Tagged: review

Wingman

A couple of weeks ago I headed down to The Old Truman Brewery to check out a Shep Fairey exhibition (to be blogged about soon) and, since art makes me pretty hungry, I decided to grab some wings from The Orange Buffalo while I was in the neighbourhood.

With most wings being slathered in butter and Frank’s hot sauce, it’s difficult to go wrong with wings. However, it’s also difficult to do anything…different. Orange Buffalo, however, do just the latter by serving up a range of different sauces (everything from Original and the devilishly spicy Viper to a sweet, spicy Mango Chilli…). All of them are scratch made from fresh chillies, with not a bottle of Frank’s in sight.

Undoubtedly, the best wings I’ve ever eaten are those at Hooters. Given my passion for equality and gender issues, it might come as a surprise that I’m a huge fan of Hooters (having eaten at a lot of them, all over the United States). Yes, I’m aware I probably should find the concept pretty distasteful, but I love it. I’m probably just blinded by my unfailing love for Americana, but it’s so much fun to eat there and everyone is so friendly and cheerful…kinda like if Disneyland made strip clubs. In the past, people have called Hooters an outdated relic and campaigned for them to be shut down. I once heard someone on the radio comparing it to a restaurant called Meatballs, where men in Speedos serve plates of spaghetti. ‘HOW WOULD YOU FEEL THEN, MENFOLK?’ she yelled. Simple – I wouldn’t eat there. (Unless the spaghetti was really good.) While Page 3 is, to some extent, shoved in everybody’s face, the same can hardly be said of Hooters. If you don’t like it, don’t go. Plus, it’s all about the food anyway. And to those who scorn that idea, I once saw two grannies in there with their grandchildren. Barring any possibility of geriatric lesbianism, I defy you to explain that one.

Outside of the US, the best wings I’ve had are at Red Dog Saloon, in Hoxton Square. I find the wings at Bodeans a bit too cumbersome, not to mention lacking spice, and those at Meatliquor much too dry. The wings from Orange Buffalo are easily on par with Red Dog’s – the deep frying process leaves them a little crispier than I would prefer but, overall, they’re fantastic. In case you’re in any doubt as to whether I enjoyed them, check out the picture below. It’s a well known fact that the messier you get during a meal, the better the food is.

Parclife

Channeling my inner Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down.

‘I’m wondering if Center Parcs might actually be Heaven,’ I’m sleepily telling my fellow travellers. ‘Everything has this timeless feel, like it could just as easily be 1984 as 2012. The air feels so much fresher and, like…everyone just seems happy.’ Of course, a couple of facts stop me getting too close to quoting Kurt Vonnegut Jr (‘Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.’), like the occasional petulent child crying and stamping their feet, and the odd scribble on toilet doors letting you know that the vandal h8s Centa Parks. Oh, and the fact that the chapel has recently been converted into a Starbucks.

Since this is (or at least pretends to be most of the time…) a fashion blog, I should probably pass comment on some of the fashion crimes committed at Center Parcs. And there are plenty of them. From the ‘pea coat and trackie bottoms combo’…

…to thirteen year old boys wearing weird matching Smurf onesies…

…Center Parcs has it all.

But all snark aside, I confess that I have completely fallen in love with the place. One of the reasons? It encouraged me to take a break from who I usually am. This revelation hit me as I sat drinking lukewarm tinnies in a bowling alley, playing (make that annihilating…) an eight year old at Mario Kart, and humming along to Tulisa’s latest single. All the while, dressed like this:

Despite not actually being in a Hunger Games-esque bubble (as vague memories of adverts recalled from my childhood seemed to suggest), which is probably a good thing as I found out on Saturday that I SUCK at archery, it still has this feel of being a self-sustaining commune. Why this led me to start dressing like a chav, I’m not sure. One theory is that what started out as practicality (tucking your socks in prevents tick bites…that’s right, I read my wildlife handbook, fools) turned into a desire for out and out comfort. And comfort is kind of what Center Parcs is all about – the accommodation is comfortable; I challenge any of you to find an unwelcoming chair in the whole place. The dining is comfortable. Even the staff are comforting – they remind you of diner waitresses offering solace (and caffeine) to lonely truckers, or dinnerladies who give you a bigger portion because ‘you look like you need fattening up’.

