Tasseomancy : Do Easy

The Canadian duo Tasseomancy made up of twins Sari and Romy Lightman release their new album on the Bella Union label on Friday 18th November.

The new album combines the folk foundations of the pair along with the psychedelic influences of with experimental pop art.

Influences abound throughout the album from Kate Bush to PJ Harvey to other ambient electronic sounds that are awash on many tracks. Personally I found a lot of the tracks to be hard to listen to and not capable of crossing to the mainstream apart from the lead single and title track 'Do Easy':

https://soundcloud.com/bella-union/tasseomancy-do-easy

This track is the one that grabs your attention due to the unique combination of the dual vocals by the twins along with a quite hypnotic bassline. The only other tracks that comes close to matching the level of 'Do Easy' is third track on the album 'Jimi Infiniti' for possible cross-over appeal and 2nd single, 29 Palms

All in all, an album that on paper looked good but unfortunately did not totally convince once committed to the studio and a chance missed to perhaps do something special.

'Do Easy' is released by Bella Union on Friday 18th November.

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My thanks to OneBeatPR for the preview listen

Netflix and the Current Climate of Sitcom

When saving for a house with your lovely girlfriend you need to make sacrifices, you need to do away with treats as you used to term them. That means making do without visits to the cinema or meals out at Pizza Express every week. It means being with the one you love, sharing those time together so all money can go into savings towards a better and brighter future in your first step on the property ladder.

A benefit of this also means committing to a different viewing practice of television. Luckily, my girlfriend had a Netflix account but this was in the early days of the provider. We used it initially for catching up and bingeing on Breaking Bad, then we noticed that the company started to release more original content. Firstly, with comedy specials by John Mullaney, then they went into original half hour format of comedy sitcoms vehicles for specific talent.

First to appear was Master of None by Aziz Ansari (who co-starred in Parks and Recreations) wrote and starred in this semi-autobiographical sitcom of a struggling Asian actor in the big city coping with pigeon-hole casting and casual racism, whilst also incorporating Ansari's rye eye on relationships in the modern world.

The cherry on the cake though is possibly Joe Swanberg's Easy; an anthology of eight episodes set in Chicago starring a multitude of talent from American independent cinema but where Swanberg as writer and director is given a platform to for a larger audience to access his work.

Swanberg who came from the Mumblecore movement of ten years ago, has always been able to write relationships and like the better writers of the last 30 years in American cinema, can write women well and effectively, something his sometime mentor Apatow struggles regularly with.

Swanberg puts his lense and scripts on differing relationships. From a marriage of 15 years struggling to add fire back into the bedroom, to a lesbian love affair that could be make or break by the adoption of vegan eating practices.  Yet he also comments on how people change in a relationship or struggle to adapt to the big life changes in their life such as impending fatherhood or new employment.

Swanberg by employing a revolving door of talent makes it easy (pardon the pun) for us to not fall in love with characters, historically the appeal of sitcom is you would want to be friends with the Friends cast - yet by having just a swift peek into this couple's life, we are now in a position of either taking it or leaving it without the need for a fully committed 24 episode season as is the want on network television.

The Ranch, meanwhile, is one of the more consistently funny sitcoms of recent years. It has the tropes and mannerisms of a typical family sitcom, yet it deals with an undercurrent of social themes - a family business struggling in the current economic climate, a married couple parting ways as well as a talented individual having to come to terms with the fact that his career and life did not pan out as he wished.

The show was released via the online network with 10 episodes and after a short hiatus, returned again with 10 more episodes making them more of an extension and conclusion of Season One rather than a stand alone Season Two.  Despite the hiatus, I could not imagine how much I missed the characters and the ease of the sitcom world inhabited by the Bennett family.

What is at times so refreshing and pleasing when you watch the show, is that even though a lot of the jokes are telegraphed and the characters are generic; it is that sense of wholesomeness and heart on the sleeve honesty that runs through the show that fills you with a sense of warmth and belonging.

And yet because the show is so professional, perhaps too polished, it can still hit you with an unexpected surprise such as the end of Season 1, Episode 11, 'Gone as a Girl Can Get' when Rooster (Danny Matherson) finds his Dad, Beau (Sam Elliott - grizzly and terrific) crying as he plants some flowers and wonders why people leave him. The scene is played not for laughs, but seriously, like families can be on occasion and it ends with two people at loggerheads usually on equal terms; there for each other.

The Netflix vehicle should be applauded though as gone are the time to sit down and watch a 90 minute comedy, and why so many comedies struggle due to the lack of jokes and hit count of laughter.  By minimising the screen time per episode to the 25-30 minute running time, you have to hit a home run less often, and if it is hit and miss, there is no need to worry due to the next episode being available straight away. An audience is more inclined to sit down and give the next episode another chance rather than dismiss it and forget about watching another episode the week after.

The Ranch, Easy and Master of None are available on Netflix now.

