The event- issue 117- 1st November 2000

The man who had all the luck?

in interv路ew

Plus!

Toploade "We show groupies a good time" Lorna Sage talks about her memoirs Gross out TV Inspected

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Cutting-edge reportage from the ents'n'arts front line

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Toploader Fuzzy haired purveyors of pop interviewed Memento A chat with the director of Guy Pearce's new flick Celebrity Weakest Link The stars face the wrath of Anne Robinson Lorna Sage Interview with UEA's very own wild child

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In-depth features, comments , analyses and gubbins

Comic Turns Can comedians actually write?

09 Euugghhhhhh!

Gross out TV under the spotlight 10 Bigging it up Dance music: from underground to the mainstream 11 The hills are alive ...

The phenomenon of musical movies 12-13 "I like it, it seems to work alright": Arthur Miller on Death of a Salesman and more 08

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Everything reviewed and previewed for your pleasure

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Music: PJ Harvey; Limp Bizkit; Blur ; Morcheeba Film: Wonderboys; Loser; Purely Better Video: Toy Story 2; Cider House Rules; Gladiator Arts: The Merchant of Venice; The Star's Tennis Balls TV/Radio: So Graham Norton; JK Rowling Interactive: Space Channel 5; Vampire Hunter:O

Eventhor·zon 20-23 The best guide to what's on in Norwich. Ever.

The Event is produced fortnightly by Concrete: PO Box 410, Norwich, NR4 7TB Tel: 01603 250558 Fax: 01603 506822 E-mail: su .concrete@uea.ac. uk Printed by: Eastern Counties Newspapers, Rouen Road, Norwich NR11RB

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k, so it all came as quite a surprise.

Not least to our Santa who suddenly and without warning found herself with a baby last week. Soaps today seem to be covering tile teenage pregnancy issue quite thoroughly. Sonia is now the second of two htgh profile teenage mothers. Does this coincide with the fact that Britain has the largest number of teenage pregnancies in Europe today or - for those of you who, like me, enj oy being cynical - has it got more to do with the fac t t hat the bads at the Beeb have been watching ITV lately and have seen a few jolly good ideas for exciting soap drama? Hmmmmm. The East enders version was certainly very dramatic and had most of us on the edge of our seats staring openmouthed at the TV , whispering under our breaths " no , surely not". I bet a few wagers were lost last Thursday. I lost 50p to my housemate for starters. There was no warning, no obvious si gns of pregnancy unl ike in Coronat ion Street with 13 year old Sarah-Louise . The only way you co ul d have known what was about to happen in Albert Square was if you popped into the newsagents up the road and glanced up to the middle shelves w here al l the soap gossip mags are. And t hat' s another thing (this l1as to be said), how annoying are those magazines, telling everyone what's happening on the next episode of our favourite soap? One of our very few sanctuaries as students is to be able to ret ire after a hard day's graft at the computer screen or stretc h in the library to our homely soap. We don't want to know, we want to guess dagnamit!!

"Does Sonia's pregnancy coincide with the fact that Britain has the largest number of teenage pregnancies in Europe today, or have the bods at the Beeb have ·= 0 been watching ITV for a few storylines?"

Ill

()

But anyway, as I was saying: does the issue of teenage pregnancy need to be covered on our screens? Well , obviously the answer is yes, it does. Soaps are there to present dramatic stuff that comes upon the characters in what seems like a stream of unbelieveable bad luck, that's true. However . this gtves us viewers at home not only good entertainment (somewhat sadistic, sure) but tt airs out hush-hush issues; and by watchtng the character go through it all as a third party , we gain a valuable insight into how someone mtght feel. "What will she do now?", "What would I do in her position?", "Ahhhhllh", etc. etc.

Wise old Mo touched on an important issue when she cried "don't they teach sex education in schools these days?" Bntish soaps are rightly celebrated with national award ceremonies, they are a valuable publtc service. lt seems proper that they should be honoured alongside outstanding ac t ors and professional drama. Of course t he whole tone is lowered when the presenters of the awards wander onstage half dressed (what were you thinking, Judy?). but in principle, whilst storyltnes about adultery, explod ing buildings and babies swal lowing ecstacy should make us t urn off. but it is both informative and cathartic. And if it discourages the Sonias of this world from shaggmg munters like Martin, it must be a good thtng.

Katherlne Everltt

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

iv·e Talkin So who 's yo ur favou ri te soap character?

Susan Kennedy ... She 's the ultimate 'Mother I'd Like to F-k'. Then add Llbby to the equation and you have the ultimate menage a trois ... but with the incest aspect. Nice. - R Mill s (EAS1) Pat Butcher... The girl's got style. Who else could wear Christmas trees on her ears and pull it off? Kate Spencer-EIIis ( ENV 3)

Worst soap?

Has to be, without a doubt, Emmerdale. I go to university In Norwich for Christ's sake! I don 't need to see four-fingered yokels on my telly as we/I. - Anon Favourite Soap?

Neighbours . lt's the defining programme of our generation. Everyone remembers coming home from school and having your tea In front of it. I used to have a mullet you see. lt's all very close to my heart. - Rob Mack intosh ( LAW 2) Sunset Beach. They had the right Idea. Half-hour long monologues, talking babies and flashbacks galore. None of your head-u~your-<Jwn-arse

worthiness you get In British soaps who always fee/like they have to tackle the uissues ". - Laura Carter (WAM 3) Sunset Beach because it was better than going to your lectures. And camp as f-k too. - Stuart Crawford ( MAN 2)

What is your defining soap moment?

When Bouncer had his dream on Neighbours.

Trlppy or what? I was only about ten ... but Imagine! - Z Lipman (WAM 2) My defining moment will be when Pauline Fowler gets electrocuted by a faulty vibrator... she 's blatantly in need of a good shag. - Nick Ali en ( HI S 2) When Shane died in Home and Away. I couldn 't stop crying. I was only about eleven ... scarred me for life. - Emm a Harris (LLT 1)

Miscellaneous: ul don 't watch them, ever. " - Anon " I 'm foreign. " [runs away} - Anon

Editor · Steve Collins • Arts Editor · Jim Whalley • Film Editor · Merek Cooper • Assistant Film Editor · Astrid Goldsmith Music Editor · Elin Jones • Assistant Music Editor· Anthony Lovell • TV/ Game Editor · Markland Starkie •Assistant TV/Game Editor · Kathryn Hinchliff Listing s Editor · Katheri ne Everett • DTP · Elln Jones · Adam Chapman · Steve Collins · Nick Henegan · Markland Starkie • Thanks to · Chris Bigsby for getting us t he interviews, Kieran for the last minute Inquisitor • God of the fortnight · Adam Chapman • Contributors · Seth Landau · Phil Colvln · Jack Burton · Jenny Wiles · Kieren McSweeny · Simon Thornhill · T.Bragger · Will Halsey · Gemma O'Donnell · Micha Gilbert · Jonathan Rolfe · Faye Thomsit · Alex Sehmer · Nick Heneg an · Kath May · Craig Garvey · Adam Lelgh · Charlotte Ronalds · Steve Quirke · Adam Chapman THANKS, you 're all fab!

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__ event lnpieces 3 sort it , Apocalypse Harold!

AAAAHT. Los 'Tazmanian yeas' expose Jelly-Belly's heart of darkness!

Got a problem? Just ask those friendly proletarians of Albert Square!

Dear Frank, I have a boyfriend at home, we 've been together for four years, but since starting university I have developed a close relationship with one of my flatmates . We haven 't slept together yet, but I think i_ t 's only a matter of time. I really love my boyfriend but he's so far away. What should I do?

You've done t he right thing by writ ing t o Uncle Frank, treacle. What a pickle, eh darlln'? Well, my philosophy Is that life's for living - your boyfrlend'll never know. Here, your new man doesn't have an earring does 'e? Those little bleeders get everywhere.

When I' m trying to steer a lady away from the subject of Infidelity I have a bllndln' plan. What I do Is turn up at the house wearing only a rotating bowtle and take her for a slap-up take-away at the Portacabln. Works a treat - and'll save you a pretty packet too. From what I've heard about Norfolk I'm guessing that the best way for you to get away from your boyfriend Is to say ' I've checked out my family tree - we're not related.'

Sorted.

Dear Peggy, I have recently started university and am living in residences. The only problem is that I am sharing a kitchen with 12 other students and my sausages keep going missing. Should I raise the issue with my Resident Tutor or call a meeting and speak directly to my flatmates?

Frustrated, Waveney Terrace

No wonder you're frustrated If you' re missing your sausage, darlln'l The way I see lt , you only have two options: 1. Lay In wait for the thieving toerag and lamp 'lm one. 2 . Invest In some proper t ucker that you can keep In your room. May I suggest cockles and mussels or jellied eels.

Dear /an Bea/e, I 'm in my second year at uni and I'm finding it really hard to cope on my overdraft and student loan.

My parents only run a failing chip shop in the East End of London and can 't afford to send me any money. Any tips?

Wotchal Well, owning a fish 'n' chip shop never did me any harm. Look at me, all of Walford admires my financial prowess. And my hair.

Natural business acumen, that's the solution! I never went to University, lt's full of lazy layabouts. Get a jobl

Revealed: Helen's

long~ost

account of what really happened when she found Ramsay Street's missing busybody after he fell into the sea like a tit •..

At last, I have reached my dest ination! After several weeks of pursuing the wherabouts of the t!nlgmat lc Mr Bishop, who disappeared four years ago off the coast of Tazmanla, I have finally discovered the elusive man's wherabouts. Alas, I now wish I had never embarked on such a venture! But the terrible, terrible truth must be told ...

As I approached the his new 'home', I began to sense that Mr Bishop was perhaps not the loveable busybody I once knew . His abode was a mud hut in the deepest Tasmanian wilderness, his dress that of a savage. "Mr Bishop, I presume?" , I enquired civilly . "Ah. Helen. I have been expecting you ", he mumbled, walking back into his dark lair. I followed in apprehension .

"Cup of tea? he inquired, plonk ing a ty phoo onecup into the what appeared to be the crudely trepanned skull of Rick Alessi ... I told him of my quest , and enquired of him what had happened over the past four years. "Well, Helen my goaty old friend, I t oo have been on a great journey." he mumbled, all the while stroking his bald, bald head. "I have been on a journey into t he darkness of man's heart. For it is dark, Helen. Darker, even, than the coarse unkempt down which rested untouched for so many years at the base of Mrs Mangle's spine. • Mr. Bishop shivered briefly at 1his thE>ught, letting a soft, susurrating IAtake of breath slip down his throat. Even his ampte jowels seemed to tremble at every word tha\ passed their owner's clammy lips. I looked away, the darkness loosening its grip on the room enough to let our surroundings insinuate themselves in candlelight .

All around lay the broken, tortured forms of bygone Ramsay Street residents! I was horrified ...

"Welcome , Helen, to my kingdom ; my little empire which I have created since you last saw me. As you can see, it is an inverted universe of evil.

Here, we follow each event in Erinsborough like cl inging shadows, with Grundy 's cast-offs working as my slaves to create the perfect pre-dinner hell ; yes, Helen , you have found ... the anti-Neighbours!"

I squeaked a squeak of terror.

"1, Helen, am the Antichrist of Erinsborough, the source of all misfortune and sorrow on Ramsay Street!

Not

discarded morsels as my tools of evil, recycl ing them for my of tea-time torture. I consider it a service: I am saving these wretches from eternal panto purgatory, soft porn hell and abortive pop careers! For years now I have kept them from Pete Waterman·s deathly grasp. They feel loved, wanted here. They worship me! " This last utterance elicited a chorus of "Praise the fuddy-duddy, 0 JellyBelly of Joyl " from the assembled wretches whose wraithlike frames surrounded us.

"Yes, I am the source of all Ramsay Street evil! Take, for instance, those musical interludes at the end of every scene - I myself composed them all on a glockenspiel fashioned from Bouncer's ribc age. Hal My greatest work, however, must be t he ' Erinsborough Mullet' .

Years ago I weaved the prototypes from the matted exfoliations of Madge's bikini line (which I secretly collected from t he s'ill-warm seat of her ex ercise bicyc le). I brought them to life using electrical currents from a treadmill generator powered by several different incarnations of Lucy Robinson. Scott and Charlene's tru ncated bouffants were the original couple, my Adam and Eve, and soon they had spawned a whole race of voluminous progeny: Henry, Mike, Shane - my creation was unstoppablel Nowadays, by process of natural selection, they have bred profusely and the species has become stronger, resulting in the evolutionary apotheosis of the breed that is the uber-mullet : Drew 's glorious crown! Strong as iron , it is. I mean , have you ever seen it move?

No - it 's there to stay! Forever!

Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaa! Ahem ."

WinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWinWin

Blaggery Corner!

Hey, if I give you loads of free stuff will you be my friend?

Pity the poor child who plies his contemporaries with gifts In order to w/n their friendship, for he will w/n their affections for only a brief moment before they bugger off with all his worldly belongings and still call him 'spotty moonface '.

Not that I 'm bitter. Go on then, take all this lot you bastards. Just shove your answers In the Concrete competition box In The Hive.

A big bucket of tickets!

We've all done it, haven 't we? (Well, actually I haven't, but anyway ... ). 10 pints of snakebite, an LCR ticket and all of a sudden you 've pulled a minger. Alcohol normally allows you to forget these discrepancies. From now on, however, your cries of "she/ he wasn 't that bad " will no longer go unanswered due to www.mlngers.com, and although it is unlikely that the aforementioned pull will be on this site, it can be used by your 'mates' to point out his/ her 'features ' which classified them as so rough.

However, the fun does not end there. If one of your 'mates' j ust so happened to have a camera on that ever so boozy Thursday night;Friday morning , you too can join the ranks of mingers under the ever so useful 'minger couples ' link . Or did your unintended resemble anyone famous?

Then send them to the 'hilarious' celebrity lookalike mingers pages! Oh isn 't the Internet such a useful tool?

Yet it seems that mingers.com is not in fact a cyberspace oddity, as far too many people have a worrying obsession with being well, rough. So all you moralists who believe beauty isn't only skin deep have a fight on your hands.

At www_uglypeople.com you can laugh and stare some more; they have a useful 'ugly person of the day ' feature for regular users (arts students with too much time), and for the big fans, uglypeople.comj merchandlse (I'm not jok ing , though I wish I was) is worth a look . There are many more, but I'm sick of ugly people. I'm off to www.brltneyspears.com.

5/mon Thomh/11

this, I felt I could take no more. But continued with his litany of evil.

I am everything bad that's ever happened on that street: Bouncer's death, Karl's adultery , Anne's slightly cross-eyed face- they were all down to mel I even turned up in drag calling myself Marlene for a bit, and nobody even noticed. Tee-hee-hee!"

And then, with suddenly altered look of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror, he cried out in a whisper that was no more than a breath "The horror! The horror!· Far away, a lone tuba wept for the darkness of man's heart : a soft , mournful effusion reverberating endlessly around the slightly soiled toilet bowl of the human condition. I had only peeped into this dark abyss, but I knew the odour would forever cling to my nostril hairs. I had to leave Mr Bishop then , with the madman still repeating his mantra - "The horror! The horrorl " . Never again wou ld I make him a casserole .. .

We 've managed to convince those lovely people in the Union Ents office into giving us some free tickets, so we can give them straight to the first person that wants them. Not only do we have THREE pairs of tickets available for Club Retro on the 18th (rrp threeee pounds advance!). we also have THREE pairs of tickets to see The Australian Pink Aoyd on November 5! And if that 's not enough, then cop this: we 've got THREE MORE pairs of tickets for the Taboo Comedy Tour, featuring three comedians live in the Hive on November 7. Just answer this:

Q. Which event would you like a pair of free tickets for?

Road Trip thingies!

We 've got a fun-packed bag of Road Trip goodies to give you, containing such useful item s as a sperm donation k it and other ex cit ing stuff li ke T-

shirts and that . Just answer this wanktastic question :

Q. Would you care for some Road Trip stuff?

Spooky putie games!

So what did you do for Halloween, then? Bet you were out blackmailing old folk for apples and coppers, weren't you? Striking terror into the weak old hearts of old ladies and old gentlemen just so that you could get a few measly pence and a pathetic power kick wh ilst hiding behind a mask like the COWARD YOU ARE. Well if you 'd had a copy of Vampire Hunter Don Playstation you might have been able to direct your Satanic urges into something a bit less cruel.

Unfortunately, this competi ti on 's a bit late to help all those old folks now , but I suppose you 'd better come and get one of our two cop ies of it for the sake of next year's potential victims, hadn't you? Oh, the game's great , by the way.

Q. I've g ot a computer game. Do you want it?

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

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Toploader make the sort of straightforward, good-time rock'n'soul party choons that get slated in the music press and rated rather highly in the charts. But just how rock and roll are they? Steve Col/ins tried to wake the rawk beast behind the frizzy hair ... . .- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - · of bile?

oploader are a bloodless sacharrin e pseudo-soul lounge act hell bent on filtering out all t he most vital aspects of our glorious rock 'n'roll heritage until nothing remains but a weak, anodyne , MTV-friendly residue of party choons and Hammond-driven Grad Ball ballad balls. Discuss.

T

··well, the press say we're not rock'n'roll or whatever, and then these journalists come out with us on a nigl1t out, and they can't keep up!

But journalists will say anything. So ... f-k them I" Now's not the best time for Matt 'Loader. First he gets dragged away from watching Enemy of the State on his big tourbus telly. Then he's made to sit in some grotty little office listening to his band being branded dullards by some pissy little student journalist whilst h1s mates munch their way through what should have been his dinner downstairs. And now he's got to defend his rock n'roll credent ials and explain that Toploader just wanna have fun, alright?

But I'm sorry Matt , that's just not good enough .

Your job consists of dancing in the moonlight, and getting it almost every night. Mine consists of laying bare the heavy drinkin', hard druggin', Bon Jovi-baitin' epicurean rawk beast that may or may not lie behind every student union's favourite party entertainers. All we need is a few tasty soundbites. that 's all. So please. Matt. Just how much fun is it being in Toploader, then? Any hellraising stories or anecdotes? Anything will do.