The difference between people who have just arrived and people who are leaving is massive – new arrivals still sport Topshop pleather jackets with dip dyed t-shirts and heels, while the veterans have long since resorted to waterproof jackets and tracksuit bottoms. Not to mention the fact that anyone who’s been there for more than a couple of days looks like an deflated balloon, or a Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man on a still day, due to ARE (activity related exhausation) and/or acute relaxation. I just got home, and I already want to go back. It’s no secret that I have something of a love-hate relationship with London, and it’s definitely good to know there’s another bubble out there where I can escape from the noise and frenzy of it all. Except next time, I’m angling for one of the deluxe treehouses…

The Perks of Being a Wallflower & ‘The Loner Flick’

At the beginning of 500 Days of Summer, a guy who sounds kinda like Morgan Freeman tells us that it’s a story about boy meets girl, but it is not a love story. As well as setting the tone for that particular movie those words have come to define, for me anyway, a whole sub-genre of cinema. Garden State. Lost in Translation. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Adventureland. Over the past decade or so, a bunch of films have deviated from the umbrella of ‘teen movies’ (Road Trip, American Pie etc) enough to make them something a little bit different. Because their slow pace and the way they meander is reminiscent of stoner flicks, except there’s no weed (ok, they do sometimes still have some weed), I’ve dubbed them loner flicks. Oh, and all their soundtracks seem to feature that one song by Crowded House.

In a nutshell, loner flicks appeal to those of us who are lost. Those of us who, nine times out of ten, WON’T take that big risk. Those of us who grew up desperate to believe that we could make our dreams come true, but have no idea how to actually make them happen. Those of us who are so resigned to loneliness and mediocrity that even relatively mundane events can become imbued with a sense of meaning. Loner flicks are so resonant with a certain subset of teenagers and twentysomethings because they hold up a mirror.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a quintessential loner flick. For that reason, it is almost invariably destined to be nothing more than a cult favourite. I first read the source material (a weird little ‘HMV Books’ paperback I picked up from WH Smith) almost ten years ago. Like most things I loved when I was fifteen, it became much more to me than just ‘a book’. It became a retreat when the world got hard, an inspiration and something like a symbol of hope. Like one of those songs you listen to over and over again, trying to get every ounce of meaning out of it. It’s safe to say that the film had a lot to live up to. Yet, at the same time, it couldn’t fail – I’ve read the book, and seen its events happen in my head, so many times that I was already overwhelmed by nostalgia when the credits finished rolling.

I have no doubt that the general public will be wowed by the fantastically camp sense of humour Ezra Miller brings to his portrayal of Patrick, and the quirky charm Emma Watson exudes as Sam (is it ok for me to have a crush on her yet?). But this will take the film only so far. Its incredibly slow pace means that most moviegoers will fail to recognise the little things - Charlie’s constant desire not to disappoint his parents, the beauty of the flickering lights of the Pittsburgh skyline and the heartbreaking innocence of young Charlie’s eyes. It’s vaguely appropriate that I sat and watched the movie alone in a room almost entirely full of couples (I’d recommend you do the same) – the film recalled all of the anxiety and introspection that plagued me as a teenager. It made me laugh, it made me cry and it reminded me of how uncomfortable I am with the real world. Like all good movies do, it took me out of my own life for a night.

If not for Emma Watson, I would have little doubt that The Perks of Being a Wallflower would bomb. Even as is, it’s touch and go. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad film, because it’s really not (I’ve already made a space for the DVD) – it’s filled with humour, emotion and completely beautiful moments. But it’s not made with normal people in mind. It’s made for people like me – the wallflowers.

[P]REVIEW: Unicorn Kid – Pure Space

Firstly, apologies if you have me on Twitter or Facebook because I’ve been going on endlessly about this song. Secondly, I take back that apology because I can’t talk about this song enough. At a conservative estimate, I’ve already listened to it about fifty times this weekend.

With Pure Space, Unicorn Kid not only bucks his already pretty distinctive (tough enough to create as it is – there are only so many video game noises…) take on the chiptune genre by mixing in old school house piano riffs and steel drums. The song is a total chameleon – it comes across completely differently depending on whether you’re listening to it in a club environment, on a summer day at the beach or walking around a city at night. It is by turns cheerful, epic and haunting, and I’m totally at a loss as to how Unicorn Kid has accomplished it.