There For You

There for you
No matter what you do
I'll be there for you

Through the ups and downs
Over and around
High or low
The to and fro
No matter what you do
I'll be there for you

You're the one for me
It is plain to see
Never knew I would feel
Like I do about you
There for you
I'll be there for you

Times are hard
And hard to overcome
Days are long
But songs are sung
Play your guitar
Sing out your heart

You're the one for me
And you're there for me
All the time
When I need you most
For a hug, a kiss
Or a dance on my toes

No matter what you do
I'll be there for you

Showboat: Book review

From the much heralded author, Roland Lazenby comes the sure to be seminal text about one of the generational icons of basketball.  Lazenby has written numerous tomes and novels about the stand out performers in the NBA culminating in his biography, Michael Jordan: The Life (2014).

Lazenby's knowledge over his subject is second to none having written five dozen nonfiction books mostly about basketball and American football.  In taking on the subject of Kobe Bean Bryant, he is attempting to make sense of one of the most difficult personas in professional basketball of the last 25 years.

Kobe Bryant is one of those lightning in a bottle talents that come along once in a lifetime. Unless you compete in basketball when there are talents such as his every 10 year cycle. Before Jordan, there was Magic Johnson, before Magic there was Dr. Julis Erving, before Erving there was Wilt Chamberlain.  And after Kobe there was LeBron, and now there is Steph Curry.

Talents such as the men just mentioned are seminal, they are awe-inspiring, they are able to do things on the court not seen before and not seen since.  They rekindle your love of the game, leave you gasping for breathe and adjectives to describe wheat they achieve. And yet this talent and gift to the public is single-minded, selfless and full of sacrifices.

Lazenby makes not of this following Bryant's young life following in the footsteps of his father Joe, a talented player in his own right who left the NBA to play in Europe, primarily Italy.  This brought young Kobe into contact with players of flair and individuality but also showed him a lifestyle he did not want to replicate. Bryant wanted to be better than his father, and that meant succeeding in the NBA, a place his father could not.

Bryant, along with LeBron, was the last great player to forego the route of College Basketball and jump straight into the big time. Since LeBron, the rules have changed as the NBA and NCAA agreed that any player must complete a minimum of one year in college before declaring for the NBA draft (in football it is two years).

Bryant was always going to make the jump when he was mixing it up with pros at his junior year of high school culminating in a state championship of Pennsylvania as he was the talk of Philadelphia.  The leap to the Los Angeles Lakers was a dream come true and a meeting of two great world views, with the end of Magic Johnson due to his HIV illness, the Lakers were a big team struggling to be relevant as Jordan and the Chicago Bulls ran the show. The Lakers needed to be relevant and with the acquisition of Bryant in the draft they had a large piece of the puzzle to regain a championship banner.

Throughout the novel, Lazenby goes to great lengths to make sense of Bryant's supposed selfishness and bloody single mindedness throughout his career; an individual who cannot play well with others, not a team player, shouting at team-mates for not passing him the ball.

These accusations followed Bryant throughout his career with him taking too many shots, ultimately missing too many shots and yet when he was hot there was probably no hotter shooter in the NBA. Bryant could score 30+ in halves of games quicker than others, from all regions most famously his fadeaway from 12 feet over the despairing arm of a defender.

Lazenby goes deep into the relationship with Shaquille O'Neal, an unbeatable tandem that garnered three straight NBA titles together something to rival Jordan's Bulls of the mid 1990s and yet O'Neal had to leave as it was Kobe's team and his alone.

By the end of the career, injuries mounted up onto a body that had played non-stop in the NBA for close to 20 years and the years of preparation before that.  His contract crippled the Lakers when they needed to rebuild and his last season turned into a farewell tour as he took to the floor of many courts for the last time.

It culminated the only way Kobe knew how to, bringing down the curtain on his professional career with 60 points in his last game at Staples Centre. Bryant brought the house down and left you wanting more. Yet Bryant could not give anymore in his desire to succeed and to be the best; his ambition was reached yet he broke some hearts along the way.

A great book and read for lovers of the NBA and Basketball for one of the more complicated players of all time.

Showboat is out now from Little Brown and Company now for £19.95 RRP, although the kindle edition is better with more pages.

The Killing of America

Released on DVD and Blu-ray by, The Killing of America is a film from the early 1980s that is being re-issued and is a prescient and telling documentary of it's own era and sends a shocking message about the problem America has with it's history of gun violence from presidential assassinations to race crimes with black on white crimes and vice versa.

The film uses a wealth of archive and newsreel footage to tell the history of the gun in America beginning with the shooting of John F. Kennedy on November 22nd 1963 in Dallas, Texas.  The film then goes to voyages past every major assassination both successful and unsuccessful from Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy to George Wallace and Ronald Reagan.

The film utilises an authoritative voiceover by Chuck Riley full of foreboding that does not attempt to provide answers nor sway the audience to follow a politicised agenda. The document simply wants to provide you with the (albeit shocking) evidence and you make up your own mind.

Huge credit should go to directors Sheldon Renan and Leonard Scharder, who had the vision in 1981 to foresee the dark road that their homeland was travelling down. We all remember Michael Moore's acclaimed Bowling for Columbine, and yet whilst that film made reference to gun violence and its influences, it nevertheless had an explicit political message at the heart of the film.