"Er, no ...

Oh come on. Justify Toploader's claim to rock and roll infamy!

"No." But , but - the song! All that dancing and, you know , ·getting it· and stuff! '"Well, I did something a bit naughty last night, but ... " But ... ? '"No. I can't tell you that. But we do drink quite a lot and do ... we are quite a funny bunch to hang around with" Well ... can you tell us a joke, then?

"No. Sorry, can't think of any. " This is definitely not going well. But hang on, didn't we read that you were having 1t rather large with a certain gentlewoman of tile press recently? Didn't you all get riotously drunk witll the Melody Maker like every good student party band should?

"Yeah, that was a good night. But Julian said something really bad , though. You probably read it in the interview. Basically, somebody else in the industry had said this thing to a woman that we know , and er ... and then Julian said it to this journalist, as a joke" What was that, then .. .?

"There will be a band scene again, yeah. Maybe not this year, maybe not for five years, but there will be one ... and I think it was basically us that started it."

"Erm ... '/'m going to rip your womb out'" Funny bunch, Toploader.

K, so maybe we've started off on the wrong footing here. Toploader's relationship with the press has never been great, largely because they did the unthinkable and rose to fame wit /lout the sanction of the NME, Maker, Select et al. In fact, whatever you think of their music , you can't deny that the band's success following this summer's top ten hit Dancing m the Moonlight bears testament to the enduring capacity of great singles to cut through all the media crap and sell shedloads with nary a kind word appearing on the nation's news shelves. Is this something t he band are proud of. transcending tne music press' obligatory baptism

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Wednesday, November 1, 2000

"Yeah . I do t hink that we transcend the music press. But a lot of the magazines that we are slagged off in don't have a very big circulation- we're bigger than them anyway, so it doesn't bot l1er us. it's one journalist's opinion, and in the same issue you can be slagged off and praised at the same time. it's ludicrous. And the NME's rubbish. Don't buy it."

Fair enough. The upshot of this rather uncomfortable relationship with the press has been that many a journalist has tried to dismiss this most beautifully coiffured of pop anomalies as unoriginal purveyors of bland watered-down white soul. Matt looks irritated again. ··it's JUSt good party mus1c. Just listen to it and don't have any preconceived ideas about it. Just listen t o 1t and enjoy 1t . I thmk most people think ·oh Toploader aren 't they that band that NME slagged off?' Then they listen to it and it's like 'Oh no 1t's actually all right.· A lot of young people that have never been to gigs before come and see us. We're getting a whole generation of music-lovers on our side" So critically acclaimed artistes or poptastic posterboys shifting shedloads of units which is better?

"Well, critical acclaim's all well and good but it's no good if you're not selling any records, cos you're career's just going to last about a year."

Matt pauses, scanning an inward eye over his big list of Rock Platitudes. "At the end of the day we just do what we do and that happens to be quite ·up' music. But essentially we are that happy party band that people go on about. We're not a miserable bunch of people. We 're not Coldplay. " But that 'womb' thing - surely you can 't expect the press to get on with you after that?

"Yeah, that was really shit, that was not good.

But we made up for it, and we got on with the journalist. she was alright. Really, we're not horrible types! And yeah , we did have a go at Julian afterwards ."

So are you n1ce a// the time? After a short while in the backstabbing biz you must have developed a bit of dislike for some of your musical contemporaries? Matt thinks for a bit, then gets bitching. '"Muse should be banned from ever releasing another record ever again. Because they sound rubbish."

Erm ... is this a personal grudge or do you just disli ke the music? " Both, really. We supported them at a small club in London about a year ago and they were just really arrogant, wouldn't even acknowledge that we were there. We said hello, cos we're quite a friendly bunch really, and they were just like ... tarts. So not great friends of ours, no."

And what do they think of the rest of the current music scene? Is Craig David and his legions of garage munchkins about to be crushed by the great hairy arse of rock? This question appears get Matt all revolutionary.

"There will be a band scene again, yeah. Maybe not this year, maybe not for five years, but there will be one. And with the little guitar scene you've got at the moment , I think it was basically us that started it."

You think you've been that influential?

"Well , Coldplay are a success, now JJ72 are a success, and people forget that we were the first guitar band to do it in the last year . it 's down to us. There's obv iously a market for it."

But surely what distinguishes Toploader from this current crop of naval-gazing miserab/ists is t hat they want to paardy, dude . I mean, sorry to labour the point, but what crazee shenanigans actually do go on backst age? Just how many motherworrying demands do you make on your rider?

"Well, nothing really. Our catering girls look after us, they always put nice cand les in the room and stuff, it"s always nice and comfy. it's quite quiet, but we party on the bus just as we're warming up for the gig. We just watch films and chill out really, have the occasional party."

Ah. the 'p' word. So, for the second and last time -do you really ·get it almost every night', like in your song? Or do you JUSt get the group1es back and show them videos? ··No, we get the group1es back and show them a good time " Whoa-ha! That's what we're after! Maybe we can

"Muse should be banned from ever releasing another record ever again.

Because they sound rubbish" get a bit more sauciness out of him now he's getting warmed up. So Matt , if you won't tell us any of your own sordid tales, what about Bon Jovi? You did support them on their UK tour after all - you must have seen some poodle-permed misdemeanours being commited in the name of soft metal? "Yeah. They brought us back to their hotel room one night, and told us stories."

Nnnnng! For God's sake man, this isn't bloody Jackanory you know! Oh, sorry. You mean, like, rude stories? '" Not really - Jon Bon Jovi told us that he was in a hotel room with this woman one night, who wasn't his wife, and he had a grand piano brought up to his room especially to impress her. He wrote Bed of Roses on it, that very night. Which IS a beautiful love song." Matt nods sagely, in admiring contemplation of Jon Son 's leathery charms. Clearly this is a man who knows just how beaut iful rock can be. So did you get on with Jon and eo. then? The NME said the crew didn't like you too much.

"Oh no, it was alright really. it's just that Ju/ian had said in the NME that people don't like Bon Jovi in the same way that men don't like to admit that they like fingers up their arses. So for the rest of the tour the crew were like, 'hey Ju/ian you fag, got anything stuck up your ass?' But they said it in a nice way."

And so once again Top/oader avoid making too many waves in t he big sweat-puddle of Rock.

Matt finally gets to return to his dinner and Enemy of the State, and I get to return to my glamourless life, still untouched by so much as a glimpse of saucy Spinal Tapisms and scurrilous showbiz insights. Pah! Oh well, I for one surrender. Top/oader are just too .. .nice to dig any dirt on. In the great big soap of pop, Toploader are the Ethel to King Aroda's Nasty Nick , the Bouncer to Mrs Mangle Oh well, at least there's always The fickle finger of fame has happened to find. Quite what they'll do with it, llowever, is yet to be seen.

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5

1111.

A murder mystery in which the detective can't remember what happened five minutes ago, let alone any of the clues, and the victim in question is his own wife. Not a bad premise for a rather spanking new drama of memory, thought Momento director Christopher Nolan. Mark/and Starkie agreed, so he met him for a chat o you're walking Into the kitchen with the sole Intention of doing something vitally Important, like taking the chicken out of the freezer to defrost for later (or, to recall a more studentfriendly stereotype, throwing away the chicken that you bought with good Intentions two and a bit weeks ago and then left at the back of the fridge to go grey and mouldy) . But, once there your mind goes on strike and you cannot remember what lt was you are In there for, no matter how hard you try. This temporary amnesia carries on for a good few minutes, but by the time you remember you have settled down to watch Countdown (or some similar programme that us student-types love) and decide that you'll remember to dolt later. A familiar situation, n'est

S pas?

Well, imagine what it would be like if you permanently forgot everything that happened longer than 15 minutes ago; that every face you saw was new and unfamiliar, even though they said that they had known you for years; that you had no short-term memory at all. This is the problem facing Leonard Shelby (played by Guy Pearce - Neighbours, Prise ilia, Queen of The Desert) in Christopher Nolan's new film, Memento. For, although he can remember everything up to the murder of his wife, all the memories he creates after that point vanish after

"lt's totally unpleasant. lt's this poor guy being bounced around by unpleasant people, this mentally ill guy. What I wanted to do was get inside his head and treat him as a hero" a couple of minutes, leaving him constantly bewildered and disorientated. In fact, the only thing that keeps him sane is the drive to find his wife's killer, using Polaroids, notes, charts and even tattoos.

Pearce delivers an excellent performance as the mentally inept hero, convincingly creating both a sense of pathos and of humour surrounding his character's situation. Carrie-Ann Moss is also exceptional as Natalie, an emotionally frigid bargirl who helps Leonard out of pity . However, what really makes this film so striking is not the quality of the acting , but the original structure and editing of the film itself. For Memento actually begins at the end and ends at the beginning . But , th is is not a standard Tarantino rip-off by any means, because where Pulp Fiction had very little linear motion in it, and changed haphazardly from one point in time to another, the story within Memento moves pretty much from the end straight through to the beginning .

This reversed view helps the audience relate to Leonard 's own condition, by throwing them into a confusing mess of images and slowly picking out and explaining what they mean and why they occur.

Furthermore, not only does the film run in reverse from scene to scene, but even the scenes themselves are edited so that often you see the second half of the scene played out before the first half. The idea of watching a story unfold backwards might seem a little hard-going , but after the initial few minutes of confusion, the viewing becomes quite exciting. And to see the story through chronologically would probably

conclude in a much less sympathetic view of Leonard's plight .

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his view is shared by the director, Christopher Nolan, himself: "One of the things you'll find is that it does not work [chronologically). I mean, it works logically, the story works and I was very determined that it would because I want people to be able to see the film again and not suddenly go, 'Oh, okay, well that was a cheat, and that was as well.' But it's totally unpleasant . it's this poor guy being bounced around by unpleasant people, this mentally ill guy. What I wanted to do was get inside his head and treat him as a hero."

Of course, in beginning the film at the end of the story, we get to see the supposed climax of the film in the first minute or so (ie. Guy Pearce shooting a man in the head). One might think that this detracts from the intensity of the story, which is, in essence, the search for a killer, but Nolan sees it differently : "Yeah, you 're always worried about, you know, how best you can try and keep people interested in the story you're trying to tell , but to me it was always very important to not make it like a whodunnit. In my trite way I like to say it 's not so much a whodunnit as a whydunnit ." Ahem , soundbite anyone?

The constant anonymity of the supporting characters throughout Memento tends to render the film, as a whole, rather devoid of any emotional interplay . But , while Nolan has purposefully downplayed the emotional interaction between the characters themselves, he recognises that the film exudes a definite emotional response on a more personal level : "I personally see it as a cold film ... but different people relate to it in a different way. I've found that older people respond more emotionally to the film, which was a big surprise to me ... relating the film to Alzheimer's Disease , particularly with the Sammy sub-plot (Sammy being a character with a similar condition to Leonard). We were certainly determined to make a film that could strike different people in different ways and that 's one way in which I think we were successful. " This permeating anonymity also promotes an overwhelming ambiguity in the relationships Leonard has with other characters - eg. is Natalie really only helping him out of pity or is she using him for her own gains? - and even things he does himself- at one point we cut to Leonard running after a man , with a gun in his hand . "What 's going on?" He says, " I'm chasing this guy ... (gun shot] Nape, he's chasing me."

This ambiguity is really the basis upon which the whole film is built.

However, it is also its downfall. For the climax at the close of the film is marred by the fact that the audience have not been given enough hard facts to deduce whether the conclusion is really what it purports to be or merely j ust another red herring thrown in for good measure. As well as th is problem, the characters with which Leonard has interacted throughout the film also seem to disappear as quickly as they arrived without really explaining what happened to them.

But the problems addressed are minor ones in a film that successfully manages to question t he reliability and ultimate necessity of memory, expose the distinctions between verbal and visual recollect ion, and study the essential human need for goals and objectives, within a stylish and inventive piece of filmmak ing. In this way, Nolan has ensured that Memento is not a film you will forget easily .

111 Unthank Road Norwich Tel: 01603 626068 Irish folk, first Sunday of each month Live jazz, thir

Sunday of each month

Latin American ev ry Wednesday evening - an enjoyable eriencel ot and cold food available {vege option) Lunch til 2 .30pm every day Evening food, Mo 6pm- 8pm

ay to Saturday

undays, full English roast until 3pm car parking, access facilities For the clisai:J , pool table, quiz machine, welcome well behaved chi

Mac/ bar staH, a crazy lane/lore/ Wednesday, November 1, 2000

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a1n, 9 contestants. One winner. A stone-cold bitch of a presenter. Yes , it's The Weakest Link! That programme that everybody hates to love is now moving to BBC 1, where the paltry prize of £10,000 will be pushed to £20,000- the Beeb's largest sum of prize money ever. Kathryn Hinchliff and Mark/and Starkie honour the occasion with their own version of the popular game show. So, bring out the contestants! irst of all we have Chris from London, a TV presenter and sometime disc jockey for boring, corporate radio station.

Capital FM. Oh yeah. and he also hosts Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? His favourite past time is watching small bunnies on his lawn and he once suffered a minor mishap in Tesco's when he was accidentally mistaken for Prunella Scales and beaten by three old ladies wtth umbrellas for promoting the myth that al l old people are stupid , condescending and generall y irritating .

Next we have Dale , a veteran host of the daytime game show and usual presenter of The National Lottery. One of Dale 's lesser known facts is that he is the only person in Britain who likes the sound of his alarm clock , "it's just that every time I hear the beep I think of the fun I could be 11aving on Supermarket Sweep!" Thank you, Dale .

Next up, it's Wheel Of Fortune's John. or Tall John. as he is known by his friends. Doing a good job. but you 'll never be as good as Nicky Campbell . John. And here we have Bruce Forsyth , the oldest game show host in the world . In fact. the oldest man tn the world ! At 127 years. we are hoping he will be popping off to that conveyor belt in the sky very soon. Our penult imate contestant is Les. Presenter of the safe. Saturday evening game show Fam ily Fortunes. Les says that his first love is actually hardcore drum'n'bass - "it 's the best way of re lieving the stress of having to talk to over-enthusiasti c family members all day, " he claims . Ftnally. we have cheeky northern types, Ant'n'DecrM . whose mischievous antics on

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struggling quiz, Friends Like These, have won over the hearts of menopausal women all across the country.

Over the next few rounds we shall find out which of these contestants will reign victorious, and which shall be exposed as The Weakest Link ...

Round 1: Well, in the first round we saw a sterling performance from John, who managed to answer all his questions correct ly and bank the most money.

Nice one. Scottte! Dale, however. did not manage quite so well, and broke down in a flood of wussy tears when Anne Robinson flashed the red glint in her eye in his direction.

But, despite being the weakest link in this round , the votes unanimously picked out Les - not because of his performance, but due more to the fact that his constant grinning and habitual nosepicking was. like, really getting on everyone's nerves.

"Les Dennis. you are The Weakest Link.

Goodbye."

Les ' Comment : "Well, I can completely understand why the rest of the team wou ld vote me out, because I too find myself quite irritating. Well , I'm off now to relax with the soothtng sounds of Photek."

Round 2: With a mediocre £110 out of a possible £1000 in the bank from the first round , the contestants really need to buck their ideas up if they want to make the torturous grilling from Ms Robinson worthwhile.

Ant'n'DecrM have already started to crack under the pressure. and their heart-warming little chuckles have distinctly turned to a more whimpering sound .

Having made little impact in the first round, old Brucie made a rather huge comeback in Round 2. proving that senile old men can be useful too. Dale. however, suffered a massive blow (ahem) when Anne Robinson let out a demonic roar and started panting in a possessed. canine kind of way. Unfortunately.

Dale temporarily lost the power of speech and movement down his left side, and had to be helped off by a sympathetic member of the studio audience.

"Dale Winton. you are The Weakest Link. Goodbye."

Dale's Comment: .... ngh ...

Round 3: Havi ng recovered sl ight ly from Ms Robinson's scary antics in the last round, t he contestants managed to

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

bag only £40 in the bank. Although all the contestants did badly, Chris was voted out because the others are all insanely jealous of his job on 'that· quiz show.

"Chris Tarrant, you are The Weakest Link .. ."

"Are you absolutely sure about that?" "Don 't play your unnecessary mind games with me. Tarrant. Go away."

Chris' Comment: Do I care about not getting the money?

Er. no. I am getting loads for ... Millionaire? I hope John gets the money because. frankly. he is a useless nobody and needs all the money he can get."

Round 4: With £420 already in the bank, it is up to the remaining strong links to higher the stakes.

Throughout the round John Leslie again answers all his questions correctly . making him the favourite to win. Ant'n'DecrM are also true to form onl y managing to answer one questton. 'The ch tldren's programme Byker Grove spawned which crap pop duo?' When it comes round to the vottng it is obvious who should be going home with nothing , John Leslie voted for Ant'n'Dec rM and they returned the favour . it was all down to Brucie who had the deciding vote. Surely he would do the decent thing and get rid of the cheesy twosome . For a few seconds there was confuston as Forsyth's chin obscured the name on his placard .

When it was finally revealed John Leslie was the one to go, a victim of Brucie's cruel tactical vot ing: he knew that he would be no match for John if he let him into the final. "With two votes you are the weakest link. Goodbye , John " .

John's comment: "I came here to win so I am obviously disappointed , but Anne Robinson was lovely. I am upset with Brucie, I expect he is jealous because I've become the undisputed king of day tim e telev ision. and he's become a twisted ugly old git. I deserved to win because I am a knight in shining armour, I didn't notice Forsyth coming to Judy's rescue at the TV awards. I expect the exertion, if not the sight would have killed him "

Round 5: In this, the final round before the knockout, the money banked is trebled at the end. so a maxtmum £3000 is on offer. "As your evil tactical voting has voted off the strongest link, we wtll start with the second strongest link which is you Bruce." With only Brucie and Ant'n'DecrM left . a pattern emerges from the start. Brucie gets a quest ion right and then Ant'n'DecrM get theirs wrong thus losing all the money.

With only five seconds left to go Ant'n'DecrM remember to bank the twenty pounds before answering their next question. luckily the time runs out before they can get it wrong. and the twenty pounds is saved. "You have supposedly now voted off al l t he weakest links. and at the end of that round yo u have banked a pitiful I £20 , but we will treble that. taking the total prize

money up to £580.