There is no other word for the video than sublime – it at once recalls the vague meandering style of Kids, The Fifth Element, Lost in Translation and (sigh, yes, I SUPPOSE) Skins, alluding to a a narrative that is never fleshed out. Of course, I wouldn’t have it any other way. The Fader remarks that the video is ‘endlessly screenshotable’, which is completely true – the video encapsulates the nihilism and disenfranchisement of today’s youth better than a thousand Tumblr pages.

Most of all, the video kind of makes me jealous that I’m way too old to have weekends like this anymore. So for that, fuck you Unicorn Kid.

REVIEW: The Hunger Games

It’s my own fault really. About five days before I went to see The Hunger Games, I watched Battle Royale for the first time. Now I’m not going to be one of these people who’s like ‘ohh, Hunger Games ripped off Battle Royale!!!’ because by this logic Battle Royale also ripped off everything from Highlander to gladiators in Ancient Rome. But what I will say is that Battle Royale is complex, tense and utterly blood soaked. By comparison, it makes The Hunger Games look like Sweet Valley High with a couple of murders.

stars of hunger games
Battle Royale? Banned in a bunch of countries. Hunger Games? Photoshoot in Vanity Fair.

That said, The Hunger Games isn’t a bad film. Yes, I may have seen it for free, but that’s not the point. But since everyone and their dog is going on about how incredible it is, I thought I’d list some of the problems I had with the movie.

The biggest is that the film completely loses the sense of isolation that Katniss and the other competitors are meant to feel in the arena – from the artificial grid of the sky to cameras whirring away in tree trunks, the fabricated environment feels more like a paintball arena than anything else. And nobody dies in paintball. Well, except for these guys. Constantly flicking between the gamemakers and the contestants offers an interesting insight into the process of the games, but I would have preferred being totally immersed in Katniss’ experiences.

This guy's new nickname is Shakin' Stevens.

A quick note on a technical aspect of the movie – having done film studies through to A-level, maybe I should know what the team was trying to accomplish with the shaky camerawork. But I don’t. And, at times, it makes The Blair Witch Project looks overproduced.

Another huge problem is the complete loss of subtlety. In the books, Katniss and Haymitch’s relationship develops through his withholding of food and medicine from sponsors. This forces her to consider how he wants her to act and who she should ally herself with. No danger of such psychological torment in the movies though, since they tuck little notes in the packages from sponsors. Seriously. Also, the mockingjay pin becomes something Katniss gets in the market for free rather than a gift obtained through a friendship borne out of terrible circumstances. Why not, I mean it’s only one of the most important symbols in the book…

Character development is also, to put it mildly, shallow. We only see Gale’s (Abercrombie model) face a few times, Foxface isn’t even referred to by name until the final third of the movie and Rue only speaks to Katniss a few times before…well, you know. The casting of Rue is utterly perfect (though a bunch of idiotic tweeters weren’t happy about her being played by a black actress), with Amandla Stenberg offering up a wonderful blend of mischief and innocence. Oh, and the riot scene that follows Rue’s death is genuinely one of the most powerful and touching pieces of film I’ve ever encountered.

The Muppets and The Artist are the same film.

‘The determinant lay, he believed, in those values which the society in question was lacking, for it would love in art whatever it did not possess in sufficient supply within itself.’ – Alain De Botton, paraphrasing Wilhelm Worringer.

The Muppets The Artist

So, the title of this blog post is one of my more controversial statements, but how can it possibly be true? Well, it isn’t. Not in the sense that The Muppets and The Artist are literally the same film, more in the sense that they both draw on exactly the same narrative conventions and are prototypes for an emerging genre of film. Sorry I misled you. I’ll explain a little about  how I reached this conclusion, and you can see why The Muppets and The Artist are pretty much the same film.

Both frequently break the fourth wall – The Muppets does so explicitly, with Statler and Waldorf (the grumpy old men) talking about ‘important plot points’ and ‘the audience’. Both Gary and Mary comment on the strangeness of the fact that they’ve just broken into song. The Artist messes with the fourth wall in a slightly more subtle way – Peppy occasionally winks at the audience, and characters sometimes appear to be addressing the audience, only for the camera pan away to reveal  their true target. In itself, this is not unusual – plenty of films break the fourth wall, but it’s worth noting now that both films are highly self referential and hypertextual.