Yet in Killing of America you have killers kill random strangers because they feel bad for having killed a loved one, a killer say he wanted to be known and famous, Shiran Shiran killed Bobby Kennedy to free Palestine. The use of the Riley narration means you listen to his facts - such as gun purchases quadrupling following the JFK killing.

The combination of superbly edited sequences especially the memorable showdown involving John R. Hopkins who held a newsroom hostage combined with the startling facts make for a gripping and at times hard to watch experience, which nevertheless is a very important one that should be seen by all.

The Killing of America is on Blu-ray/DVD from Monday 31st October

Special features include:
Audio commentary with Sheldon Renan, Interview, 'The Madness is Real' with Sheldon Renan, 'Cutting the Killing', an interview with editor Lee Perry

National Treasure

No, this is not a telling re-examination of the Nicolas Cage/Jerry Bruckheimer film from the early 2000s but a review of the DVD release of the Channel 4 drama National Treasure originally screened in early September starring Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters and Andrea Riseborough.

The drama tells the fictious story of Paul Kingsley (Coltrane) an ageing television comedy legend who has to contend with an accusation of rape from over 20 years previously. Whilst happily married to his wife Mari (Walters), Kingsley has a sexual appetite as depicted by his affairs with prostitutes yet this has never succumbed to under age girls as he is accused of.  Kingsley fears he is being portrayed as Jimmy Saville, the spectre and recent history of Operation Yewtree hovers over this production as a very dark cloud.

This cloud is embellished by the visual hue of the cinematography which is very dark greys and blues with the camera lurking behind corners and doorways not showing us everything fully until a character calls another directly bringing them into eyelines.

The drama is played with amazing panache by its three leads and is generously helped by key supporting player, Tim McInnery (Blackadder) as Finchley's comedy partner. Andrea Riseborough  as the broken and troubled daughter, Dee who we first meet in a halfway house being threatened with losing custody of her children and having driven her car through the accuser's house, Dee's descent into periods of madness will stay with you.

Yet it is the steady sterling presence of Julie Walters who is the star of the show, a performance of such reach and depth she puts everyone else firmly in her shadow. Her presence as a rock to Paul is very much absent by the series end.

The drama is very of the moment and in years to come may rescind into memory but it is great to see a brave production painting its narrative stars as very much that, a star who uses his talent and influence.

The script by Jack Thorne of Made in England fame had an opportunity to make a statement on star power and celebrity influence instead it singles out the women who accuse celebrities as hungry for fame themselves and to quote Mari, end up destroyed in the witness box and hard to believe.

National Treasure is released on Home Entertainment on Monday 31st October.

Ragdoll

With thanks to Orion Books for the review copy of this book before the February 2017 release date.

Written by debut novelist Daniel Cole, Ragdoll started life as a unproduced television pilot before Cole put it in a drawer somewhere and after many rejections decided to in his own words, 'do the selfish thing and write a book that I would love myself'.

Ragdoll tells the tale of the Ragdoll killer a serial killer who having already stitched together six victims to make a ragdoll of a corpse - separate head, torso, arms, legs. The head belongs to the infamous Cremation killer, a serial peadophile who would abuse young girls before disposing of their bodies in the aforementioned manner.

One detective William Fawkes stood up to his belief that one man Naquib Khalid was the killer, and this belief led to him attacking Khalid in the dock at the Old Bailey.  Now the case is brought back from the past, Khalid's own head is that of the Ragdoll, and Wolf is being used as bait by the Ragdoll Killer.

A man who is gripping the nation as he has provocatively claimed he will kill seven people on a specific date, with Wolf the last on the list. This showmanship of stating when and where he will complete his next murder is fitting for the current world fixated with multi-media platforms, the ultimate embodiment of 15 minutes of fame even for the victims. 

So begins a huge game of cat and mouse between the Metropolitan Police and the Ragdoll killer who is seemingly one step ahead of them, as the police try to put every next victim in witness protection, the killer beats them to the punch.

Daniel P Cole - the author

For a debut novel, Cole takes telling risks in his narrative by flirting with the possibility of following a tried and tested pattern yet then doing an about face which is as ingenious as his master villain. The risks are not restricted the narrative development, our allegiances to Wolf who is part Maverick, part wind-up merchant, part charmer is a risk taker himself, and our empathy for him is tested throughout culminating in the test of plausibility by the book's third act.

Yet Cole writes with such confidence and panache transferring from set piece to set piece whilst sustaining a romantic sub-plot and the growth of periphery characters coming front and centre by the conclusion.

The ending is both resolutory and yet ambiguous to the degree that there promises more to come from Wolf in whatever guise it may be. Whatever Cole chooses to do next, whether it is with or without Wolf, this debut novelist is certainly one to watch.

Ragdoll could possibly be the literary event of 2017.

It will be released by Trapeze Press on 23rd February on e-book edition and Hardback.