Round 6: The knockout round , and the remaining t wo players go head to head . Bruce Forsyth against Ant 'n' DecTM . And so. som e int ere sttng questions are raised: is this just two contestants on a quiz show . fighting for the prize money. or a war between youtll presenting and tradttional , Generation Game type vanety presenting? Do we wa nt to watcl1 crinkly old men surrounded by beautiful women presenting our quiz shows or Ant surrounded by Dec exuding youth and enthustasm? And. do we really care?

After onl y three questions t he an swer was reveal ed, as Ant 'n 'Dec"' fai led to get a stngl e questi on right. Making Forsyth the champion of all th at he survey s.

"Brucie , you are th e strongest link. Errn, well done : ·

Ant'n'Dec's comment: "We didn't win anyt11ing like. but it was an ace day. we got to hang out wtth like grown ups and stuff, and it was really cool! John Leslte deserved to win really, he's a really friendly guy and not as Scottish as you 'd expect! Anne Robtnson was harsh, I mean you're used to being called thick ar'nt you Ant . by all those seven year olds that kick your arse on Challenge Ant, but yeah she didn't have to be so nasty , we got at least one question right. Hmm it was wicked!"

Brucie's comment : "Well . all you can say is that the best man won.

I am the finest quiz show host who has ever lived. Or died for that matter. I am the strongest , the cleverest and my car goes the fastest. This money doesn't make a blind bit of difference to my already gargantuan fortune. it's a drop in the ocean to me. I'll probably spend it on a huge bottle of scotch to drink while my wife ts away ... On one of her long weekends ...

With the chauffeur." [Mr Forsyth bursts into tears]. "Goodbye."

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• EAS professor and renowned literary critic Lorna Sage has just released the memoirs of her childhood, Bad Blood. Jim Whalley spoke to her about her turbulent upbringing and the changing face of UEA.... · • • • posts at UEA . As the Guardian puts it " Sage breaks off at the point at which her life, if not her blood, became her own. " Sage claims to have found writing Bad Blood "an enjoyable experience", despite the often painful memories. By ending the book when she does she allowed herself a "certain dis• tance " from the events. The early conclusion was also for her daughter. Sage now has an interesting relationship with her family. She does not think she could have told her story if her mother had still been alive, not out of any particular closeness, but because she "felt a need to protect her" .

Her father, on the other hand, who is still very much alive "can take care of himself". Relations are good " as long as they live some distance away " . How did Sage's restrictive childhood affect the ra ising of her own daughter? " I always intended to be a lenient parent .. . perhaps I was a little too lenient. You'll have to ask her that " .

She is clearly very proud of Sharon and points out that she recently completed a part time MA in script-writing at UEA, "amongst other things" .

There is also an obvious, and justified, pleasure in the recept ion of Bad Blood by both critics and the public . As Sage says, "the best reviews pointed out the wider significance of the book ...

I had hoped it might address wider issues, but it seemed such a narrow subject" . To the contrary, it provides a valuable account of attitudes both of and about women over three generations in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Though far from typical, Sage's childhood was full of moments, such as her mother's discovery of fish fingers, that anyone wanting to learn more about the era will find enlightening.

Some reviews have described it as an 1 Important work of femin ism, a conclusion Bad Blood's author attributes to the lack of other women from her generation attemptIng similar works.

Lorna Sage's last publication was The Cambridge Companion to Women's Literature which she edited. lt too was well received on release , although some critics not iced "the col'lspicuous absence of any entry for feminism " (Shirley Kossick).

Sage is quick to refute these claims,

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oma Sage has been at UEA since 1965.

When she arrived, along with her husband VIctor Sage, the original Intake students were beginning their third year.

Initially, she says, she wasn't sure how long she could last. UEA's status as a new university had attracted a different breed of student from those she had encountered during her own time of studying In Durham. Some had previously dropped out of other universities. They were overtly confident and told seemingly meaningless In-jokes. Understandably, on what was then a tiny campus, a sense of community had arisen that Sage had difficulty breaking Into.

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Luckily this was only a temporary problem and Lorna Sage has gone on to great things, both at UEA and in the wider literary world . She has twice been Dean of the School of English and American Studies, where she is a Professor of English Literature. She did research on sevel'lteenth century poems about writing poetry, and published work on Milton, Thomas Love Peacock, Thomas Hardy and George Meredith, before becoming a specialist on more modern writing and women's writing. She has been a prolific literary journalist as well as an academic critic , and currently reviews fiction and literary theory for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Times Book Review. At UEA she is concerned with the UEA Writing Fellowship and the David Wong Fellowship.

Sage considers her reviewing to be " moonlighting " , explaining that many of her colleagues in journalism were unaware of her academic career. lt is this freedom that has allowed her to stay at UEA , an institution she believes " is still among the best universities, for English and literature, in the country " .

Her latest endeavour, and the basis for this interview , is the recent publication of her memoirs, Bad Blood. The book details her upbringing from her earliest memories until the age of eighteen. lt is an extraordinary story that Sage describes as "grotesque" and " bizarre". She grew up in the small village of Hanmer, on the border between Wales and Shropshire. Her early years were dominated by her charismatic but immoral vicar grandfather and her grandmother, a four foot ten barrel of a woman who loathed her husband . When her grandfather died and her father returned from the war the family moved to a council house where the " separate spheres" acted out in her parent's marriage left the young Lorna determined never to marry or have children .

However, an education based on books romanticized the facts of life . She became pregnant without real izing she had lost her virginity and was married on Boxing Day, aged sixteen. Yet the book ends on a positive note, with the birth of her daughter Sharon and both Lorna and husband Victor receiving firsts in English and taking

stating that few academic labels or writers can be found in the tome, a fact supported by herself being omitted. Indeed, her support ing editor Germaine Greer, about as famous a feminist as they come, has a full entry . She goes so far as to call the Companion itself a work of feminism, as it was worked on by "a wide range of contributors, most of them women, some graduate students and some over 90". lt is hard to disagree with someone who has supported women writers so consistently over the last thirty years. Sage was on the inaugural jury of the Orange Prize for women 's fiction and sees its role , and the role of literary prizes in general , to highlight overlooked minority groups in writing , to "give previously ignored books a second chance ". lt is a role she accuses the major prizes, such as the Booker for which she has also served as a jury member, of neglecting.

"Too often ", she laments, "the jury feel they should represent Everyman ... and give the prize to the morally safe choice ". This year UEA 's alumni has two nominations for the Booker Prize in Trezza Azzopardi and Kazuo lshiguru . Of the two, Sage taught Azzopardi , whom she describes as "a bright , clever student ". lshiguru was taught creative writing by her friend Angela Carter, who died in 1992 after serving at UEA as "the reluctant other half of Malcolm Bradbury ".

Carter's skill was "to inspire writers to find their own voices ". The two women were clearly very close. Carter's writing desk is beside us during the interview.

With Bad Blood's publ ication so recent, Sage has yet to consider her next move. Has she col'lsidered following it with a biography of her friend? lt is an idea she has given much thought, though she wouldn 't be able to conduct the research the project would requ ire. Carter lived in Japan between 1969 and 1971, a "fasc inat ing period no one really knows anything much about ". Whether Sage will be able to shed any light on the time remains unclear, but she is tempted.

Please welcome the all-wild, the all-loud, The All.f-ingmighty! The Glasgow punk rockers have retumed and this time it's personal!

Are you surprised by the new album's reception?

Yes and No. I didn't know what was going to happen but I knew we made a really good record.

Why did the band split up four years ago?

We'd spent a year working on the last album, Just Add Life. Our record company Chrysalis were bought by EMI. 45 people lost their jobs. We got fed up trying to fight a system of record companies.

What bands influenced The Almighty?

Anything from MC5 to Motorhead, from The Clash to Stiff Little Fingers.

Should marijuana be legalised?

Of course.

What about the harder stuff?

it 's down to people's discretion. Everybody should have a choice and the right to decide what they want to do. I don 't think heroin should be made legal but some hard drugs could be decriminalised a little bit.

One guy asked me to have sex with his wife while he watched.

What Is your favourite tattoo?

Probably The Almighty one across my back , for obvious reasons!

What Is the strangest request you have had from a fan?

One guy asked me to have sex with his wife while he watched.

Did you?

No. it's not my cup of tea. Sex is, but not that!

What Is your opinion of Limp Blzklt?

it's great, I'd rather listen to that than f-king Westlife .

Who do you prefer, Britney or 811/ie?

(laughs) Christina ... by miles!

What advice would you give to an unsigned band?

Go for it. Be prepared for more bullshit than you can take . lt stops being your own band the moment you start signing to management and record companies, that's when it starts to get messy .

Kleren McSweeny

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Comedians often try their hand at disgorging their observations upon the printed page rather than live audiences - but is the pen necessarily mightier than the microphone, asks Johnathan Rolfe?

hes for themselves or appear on numerous comedy quizzes. Of course, there's no mystery to the success of their novels either · their books are immediate bestsellers because of the writer's celebrity status , and an instant literary cult following is thus assured. But are their 'masterpieces' a cynical attempt to cash in

on their fame with a pretence at great literature? Why should we read them and not those who haven't already established their positions as literary luminaries?

Certainly not to be amused, it seems. Many comedians, wl1en given a word processor and a few hundred thousand words to play with. become tragedians 111 disguise. They"re all tortured souls who have used comedy to hide their real feelings, and then used their opportunities as novelists to hit us with as much doom, despair, desolation

"But are their 'masterpieces' a cynical attempt to cash in on their fame with a pretence at great literature?" and as many of their own disappointments as possible. A typical template for such a novel will run as follows. A) At least one grisly death. usually a murder that in some way implicates the protagonist or narrator. B) A lurid sex scene, always a useful selling point. C) At least one alcoholic or drug dealer. usually related to the main character. or to a lesser degree the protagonist themselves.

And D) , a crucial extra layer of what the author hopes the reader w111 recogn1se as "semi· autobiographical" material grafted over the top. Repeat until bored. Or sacked.

Years in an unpredictable profession seem to give comedians a love of characters "on the edge ... They often write about repressed souls who somewhere along the line "snap" and then spend the rest of

Wednesday, November 1 , 2000

ex a this is former UEA student Charlie Higson, or as he's called on his book s for greater literary cred ibi lity , Charles Higson. The writer and performer on The Fast Show (designed to make us forget there are no punch lines by blazing thro ugh as many sketc hes as possible) has written books that may have been a surprise to many of his fans. The novels are often painstaking, philosophical and meandering. very unlike what we 're used to from him. Taking just Getting Rid Of Mister Kitchen, the plot runs in this way · M an goes to see narrator about car. narrator kills man. narrator drives about trying to dispose of man, plays tennis with naked drunk man before he collapses in a flower bed ·you get the idea. Which is nice .

Another comedian who takes solace from long soul-searching is Rob Newman, eo-creator of The Mary Whitehouse Experience. Although his stage act was always dominated by death. suicide and er. the mind altenng powers of hand-held klaxons(!). i1is time nowadays seems more dominated by self-analyt1ca1 fiction. Dependence Day is a ludicrous take on Conrad's Heart of Darkness wi1ere Marlowe's story is replaced with tales of an avid David Bowie fan. migratory swallows in Peruvian drug seams and a totally unbelievable court case involv ing the cross· questioning of a woman in court by a murderer. If you're going to write for fans, it seems they always li ke to see some evidence of a comedian's stage persona in the book and Newman manages it quite neatly - a shamboiic wreck appearing to hilarious effect in amongst the more central characters. Long philosophy IS where New man tends to make up for lack of action. as does seem to be the case in a lot of comic novels by famous writers. Manners, also by New man. is a long and arduous journey accounting the suspension of a poi1ce officer. John Manners. after he ki ll s a rap ist. Hilarious stuff.

Also pretty unfunny, and therefore often descnbed as ··savagely com1c" 1s Sean Hug11es novel it's What He Would Have Wanted The main character Shea, apparently named after the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, tnes to find out why h1s father, a BBC weatherman. has hanged himself. it seems that rather than filling page after page with jokes. comedians l1ke to use their observational powers to create black comedy. After all, what's the point of entirely re-hashing your stage act in a book?

With this in mind, comedians will often try and link their television work w1th their books anyway.

In some cases it's almost inevitable that some will happily take the material from their novels and turn 1t into f1lms or plays w1th varying levels of success. No one has taken th1s ideal further than Ben Elton. Now collaborating with Mr Bnt1sh Theatre himself. Andrew Uoyd Webber. the one t1me "motormouth" has converted his novel Popcorn into a very successful stageshow. and Inconceivable into the very badly rece1ved film Maybe Baby. Stark , his first and without doubt his best novel was converted into a series, replete wi tll lefty politics and world leaders conspiring to start another

I

colony on the moon because of Earth's unrecoverable pollution Situation. Elton·s stand-up material is always very apparent in his novels, but in his case, you coul d hardly expect it to be completely absent.

So with new novels emerging from the camp unabated, what can we say for them? T11ey probably won't appear on your university reading lists, but wi ll always be a source of interest, even if some of t he ideas in them are better exploited elsew here. In t he pick of what's new at the moment, Stephen Fry has just published h1s fourth novel The Star's Tennis Balls and will be appearing in the Arthur Miller Literary Festival to ta lk about it in November . The book takes it's tit le from the Webst er play The Duchess of Malfi, an d is a subvert ed revenge tragedy set in 1980 with a nice love story in the middle. Considering the success of The Liar· a joyous account of university life and international conspiracies. characterised by controversy and arguments.

"Many become tragedians in disguise ... tortured souls who have used comedy to hide their real feelings, and then hit us with as much doom and despair as possible" antagonism and corruptible lecturers, the new novel is well worth a look.

Not to mention the numerous others, including Meera Syal. Alexei Sayle, Hugh Laurie, David Baddiel et at. it looks as if there'll always be another funnyperson to find new fame with a miserable novel. They're not going to be to everyone's taste and will probably not replace Shakespeare as the heading on your essays, but with little else to do are we ll worth the effort .

Just don 't expect to come away feeling very wonderful about life. That's what cop1ous amou nts of alcohol is for.

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Television seems to be increasingly nauseating these days. Equipped with sick bag and stomach settlers, Steve Quirke decided to take a look at the phenomenon that is gross TV ... s

lt just me, or Is television getting more and more disgusting. No, I'm not t alking about the stream of bad made-for-tv movies on Channel 5 , or Anne Roblnson's smirk on The Weakest Unk, although those are pretty unsavoury things . Don't get me wrong, I'm hardly the next Mary Whltehouse, but 1t seems that television has really been pushing some boundaries recently, but I was wondering If they could just please stop, If not for me then for the sake of my weak stomach, and the general sanity of the nation.

I

I am speaking as someone who loves television, you know. They cut the umbilical cord certainly, but I was lucky enough to find coaxial cable to

"I don't want to hear phrases like 'yes, it appears to be infected, we'll have to operate,' whilst I' m eating my tea"

she looked on in amazement, sacrificing her own innocence so the general audience didn't have to witness the same prospect. But, not content with this, Channel 4 decided that the public hadn't seen enough, and promptly brought the Australians back, and this fantastic new passtime was explicitly demonstrated on 4Later. lt was pretty impressive, watching two random Australians twist their genitals into wild and wacky shapes that for the most part we re reminiscent of nothing more than, well, twisted Australian genitals really. But necessary viewing?

I think not.

Looking on the bright side, at least they had genitals to twist. I mention this because Channel 4's Hidden Love series was good enough to bring to a small screen near you, men whose greatest sexual fantasy was t o be castrated. By the way, that's not in the Sigmund Freud psychoanalysi s way.

Y'know, the idea of male fear of strong females usurping their power- as seen in all manner of literature seminars. No. These were men. Who really really wanted ... to cut their balls off!

You can imagine the scene at our house, three guys sitting cross-legged looking pained, and one girl laughing away (and occasionally turning away

replace it with. But I'm sure television didn't used to freak me out as much as it does now. Perhaps I had a stronger stomach back then, but I doubt it, as I'm still freaked out by needles and famously fainted during a heart dissection in Biology. Yet ironically, I used to be a big Casualty tan. There were all manner of gory and unpleasant things: compound fractures, punctured lungs, nasty car crashes, acid burns, Charlie's thinning hair and complete failure to find a long term girlfriend or leave the show. No I loved every minute of it. In fact, most of the fun came from guessing how each of the extras would manage to injure themselves this week.

But most of the appeal comes from the fact that it wasn't real, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if Casualty was created to give the special effects guys from Doctor Who something to do after the series was cancelled. Nope, TV wasn't too graphic a few years back . Well apart from The Word maybe. Yeah, okay The Word was pretty er, well, colourful in places. But it was clearly post-pub entertainment, designed to shock, and to keep Terry Christian off the streets on a Friday night (well, would you like to run into him in your local?)

However, in recent months, television has given me plenty of reasons to reach for the sick bag.

How about penis origami? Two Austra lians demonstrated their "talent" on the Big Breakfast a few weeks ago to an unusually shocked Denise Van Outen. But, that was fine because the only twisted object you got to see was Van Outen's face as

as the scalpel came out). In this multi-channel age, you'd think we'd be able to find something else to watch, perhaps something warm and fluffy like Animal Hospital. However, the show proved hypnotic . lt was like picking a scab, you know you shouldn't do it, but you just can't help it . Then again, it was probably more like watching someone else pick a scab. A scab on their balls. And overdoing the whole scab picking thing and just cutting both balls off instead.

Not that you're safe from gross stuff by watching Animal Hospital. Someone in charge seems to have decided that because animals are, for the

"lt was pretty impressive, watching two random Australians twist their genitals into wild and wacky shapes"

most part, cute - and that Rolf Harris is, for the most part, a harmless old man loved by all ages - it is okay to show all manner of animals being sliced up. I don't want to hear phrases like "I'll just make a small incision here," or "yes, it appears to be infected, we'll have to operate," whilst I'm eating my tea.

Stick it on the Learning Zone as introduction to vivisection and be done with it.

