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Excellent.

It seems my penchant for ‘true crime’ is, pardon the tasteless pun, alive and kicking.

Whilst the direction of Manhunt is not especially remarkable – the subdued almost monochrome grey-ish palette is standard practice in English crime thrillers nowadays (for obvious reasons, climatic and subjective) – that’s actually a strength. It’s understated in a perfectly appropriate businesslike and very functional manner. Exactly right for a police procedural; PC plod going about their business!

The cast of this drama are uniformly (can’t seem to staunch the flow of puns!) superb. Martin Clunes, as SIO Colin Sutton, heads up a roll call of actors most of whom are not previously known to me, with one or two exceptions (such as Sutton’s long-suffering partner*, played by Claudie Blakly, and…?).

At one point, Sutton is about to fly to Spain for a family wedding, and we see him reading Wicked Beyond Belief, which I’ve only recently read (see my review here). It’s a great credit to Sutton and co. that this killer, Levi Bellfield, was caught so much sooner than Peter Sutcliffe. It seems lessons have been learned.

It’s also very interesting to see what has evolved technologically and what hasn’t, in terms of detection. The ubiquity of cameras brings new avenues of pursuit, but the evidence this yields – vehicles used by the perp’ – still requires masses of slogging through databases and wearing out of ‘shanks pony’/shoe leather!

Obviously computers, and forensics have all developed massively since Sutcliffe’s reign of terror. But it’s fascinating to see the parallels in the Bellfield case, regarding how hard it can be to amass the required amount of evidence to make the crucial arrest.

As with Michael Bilton’s excellent book on Sutcliffe, the approach here is to follow the coppers, not the killer, which I can see has a certain advantage, morally speaking, over the potentially more salacious and prurient voyeurism of following the murderer.

In the Sutcliffe case, it was (if I recall aright?) just one car that the rozzers needed to trace. Here they discover that the perp’ used numerous different vehicles. And yet they were able, thanks to all the CCTV footage, to do much better this time around, than back in the Sutcliffe investigation.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with the series. As I’ve watched three episodes, and it seems to have finished. But I also see it being advertised as ‘starting on Monday’, and there seems to be footage in the trailer suggesting something different from what I’ve watched online.

Anyway, what I’ve watched is well done, and both enjoyable and interesting viewing.

*A theme in WBB is the toll this demanding work takes in the marital lives of coppers.

This movie tells the story of the infamous ‘butcher baker’ of Anchorage (Alaska), Robert Hansen. John Cusack plays the killer.

Sadly, as with most movies of this sort, they take great liberties with the story, for the sake of making a slicker movie. I can see why film-makers do this stuff, but it is a shame. And it has the effect of potentially muddying knowledge of the real events.

Incidentally, for me personally there’s a big dose of irony here, in that the main copper is played by Nicolas Cage. And I recently lamented the fact I keep watching movies with him in, despite many of them being appalling turkeys. This is fortunately one of the better ones.

The film starts with a scene that’s fairly true to life, when ‘the one that got away’, Cindy Paulson, er… gets away. Cindy, played by Vanessa Hudgens, was coached on the role by Paulson. From there on in a rather complex fiction is woven around her, which is where the film diverges from fact into fiction.

This whole thread reaches a kind of climax in a scene where ‘Bob’ Hansen and ‘Sgt Jack Halcombe’ (Cage’s cop, somewhat based on real fuzz Glenn Nothe) are both hunting Cindy, in a sleazy nightclub/sex-joint. It’s a clever conceit, because that’s what got Hansen off, hunting his victims like he hunted game.

The bleak washed out Alaskan settings lend themselves to the cold grey near monochrome aesthetic the film favours. The Frozen Ground works very well as ‘good watching’; well shot and structured, with a decent cast. It’s a shame they fiddled with the facts as much as they did, and somehow the depth and length of the case, despite being referenced numerous times, feels weaker than I’d have liked.

Cusack, a very capable actor, is pretty good as Hansen, but I think they ought to have had more about how and why he wound up doing what he did. His characterisation here is a bit thin. And only having the thinnest of allusions to his raison d’etre adds to that lack of depth.

The top line cast are good, but the lower ranks, in the fleshpots scenes in particular (these include rapper, Fiddy-Cents!), struck me as a bit formulaic. Apparently The Frozen Ground was a flop when it came out. But it’s proved popular on subscription channels. Far from perfect, it is pretty decent, and I like it.

Phil Collins was a busy little body in 1976! Trick Of The Tail and Wind & Wuthering with Genesis, and this opus de fusion.

