced to arbitrarily be quite to want to stay silent. When you’re detected the ensuing shit storm is appropriately frantic and difficult without being cheap, and it’s this motivation gives the game much of its appeal.

Instead you’ll want to climb and hide in places and slowly pick off the bad guys, which is fantastic fun. The mechanics don’t work so well in real life, if you shoot someone and the survive you have telegraphed your location, but a combination of melee, shooting and gadgets give the game a one of its kind guerrilla feel. Within the game it’s implementation is absolutely superb. You always feel outgunned and like you’re relying on your wits, and as you skulk around messing with the guards you realise this very unique experience. I guess it has a lot in common with the excellent Arkham Asylum, but replaces the adventure aspect with tight action sequences and a faster moving narrative. That’s not to say the game is restrictive, it gives you a location or objective and lets you make your way there.

This game also has some of the best game design in the business. Everything from unlockables to achievements to multiplayer to even the menu system is a breeze to navigate. It has the A.C.Es style system from Vegas 2 that encourages you to play the game inventively, varying your style. These points carry over everywhere and landmarks are rewarded with achievements. This game goes out of its way to make sure you exploit its fantastic mechanics to the fullest.

The co-op is also superb; it’s basically a mini campaign that is involved with the single player story but with less emphasis on interruptive story.

I cannot emphasis what a breath of fresh air this game is, delivering a joyous experience greatly missing in today’s market. The gameplay has infinity depth and by my time with this game was through I was effortlessly breezing around the map having a great time. Even if you don’t like stealth Conviction is a fantastic experience as is well worth picking up. I happily put about 30 hours in so it may be more of a purchase than a rent.

Zombieland

Not all movies need a message or a metaphor. Take Zombieland as an example, the closest thing to a moral agenda this film has is “fucking shit up is fun”. That isn’t to say this film is dumb, the humour comes entirely from wit, mainly Jesse Eisenbergs protagonist, who dryly narrates the film with the tentative, nerdy ironies Michael Cera is known for. Eisenberg>Cera anyday in my book though, he lacks the quite so cute babyface that confines him to quirky rom-coms. As proven in the Social Network Jesse can turn to drama easily and that, coupled with the way he can convincingly pull off a somewhat flawed, dickish character helps flesh this film out.

Talking about flesh, I’m going to stop and point out that this film is gory. These aren’t the Shaun of the Dead, green faced mumbling stumbler zombies; these are the Rage infected, bodily fluids and bone snapping monsters. For gore fans though there is an excellent slow motion zombie murder montage to Metallica to look forward to.

Accompanying our geeky antihero is Woody Harrelson, who fulfils the role of badass in chief with ease. He enjoys killing zombies and is effortlessly hardcore (“cool” is not a word reserved for a snake skin jacket wearing red neck, but he sure is fun) and dismembers the undead with baseball bats, garden shears and banjos. Later the film introduces Emma Stone (ummmm Emma Stone . . . ) and her spunky 12 year old sister. They are they street wise con women who fool the duo but soon end up in with them. Beneath these characterures however each character has atleast one thing behind them and the cast turn out to be surprisingly deep. Some of the revelations about their past are truly tragic, although it isn’t too long until something funny comes along.

This film won’t make you question existence or admire life in a different way, but it sure will entertain you for the entirety of it’s running time and is one of the funniest comedies so far this decade.