And get rid of that horrible sax music over the titles too. On the subject of t elevision as educator, what about BBC 1's Superhuman? lt was just an excuse to show gross stuff and make me feel ill . Okay, the show is supposed to be about the incredible resilience of the human body and everything ... but showing a hand transplant?

Ah, you say, hand transplant, miracle of modern medical science that is.

Perhaps, but would it be too much to ask for the stitching to be a little less obvious. And it wouldn't have been any less informative if we hadn't have been shown an actual transplant operation. complete with screwing bones together and sewing up veins and tendons. Furthermore, it would be nice if the hand didn't look like it was going to drop off at any moment. lt was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen on television , the concept seemed straight from a horror movie, but the inane suburban settings plucked it from movie fiction and stuck it in my living room as 'real-life' .

Then, before I got a chance to recover, they moved onto open heart surgery. Now, it's one thing to watch someone holding a beating heart in their hand is if you're playing, say, Mortal Kombat, where it's about learning some ridiculously complex set of button pushes and joystick moves to watch a group of red pixels wiggle a bit, but it's quite another to watch a surgeon hold someone's still beating heart. it 's not exactly something that you expect to see on a Sunday night after you've just settled in for the evening .

What's next? Snuff Movie night on BBC2? The World's Funniest Testicular Injuries on ITV? A series of decent movies on Channel 5?

Actually , these are pretty farfetched examples; we all know there 'll never be any decent movies on Channel 5. Having said this, it's really just another example of the ways in which you can learn new things from TV . I've learnt that I'm actually really squeamish; that informative programmes are no longer designed to inform but to shock; and that on reflection I'd like to keep my balls where they are if that's okay.

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Wednesday, November 1, 2000

event

Insight "

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~Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Frank Zappa

With the release of yet another dance compilation - and the promise of free booze Elin Jones headed down to the Ministry of Sound to find out how the big-name DJs brought dance music into the mainstream ... emember the days when the 'big-name DJ' at the local disco was Mr Tomklnson the Geography teacher? Music was reassuringly bland and the closest we got to a 'phat ' tune was bouncing around to No Limit by 2 Unlimited.

Nowadays, with the rise of dance music and the increasing diversity of mainstream genres, some DJs have been rising out of the underground scenes to produce a new breed of ·super DJs' who have earned t hemselves loyal followings reminiscent of those commanded by recognisable bands. Although there are stil l a huge number of underground artists, DJs such as Judge Jules, Brandon Block and Tall Paul have paved the way for dance music and dance cl ubs to become very much in the mainstream. Long gone are the days when you had to drive down to the Black Mountains in the back-of-beyond in West Wales for an illegal rave to experience some harder music than was played in your local Ritzy 's. So how exactly did dance music evolve from the happyhardcore of the ecstasy generation to the slick,

R What's it all about then?

As a virtuoso guitarist, vocalist , composer, lyricist and frontman for the infamous Mothers of Invention, Frank Z appa dominated the American Avante Garde rock scene from his debut in1966 until his death in 1993. Any musician whose influences range from the calculated chaos of classical composer Edgard Varese to the straight ahead blues of Johnnie 'Guitar' Watson was never going to sound avarage, and a quick glance over Zappa 's massive back catalogue shows that he was capable of everything from the psychedelic noodling of 1969's Hot Rats to the classical opus that is The Yellow Shark .

Who did what?

Zappa was renowned for giving many excellent musicians their forst breaks into music. Whilst it is impossible to list everyone he collaborated with in his thirty year career, some of the most natable were 70s Mother's drummer Terry Bozio , percussionist Ruth Underwood and 80s fret-wank kmg Steve Vai. All sounds a bit Intellectual and scary...

Don 't worry, Zappa descended into the murkiest depths of sexual humour on many of his most famous tracks. Notable examples being Don't Eat Yellow Snow, Bobby Brown Goes Down and he surely must be the only cultural liaison between the USA and Chechoslovakia to have recorded a song called Titties and Beer.

All this, and the coo lest moustache in rock too!

So which Is best?

Strictly Commercial: The Very Best of Frank Z appa actually does a very good job of

distilling a massive career onto one CD, so go out and buy it now! You can almost guarantee you'll find something you lik e.

In retrospect: "Suzy Cream cheese ... what 's got into you? " Jack Burton

"Even the bloody Spice Girls have jumped on the bandwagon with Lady Beckham's ill-advised venture into UK Garage" marketable commodity that it IS today?

The big-name DJs of today can be credited with much of the money being injected into dance music by record companies and, ultimately , the music-buying public. Judge Jules and Danny Rampling, both names synonymous with Radio 1's dance music policies, started out on Kiss FM, then a pirate radio station. Both had been influenced by electro 1n the early 80s and had only recently become interested in dance music following the negative backlash to the disco; Saturday Night Fever which had put them off mainstream genres.

In 1987, the same year as Judge Jules blagged his way onto the turntables as a cocky 16-year-old, Danny Rampling set up a club called Shoom with a radica l music policy derived from his time in Ibiza with its Balearic influences. Thi s was a huge gamble in an industry dominated by 80s 'greats' like Stock, Aitcken and Waterman et al, but the gamble paid off as it presented an opportunity for dance music to come out of the closet and show its commercial potential. Other club-runners followed suit and soon even the BBC were converted to the revolut ion, poaching both Judge Jules and Danny Rampling from Kiss to join Radio 1's rapid ly changing musical di rection.

Dance music's rising stars such as Alister Whitehead , Danny Rampling, Brandon Block and Judge Jules have attracted the same kind of following as was reserved for mainstream bands in the 80s. Indeed, dance music has been steadily creeping into the Top 20 with increasing regularity since the early 1990s, making them more attractive to the press and increasing their widespread appeal. Even the bloody Spice Girls have jumped onto the bandwagon with Lady Beckham 's ill-advised venture into UK Garage with Dane 'fat loser' Bowers and True Steppers. As well as dance artists moving into the mainstream a la Sonique, mainstream bands have also been attempting to cross-over the other way, unfortunately with rather less success - do I really have to mention the cringingly awful Steps release? eturning to credib le dance artists, after Radio 1's conversion to the dance music crusade it was only a matter of time before

R Wednesday, November 1, 2000

the record companies pounced upon the rising Arrive at Elephant and Castle Tube stars of the moment. waving fistfuls of money at • -.·t;,tlnn In a haze of excitment about Impending free booze, wonder around for a bit before them in return for their knowledge of what the public now seemed to want. Compilation albums stumbling upon the Ministry of Sound down a side street. There Is a sizeable crowd gathering along the same lines as the hugely successful Now ... series seemed t o be the way to go as there for the event, all of whom were doubtless excited about the prospect of an evening of were no recognisabl e artists coming out of the top-class turntable action from the lovely Lottle scene with enough material to release their own album . These compilations are still being released and the Judge himself, rather than the champagne reception. From the outside the with seemingly endless Ibiza collections coming out at the end of the summer, bringing a bit of club looks like the back entrance to an office balearic sunsh ine into our lives. The super-clubs block canteen , but on passing the extremely •triendlv securit y an entourage of green , sparkly such as the all -powerful Ministry of Sound and ladles appear, carrying trays of champagne.

Gatecrasher have followed suit, adding an exclusive air to the market with their highlyThis Is more like lt!

"Can there be more of an illustration of the crossover of music genres than Bryan Adams being featured on a Ministry of Sound album?"

9.30 As the champagne begins to kick In the music takes shape and the thinking behind the tracks Included on the Annual becomes clear.

Lottie played a set to start the evening off with slick mixing offsetting the blend of dancefloor fillers and harder beats more remlnicant of the usual Ministry style. Paul Jackson 's set was slightly more funky with a trance edge as the night progressed. The compilation album follows this progressive formula , starting with recognisable chart tunes building up to harder beats towards the end. This Is an Ideal example of how the dance music scene has had to be diluted to suit the mass·market, although this wasn 't Immediately obvious at time as I frantically searched for the Illusive appearance of Judge Jules under the

recognisable branding. Just like the Ibiza albums, these club collections aim to advertise the music and style of the club to potential customers, as well as being a handy way to make cash with relatively less outgoings than in actually running the club. By using their resident DJs to mix the albums, the cl ubs are also able to tap into their image of having an almost god-like influence and knowledge over the dance scene, and, of course, 10.30 Abandon all pretence of Investigative lnu~rn:•ll~•tlc Intent and get on the dance floor! into their huge marketability.

Clubs' comp ilation albums attract huge amounts of media attention as they are seen as a yard-stick to measure the achievements and progression of the dance scene over the past year, and can be used to predict future trends. The Ministry of Sound's Annual is arguably the most influent ial of these albums and is mixed t11is year by the giants of the DJ world, Judge Jules and Tall Paul. Even with its reputation as being one of the top superclubs in this country, the Ministry has allowed the mainstream to infilt rate the ir album playlist in the form of former chart number 1s Groovejet by Spil ler and Sonique's it Feels So Good, as well as tracks by Fatboy Slim and even Chicane (featuring Bryan Adams) . Can there be more of an illustration of the cross-over of music genres than Bryan Adams being featured on a Ministry of Sound album? I went along to the Ministry Annual launch . all in the name of research of course. to find out just how far this cross·over has gone ...

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11

Insight

Once missing, presumed dead, the musical is making a comeback. Merek Cooper dons his dancing shoes and discovers that it isn't quite as bad as he once thought ... he year 2000. The new millennium. The promise of a bright and better future, a greater tomorrow and a fresh new start .

This may all sound like a line out of one of those sickeningly sugary musicals that Hollywood used to make, the type where some bright young starlet is plucked from obscurity and told to go out, follow her dream to sing and dance: the "go on baby you'll be a star!" type. Cue much scrambling around in the dark for that overflowing bucket of popcorn as an impromptu sickbucket. Thank God they don't make them like that anymore ... Or do they?

Who would have thought that at the beginning of our new millennium cinema audiences would be faced with a rash of films all seeking to imitate the aforementioned classics. With such luminaries as Lars Van Trier, the Coen brothers and young British director Stephen Daldry (the man responsible for Billy Elliot) all producing films that in one way or another tread the musical path. Musicals, so long overlooked seem to have found their way back into fashion. As someone who dreaded anyone bursting into song on screen, and would fast forward through any musical sections at the slightest hint of a song and dance number, I was mortified.

However, recently, and after a good few trips to the cinema, my attitude seems to be mellowing somewhat. Very much against my wishes, musicals now seem to have found a place in my heart and, thanks to the recent new wave of musicals, I have gone back through cinema history to discover what it was that I initially missed. To my horror I found myself giving up my misgivings to the guilty pleasures of a good old sing along .

The main problem I had with musicals is that they have always lacked the essential quality of realism necessary to make me believe in what I was seeing on the screen. I don't know anyone,

T

"Although Dancer in the Dark has been described as an anti-musical it is essentially a tribute to the classics" who when bursting into song is immediately joined by a hundred strong well-drilled dance troupe. Do you? I thought not.

However, as someone who, when a child, liked nothing better than to dispose of vast amounts of my time watching endless science fiction films, a genre hardly shot through with gritty realism, I can hardly complain about a certain amount of artistic licence. New musical Dancer in the Dark seems to avoid this problem by presenting all the

musical numbers as an invention of Bj6rk's imagination and in doing so deftly bypasses questions of reality.

Indeed Dancer in the Dark was a film I was bound to love, made, as it was by the enfant terrible of European cinema Lars Van Trier and staring the wonderfully talented Bj6rk. Say goodbye to the elaborate sets and say hello to gritty realism and hand-held camera movement. Although Dancer in the Dark has been described as an anti-musical, it

"Musicals have always lacked the essential quality of realism necessary" is essentially a tribute to the classics. Witness the fact that it begins with a rendition of the classic song "My Favourite Things" from the Sound of Music! The huge ensemble pieces that characterise what many think of as traditional musicals are all here and, although they are not shot in the traditional way, they are still amazingly eye-catching.

In fact, Van Trier used 100 hundred cameras positioned around his actors to catch surprise moments and unusual angles. His summary of this method? One hundred wasn't even enough. He claims he could have used a hundred more!

However, this fresh new treatment of musicals has served to breath new life into what had become a tired old genre. nother supposedly alternative leftfield act to ex press a love for all things musical are the Ober-cool Coen brothers. Their backcatalogue was already awash with tributes to Hollywood of old. lt was surely only a matter of t ime before they ventured into musical territory.

Oh Brother Where Art Thou is exactly that.

Label led in some quarters as a country musical, tinged as it is with fugitive country romps and southern-fried gospel harmonies, the end result is a musical oddessy from start to finish. Our heroes, led by the decidedly mainstream George Clooney are on the run in the deep American south. On their travels they manage to find the time to become country music sensations as the much-adored Soggy Bottom Boys, get baptised by a gospel choir and nearly lured to their deaths by the hypnotic harmonies of a trio of beautiful sirens. With their deadpan humour and vast cinematic knowledge, the Coen brothers ensure a rooting, tooting good time is had by all.

Proving it's not all singing and that some dancing must be involved, we have the universally acclaimed Billy Elliot with its message that ballet is not for "poofs" and can provide a much-needed lifeline from a life of poverty and violence.

Everyone and his uncle has now seen this film and, although it may have escaped many people's attention, while not exactly being an out and out musical, it does contain large elements of choreographed dance. Billy Elliot has been a huge success and it's great to see a homegrown talent pulling in the crowds. As I began to look at the appeal of such a film it became clear what an integral part music seems to play in other recent British successes such as the Full Monty and Brassed Off. Where would the steel workers steamy strip show be without the funky groove of Tom Jones and who can forget their dole queue dance routine?

Future new releases like Centre Stage, which bears a startling resemblence to 80s hit Fame, seem to indicate that while the musical has long been believed to be dead and buried it has been present in hit films all along, albeit in different variations, and seems determined to continue, to entertain for years to come.

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Wednesday, November 1, 2000

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Two weeks ago Arthur Miller, one of the America's most celebrated playwrights, was in town to accept the freedom of our fine city. Nick Henegan caught up with him to talk about literature, life and sheep ...

An exceptionally alert, witty man, you got the feeling that he could talk about literature and his work all day but when it comes to more personal matters his demenour changes somewhat

wo weeks ago Arthur Miller celebrated his 86th birthday. Like the rest of his generation he has lived through some of the most turbulent and catastrophic times that the world has ever seen.

Unlike the rest of his generation he put it all down on paper and , thanks to a remarkable empathy with his fellow man along with a masterful control of language, has become one of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights in the process.

On the eve of the ce lebrations I headed down to a plush hotel in the centre of Norw ich to meet the great man. As the bus neared the city centre my nerves began to jang le. After all, this is tile man who penned Death of the Salesman (a play regarded by many as one of the greatest works of American literature ever written), the man who was a victim of US Communist paranoia during the 1950s, the man who was convicted in contempt of Congress for refusing to name his left-wing associates, the man who was blacklisted by Hollywood and refused a passport, the man who was married to Marilyn Monroe. Plenty to discuss then · or so you might have thought. lt seems that people who have faced the extremes of triumph and disaster fit into two categories. those who could talk about it all day and those who would rather see it as a moment in their past and move on . it 's rather like summoning up the courage to ask you grandfather what he did in the war , not knowing whether he'll talk your hind leg off for an afternoon or break down crying.

Speaking to Arthur Miller it didn't take long to realise he fitted into the second category . An exceptionally alert. w itty man, you got the feeling t hat l1e could talk about literature and his work until the cows came home · but when it comes to more personal matters his demeanour changes somewhat .

T

"If something lasts it's probably because the inception when it was written somehow sees into the common human condition, which really doesn't change much."

When I met Arthur Mil ler he was jet lagged having just flown in from New York. Enthroned in a large, high backed chair, dressed in a grey tweed jacket and v-necked sweater he looks JUSt like a grandfather . "Well shoot , whatever you want to ask me you better go and ask me" he says in a husky New York accent. He ·s a granddad with an edge.

I kick off by asking h1m what he thinks of modern literature; after all in a period of relative political apathy and social contentment can it really be as powerful as when he started out in a post-war, paranoid America? "it's always been hard to write well with a degree of weight. I think now for young writers there is more of a distraction than there was, partly because of television . There is the sense that everything is possible so nothing is necessary ." He chuckles at this but soon his tone is much more senous.

"In one sense it's better, 1n the sense that people are , I think compared to 30 or 40 years ago, more conscious of what's happening in the world and that awareness has made them a little less willing

Wednesday, November 1 , 2000

to accept stupid actions from up above. So , they are more alive to the au tllorities· idea than they used to be," explains Mil ler passionately . "But"· and there's a big but · "of course , the bad thing about what's happening at the moment is there's a terrific rise of religious nationalism in many, many writers and this can degenerate into a kind of mindless hatred for anyone who is not like you are and it can be terribly violent and destructive , and that 's a real step backwards."

From speaking to Miller and reading his plays it is apparent that he is very much concerned with tolerance. Unsurprising really, considering that he was lucky to escape imprisonment in the 1950s during the American Government's search for Communist infiltrators resulting in hundreds of suspected ·Reds· being hauled in front of Senator Joseph McCarthy's House of Un-American Activities Committee. Miller refused to name friends who were formerly members of the American Communist Party, and was consequently blacklisted by a Hollywood that refused to accept his work until 1961. On top of this he was denied a passport and convicted of contempt of

Congress, a decision that was overturned a year later. The era of McCarthyism also caused the breakdown of relations with his director and friend , Elia Kazan who, much to Miller's dismay, agreed to name Communist sympathisers. lt was this climate of hysteria that prompted Miller to write The Crucible in 1953, a play set during the Sale m witch trails in the 17th century. lt tells the story of a man who allows himself to be executed rather than sign away his name and his fami ly's honour. Definitely a play very much influenced by its time t hen, but does M iller set out to write plays t hat transcend their particu lar time in history? "Wel l, you know you can 't design somethi ng that way" he explains . "If something lasts it ·s probably because the inception when it was writ t en somehow sees into the common human cond ition of t hat time which really doesn't cha nge ve ry much . I've found t hat whi le a lot of superfic ial th ings c hange all t he time . at bottom man moves very slowl y and changes very slow ly so consequent ly some of my stuff is as pertinent now as when I wrote it."