It’s funny, because, apart from Phil Collins the other players – John Goodsall (guitar), Robin Lumley (keys) and Percy Jones (bass) – aren’t exactly household names. And yet they play with the fire, chops and intensity of jazz-rock-fusionistas of the first rank.

Perhaps the biggest and most obvious potential criticism might be that at numerous points the influences are very transparent. It’s a heady mix of Weather Report, Mahavishnu and suchlike. The thing is, it’s so well done, that I don’t frankly care about this. It simply means if you like that other stuff – and I do – here’s more, in a similar vein.

In fairness to these guys, however, I should add that despite wearing their inspirations on their sleeves, this still remains a unique, or rather, more accurately, a spirited enough combination to stand on its own.

The intensity levels are sky high, stratus-pheric, one might even say. Part of me feels, listening to it now, aged 49, that this level of energy really makes this young man’s type music. And I think to some degree that holds. But then again, Brand X are still going! And they – any surviving original members, that is – must all be late 60s, early 70s?

A fascinating if rather grim documentary, detailing the gargantuan forensic project that arose from the smouldering hell of ground zero.

Interestingly the global scale of the disaster is brought home through the story of Geoffrey Campbell, a British man killed in the attacks.

Just as technology advances during war time, the science of forensics has been advanced by the unprecedented work required.

At one point, the investigation had to be halted, as the DNA work that could be done, had been done. Of the nearly three thousand victims, a little over half had been painstakingly identified.

The scale and intensity of the carnage was so extreme that very few remains – about 300 people – could be identified in the quickest normal ways: visuals, such as facial recognition, fingerprints, teeth, tattoos, scars, etc, yielded very few results.

Ultimately ground bones and the DNA they contain would be the key. Both in the initial investigation, and again in the second wave of analysis. And so a larger tranche of results became available. And in 2013 a third wave of new identifications occurred, but only four victims could be ID’ed.

So there’s a law of diminishing returns at work. And still there’s a pretty large number of relatives – about 40% – who have no remains at all with which to commemorate their loss. This is a very particular angle on these momentous events. Fascinating and heartbreaking.

Phew…

Emotions and memories are funny things, are they not? I’ve just recently been given a load of mp3 files from the ‘family band’ I was in, for a few years as a kid, circa age 16-18 year old, perhaps?

The band went through many band name changes. Something I really disliked! At the point when these recordings were made, we were called The Minotaurs, and comprised my mum on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, my dad, on bass, and I was the drummer. Completing the line-up was Malcolm Heyes, on lead and rhythm guitar and backing vocals.

I’m 49 at the time of typing this, so this music is over 30 years old. It’s the best early record of my playing as a drummer that I have. And for that I’m grateful. But it also brings back memories of a lost era in my life when my family were still what one might call a solid nuclear ‘family unit’. It could be said that this band put paid to that.

But that’s another story.

Or is it? That’s the thing. I can’t really hear this music and not feel some of the pain associated with events that would unfold in the ensuing years.

Part of me might want to be able to just listen and respond to it ‘purely musically’. But then again, that’d be weird. One of the chief appeals of music is how it stimulates feelings.

My mum and Malcolm – that tells you something about what came to pass – recently contacted me asking if I’d like to hear these tracks. And also talking about songwriting credits, etc. I’m glad they did. It is nice, on one level, to hear this stuff again after so many years. It’s surprisingly good, in certain respects.

And it’s nice, if this music is to exist our in the real world, as opposed to languishing on a few cassettes in drawers here and there, to be credited for my part in it. I have to say that I’m rather proud of my number, Blue Claw Sky, and for my age (and considering how little schooled I was in the art) I’m quite chuffed with my playing.

I didn’t know this, but I think we owe John Garrad, a friend of my dad’s who ran a folk record label called Plant Life, and is I believe responsible for the surprisingly good recording quality, a debt of gratitude for capturing is so well. This was, after all, just a little local pub gig, in (I think?), Fordham.

But we also owe ourselves a big pat on the back for a decent set competently played. We were well rehearsed, from frequent practise and quite a busy giggling schedule. The set, mostly originals, with a couple of those being instrumentals, and one or two covers, is strong.

Also in our favour, we had a decent and appreciative audience, who can be heard digging out stuff. Very gratifying! If only all local pub gigs could be more like that!

Anyway, I found the impact of the complex bittersweet mix of emotions too powerful to do the whole thing in one sitting. In fact I had to dose myself carefully, and it took three sessions of listening to hear the whole thing.

I don’t think it can be the entire set, there doesn’t seem enough material? And as I recall we were the main (only act?) that night. I may be wrong!? It also seems to be in a random order, starting with what was the last song before we took a break between sets… we’re all the tracks recorded that night? If so, what’s become of the rest?

