Category: Review

Tigertailz – Glasgow Cathouse

Kim Hooker
Kim Hooker (Image by Iain Purdie via Flickr)

[more photos can be found in this Flickr set]

In 1990 (maybe 1991), I bought my first ever single. On vinyl – that’s a 7″ black disc of grooved plastic for you youngsters who aren’t aware of the concept any more. That single was “Love Bomb Baby” by Tigertailz – Wales’ answer to the US glam metal phenomenon Poison.

In 2011, I finally got to see the band live. Well, half of them. Ace Finchum left his drumming position quite some time back, and Pepsi Tate (bass) sadly died almost four years ago. However, they were ably replaced by Robin Guy and Sarah Firebrand for this tour, joining founding member Jay Pepper and long-server Kim Hooker.

It was to be quite a short set, a little over an hour, but virtually non-stop. Opening with “Sick Sex” and passing through crowd-pleaser “Heaven” before finishing with an encore that included the aforementioned “Love Bomb Baby”. Hooker certainly still has that voice, despite the time that’s passed. Pepper looks like he’s never left the stage. Firebrand is one hot chick, and Guy looks like he’s been taking lessons from Nicko McBrain in “how to be a drummer stuck at the back of the stage, but still be a huge and obvious part of the band by arseing around and being entertaining”.

Sarah Firebrand
Sarah Firebrand (Image by Iain Purdie via Flickr)

If I had a problem it was that the sound was rather muddy, something that Gillian says is a known issue with the Cathouse. A shame, but it didn’t stop me singing along to the songs I knew and having a great time. The band were straight over to the merchandise area the moment they walked off stage and were more than happy to chat to fans, have their picture taken and so on. A genuinely nice bunch. Kim commented on my beard and how it rivals Jay’s. Apparently they’re touring on motorbikes and Jay’s often end up all over the place by the time they get to their destinations!

Credit also to the two support bands. Openers Rare Breed didn’t look old enough to shave, but it takes balls to get on stage at any live venue in front of someone else’s fans. They did a great set with a couple of perfectly acceptable covers as well as some of their own stuff. Good luck to them!

Spit Like This were entertaining enough and certainly had a fair bit of energy for the small stage. I actually own one of their t-shirts from a few years back. Nice to see them live at last, as well.

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Win Win

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsCourtesy of the Cineworld mailing list, I managed to wangle two preview tickets for the new Paul Giamatti film. I knew nothing about it before screening, and sometimes this is a good thing. It meant I was all the more pleasantly surprised by…

Win Win

“Whatever it ******* takes!”

See it if you like: heartwarming dramas with genuinely funny moments

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A well-meaning but skint lawyer takes on guardianship of an old man, and finds things somewhat snowballing from there.

I like being surprised by films. It’s one reason I’m not a huge fan of watching trailers, especially not for blockbusters or comedies where they insist on showing you every single good moment. I think that’s part of the reason I liked Win Win so much – I had no preconceptions.

Giamatti plays Mike Flaherty, a rarity amongst lawyers in that he’s not dodgy, nor is he rich. In fact, business is bad. When the chance comes up to take guardianship of old Leo Poplar (Burt Young) in exchange for $1500 a month, he takes it. Then dumps the old fella into a care home anyway. Tut tut.

Things become complicated when Poplar’s grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) appears out of nowhere, looking for grandad. He’s trying to escape from life with his drugged-up mother (the as-ever gorgeous Melanie Lynskey), and the Flaherty family end up taking him in.

The disaffected youth turns out to be a bit of a wrestling prodigy, and Flaherty’s life starts to look up – the “win win” situation of the title. Of course, as in every film, the lies start to trip our protagonist up…

Win Win is very well scripted. It’s almost like a TV drama in the lack of extremely tense moments, or huge focal scenes. Instead, it’s just a nice story with some wonderfully believable characters. Mike’s wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) is a wonderfully varied character, unsure whether to punch Kyle’s mother in the face, throw the somewhat unusual boy out or let her maternal instincts take over and look after him.

I could have watched this film for another hour, I was so engrossed. Genuinely entertaining, clever, funny and well-acted. Oh, Shaffer didn’t have to act too hard in the wrestling scenes. He won the New Jersey State Wrestling Championship last year, aged 17.

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Priest 3D / Attack the Block

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsSomehow I stayed awake enough to catch two films this week. Partly as the second one was so entertaining.

Priest 3D

“Though I walk through the valley of…” *yawn*

See it if you like: wearing stupid glasses for no apparent reason and listening to actors whisper rather than talk properly.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: deposed cleric dusts off the cruciform shuriken to kick vampire ass – against the Church’s wishes.

Oh dear. We saw this one because Gillian has a thing for Paul Bettany. Yes, I’m blaming her for this one. Completely. Not that I’d have avoided it had I been on my own with my Cineworld Unlimited card, but then I’d have been blaming myself. Priest isn’t that good.

Something happens. People get on bikes and drive to the next place. Something happens. Bikes. Something… etc. Bettany isn’t even that good and I usually like him. The visuals are OK and the basic plot acceptable, but the whole thing just doesn’t hang together very well.

The single worst thing about it, though, is the compulsory 3D. I’m sorry, but I’m going to rail about this again. While I appreciate that someone in an office has decided that 3D is the new way forward, Priest is a prime example of why it shouldn’t be. In huge portions of the film, the 3D levels “nearest” you move. The background 3D moves. But there was a constant stationary layer which just “stuck” there and made viewing the film actually uncomfortable.