So is it M il ler 's aim to doc ument the human condition through his writing? " I, er, just instinctively write about, how should I put it?" He pauses. "I don't write about - I'm just not interested in writing about something that's in fash ion and that 's just t he way my make up is".

Miller is not keen to talk about his brush w1t l1 McCarthy. I ask him about his influences in attempt to draw him. "When I first started out Henrik lbsen was no doubt an influence , I found the structure of his work very helpful to me and certainly classical Greek theatre was also very helpful" he tells me . " But I was also moved by a lot of contemporary theatre which was very exciting and I got a lot out of that." But what about event s in the society of the time, do they have an infl uence? 'T ve changed and my work changes and society changes, the temper of the t ime changes. The wo rk g radually takes on the form that , it seems t o me , it wants to take on. it's no longer influenced by anythi ng" Stil l no luck, but I persevere. So your influences nowadays come from wit hin rat her th an from events taking place out in societ y? "Ye s. wel l, it's simply com ing out of t he insi de rather t han t he relat ionship to the day 's news or somet hi ng " . I let it lie. I guess Miller appl ies t he same phi losophy to his persona l as well as his litera ry past . When I ask him if 11e feels under pressure to surpass his earlier, critica lly renow ned work he simply rep lies.

"What's gone is gone. That's the way it was and that's the way it oughta be."

If it was hard to believe that this rather sedate old gentleman sitting in front of me was once at the heart of radicalism in America and, for a time at least, a political criminal. it is mind boggling to know that he was once married to one of the most glamorous women of the 20th century, Marilyn Monroe. The pair married in 1956 and, following the disintegration of the Hollywood blacklist, Miller wrote the screenplay for Monroe's movie The Misfits in 1961. In the same year they were divorced, and two years later she was dead.

Monroe may be one of the most recognisable images in popular cult ure, and her death may provide conspiracy theorists the world over with scintillat ing after dinner conversation, but before I even met Miller it was made clear thdt this stage in his life was taboo· "the one thing" not to talk about.

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11 guess Miller applies the same philosophy to his personal as well as his literary past: "What's gone is gone. That's the way it was and that's the way it oughta be." iller is no stranger to critical acclaim and, indeed, derision. lt was in the early stages of his career that this reached its peak . !iller's first professionally produced play The Man Vho Had All the Luck by his own admission failed", although it did succeed in winning the heatre Guild Award. But it is his third play, Death 1f a Salesman, which is regarded as his ~asterpiece. Perhaps rightly so considering that it ; the work that won him the Puiitzer Prize and his lace in the canon of American literature. Written , 1949, the play tells the story of salesman Willy oman, and his ultimately fatal inferiority complex )Stered by a society that demands social and ~onomic conformity.

M does Miller agree that Death of the Salesman narks the pinnacle of his creativity? He smiles, Well, you know it's not produced as much as Jome of my other plays actually, like The Crucible. lut, er, I'm pleased with it , it seems to work 1lright" and what about the label of literary genius hat Miller has had bestowed on him? "A what? I lon't know what that is. it's hard work what I do, ny nose is to the grindstone." Well, there's nodesty for you . lt seems that critics don't count or much in Miller's eyes then? "Critics!" he cries Well, I stopped reading critics many years ago

M

because, er." He pauses again. "I don't know. I lost interest."

Surely, though, there must be one play that stands above the rest. This obviously seems to amuse him . "You know it all depends on which one I saw last, in a good production mind you" he laughs.

Having generally read Miller's plays it's easy to forget that the main reason they are written to be performed, an obstacle that other authors tend not to be confronted by. I mean while novelists and poets inevitably have their work analysed and reinterpreted the results tend to be confined to the relatively private world of academia. In contrast the interpretation of plays are a very public occasion, an occasion that has the ability to offend the playwright when it all goes a bit pear-shaped. Miller chuckles - "Oh I try to avoid bad performances. I just flee from anything if I suspect it is not going to be what I want." it must be a stressful transition from the written to the spo~en though. "Oh yes" he says earnestly, "You know, it's a bit like music. Music is a lot of notes on the page but if you get a tremendous orchestra or instrumentalist it's a whole different thing to getting a very ordinary instrumentalist. it's the same notes but in one case it can really thrill you and in the other it's just a lot of notes."

Reading his plays it would seem that Miller tries to make this transition as simple as possible. His stage directions are complex in the extreme and appear to make any radical re-appraisal of his

plays impossible. Take the directions for the opening act of Death of Salesman, for example.

Spanning over a page the directions encompass everything from the music, the lighting and even the layout and dimensions of the scenery. So are these detailed instructions to future directors of the play a deliberate effort by Miller to keep control of his work once it is released into the public sphere? "You can't keep control, there's no way you can do that. My plays are on everywhere and I can't be everywhere. So all I do, most of the time, is that for the first production , the initial production, I am very much present to ensure that my intentions are carried out. After that first

"Well , it was a big surprise and I'm told that I can fish in the waters and graze my sheep and there's one other privilage that I can 't remember. The idea is pleasant."

production I can't possibly do anything but disappear, after that I have very little to say and just as well ."

As much as I would like to delude myself the Arthur Miller has not come all the way from the States to talk literature with me. No, the reason he was sitting jet lagged in a plush Norwich hotel just over two weeks ago is because he was in England to receive the freedom of the City of Norwich. I ask him how he feels about the honour, his response is accompanied with hearty laughter.

"Well, it was a big surprise and I'm told now that I can fish in the waters and graze my sheep and I think there 's one other privilege but I can't remember right now".

And will we see Arthur Miller taking advantage of these privileges? "I haven't brought my sheep or my fishing pole but the idea is pleasant" he says.

I'd say that's an invitation to keep your eyes peeled then.

The reason Miller received this accolade, one that he admits "is a little more fun" than all his others, was thanks to his work at UEA over the last thirty plus years. As he explained his relationship with UEA has been a long and happy one. "As you know they have a department here of American Studies and way back Professor Chris Bigsby approached me to come and talk here and so on . I was curious about how they see America and also I felt interested in getting a different angle on the United States from outside.

"So, we've been friends for all these years and as a result I've been coming back more than I ever thought I would."

Before I left Arthur Miller to recover from his flight and formulate plans of future sheep grazings, I asked him how he would liked to be remembered by future generations of readers and theatre audiences.

"Well, I would hope that they are involved with my plays" , he says, 路and that they feel that they are saying something to them and have some significance for them. I'm totally prepared for everything to fade away like most things do. But my plays have been around for half a century, some of them, and I feel very happy and lucky that they seem not to have fallen apart" .

Above: Millet ~ on the original production of with Robett Whitehead and EUa Kazan (rfght) , Ld : with

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

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Ibums:

The Beautiful South Painting it Red This is The Beautiful South 's 8th album , and altho ugh 1998's number one Quenc h proved th at a band a decade old cou ld sti ll sound fresh , Painting lt Red fails to excite.

Opener Closer Than Most is a ty pical singalong pop anthem, but its fresh sound means that the drab Just Check in, Hit Parade an d Masculine Eclipse which follow grate even more than they should . Till You Can 't Tuck l t In (an 80's st yle pop bal lad) , and If We Could All Crawl make an attempt to return to Hull 's finest (and only) pop bands' fo rmer glories; yet en d up sound ing like B· sides bashed off in 10 minutes. it's not until around 20 minutes through this album that The Beautiful South prove their worth in any real way , albeit for only 4 minut es and 26 seconds. The psychedelic stylings of Half Hearted Get (Second Best) shine like a diamond in the bucket of du ll rocks which t hi s album is.

Later on, Baby Don "t Go provi des a we lcome lighter-i n-the- air moment, whereas 10,000 Feet gets a respectable groove going even if both songs are surrounded by, at best, mediocre tracks.

The album fin ishes with a nice enough song in the form of Chicken Wings, yet after spending an hour listening to all the other songs you rea lly won 't care anymore. In the end (bar a few exceptions) you can't hel p but feel th at The Beautiful South have spent all day 'paint ing it red" and then forced you to sit down and watch it dry for an hour.

Slmon Thornhlll

Like it or not, nu-metal has arrived and is here to stay. If you walk into HMV today, you will see kids wearing chains that drag along the ground, baggy pants that threaten to drop with every movement and T-sl1irts pasted with Korn and Slipknot. Metal has become fashionable again and spearheading its return is nu-metal / hip-hop act, Limp Bizkit. The band's appearance on Top Of The Pops, their recent MTV hit Take a Look Around, and vocalist Fred Durst's duet with Christina Agui lera show that the "Bizkit have never been content to pass by unnot iced.

1999 's Significant Other wa s a grou ndbreak ing albu m, show ing t he band reaching a new level of originality and angst not seen si nce Korn's eponymous debut . Sadly, Chocolate Starfish ... lack s the innovation of its predecessor. Hot Dog

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continues the band's feud w rth NIN, shamelessly borrowing from the latter's Closer. and featuring the childish line. ·that ·s 46 f-s m this f-ed up rhyme'. My Generation rs a catchy rehash of Just Like This and Counterfeit, while the un imaginatively titled My Way seems to be Rearranged re-arranged . However, the album does boast some excit ing moments. Full Nelson and the new single, Rollin, are as heavy as a couple of Samoans in a candy factory, sporting 'Bizkit"s trade mark phat guitar groove, DJ Leth al's skill on t he scratchboard and Durst's stirring, charismat ic rap. But although this new album may boast more guests than Park inson and enough bad language to make Eminem bl ush, it just doesn 't size up.

Kleran McSweeney

Good old dependable PJ, always guaranteed to t ear the guts out of a song while happily screaming at you, through your long suffering speakers. Thought you had her fig ured right? Well th ink again, the new Polly Harvey is far t oo refined to indulge in such misbehaviour. Finely tuned and immaculately poised, this is a wonderful song.

Merek Cooper

Also Released: nnznw

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The BestBlur Of

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What, already? Surely it can' t be that long since four Colchester boys had the nation wanti ng to be nati ves of Essex? Blur had been recording toget her si nce 1991, and sounded like old hands on 1994 's Park life- hardly surprising when you listen to Leisure and Modern Life Is Rubbish. Both are Britpop before the term was coined! it's now six years on, and Blur have matured enough to be able to release this, their Greatest Hits album.

Blur"s success is down to the fact that they re leased their best songs as sing les. Hardly surprising then , that 17 of the 18 tracks have been in the Top 40 at some point. lt is therefore arguable that this is simply the Singles Collection on one album, or that it rips off the fans because

it contains nothing new. So why then is this album so damn irresistable? Easy. it's got the lot.

From the Lennon-esque Beetlebum to the quirky guitar effects-board fest that is On Your Own, via the heights of Britpop and the best metal song not written by a metal band (Woohoo! ), this is a brilliant way to follow Blur"s development as a band. In particular, the ability of Graham Cox on (by far the most musically talented member of Blur) is superbly catalogued.

Is that reason enough to buy this record? Of course, it 's bound to have missed at least one of your favourites off (no Stereotypes? No Chemical World?) but this is an essential compilation.

Quite simply, it's the soundtrack to your young life.

Anthony Love//

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Live

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inept, and continual ly apologised to the audience for perfectly adequate numbers. What larking about that did occur appeared embarrassingly fo rced. A near em pty bot t le of Jack Daniel's was rarely t ouched and his shout ing at the audience sounded startli ngly similar to reports of his recent Leeds gig. Th e distinct impression was t hat th is was Badl y Drawn Boy going through th e mot ions. There were brief moments of bri lliance, Pissing in the Wind and Disillusion we re great and as times he was genuinely funny, joking about his Mercury status and his obviously genui ne hat red of Geri Halli well. But as Gough said himself ''I" m just a knob-head making it big".

If t his show was any indic ati on he hasn't made it yet .

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

Jlm Whal/ey

Morcheeba Be Yourself Well well. Morcheeba , purveyors of 'post-club trip-hop', or whatever it 's called these days, have made a record that exhort s us to "be yourse lf".

The singing rs quite pretty and the requisite William Orbit -style blips and squeaks are all in place, but it's inescapable that this song really does put the 'D' in Dull.

Will Watts

M y Vitriol Pieces

The 'Big Rock Ballad · can either be a cosmic roller coaster of emotion or, more often, a pathetic, clumsy Ban Jovi pastiche. Luckily, My Vitriol steer well clear of the latter, producing a blend of power and tenderness that should -""''IIWIII!Iiiill_.-1 attract Coldplay fans without scaring away metal

J Mascis and t he Fog More Ught

~~.~ · ~~....~....i&mll~~li&li&!~.mli&li&!li&li&!li&li&!li&li&!li&li&!li&li&!.ali&li&!i&mllma~--li&li&!--~~--~........li&li&!li&li&!~.,..............~mm•l First let 's get one t hing straight - Badly Drawn Boy is a very talented guy. His album, The Hour of Bewilderbeast, is one of the best of the year and it probably deserved t he Mercury M usic Prize (alt hough Coldplay and Death in Vegas are at least as good ). Unfortunat ely, it 's quite c lear th at he knows it .

His show last Wednesday was that of a man who has decided to indulge himself. In itially t he signs were positive. After the usual nondescript wa rm up act (Hafen if anyone's interested) ol ' Badly Drawn, as his friends never call him , bounded on stage to a rapturous rece pt ion from t he capacity crowd. And the all iteration doesn't end the re, he began pl ay ing hi s sensat ional si ngles liberally mixed with below -par B-si des .. . Th at 's enough of that.

Badly Drawn Boy , or Dam on Gough, has built his career on a beautiful, eclectic collection of songs, backed up by a reputation for shambolic live performances. His Norwich appearance did nothing to challenge this view. During the evening most of the album tracks everyone was the re to hear were eventua lly played. However, to get to them we had to stand t hrough long direction-less ramblings , both musical and verbal, that on ly provided sporadic entertainment. This was fine for the first hour and was even OK for the second. As the third hour loomed close it was beginning to get a little tiring . Someone needs to whisper in Gough 's ear that length doesn't equal quality.

Also, as he has now been touring for some t ime, the music has started to sound almost professronal. Th roughout the entire set only one song went seriously wrong, with Gough tripping repeatedly over the piano introduction to Magic in the Air. But he still likes to think of himself as

PJ Harvey Good Fortune

Too often overlooked, Dinosaur Jr were one of the most innovative guitar bands to roam the plains of the American underground for nearly two decades, before implod ing in 1997.

Fronted by the perpetually dism issive, but ult imately visionary J Mascis , the band made it acce pt abl e t o co mbine hardcore ethics with guita r solos . Thei r frequent use of feed back and abrasive me lod ies laid the blueprint for t he grunge movement.

More Light, therefore, has been far too long in the making, but proves that Mascis has certainly not lost his touch for producing lo-fi rock of the highest order after his noticable absence .

Eac h song has enough class and individua lity to enable Masc is t o tower above the curre nt bree d of bands that st rive to emu late him to such a massive extent today.

The band that Mascis has assembled under the ambiguos name The Fog cons ists of little more than himself and fellow noisemaker , ex-My Bloody Valentine mainman Kevin Shields, whose presence is stamped all over M ore Light, from the scrambled gui t ar lines of Where'd You Go, to the apoca lyptic white noise blizzard that is the climactic title track (that's M ore Light in case you were wondering ).

Elsewhere, Sameday is a fuzzy portion of emotive lo-fi, whilst / 'm No t Fine contains a healthy dosage of pop sensibility amongst the frazzled guitars and scrat chy production .

Overall, M ore Light is a near-perfect balance betw een t he opposing fo rces of cathartic no ise an d deli cat e song writing. .

As someone probably once said, the original is always best.

Tlm Bragger

heads!

Chicane Autumn Tactics Autumn Tactics, Chicane 's latest offering, is a kind of Latin Everything But The Girl. What will they think of next? Not much, apparently. The three mixes get progressively harder and by the thi rd track you are we ll into t rance territ ory, albei t house-fri endl y. No doubt Chic ane fans wil l lap it up.

Mischa Gilbert

The Game

Nichoia Hoit Lookl it's zany madcap banshee Nic ky from Big Bro ther! On ly now she'd prefer t o be more famo us for pant s dance drivel li ke thi s. Nicho la, yo u are the Scrappy Doo to ATB's Scooby! We 'd rather see you naked and smothered with clay. No, really, we would .

Gemma O'Donne/1

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__event Best of the Rest Betrayal UEA Studio November 9 - 1 1 UEA 's drama society is putting on a production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, an occasion made particularly interesting by the fact Pinter opened the Studio where it is being performed back in 1994. Betrayal charts an affair between Emma and her husband's best firend, Jerry. "Desire, pain, love and trust are just a few of the emotions explored in the play" . Tickets are ÂŁ6 or ÂŁ3.50 for concessions.

Beryl Bainbridge LT1 November 6 Here to publicise her latest Whitbread award winning novel, Bainbridge has written a series of well recieved books including Master Georgie and Every Man For Himself. She is probably best known for her out-spoken views on regional accents. Her novel An Awfully Big Adventure was made into a film starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman.

Inspected: Arts ~---=======~~~~====~====~=== Theatre review:

7 {\s a near enough traditional Shakespeare production, The MadderMarket Theatre Company's The Merchant of Venice, directed by Karen Stuart, benefits from the charm of the cosy MadderMarket Theatre premises. The real attraction with a play like this, though, is just how the director will choose to interpret it.

The earliest reference to the play , in 1598, shows it was otherwise known as The Jew of Venice, despite Shylock only appearing in some five scenes of the play as scripted. He's even more central these days, since in this postHolocaust age it's impossible to come to the play without evaluating it in regard to our history. How, then, to best avoid the temptation to turn him into a pantomime villain? Noel Jones' Shylock is perfectly understated. The audience can hardly sympathise with him, but Stuart lets the Christian characters shout their own prejudices far louder, consequently condemning themselves in the all but the blindest of audience members' eyes.

But The Merchant of Venice is more than a coupling of the story of Shylock with the plot of a fairytale romance. With Salario (Steve Quinn) and Solanio (Andrew Ramsbottom) camping it up In kind, you can't help but feel Stuart missed a

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The Merchant of Venice Maddermarket Theatre, October 26 - November 4

trick ignoring the ambiguous sexuality of Antonio's relationship with Bassanio.