Anyway, I must admit I’m fairly proud of what we had going, and pleasantly surprised that it’s pretty good in most respects: songwriting, performance, recording. But listening to it isn’t too easy, thanks to the historical emotional baggage. But, hey… that’s life. And that’s part of the charm of music, that it sears the emotions into the synapses.

Wow! What an odd but very interesting film.

Based on a real story, Bernie mixes the reflections of real life ‘talking heads’ with actors delivering a very polished (and rather stylised) re-imagining or re-creation of events. Of the two quotes on the image above, ‘murderously charming’ is the better and more accurate. There is an element of gentle humour, but ‘absolutely hilarious’? Hmmm… not really.

Bernie Tiede was, if this film is any guide, a slightly odd but basically very nice guy, who ultimately befriended a rich widow, who, by all accounts, was not an easily likeable person. Bernie got an in on a ritzy lifestyle, and Mrs Nugent got a friend and dogsbody. Which, if either, of the two was using the other?

Was Tiede playing the long game, as a gold-digger? Or was he simply who he seemed to be, a loveable oddball? His behaviour after his arrest and incarceration suggests the latter. But then again, he shot and killed a defenceless old biddy, and stuck her corpse in a freezer!? And carried on living an ever deepening lie, whilst generously splashing her cash around.

Jack Black gives a great performance, and the entire cast conspire to make the whole thing both a little zany and yet totally believable. The ‘real people’ are worked into the fabric of the film expertly. And throughout – but especially when the camera lingers on the faces of Tiede’s jury – you feel this is a film that, as unusual as the subject may be, gives a glimpse of the real America so absent from mainstream Hollywood generally.

Not sure this a ‘great’ film. But it’s very good. And really interesting. Oh, and very entertaining as well.

I was working at the home of my illustrator pal Tim Oliver, on Sept 11th, 2001. I was outside the house, working in a wooden shed studio in the back garden. Tim came running in, clearly agitated and excited, saying I had to come inside and see what was on the TV. I think it was a sunny day in the UK/The Fens, just as it was in the US.

Now, 20 years later, it’s still very powerfully affecting, seeing the footage and images of that fateful day. And there are a number of interesting ‘twentieth anniversary’ type programs on TV and other media, about these unbelievable events. This particular program is particularly fascinating, as it’s a view into the nerve centre of the American government as it came under attack.

I remember the way one thing after another kept happening: first one plane, then another, hitting the first and then the second tower, then a plane crashing into the Pentagon, then one tower coming down, then the other. It was a series of hefty punches, raining down, one after the other. This program conveys that well.

As well as the panoply of illustrious and powerful talking heads – all the key players: Bush, Cheney, Rice, etc. – who so suddenly seemed rendered powerless, there’s a cleverly deployed visual timeline. The combination of source materials, such as footage of the events themselves, audio recordings, and stuff like the computerised data of aircraft in flight, is incredible, and very well presented. The whole adds up to a very powerful experience.

One could argue that this might be official and therefore hagiographic propaganda. And maybe it is? A joint production by Apple TV, and the BBC, it appears, at first glance, to be independent. Certainly it’s very candid, with full and frank admissions as to the unpreparedness of US govt’ for such events.

The chief protagonists come across very well. Bush in particular impresses. Compared to some of the buffoons that have disgraced high public office on both sides of ‘the pond’ recently, the levels of eloquence and dignified calm in the face of such trauma are salutory.

Bush was doing a meet ‘n’ greet at the Emma Booker Elementary School, Saratoga, Florida, when he learned of the unfolding events. Watching how he reacted to learning the news is powerfully compelling viewing. And as things escalated the President and his entourage had to work out how to react; where to go, what to say.

This programme shows how uncertain things were. Bush wanted to go straight to Washington. But the bureaucratic machinery around the President overruled him, and they went instead to USAF Barksdale, and then a secure bunker in Nebraska.

One thing that this brief but impressive doc’ doesn’t address, which is something many non-Americans will think about (hopefully some Americans also?), is how America is happy to use violence abroad, but is so shocked when it comes home to roost. And of course there’s the irony of violence begetting yet more violence.

One of the things about Bush and his coterie of advisors at this point is that they were clearly very competent. It’s good to hear the former President acknowledge the importance of such resources as the teams of advisors he had around him, and to see that this was real and meaningful advice – willing and able to contradict him if need be – not just place-serving ‘yes men’ (and women!).