Both of the plots are nostalgic for the ‘golden age’, of Hollywood and of America. The Muppets’ Smalltown is stuck in the 1950s, resembling a polished version of the decade usually reserved for posters in diners and the memories of reminiscing pensioners. The Artist presents a similarly idealised version of the 1920s and ’30s – the women are beautiful, dog is man’s best friend and everybody smokes but nobody gets cancer. Both films stick with American dream-y ideals, and document a nobody (Walter and Peppy respectively) who manage to make it big for no reason other than some good luck, their quirky personality and their dedication to a cause.

This is where it starts to get interesting. Both movies are concerned with comebacks – of The Muppets, and silent movies. When I say they are ‘concerned’ with comebacks, I mean not only that they are about them but also that they are them. ‘They don’t make them like that anymore…well, they do now,’ quipped one bumbling spectator on a television advert for The Artist. The Artist is a film designed to generate a sense of nostalgia, ironically one for a period during which most of its viewers weren’t even alive. The same is true of The Muppets – in one scene Walter takes in the sights of Kermit’s office, including pictures of Kermit on magazine covers, with celebrities, presidents etc. The message is clear – The Muppets were a big deal. If you don’t remember them, just look at all this cool stuff they did. Through combining all of the conventions of silent movies (albeit often in a clever way), The Artist does a very similar thing.

The really strange thing? Both films are about comebacks for something that never really went away. The Muppets appeared on Weezer’s Keep Fishin’ video in 2002, had a Christmas special in 2008 and have popped up in various straight to video features. And remember a few Christmases ago when Tickle Me Elmo was THE Christmas present everybody wanted? (Mind you, he’s a Sesame Street-er rather than a true Muppet). Although it’s difficult to argue that the same is true of silent movies, any film course worth its salt has at least one silent film module. And, more generally, 1920s culture is far from forgotten – recent fashion collections have been heavily influenced by the era, electro swing has been sweeping clubs across the nation for the past couple of years and last Christmas I gave you my heart saw dancer Darcy Bussell paying homage to dance numbers from old timey movies.

Both films are based on such narrowly structured plots and tropes, that they’ve actually been beaten to the punch. By cartoon shows no less. The ‘punchline’ of The Artist (the reason George Valentin is so unwilling to speak) appeared in a Family Guy skit years ago. Enjoy this terrible quality video -

As for The Muppets? Well, it’s not exactly the same situation, but after Krusty gets kancelled (sorry.) Bart and Lisa run around town trying to recruit celebrities to appear on his comeback special. No video of the show itself, but it does feature someone getting shot out of a cannon Gonzo-style…

If the Worringer quote, alluded to way up at the top of this post, is correct then the implications are a little worrying. The fact that self referential comeback films about…comebacks are currently in vogue (like…Oscar in vogue) would suggest that not only are we out of ideas for ‘new stuff’, but also that we all now hate the society we live in. Happy Sunday.

Review: MEATliquor, meet suckers.

I’ve been waiting to try Meatliquor for months. Like real, honest to God, months. It is, therefore, just possible that my unrealistic expectations compounded with obscene amounts of Twitter hype mean that I’m being a harsh critic. Still, it took twice as long for us to get our meal as it did for the Titanic to sink. And that’s never a good start to a review.

We arrived at the restaurant at 7pm on a Thursday to find a queue of around 50 people, which took an hour or so to clear. This wouldn’t have been so painful if the queue hadn’t been full of hipper-than-thou douchebags looking at each other’s trashed shoes and trying to decide who was the most boho. The very air was thick with breathy murmurings about new underground German techno nights and places to get the deepest V-necks known to man. But that was fine, I’d expected all this.

meatliquor
Meatlqiuor Interior

On entering the restaurant, it was much smaller than I expected. I had been hoping for a pseudo-derelict Gotham City-esque ballroom (note to restaurateurs – build this, and I will come every night.) but instead found a large bar whose decorators seemed to have used Charles Manson’s Tumblr for inspiration. Still, I get what they’re trying to do and it works, especially alongside the eclectic musical mix of bass heavy tracks by artists like Kele Okereke and Joy Division.

We ordered our food – wings, bacon cheeseburger, dead hippie (a double patty burger) and fries to share. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. Everyone else’s food was arriving, so we questioned whether the order had gone through. It hadn’t, and another waitress offered us cocktails on the house. We went for a Donkey Punch (lol), a fizzy gingery concoction, and a Mai Tai that were both amazing. Like ‘The Savoy’s American Bar amazing’.