In this respect, to many directors, The Merchant of Venice is a huge fantasy of dark relationships.

Surprisingly, given Stuarts subtle approach to the play's potentially anti-Semitic themes, this production doesn't seem to have the capac ity to tackle them . Instead it concentrates on the some of the play's more fantastical and fairytale aspects. There is an appropriately myst ical qual ity to the casket scenes, with the three caskets borne by silent attendants who spiral in choreographed patterns across the stage.

There are also great dashes of comedy from Richard Pry aI as the unfortunate suitors, and from Peter Moore's loud and energetic Launcelot Gobbo. Natasha Purwin turns in a confident performance as Portia, while Vince Hadley works sombrely through the part of Anton io, a man who knows not why he is 'so sad' . The cast are all forced to double-up and play at least two characters each . There are some lightning costume changes, but its something they handle ably. it 's a confident, understated production, without pretensions.

Alex Sehmer

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Theatre Review: Dancing at lughnasa

Men of a Certain Age Norwich Playhouse November 2 - 3

Norwich Playhouse, October 25 - 28

If you feel in the mood for sparkling wit you could do worse than to see Noel Coward's Men of a Certain Age, being staged by the Noel Coward Society. it's being billed as "words, humour and music of the baby boom generation". So there you go.

Glyndebourne Touring Opera Theatre Royal November 7 - 11 The highly successful Glyndebourne Touring Opera bring three popular and contrasting productions to the Theatre Royal over four nights - busy chaps!

Don Giovanni and La Boheme are sung in Italian, but have English supertitles, whilst The Last Supper is in English.

Don Giovanni (November 7 and 8) was written by Mozart and tells the emotional and sexuallycharged story of the title character who was based on the real life seducer Casanova. This is one of opera's greats featuring many well-known arias and choruses.

La Boheme (November 8 and 11), written by Puccini, is a timeless tale of joy, anguish and the heartbreak of young love through heart-rendering arias and Puccini's glorious score .

The Last Supper (November 9) is a new work , premiered by the GTO, written by Harrison Birtwistle.

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Dancing at Lughnasa is a play which has enjoyed a successful run on the WestEnd. lt is set in the 1930's in Ireland in County Donegal. The action centres around a Catholic household and the action (perhaps too strong a word) is based in the kitchen and the front garden, so a restrictive atmosphere is in place from the beginning.

Harvest time is approaching and a tension is building between the suspected pagan rituals of

Lughnasa and the strong Christianity felt in the Mundy house. The narrator looks in, as an adult, at himself as a child aged seven, and takes us through the scenes. The other members of the house are the five Mundy sisters, who never married, and hence never left home, and the former parish priest, Father Jack who went to Africa as a missionary, and after 25 years was sent home. We watch as over a very short space of t ime, the household goes from just about functioning , though on the breadl ine, to broken and unhappy .

The play has a definite feeling of watching a scene in t ime at a distance.

Dancing at Lughnasa was directed by Tony Scandell, who also plays Father Jack . He is best known as Ted Roach in The Bill, but has also found time to direct many other plays. Continuing the eerie, 'where have I seen them before' theme Kate, the eldest sister, is played by Agnes Lillis, who 's career will always be blighted by her portrayal of Helga in Allo Allo. Amazingly, despite the pedigree, the play is very well acted . Each of the characters is richly explored and as a whole unit they enhance each other. More will be gained from this play if you have either read it or seen Dancing at Lughnasa before, as it can appear a little motionless otherwise. However, if you want a pleasant, if slightly downbeat, evening off campus go to this play while you still can, as while it may not have a strong story line it is a delicate portrayal of a family's hardships in rural Ireland.

Faye Thomslt

The Stars' Tennis Balls Stephen Fry

i9 Book review: Stephen Fry is always primarily remembered for his role as Fry in Fry and Laurie (although he claims in his press release to have played Laurie) and Lord Melchett in Blackadder, rather than as the author of six best-sellers. This is something that is experienced by most comedians who turn their hand to writing books, but Stephen Fry is no ordinary comedian . And his latest novel should finally establish him as a writer over 'funny-man '.

The Stars' Tennis Balls seems to be a move away from writing purely amusing books, in fact there isn't a funny line in it . Any humour that occurs is derived from the complex unraveling of the plot, and the situations that the characters unwittingly find themselves in. lt details the story of young Ned Maddstone, the son of a Tory politician, who lives an almost perfect life. He has a beautiful girlfriend, is about to go to Oxford and is liked and admired by everyone at the school where he has just been made headboy. Completely oblivious to the fact that people could hate him for these very reasons, Ned leads a very contented life.

However, he will soon discover that his fate does not lie in his own hands and that, "we are merely

the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied which way please them", hence the title . A schoolboy prank on the part of his schoolmates, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, changes Ned's life forever, turning him into a political prisoner and launching him headfirst into Hell.

When Ned returns he is consumed by the need for just one thing - Revenge.

The Stars ' Tennis Balls is gripping throughout and, unlike Stephen Fry's first book The Liar, is incredibly easy to read. Although still littered with Fry-esque academic references and witticisms, they are less frequent than in his previous novels, so this book can be read without the aid of a companion to literature. However it is still intelligent enough to identify as a Fry novel. The plot is much nastier than anything he has attempted before, even by the standards of The Hippopotamus ' bestiality scenes. lt is not a nice novel , and one of the major problems with it is that none of the characters are likeable, Ned seems slightly pathetic and not very interesting, and the others are all, to varying degrees, evil (Without wanting to use too strong a word) . For about one hundred pages in the middle you begin

to really like one of the characters and then by the end you hate them all again. Whether this was a deliberate ploy to mess with the readers' mind or poor characterisation is not clear. As the plot is so complex the first few chapters act solely as a device to set up the rest of the story, and to introduce all the characters, making it difficult to get into. This is done too obviously and for a while it seems more like a Maeve Binchy beginning than a Stephen Fry, but after a while the novel takes off and from that point until the end it is impossible to put down.

The dust jacket describes The Stars' Tennis Balls as 'part love story, part _thriller', although definitely a thriller, it makes a pretty sick love story . lt also claims that this book will 'leave you feeling happy and replete' , Making History left me feeling happy and replete, as did Five find the hidden treasure and are all safely tucked up in bed by 9pm. This left me feeling shocked,

bewildered, disgusted and mentally questionable.

The fact that a book can do this to someone would be a much better selling point to put on the cover.

Kathryn Hlnchllff

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

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event .

cted: Film

iS Directed by: Curtis Hanson Starring: Michael Douglas, Frances McDormand, Katie Holmes and Tobey Maguire

Following the cannabis fuelled exploits of a college professor as he tries to sort out the mess that is his life. And guess what? Michael Douglas actually gives a good performance for a change.

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Like so many other campus-set comedies before it, Wonder Boys recounts the weed fuelled antics of its lead character on his way to growing up.

The big difference here, however, is that the lead character is Michael Douglas, looking every one of his 56 years.

Douglas plays Grady Tripp a university lecturer who had great success with his first novel but now, seven years later, is still struggling with the follow-up. Tripp's life is a mess. His latest wife has just left him, he 's having an affair with his married chancellor (Frances McDormand) and his job is going nowhere.

Over the course of a snowy weekend, matters rapidly deteriorate. lt is the university's annual literary festival, Wordfest , and Tripp's editor ( Robert Downey Jr) is in town, increasingly desperate to see the new book. This would be bad enough as the novel is two and a half thousand words and far from finished, but he also has to contend with a depressed student (Tobey Maguire), the body of a much-loved family dog the student has shot, and a mysteriously irate Little Richard lookalike intent on ta king his ca r. Tripp attempts to respo nd by smok ing vast quant iti es of marijuana and loafing around in a pink dressing gown.

Wonder Boys is a very funny film, immediately

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sidestepping the usual constraints of the genre by also being really good. Whereas American Pie and Road Trip had their share of laughs they were still essentially crap films . Wonder Boys' director Curtis Hanson has instead fashioned a minor classic, taking Steve Kloves' witty screenplay (based on Michael Chambon's novel) and coaxing fantastic performances from an incredible cast.

Douglas is a reve lation, surprisingly playing a nice character with style. He also acts as narrator, revealing just how messed up Tripp has become ( "lt was a bad morning for me as my wife had just left me. I'd get over. I'd been left by wives before.")

McDormand, Maguire and Katie Holmes all offer classy support. Only Downey Jr lets the side down, presenting the same loud, outrageous routine he's used since Chap/in. Perhaps prison has affected him more than was originally thought.

Yet despite the serial offender's best efforts he can't spoil the film.

Wonder Boys is intell igent entertainment with a few laugh-out-loud slapstick moments thrown in for good measure. When you remember that Hanson also made the totally different but equally amazing LA Confidential, it is hard not to envy the guy.

Jlm Whal/ey

In the Mood For love

i3

Purely Befter

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loser

Directed by: Wong Kar-Wai Starring: Maggie Cheung

Two lovers embark on an affair in sixties Hong Kong in this underrated drama from Wong Kar-Wai.

Directed by: Starring: Chris Beattie, Greg McFarlane and er ... Alan Shearer

Directed by: Amy Heckerling Starring: Jason Biggs Mena Suvari

Whi le the media attention for this year's Cannes Film Festival focused almost entirely on a certain Icelandic pixie, only faint rumblings were heard about the quality and variety of Asian films on offer. At the vanguard of this faint groundswell of adulation was the grand master of Asian-cool himself, Wong Kar-Wai . Ring any bells? Probably not.

Whi le fellow Hong Kong nat ive John Woo made the cross over to Hollywood with a very big bang , Kar-Wai has remained an exclusive independent movie darling. His distinctive visual style, instantly recognisable to those in the know, has ensured the complete respect of the critical cognoscenti .

His new film is essentially a penod piece centred on Hong Kong in the sixties; two neighbours find forb idden love when they discover their respective

partners are away on a c landestine weekend of sin. The Jllm is a hypnotically shot study of repressed rust and forbidden love played out against the claustrophobic backdrop of sixties Hong Kong (there is literally no room to swing a cat around, let alone a camera). The attention to detail here really is astounding.

Both the costumes and sets smoulder with a faded glamour. lt may be some time until you can get to see this in our fine city; until then you can fill your time brushing up on your Asian f1lm knowledge by sampling Wong Kar-Wai's previous delights, all of which come highly recommended and are truly original. A very refreshing trait, indeed.

Another Northern llritish "comedy" released, one can only suppose, to ride on the back of Billy Elliot. There is only one problem, though. lt really isn 't very good...

Another ineffectual young, ever so unamusing attempt to make us laugh at how purile American college students are.

Give me a concrete multi-storey car park for a university any day.

Merek Cooper

I reckon there's something amazing going on in the North that they don't want us southerners to know about. Over the last few years, the British film industry has spewed out many, many good reasons never to go any further north than the Watford Gap. Brassed Off, Little Voice, The Full Monty, and most recently, Billy Elliot, have all proved to us that it's so grim up north that we are better off in the posh and bountifu l south depicted in such films as Four Weddings and Notting Hill. What are they hiding from us?

Conspiracy theories aside. what distinguishes Purely Better from the rest of the rash of northern films is that it is not really very good.

Centred around two football-obsessed teenage boys from the rough side of Newcastle, it follows their quest to raise enough money to buy a Newcastle FC season ticket.

However, instead of doing the sensible thing and getting jobs (a novel approach one would have thought), they embark upon a series of 'hilarious路 and illegal activities, such as pretending to be blind whilst shoplifting.

What makes it even funnier is that one of them is really small and skinny (Chris Beattie) and ... wait for it ... the other one is really big and fat ( Greg Mc lane) . But, this being the movies, the fat ugly one lands the prettiest girl in school (Jody Baldwin) , having sex with her, in true romantic British fashion. in a rusty van in a scrap metal dump.

Much is made of the power of football, and Alan Shearer even appears briefly , in god-like slow motion. All the classic components of a northern tragi-comedy are here: violent piss-head absentee father, sick single mother. junkie sister, cringeworthy Christmas celebrations and concerned but ineffectual social workers. The acting is of the instantly recognisable Byker Grove school of gritty TV. Purely Better tries too hard to be bitter-sweet and appealing, but it just ends up being cheesy and embarrassing. And the end result? Purely Bollocks.

Astrld Goldsmith

If you like watching unfunny movies about fairly pathetic and insufferably nice American nineteenyear-aids as they wind their way through eye opening university tribulations towards a sappy , happy ending, then Loser is for you. Jason Biggs , of American Pie fame (yes, the one with the pie) stars in this tepid fodder for the entertainment hungry youth of the world. Biggs plays the innocent Paul Tannek, a boy from the country, on scholarship and struggling to fit in at New York University. In quite an original plot twist, he meets a girl (imagine that) who is having troubles of her own in the big city. Interestingly said girl is played by Mena Suvari, also of American Pie fame (and last seen snuggling up to Kevin Spacey on a bed of roses). Amazingly enough, Dora is dating a professor who is not very nice to her. Incredulously, they meet , get along well , and after the usual paltry amount of dramatic irony and miscommunication, she realises that she loves Paul and they fall happily into each other's arms at the end of the movie.

Don't worry, I'm not really spoiling anyth ing for you, as the ending is as predictable as the average can of soda: sweet, but not very filling .

If you are looking for a funny movie about American adolescence and sex , watch Amencan Pie. If you are looking for a good movie about American adolescence and sex at a university, watch Wonderboys. If you are looking for an inoffensive, unfunny , reasonable date movie that will simply act as a piece of fluff you may feel guilty about paying money for later then watch Loser.

Seth Landau

Coming soon 10th November: Pitch Black Disney's The Kid The Yards

17th November: The Way of the Gun Where The Heart Is Little Nicky

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

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Inspected: Video

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Toy Sto

Directed by: Ash Brannon and John Lasseter Starring the voices of: Tom Hanks, Tim Alien, Joan Cusack, Kelsey Grammer

The toys are back in town! ignoring conventional logic, animation gurus Pixar serve up a sequel that's even better than the original. Woody you believe it?

You would be forgiven for thinking that Disney sequels are things to be avoided at all costs.

Anybody who has had the misfortune of seeing Lion King 2: Simba 's Pride or Aladdin's Mystical Journey or whatever it was called will know what I'm talking about. But Toy Story 2 is different . lt is .. .dare I say it, better than the original.

The animation is more advanced and richer-looking, the plot is more sophisticated and there are more interesting characters. The basic story is that Woody, the toy cowboy hero from the first film, is discovered by evil toy collector AI as a valuable collectable toy from a 1950s television series, and stolen from his owner Andy.

In Al's apartment, Woody meets the other missing parts of his 'Woody's Roundup' family Jessie, the feisty, sassy cowgirl; Bullseye, his old horse; and sinister Stinkie Pete - and makes friends with them. Meanwhile, Buzz, Hamm, Rex and Slinky (Andy's toys and Woody's best friends) go on a perilous mission to rescue Woody. Will they ever get to Woody? And if they do, will Woody want to go back to Andy now that he has new friends and new-found importance and fame awaiting him?

Apart from Jessie's sickly sweet song in the middle of the film (lamenting her owner's abandonment of her), Toy Story 2 is thankfully free from overly sentimental characters, which is where most Disney films fall down. This is no

18 !

Bambi: there are clever, clearly-meant-for-adults references to Star Wars (Zurg and Buzz enacting the 'I am your father' sequence on top of an eleavtor) and quite adult themes of loss and growing up. You might find yourself wondering about the fate of your own chilhood play things.

What's more, it manages to balance nicely between tying up all the strings from the first film and being a fantastic film in its own right, which means you don't have to have seen the first one. The aliens reappear and get proper homes, Buzz gets a girlfriend and Mr Potato Head has aquired a wife. There are A Bug's Lifestyle outtakes in the credits, Geri from Geri's Game makes an appearance, and Barbie turns up in Al's Toy Barn.

Computer-generated animation has developed greatly since the first Toy Story was made, and it shows. Some of the set pieces are breathtaking, especially Al's Toy Barn and the busy main road.

With the recent release of Dinosaur, the latest Disney computer animated feature, it is clear that this is the way forward in animation, although it certainly works better with plastic toys than enormous j urassic creatures.

Toy Story 2 is one of the cleverest, funniest, most intertextual, likeable films of the year. Do you need any more excuses? Go and rent this video now.

The Ciderhouse Rules

Directed by: Lasse Halstrom Starring: Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Erikah Badu

The heart-wrenching tale of discovery, hope and Illegal abortion Is released on video and has another chance to get the recognition it so richly deserves. lt is a total mystery to me how a film with such a quality pedigree failed to make an impact at the British box-office. Adapted for his own best-selling book by John lrving and directed by Swede Lasse Halstrom (who had notable success with What's Eating Gilbert Grape?). On its initial release it received a whopping seven Oscar nominations and, although it got crushed in the clamour to get a piece of American Beauty, it quietly took away two of the little gold-plated men. You would think all this was hardly likely to damage audience pulling power. However, on its subsequent release the general public seemed to be too concerned with sneaking a peek at sixteen-year-old cheerleaders to notice this gentle little gem.

Perfectly formed and in need of a good hug, quite frankly, this film never puts a foot wrong; characters to root for, scenery to die for and despite the heavy subject matter you will leave the cinema with an extremely rosy glow.

The story is basically a rehash of the classic coming-of-age story. Homer Wells (played by current cutle Tobey Maguire), sets out to see the world and has adventures along the way, finding that his innocent charm effortlessly attracts beautiful women (Charlize Theron) and that what he has learned from his mentor really can make a difference. His mentor being Michael Caine, who charms us with his humane portrayal of ether-

sniffing Doctor Larch, a broken man who has devoted his life to helping both the children in his long suffering orphanage and the pregnant women who come to him for abortions. This may at first glance seem a little too familiar and I will admit at first I was sceptical. However, the film has such a compassionate charm that only the coldest hearts will remain frozen . By the end you really will be reaching for the Kleenex with the rest of us.