But after all of this, Bush felt, and undoubtedly rightly so, that he had to get to somewhere visibly ‘central’, which for him was Washington, and be seen and heard to be calmly in command. Bush, an assertive and competitive man, was psychologically exactly the right kind of leader for this ver challenging moment.

I may object to his religious platitudes, apple pie Americanisms and machismo, but Bush handled the unfolding events pretty damn well. On the day. But maybe the longer term legacy of such blue-blooded American posturing hasn’t been so good? To their credit, the production team don’t duck this issue (see below).

BBC ‘Do you think your actions after 9/11 made the world a safer place?’
GB ‘I’m comfortable with the decisions I made.’

One particularly poignant thread, amongst many, is that of Ted and Barbara Olson. Ted was, at that time, a very high ranking official in the Justice Dept, and his wife, Barbara was a conservative journalist/pundit. Barbara took a later work-related flight than originally planned, in order to share Ted’s 61st birthday with him, leaving a love note to her husband on his pillow (which he reads, very movingly, in this film). A note he would first see and read very late on the very same day he knew she had died.

Towards the end of the documentary, and in real timeline terms, on the 14th Sept – so three days after the events – Bush and his entourage visited ground zero. ‘It was almost like Pompeii’, says journalist David ‘Stretch’ Gregory.

All in all, this is an excellent programme, that gives an incredibly powerful, unprecedented and surprisingly candid insight into some very powerful era-defining events. Definitely well worth watching.

Well, I’m amazed. I’ve made a bodhran, or frame drum. It’s made from a cut down 13” rack tom, from a cheapo ex-school beginner kit.

It’s quite high pitched and resonant. And I think a ‘true’ bodhran would have a bigger heavier frames and lower tone. But hey, it’s a first attempt. And I have to confess I’m chuffed. Chuffed it’s a playable drum at all!

I’ve kind of jumped from the previous post to the finished thing, with this second post. I might at some point put up more pics and info’ on the complete build process.

I don’t know how to play it. Leastways not in the authentic bodhran manner. And I don’t have a stick/tipper/beater thing. I’m trying (unsuccessfully so far!) to put up a short video or two, just for a quick sample of the tonal characteristics.

A terrific group portrait.

I literally just finished this excellent book. The two main characters in it are are Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. The titular Club was actually founded by painter Joshua Reynolds, to get Johnson out of one of his regular depressions. Boswell wouldn’t be invited to join for quite some time.

More than a history of The Club, this is really a group portrait of figures in the Johnson Boswell orbit, and of the places and times they lived in. It’s heavily illustrated, which is great, really adding several layers of warmth and depth to what is already interesting, helping one imagine the characters and the settings of their lives more vividly.

Damrosch clearly loves the whole era, and the great majority of the colourful cast. But this doesn’t stop him from giving a balanced portrait, warts and all, so to speak. Johnson is a cranky conservative prude, as well as the witty savant behind his famous dictionary. Boswell is an inordinately vain womaniser, in thrall to Johnson, and both are in many ways unattractively hidebound and old-fashioned.

But the chief attraction of this book is that it vividly and compellingly captures the multifarious facets of a kaleidoscopic era, populated by a diverse bunch of very interesting (if frequently flawed) people. And it does so with equal measures of detail, balance and excitement, such that it’s both very informative and highly enjoyable.

It’s perfect for me, as a way to start to learn more about a whole slew of folk I’m interested in, from Johnson and Boswell, to Adam Smith and Edward Gibbons, and many more besides. It’s pitched in the sweet spot between scholarly and suited for the lay reader. I loved this book, and would unhesitatingly recommend it.

Utter garbage. I’m amazed I bothered to watch it all the way through. How many lame ass Nic Cage films am I going to inflict on myself?

White-trash prick-tease Teena (Anna Hutchinson) gets gang-raped – with her daughter as witness – by four cartoon rocker ne’erdowells. The loathsome quartet are then acquitted, thanks to the biggest insensitive prick of a judge ever, oh… and Don Johnson, as the most oleaginous Harley riding lawyer ever.

Throughout this pitiful movie the heavily made up Nicolas Cage disappears from the screen for long enough – poss due to the time required attempting to make him look younger? – to call his star billing into question. The real screen time is shared by the white trash trio of Debs Ungar (as granny Agnes), Teena, and Bethie, the traumatised daughter.

I knew this movie was going to be complete arse when the Patriot Films part of the titles rolled. What passes for patriotism in the US of A these days seems to be gun-fetishism and vigilante ultra-violence. This film sho’ is patriotic, ticking both boxes.

Set in the Niagra Falls community … aw, shoot…I really can not be bothered spending any more effort reviewing such toss. Avoid.