In its favour, the film isn’t too long coming in at 80-some minutes plus credits. This is a good thing as it is essentially just a string of effects scenes. Lots of clichés abound, and enough physics ignored to last an entire series of Mythbusters. I’m no mechanic, but I’m fairly sure that electric engines won’t go any faster if you squirt nitro into them.

There are better films out. Go and see one of them instead. Like…

Attack the Block

“This is too much madness for just one text!”

See this if you like: low budget horror, kids swearing and fluorescent teeth.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: asteroids bring big-toothed ETs to earth in a dodgy part of London – and they certainly don’t come in peace.

Now this is more like it. A low-budget British effort with a very young, inexperienced cast which manages not to be painful to watch. Despite a slightly shaky start with some dodgy acting and effects, the film swiftly gets going as the big, bad aliens arrive – all glowy teeth and policeman-rending claws.

Like Priest, it’s not a long film but it fills its length with far more entertainment. And it’s not in bloody 3D.

The only actor I recognised was Nick Frost, who plays a rather dodgy drug dealer. Pretty much everyone else is a teenager, tooled up with the random weapons you’d expect any child thug to have to hand with which to fight huge scary beasties.

There are some genuinely funny moments, quite a few jumps and a couple of cringes from the early dialogue. The film does get better as it goes on, and doesn’t outstay its welcome. There aren’t any real surprises, but one benefit of an unknown cast is that you never really know who’s going to get “offed” and when. Enjoy this luxury!

Definitely worth a look. Support the British film industry, seeing as our government can’t be arsed.

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13 Assassins

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

It’s not often a Japanese film gets a mainstream release in the UK so I wasn’t going to miss out on this. Miss out on the first 5 minutes or so I did, though, courtesy of the traffic and the first long queue I’ve ever seen at Cineworld Edinburgh. Typical.

13 Assassins (Jûsan-nin no shikaku)

“I shall accomplish your task… with magnificence.”

See it if you like: Bickering Japanese, huge set pieces and period drama. With blood. And beheadings.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A small band of samurai, ronin and a woodsman take on a mental emperor regent in early 19th century Japan.

Director Takashi Miike is most famed for extreme gorefests such as Audition and Ichi the Killer. 13 Assassins is more akin to a smaller-scale Red Cliff (yes, I know that wasn’t Japanese) and while still a little grisly in places is generally fairly tame.

The plot hinges around an evil lord – half-brother to the emperor – who is causing a little friction amongst the locals. Burning their land, chopping off their limbs, raping their wives. That kind of thing. He’s a complete sociopath and eventually enough is enough. One aggrieved noble too far and a plot is hatched to dispatch with him as he is travelling.

The 13 assassins of the title are a mixed bunch, though all with a common goal – to die an honourable and purposeful death. The drama leading up to the actual blistering final encounter is a little slow-paced and typically Japanese in its grandeur and social structure. The dialogue fits well – at least as far as the translation goes – and doesn’t reach “cheesy”.

However, the kicker is the final battle “scene”. I use the word loosely as it essentially takes up the second half of the film – pretty much an entire hour. During this period, no music is played in the background – the only sounds are screams, explosions, shouted dialogue, clashing swords… you get the idea. It flows very well and is a joy to watch (if you find brutal death joyous).

It’s probably not one to take people to see if you’re trying to convert a general cineplex-goer to world cinema. However, that last battle sequence rivals anything that Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Bay and the like can produce with huge budgets and a billion CPUs churning out the CGI.

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Hanna

By إبن البيطار CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0

Due to times not matching up well (i.e. overlaps or 90-min waits between films) we only caught the one this week:

Hanna

“I just missed your heart.”

See it if you like: awful background “music”, arthouse films that aren’t really arthouse and rehashed plots

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A young girl is raised as a survivalist assassin in a cabin in the woods for some reason.

This is a weird film. It’s been claimed in the press that it’s the new Leon, but frankly it’s not fit to be named in the same sentence. Leon was a classic. Hanna, while sharing a very basic premise, is just another film with some good moments.

Our title character is played by Saoirse Ronan, and she is being raised in a cabin somewhere within the Arctic Circle by her father, Erik (Eric Bana). They are hiding from the CIA, specifically someone called Marissa (Cate Blanchett). One day Hanna decides she’s ready to be found and the two announce their position and then flee to Germany. I have yet to figure out exactly why.

The film does have some excellent moments, mostly relating to Hanna’s naivety as regards the big wide world and her interaction with some incidental characters – mainly a British family she encounters and a Spanish youth who tries to kiss her. These little sequences are funny and well played, balancing against the violent nature of Hanna herself.

Hanna’s secrets are slowly revealed as the film goes on, but in honesty there’s not much of a twist. Blanchett plays a very evil “bad guy” but I just couldn’t take her seriously. Bana is pretty good and all credit to Ronan for her portrayal of the confused little girl.

The worst part of the film, though, is the “music” supplied by the Chemical Brothers. They seem to be churning stuff out for every other film at the moment. Most times they’re tolerable, but in this case it’s simply dreadful. The “atmospheric” stuff sounds like someone’s fed John Carpenter speed and thrown him in a roomful of keyboards, whereas the more supposedly musical efforts are somewhat more akin to listening to a diarrhoetic elephant shitting through a tuba.

Hanna promises a lot, especially from the trailer, and it fails to deliver most of it. A slow, drawn-out film with a handful of highlight moments.

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