A generous helping of wings eventually arrived (though they still took about fifteen minutes after we lodged our complaint) and they were…fine. I don’t see how people can go wrong with wings, but these were far too dry for me. Still, I was just glad enough that our food was on its way. Or was it? Around an hour later, we had to complain again (hello, more free cocktails) and it quickly became apparent that the order for our burgers hadn’t gone through. Fantastic.

meatliquor 2
Dead Hippie Burger

Another half an hour later, our burgers arrived in the hands of an extremely apologetic waitress (not our original waitress, who seemed to be avoiding us…) who told us that our entire meal was being comped, which was nice. Again, the fries were…fine. I regret not going for the jalapeno covered chilli cheese fries, because what I got was only just better than McDonald’s fries. Mind you, I do like McDonald’s fries. The burgers were admittedly pretty good, but no better than a great diner burger. After waiting around for three and a half hours, I expected a lot better than a great diner burger. About three bites in, I realised that I wasn’t even really hungry anymore. Hunger had tagged out and gone home, and that feeling in my stomach was now just disappointment. We left the restaurant close to midnight in a haze of more apologies. Although not one of them came from our original waitress.

Ok, I get it – apparently it’s now ‘cool’ not to offer reservations. But if you insist on doing that, at least make sure that every customer receives service that’s efficient, lightning fast and friendly beyond belief. The service we received (from our original waitress, at least) was none of these things. Sorry I’m not toe-ing the party line and raving on Twitter about how amazing Meatliquor is, but it’s really not all that. It’s just…fine. Try the Hard Rock Cafe instead; fewer hipsters and you might get home before midnight.

REVIEW: Chuck Palahniuk, Damned

If there’s one thing Chuck Palahniuk knows, it’s the grotesque.  From Big Bob’s sweaty bitch tits to…well, pretty much all of Haunted, Palahniuk knows how to make readers squirm.  As expected, there is an element of this in Damned’s descriptions of Hell and its inhabitants – “the denizens of Hades, they flail and cower, shake fists at the flaming sky, pound their heads into the iron bars until their blood blinds them”  And yet, Palahniuk seems to insist that it is human instinct, rather than anything supernatural, that leaves people truly damned - ‘In Hell, it’s our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us.’

If you come expecting the visceral, aberrant prose of Guts, you may find yourself disappointed.  However, you may find yourself enjoying what I enjoyed most about Damned; it’s actually pretty funny.   Demons complaining about internet speed and Hell’s large screen playing The English Patient on repeat are just two examples of moments that made me smirk.  But there are also some wonderful moments that make so much sense, you wonder why no-one has ever thought of them before.  Here I’m thinking particularly of Madison’s description of “those websites which everyone assumes are in Russia or Burma, where naked men and women stare unflinchingly into the webcams, a dazed look in their glassy eyes…”  How could we have ever thought that these people lived anywhere but Hell?

The narrator, Madison, is a complex creation.  For the first few chapters, I wasn’t a fan, but as the novel progressed I began to warm to her.  I have no doubt that using a thirteen year old girl as the central figure will inspire some (pointless) debate about whether Palahniuk is trying to poison today’s youth.  Snore.  Of course, Damned argues that today’s youth, as well as its old, are already poisoned – “Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.”  As with most novels about that whole elusive ‘human experience’ thing, we’re left with just as many questions as answers – is life (and the afterlife) really what we make it?  Or are we all damned, as the novel suggests, by the age of five?  Well, maybe we’ll find out in the sequel.

Oh, and my favourite line? “I ask Emily what it’s like to have AIDS. Even over the phone, her eye roll is audible. ‘It’s like being Canadian,’ she says. ‘You get used to it.’”

I don’t really do star ratings, but I will say that this is probably going to divide audiences.  I can’t see anyone losing their Palahniuk virginity with anything other than Fight Club, but this would be an interesting way to do it.  I sense that a lot of Palahniuk vets will argue that this is subversive fiction watered down to cater to the very people it spends much of its time ridiculing.  For everyone else this is an easy, but sometimes thought provoking, read that’s difficult not to enjoy.  Oh, side note, the hardback is going to come with dust jackets designed to look and feel like human skin…