The Ciderhouse Rules is amazing to look at, all autumnal orange and luscious New England coastlines. Enraptured by the beautiful landscape Homer spends an entire summer picking apples with a group of Black American workers. Keeping him company in his new found profession is Afrosoul diva Erikah Badu who turns in a wonderful performance as Rose, providing one of the main surprises of the film with her flawless ability to make you believe in such an innocent character.

Many prospective wannabes can learn from her shining example as rarely has the difficult transition from singer to actress been tackled so well and with so little fuss.

While containing some really tortuous moments The Ciderhouse Rules is handled with such sensitivity that you leave the cinema feeling uplifted and totally enriched.

Merek Cooper

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Gladiator

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Directed by: Ridley Scott

Directed by: James Wong

Starring: Russell Crowe Joaquin Phoenix Oliver Reed

Starring: Devon Sawa Kerr Smith Ali Larter

Russe/1 Crowe flexes his muscles, the evil emperor spits his dummy and Oliver Reed snuffs it! A sure fire classic you would think. A greatly "Vexed" reviewer begs to differ!

Habouring an irrational fear of flying? Need a valid reason to never set foot on a plane?... Let this film be you bible/ More thrills and chills for the post-scream market.

Advance press for Gladiator was great. lt was going to be a return to the Hollywood tradition of ancient epics, an updating of such revered classics as Ben Hur and Sparticus. lt was being directed by Ridley Scott, whose previous work included Bladerunner and Alien. And it could boast as its star Russell Crowe, man of the moment thanks to his performances in LA Confidential and The Insider. When it finally arrived Gladiator didn't disappoint, garnering fantastic reviews and making vast amounts of money. lt is now out on video. The excitement has died down and it's time to re-evaluate. Advance press for Gladiator was misleading. it's a return to the Hollywood tradition of ancient epics, a genre that spawned such trash as Cleopatra and The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. it 's directed by Ridley Scott, last seen losing his way with White Squall and Gl Jane. And for a star it could only find Russell Crowe, who can also be found in Romper Stomper and as the bad guy in that all time classic Virtuosity. With these revised facts in mind it 's pretty clear why Gladiator is not a very good film . The script is absolutely appalling , with standout lines including " are we so different, you and I?" and "it vexes me deeply, I am deeply vexed" . Thanks to the casting of Joaquin Phoenix it has a spoilt child instead of a villain . lt also boasts two well renowned hellraisers in Oliver Reed and Richard Harris, who enjoy being able to ham-it-up at every given opportunity.

Worst of all, after sitting through this banality for nearly three hours, it becomes clear the hero achieves next to nothing.

Admittedly there are some excellent fight scenes and the effects are superb. But then the same could be said for The Phantom Menace, and who the hell wants to watch that again? On video, Gladiator is only worth a look if you want to play 'spot the scenes where Oliver Reed is dead'.

Jlm Whalley

Maybe it's just me, but when it comes sheer terror I can't think of anything less threatening than the whole 'teen slasher' thing. Where I come from, we tend to worry about far more mundane things than some maniac slicing us to pieces in the middle of the night . Thank goodness, then, for Final Destination, a superior slasher movie In which we're taught not to be scared by killers themselves, but the fickle whims of the Grim Reaper, upon whose recommendation we either stay or go.

Surviving a plane disaster at the start, our usual -~ group of annoyingly beautiful and irritating American kids, led by the furious pouting of Devon Saw a and Dawson's Creek refugee Kerr Smith, gradually start snuffing it . The catch is that Final Destination's killer is fate itself.

Having escaped death the first time, they are informed by a spooky mortician that fate is going to have the last laugh ... eventually. This ingenious twist on the traditional formula comes courtesy of Glen M organ and James Wong, veterans of The X-Files back from the days when it actually scared people .

Of course, if you examine Final Destination in detail, the flaws are numerous in both the acting and all too convenient plotting . it 's blantently obvious that this film is not here to be analyzed too deeply - as Scream took pains to tell us we're not meant to take any of these films seriously in this genre. If you find yourself laughing each time somebody snuffs it , you 're not missing the point of Final Destination, you 're actually getting it. So draw your curtains, settle down in the front room, and get ready to jump out of your seat.

As in all the best scary movies, the most potent chills are the ones which remain even after the .:: film's end . Just try going into your kitchen and cooking after watching this and you'll see exactly what I mean .

Phll Colvln

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

~

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Inspected: Interactive

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iS Essential Game 01: Clearly people in Japan have different attitudes to mental health than us, over here in Britain . If someone here were to start having ideas about a distant future where alien invasions are defeated with dance they would be locked up. In Japan, they 're given millions of yen to develop those ideas into a video game. If Space Channel 5 is anything to go by, our mentally ill should be allowed to make far more than wicker baskets.

In the game you play Ulala, Channel 5's ace news broadcaster who, in the process of reporting on the recent alien invasion, must save hostages by out dancing their extra-terrestrial captors. The better she does the higher the ratings, and the longer the station allows the broadcast to continue. Controlling Ulala is simplicity itself, watch the aliens' moves then copy them using up, down, left and right . One button is used to shoot, another to rescue. Getting these confused can have serious consequences. Everything must be performed in time to the music . Perhaps concerned that events weren't quite bizarre enough, the programmers have included all kinds of peculiar plot twists. Be prepared for everything from rival stations cutting into your signal to Michael

.

iS Essential Game 02:

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Vampire Hunter 0 is an action adventure game that is based on the novels written by Hideyuk i Kikuchi. lt is set in the future after vampires have taken over the earth and are now losing it back to humans. In this world you play a half-human half-vampire hybrid called D who hunts down vampires and strangely talks to his left hand and even more strangely it talks back.

The game starts with a good looking FMV sequence but sadly goes down hill very quickly. it suffers from possibly the worst camera angles possible making it virtually impossible to control your character through the levels. Being unable to see where you are going properly obviously makes playing the game a cha llenge and not a very fun one at that . Add to that the lack of a haunting atmosphere, poor in game sequences,

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"Desti ned to beat Ken Barlow in the soap stakes, it's about time Adam Woodyatt got the recognition he deserves." This is the manifesto billed by Nik Taylor in his website dedicated to lan Beale, the, er, king of Albert Square.

Filled with amusing little articles, games and info on the man himself the site is a must for any budding Beale fanatic. Ahem.

Okay, so t his isn't exactly a normal fan webpage.

For instance, normal fan sites don't usually include a Scratch'n'Sniff tour of their idol's home (ie. Albert Square), or a page on lan's Organ. The musical variety, of course. lanBeale.com also contains a news section, detail ing recent reports on relevant characters in Albert Square . Current stories include the headl ines, "Pat Butcher denies having own gravity " and "Patsy Palmer would rather 'eat own face ' than listen to Martine's songs".

Even more bizarre is the interactive conversation you can have with an artificially intelligent representation of lan Beale, where you get the chance to ask him interesting questions, like, "do you have any genitals?"

As you might have guessed by now, Nik Taylor is a slightly strange man with a bit too much spare time on his hands. However, as a professional web designer he has put his spare time to good use, in creating one of the funniest sites around that doesn't use sex, nudity or gore as the basis of its fun-test. Oh , and none of the above has interested you so far, there's always the Beppe d 'Marco Face Squisher to keep you occupied. http:/j freespace.vlrgln.netjn.taylor/adamw.htm

Space Channel 5 ( Dreamcast) Jackson finally finding a setting where he doesn't look out of place.

Anyone who has played dance games such as Parappa the Rapper on Playstation will know that a game of this kind is made or broken by its soundtrack. Luckily, the music in Space Channel 5 is fantastic, consisting largely of retro , seventies-style disco funk . Some of the tunes are so good they 'll stay in the head long after the game has been forgotten. The graphics and animat ion are equally excellent. Characters are decked out in garishly outlandish clothing and all, particularly Ulala, walk with an exaggerated, hilarious gait.

Despite this outpouring of praise, the game isn't without a pretty serious flaw. While it lasts it's about as fun as gaming gets. Unfortunately it doesn't last very long . Maybe because of the quality of the graphics, only five levels have been crammed onto the disk. If the beat is with you, it can easily be finished in a couple of days, hardly value for money when it costs forty quid. That said, Space Channel 5 is impossible not to enjoy , stick it on and watch people who profess to hate computer games demanding a turn.

Jlm Whalley

Vampire Hunter D ( Playstation) repetitive combat , badly translated text and you find yourself thinking that maybe it would be more fun to go to that nine o'clock lecture .

Of course its not all bad for one thing the block move that consists of Vampire Hunter D whipping his cape round in front of him adds a great touch and is fun to do. Also the backdrops are highly detailed and this adds a dark feel to the atmosphere of the game that is sadly lacking in most other parts.

To sum up this is a second rate effort. lt seems to try and use its license instead of good gameplay and ends up being boring and uncontrollable. If you want a dark atmospheric game you are better off buying one of the Resident Evil titles or Silent Hill.

Cralg Garvey

lan Beale.com

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eVent

19

So Graham Norton C4, Fridays at 22.30

Essential TV 01: This Friday the irrepressible Graham Norton will be returning to our screens with the fourth series of his hit TV show So Graham Norton.

The format is set to remain essentially the same but with even more games and audience participation, so if you hated it the last time around then the chances are you will probably hate it still.

For the people who do find it amusing, however, there will still be the (supposedly) hilarious rude antics from Graham Norton, as he listens sympathetically to the weird confessions that his live studio audience are desperate to share with the rest of the world .

For example, the girl who got into a bit of bother whilst waxing her intimate regions, and the numerous "I slept with my dead husband's dad/brother/sister etc ." There will also still be the bizarre phone-calls to people picked randomly out of the phonebook just because they were unlucky to have been born with slightly amusing names, i.e. Poohead, Bumgarden, or Bolack (okay, extremely amusing names), the crazy websites, and the celebrities who take the brunt of Graham

Norton's piss taking.

In the past the celebrity line up has included a diverse range of people such as Grace Jones, Roger Moore, Naomi Campbell and Mo Mow lam and, although, Graham has come out with some fairly cringe-worthy stuff before, he claims he would never go too far, and always tries to get guests that he genuinely likes, in order to prevent him crossing that line.

So far the guests for the new series are being kept well under wraps. Perhaps trying to drop a hint, Graham Norton's dream interviews would be with either Dolly Parton or Cher.

Dolly because of the "earth mother aura that surrounds her" and "the love that oozes out of her," and Cher because apparently she is a genuine icon from the last century and he likes her sense of style . Hmm. The main part of the show is the banter that goes on between Graham Norton and the studio audience. In order to improve on his skills in this field, Graham has recently embarked on a three week road tour, where the audience are less eager to please or to make complete fools of themselves.

The studio audiences' lack of inhibitions are attributed to the unreal atmosphere that prevails, created by the intense lights and cameras. lt seems that they are also desperate to reveal their inner most secrets to Graham, mainly because of the show's non-judgmental air, the fact that whatever they say to Graham, they can rely on him to find it wonderful and funny as opposed to sick and disgusting . Which is what the home audience are most likely thinking.

Despite the fact that the show has been fairly risque in the past, Graham Norton's particular brand of schoolboy humour has been slightly toned down for the new series. However it will still be rude , the show claims that Britain has changed and that people don't take things too seriously anymore. If this is true then we should be able to handle it, for fifty minutes late on a Friday night anyway.

Kathryn Hlnchllff

Essential TV 02: So karaoke has finally hit our small screens. Oh joy! Now you can practise your arse-slapping Kylie impressions in the comfort of your own living room without even having to buy one of those embarrassingly godawful karaoke videos from your nearest Woolworth's bargain bucket.

Brilliant! Fantastic! Etc. etc ...

Okay, so the idea of spending your Friday night watching a whole programme dedicated to cheesy cheesy music videos with a fish bouncing along the words at the bottom may not seem a classy or indeed vaguely enjoyable way to end the evening, but Karaoke Fishtank is actually a rather amusing little piece of trash. And not merely in the kitsch "karaoke is cool" kinda way. For, this programme, strangely enough, does exactly what it says on the tin路 it is set in a fishtank, and hosted by a fish. Called Vince. DJ Vince the Fish, to be precise. Furthermore, this fish is no ordinary

Karaoke Fishtank C4, Fridays at 01.20 Essential Radio:

Desert Island Discs R4, Sunday 5th November at 11.15 This Sunday sees the return of the much anticipated (ahem) Desert Island Discs to Radio Four. Now, whilst this is usually what mums listen to when cooking the Sunday roast (sorry to be sexist girls, but it's true). and so should by rights be more suited to a 'miss this' radio column (if we had it, that is), this week is set to be different. Mainly because the first castaway to discuss what music she's like to take with her to a fantasy desert island is J K Rowling. In case you're not sure, she happens to be the creator of Harry Potter. Heard of him?

Thought so.

Since publishing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone back in 1997, her books have sold more than 35 million copies, been translated into over 20 languages and have yet to get knocked off the best-sellers list in Britain.

Quite impressive stuff for a single mum who wrote at her local cafe because she couldn't afford to put on the central heating at home.

Also renowned for having one of the best imaginations on the planet (Quidditch being proof of this alone), Rowling will surely be worth a listen, possibly providing some much-needed inspiration for all you writer wannabes out there.

For those of you not convinced, ask yourself what else you'd be doing on a Sunday midmorning? Sleeping? Surely not.

And even if you are still In bed, then the genius that is radio requires no more from you than your ears. I just wonder if Ms Row ling will opt for any Wizard, just to a get a good ol' pun in Charlotte Ronalds there. God I hope not.

fish! Vince is adorned with eyebrow ring (but suspiciously little eyebrow). northern accent, a badass attitude and, er, a nose. So, as you might have guessed by now, Karaoke Fishtank is not your ordinary, crappy little karaoke session.

Of course just because the show has a fish presenting it does not make it good. Fortunately, Vince's presenting skills far surpass many of his more conventional contemporaries, due the fact that he is one very funny bunny, er, fish. Yes, he bitches about, parodies and generally mocks the bands whose videos he airs, be it Coldplay, S Club 7, Billie or Steps. "it's a little known fact that Steps played all their own instruments on their new album, " he concedes, "However, they were f-kin' shit and session musicians were immediately rushed in to do it properly." Genius.

Markland Starkle

Essential Soaps So, another week of soapy shenanigans passes and lucky Eastenders fans get yet another glimpse of geriatric porn courtesy of play-mates Pat and Frank. Even as Roy returns to the square, their deceitful love affair still burns brightly. But could someone please whisper in the scriptwriter's ear that Frank should serve somebody other than Pat if he wants to keep Peggy standing in the dark. And then there's Sonya's baby. Aww. Poor little thing doesn't even realise that his mum is an ugly, stupid teenager with a really bad dress sense.

The Mel and Steve saga is still dragging on and after many months of bickering, bitching and boring 'will they, won't they' type antics Mel finally popped the question. The romantic bubble of E20 was quick to pop as classy Cat subtly

interrupted and Mel stormed off (no surprise there then).Meanwhile, Corrie sent Curly to France to visit his long-lost daughter and dealt with fatherhood by almost knocking her out with a rubber ball. Children and dodgy acting just don't seem to mix in the world of soaps. Maxine and Ashley, the most convincing couple on TV, proved the rumour that English people make the most irritating tourists on foreign shores as they traipsed round Paris with Fred and Audrey. With an array of such, erm, angelic voices it made sense that the Eiffel Tower seemed particularly deserted.

And finally, in the shadow of Mo Slater, the runner-up award for soap nastiness goes to Mark Gibbs in Hol/yoaks as he stands in the dock for the 5-day trial special.

Kath May

Wednesday, .November:路 :1,. 2000

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20

Eventhorizon: Film

The essential guide to what's on in Norwich over the coming fortnight

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r1zon •

Film Campus Film American Psycho Thursday 2nd November· 7.00pm As a novel this shocked a nation so it's going to be a pretty scary film. The film tones down the novels excessive gore in favour of using sociopsychological satire. Christian Bale excels as the deadpan anti-hero Bateman who goes on a sick murder spree in NYC .

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Galaxy Quest Friday 3rd November · 8.00pm Sci·fi spoof that really hits the nail on the head . When a group of hard core fans rebuild their spaceship the flattered crew cannot resist a visit. However the fans turn out to aliens who believe GO episodes to be real and wish to hire the crew to save their planet.

Creature Com forts and Chicken Run Saturday 4th November · 7.30pm and 8.00pm Academy award winning short fil m from th e makers of Wallace and Gromit. An excellent idea that puts zoo animals to the voices of ordinary peopl e, funny , charming and full of wit and insight.

Th e Ratcatcher Monday 6th November · 6.30pm Set in a Glasgow housing estate during a dustmans strike in the mid 1970's Ramsays excellent debut feature centres on a 12 year old boy who is disturbed by his friends accidental drawing. Critically acclaimed art house film.

Any Given Sunday Tuesday 7th November- 8.00pm Oliver Stone brings us back to Roman times and amphitheatre bloodfests. it's long and in your face but it works if you like serious cinema.

Erin Brokovich Thursday 9th November - 7.00pm Julia Roberts excels as the trailer trash housewife who takes on the establishment. Fortunately the film avoids all the cliches of its predecessors and we don't get bogged down in a facile courtroom drama, rather director Stephen Soderburgh focuses on character motivation and development.

Cider House Rules Friday 1Oth November - 8.00pm Toby Maguire shines as an orphan who feels its time to leave the roos as he sets out to work on a fruit farm . it is hard and poorly paid but it keeps him close to Candy, the object of his affection. Things go awry when Candy falls pregnant. Lasse Holstrom's adaptation of th e famous John lrving novel is extremely entertaining.

The Long Good Friday and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Sunday 12th November · 7.00pm and

Essential Film: Memento 9.00pm Bob Hoskins as a hard nut London gangster and Vinnie Jones 90's gangster film . Brilliant if you like gangster films!

making friends with all the loverly little animals in thi s light-hearted musical romp ... or maybe not. ' Lars Von Trier proves once again th at bad th ings can and do happen.

Showing at:

Limbo Monday 13th November - 9.00pm Set in Alaska the film follows the fortunes of a country singer, her lover and her interfering daughter. Sayles has a knack of portraying seemingly ordinary folk with depth and an attention to detail that grips the attention an d absorbs the intrest .

Saving Grace Tuesday 14th November- 8.00pm A lightwe ight British comedy in the vein of those old Eali ng Classics. Brenda Blethyn plays a well to do, prim and proper country lady who discovers, on her husbands death , that she is broke.

So she teams up with Craig Ferguson to become a dope dealer, mass-producing the stuff on her country estate"' A most enjoyable film .

City Film Billy Elliott "Gritty northern drama".

Showing at:

UCI Ster Century Cinema City· Wednesday 18th, Friday 20th, Saturday 21st, Monday 23rd October at 5.45pm, Thursday 19th October at 2.30pm and 8.45 pm, Tuesday 24th · Thursday 26th October at 8.15pm.

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 Sequel to the highl y successful lowbudget '' horror" film of last year.

Direc ted by Joe Berlinger 8/air Witch 2 has been slated by practically everyone bar us and Wh at's On TV.

Wednesday 1st November, Thursday 2nd November at 2.30pm, 5.30pm and 8 .15pm, Friday 3rd November.

Saturday 4th November. Monday 6th November at 5.30pm, Tuesday 7th November. Wednesday 8th November at 8.15pm, Thursday 9th Novembe r at 2.30pm and 8.15pm .

Dinosaur Crap Disney reworking of the natural science of th is planet. Dinosaurs now all like each other and work together to survive. Natural selection? What's that?

Showing at:

Ode on UCI Ster Century The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas You are so lame fo r even looking at this, let alone considering seeing it.

Showing at:

Cinema City - Saturday 4th November at 2.30pm Hollow Man A twisted remake of The Invisible Man with Kevin Bacon. Except nowhere near as good, despite the special effects.

Showing at:

ABC UCI Ster Century House of Mirth

Gillian Anderson and Eric Stol z go head to head in this ''Battle of Gingers".

Only one will remain victorious in this carrot topped delight adapted from Edith Wharton 'a acclaimed novel.

Showing at:

Showing at:

UCI Ster Century

Cinema City: Friday 10th November.

Saturday 11th November. Monday 13th November at 5.30pm and 8.15pm, Tuesday 14th November at 2.00pm and 8.15pm, Wednesday 15th November at 2.00pm, 5.30pm and 8.15pm.

Chicken Run Are you still eating chicken? You are?

Good.

Word of warning. Do not go and see this film with a hangover. it will make your brain hurt so much it will start to leak out of your ear. Trust me ... I know.

Sober. though. Memento proves itself to be one of those films that. like The Usual Suspects before it , amazes with its originality and firm grasp on a somewhat complex story . What could have been an almighty mess in the wrong hands, ends up, thanks to the deft direct ion of Christopher Nolan . as one of the most intelligent and stylishly shot films of the year. Following the story of Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce . proving that LA Confidential wasn't just a one off) who was once a happily-married insurance investigator but is now suffering from a total lack of short-term memory since the brutal rape and murder of his wife .

In his quest to avenge the attack, he comes into contact with a variety of characters (Joe Pantoliano and Carrie Moss. pictured below) none of whom he can rea ll y trust. Unmissable.

Showing at:

UCI Ster Century Cinema City - Saturday 11th November at 2.30 pm.

Coyote Ugly Lots of ladies who wear very few clothes work in a bar and learn self-fu lfillment through serving drunken men.

Written and directed by Germaine Greer ... in another dimension perhaps.

Showing at: Ster Century ABC Dancer in the Dark Bjork goes skipping through the daisies

Little Vampire What is the world coming to? Vampires now no longer drink blood, and they are a persecuted minority. Give the kiddies violence is what I say! Make ·em wet their pants in fear. it builds character.

Just like taking Sunday afternoon walks on cliffs.

Showing at :

ABC Ster Century Loser Reviewed on page 16 so go read it before seeing this.

Showi ng at:

UCI

Memento See Essential Film (above).

given the right to waste our money like this.

Showing at :

Showing at:

UCI Cinema City - Friday 3rd November at 8 .15pm and 11.15pm, Saturday 4th November, Monday 6th November at 8.15pm. Tuesday 7th November at 2.30pm and 5.45pm, Wednesday 8th November, Thursday 9th November at 5.45pm , Tuesday 14th November 5.30pm.

Ster Century 0 Brother, where art thou?

The Coen Brothers latest starring George Clooney, John Turturro and John Goodman. based, extremely loosely, on Homer's Odyssey ... Very highly regarded and worth a look before it comes out on video.

Showing at :

Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps Just because someone can use latex does not mean that they shou ld be

UCI Cinema City - Sunday 12th November at 5.00pm

Use ou r searchable listings database at -------===:::::::::;:;:::::::::;:::;=::::;;;:;::::==:==:::::::::::::::

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

www. concrete-onIine .co. uk

the

event ______E_~_e_n_th_o_r_iz_o_n_:_F_il_m....I_C_I_u_b_s__21_ £Film Chart 01 What Lies Beneath 02 Dinosaur 03 Road Trip 04 Billy Elliot 05 The Little Vampire 06 Nutty Professor 11: The Klumps 07 Coyote Ugly 08 Hollow Man 09 Romeo Must Die 10 Bring lt On

Purely Better Reviewed on page 16.

Showing at: UCI

horror.

Showing at UCI Ster Century

Road Trip Things always seem better at American universities ... that is if you can get past the vapid bunch of knobheads who inhabit lame arse movies like this.

Showing at: UCI

Wonderboys Reviewed on page 16.

Showing at: UCI

Romeo Must Die Bears no resemblance to Shakspeare in the slightest. lt is also not very good so if you have any preconceptions leave them at the door.

Showing at: UCI Scary Movie The final nail in the coffin for irony and the slasher movie ... unless, of course you count this month's Blair Witch sequel.

Showing at: ABC UCI Ster Century Snatch Mr Ritchie pretends to be ever so cocketnee again and pretty much succeeds at fooling us all yet ... except Madonna, of course.

Showing at: UCI

Space Cowboys A NASA sponsored advertisment for Age Concern .

Showing at: UCI Ster Century Stuart Little Aah shit .. . a talking mouse .... again? I really should check the label on my prescription medicines.

Showing at: UCI Unforgtven A seriously craggy Clint shows us just how rough his Wild West is, in this uncompromising western. An Former Oscar winner.

Showing at: Cinema City: Sunday 5th November 5.00pm Up at the VIlla Sean Penn and Kristin Scott-Thomas star in this story and forbidden love and deadly secrets. Set against a backdrop of idylic Italian countryside and some seriously bad driving from Miss Scott-Thomas.

Showing at: Cinema City: Sunday 5th November 7.30pm, Wednesday 8th November at 2.30pm What Lies Beneath Miche1le Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford in this passable attempt at Hitchkockian

X-Men The classic Marvel characters swop Lycra for leather in this live action tale of mutant-human prejudice ... saucy!

Expect a feast of special effects, super-human strength and naked blue women.

Showing at: Cinema City : Friday 10th November at 11.15pm

Clubs

just met with a fixed grin on their face.

Priceless really. £3/£3.50 on the door Charty Handbaggy: November 2/9 The Loft Popular gay night in the not-to-bemissed zebra striped building. No really, you can't miss it.

DJ Twister: November 2/9 Joe Alans Uplifting house night in a less well known but worthy venue in Norwich .

70's Night: November 2/9 Hy's If you need a fix of Retro music, flares, orange wigs, and Austin Powers talk on a Thursday this is the only place in town to get it. £2 (NUS) Value for Money: November 2/9 Liquid A lovely night had by all. .. despite certain people insisting on wearing Lynx deodrant. Do you really want to smell like a 13 year old? Really? £2 b4 11 pm, £3 after Bassment: November 2/9 Mojos Get down and mix with seriously trendy types who take pride in their appearance and shop in all the right shops.

Better rethink the jeans.

Fridays Empower: November 3/10 Fat Paulys Tonight you are empowered to get completely rat arsed and fall down the stairs

. .- - - - - - - - - - - - - - and then puke all over your best friend .

That's empowerment for you. you get to do all the things you 've always wanted Wednesdays to.

Superfly: November 1/8 Hytimes: November 3/10 Mojos Hy's This dark, underground club offers us a Hey everybody it's DJ Rob Mac here to cool mix ol funk, drum & bass and An'S give you top tunes delivered to the best for a chilled out wednesday eve. of his ability as we dance and drink and £3 things like that. £3 Flockin' Sheep: November 1/8 Ikon Hot: November 3/10 Cheap and cheerful fun with the locals, Ikon and an "interesting" alternative to the You will be, but then hopefully so will standar student nights. V. spacious and the talent. You can just imagine a big dark inside, perfect for losing your mass of dancing, sweaty, heaving friends when you've pulled. breathing (from the alcohol) bods out for £2 before 11 pm YOU. £4 WeAK: November 1/8 Manhattans it's the Business: November 3/10 Music brought to you from the fully Liquid qualified and professional DJ Shaun Go through the glass doors, past the Johnson, well he's quite good anyway. huge lava lamps and get your grove on this friday in one of the most popular Reverb: November 1/8 clubs in town .

Po Na Na £2 b4 11 pm, £3 after Funk and soul at the souk bar. They even provide groovy Moroccan-style Elegance: November 3/10 cushions for you to sit on.

A slinky An'S evening. Just make sure £1 after 9pm you fit in with the general theme and don't get sloshed so much so that you Dj Jam: November 1/8 have to be apologised for by you friends Hy's and carried out slung over someones All popular dance styles so get down shoulder. there and strut your funky stuff girl!!

Thursdays Spank: November 2/9 Time A night with a title to raise an eyebrow or two. Surely it's worth checking out to see what actually goes on. No cheesey pop her.e thankfully. £1 B411pm(NUS) The LCR Disco: November 219 UEA The highlight of the week surely, where would we be without it? A night of wild dancing, cheap beer and chatting away excitedly for hours to someone you've

Parkside: November 3/10 Po Na Na If you fancy a night in a new, bohemiankind-of-thing club then this is the place for you.

Marvel: November 3/10 The Loft The zebra building goes 'straight' for the night (of course all are welcome). Hip hop, funk and soul and very good it is too.

SO's night: November 3 The Waterfront You're guaranteed to know every song

that's played. You know, the ones that you've forgotten about but are actually your all time favourite songs ever. £4/£3 Fuel: November 10 The Waterfront A seriously cool looking night with the likes of Andy C, Hype and Zinc. An all nighter so get all your seminar reading done before you get down to the hut by the river. £9 advance (NUS £8), £11 on the door

Saturdays Satisfaction: November 4/11 Hy's DJ Rob Mac returns to the house with a bit of swing to warm your cockles in the cold winter night. · £4 b4 11 pm, £5 after Meltdown: November 4/11 The Waterfront One of the best nights in town, featuring indy classics that you get to hear time and time again (every saturday that is).

We just can't get enough of it. Also featuring all our yesterdays apparantly. £3 (NUS) Saturday Rewind: November 4111 Mojo's If only the skater kids would stay under the bridge by Sainsburys and leave us all in peace. If they did this would be a perfectaly reasonable way of forgetting that you were in Norwich (not that we don't love the place) .

Sundays Sunday Service: November 5112 Manhattans For a different type of 'sunday service', that is one that includes more alcohol than just red wine and not really a lot of praying (other than what you do at the end of the night over the toilet bowl) .

Mondays

other place are beneath you. Hmmmm.

Play: November 6/13 Po Na Na's Chain club/bar gives the locals (and you) something more of a selection for delection.

Tuesdays Funk Fril.1ion: November 7/14 Owen:; Cafe Bar Not really a club but it has the whole atmosphere thing going on. There's music and alcohol what more do you need?

Slinky: November 7/14 Hy's The place with the seethrough flcu:>rs and no stairs for and slinkys to go down, but hey.

Salsa: November 7/14 Po Na Na's A very funky idea for a night out because here they actually teach you how to dance so you don't have to worry if you have two left feet, and remember this is the funky place with the cushions!!! Plus, even if you don't want to learn how to salsa, it's a great opportunity to laugh at those who think they can.

Lesson's star at 7pm for beginners and end at 9pm. £3 (NUS) Life: November 7/14 Time You're life tonight, according to Time, will consist of walking around a dark warehouse sized club looking for the people you arrived for, meeting people you really don't want to see and passing out on the floor. A great metaphor for life I think. £1 (NUS) Student Night: November 7/14 L1quid Typical student night only for students.

No Norwich lads and lasses are allowed in, so we're quite privileged really.

Maybe it's more the case that they want to protect them from us though. Who knows? £1 before 11.00pm

Flockin' Sheep: November 6/13 Ikon For animal lovers out there, ttiere are not actually a lot of sheep tonight. The title refers more.-----------~----------.., to the amounts of people that are there. £2 b4 11pm Funky Jam Carwash: November 6/13 Liquid Again not a lot of jam and not a lot of carwashes, but that's just another clever title. it's actually a place to dance the night away and try a pull a member of the opposite sex.

Underground Bands: November 6/13 Mojos Low-fi indie night until 2am, so if you take your music seriously and don't want to look like a tit, this is the place for you. All the

Photographs & Transparencies Reproduced Facsimile Service

NORWICH 01603 623535 Fax 01603 632977 57 A Earl ham Road , Norwich

Wednesday, November 1? 2000

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22

Eventhorizon:

Gigs Doves: Wednesday 1st November The Waterfront Advertised as ·melancholy gu1tar manics ' which sound s intic ingly atm ospheric. £8.50

...

Angelou and Giles Massingham: Friday 3rd November Norwi c h Arts Centre - 8 .3urm Folk fan s wi ll have a field night tonight.

This is a highly ce lebrated UK t our of "g org eou s " folk music . £4 ( NUS) James: Saturday 4th November UEA Top ban d at t he t op venue in Norw ich.

Tonight th e c oncret e will be ringing with c hants of "Oh si t down , oh si t down, oh sit down , sit down next to meeeee .... " See not so essential gig. £17 .50

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Australian Pink Floyd: Sunday 5th November UEA Wh at a better way to fin ish off the weekend with a live band bring you gold en ( ish) greats while you nu rse your hangover in the best way, by drinking more booze .

La Doors: Sunday 5th November The Wat erfront A doors tribute band bri nging their friends universa l love tra in. £7.50 Taboo Comedy: Tuesday 7th November UEA Cheap comedy in the hive. Cheap as in not expensi ve to go to not c heap as is not worth seeing . £2 Jazz Cafe: Wednesday 8th November UEA A popul ar night when the Hive becomes all dark and mysterious and people stand up and say st ra nge rhyming words into a mic rophone an d everyone listens whit h thoughtful looks on the ir faces and c laps enthusi c al ly afterwards. Fai rl y groovy dude. £3 Misty In Roots: Wednesday 8th November The Waterfront A british reggae tour wh ich wi ll be the only one of it 's k ind in Norw ich for a while so get out your red , yel low and green scarves and get jammin ' . £8

ig;s w

Oysterband: Wednesday 15t h November The Waterfront This one is actuall y a folk band so for all you folk fans who've been frantically scannmg the listings for somethmg good , here 's your big break.

desc ribed as ·a del ighful romp set in a fantastical world'.

£9

Mise

£9 Roachford: Wed nesday 1 5th November UEA Guitar funk in t he LCR. £1 2.50

Theatre

Defining features: Scientific and Medical Portraits from 1660 to 2000: unt il 1 0th December Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts , UEA This fascinating exhibition on tour from the National Port ra it Gallery charts the development of one of the most impressive areas of modern life . the rise of

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - modern sci ence an d t hose peopl e who were responsible for it.

Previewed on page 17.

Men of a Certain Age: Thursday 2nd £2 (£ 1 concessions) November - Friday 3rd November Norwic h Pl ayhouse Human and Divine: 200 0 years of Indian Sculpture: until 1 0th December.

The Noel Cow ard Society present one of t he playwrite ' s lesser k nown plays Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts , UEA about the baby boomer generat ion .

This exhi bit ion ex plains the origins of £6 Ind ian sc ulpture an d how thi s important spi ritual and historical feature has Glyndebourne: Tuesday 7th - Saturday developed over the past two thousa nd 11th November years. A stunning and we ll laid out di sTheatre Royal - 7. 15pm play whic h is right slap bang on yo ur A touring Italian opera wi t h singing doorst ep so st op bei ng such philist ines done in Ita lian wit h English subtitl es . and go now .

St ories of lust murder and retributi on. £2 (£1 c on cessions) £5 - £41.50 The Master Drummers of Africa: Relatively Speaking: Tuesday 14th Thursday 2nd November Saturday 18th November Norwich Arts Centre - 8pm Theatre Royal - 7 .30pm and matinees Over 50 exot ic and anci ent instruments and used t o produce ex hil araton th ur and sat at 2.30pm A comedy starring Susan Hampshire ing , uplifting and deepl y spirit ual about shenanigans in the home counmusic. ti es. £8 ( NUS) £ 3. 50 - £16 Rrework Night: Saturday November 4th The Kaos Renaissance: Wednesday Earlham Park With true Norw ic h logic , Guy Fawkes 15th November Norwich Playhouse - 7 .30pm now blew up th e Houses of Parliament Aw ard winningly directed drama on the 4t h. That aside, this is one of

Not so essential gig:

Jarnfl~

Get ready for an orgy of chin- st rok ing t hirtysome cou ples who've only ever slept wi t h t heir ·partner' and rarely go t o g igs unl ess it's David Gray or some si milar AOR MOR bollock s whic h is nice to listen to in t he living room with the headphones on (don't want to disturb lit tle Josh) but you know. you wouldn't want t o go and dance or anyth ing because yo u' ve grown up a bit now, llaven' t you? [ deep breat h). OK, so maybe not everybody t hat likes James is quite t hat st ereoypical ly 'mature'. but I can't help th inking that in these en lightened postmi llenni a\ ti me s when stu dents have sto pped pai nting their DM s and wea ring t iedye T-shirt s, we should be listening to somet hing a bit more progressiv e, don 't you? A bit more young. Christ. you r dad scoffed acid and listened to The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band! And you 're going to te ll your grandchil dren t hat. back in 2000, you witnessed Chri s Evans' mates once again fail t o keep t heir runny music al faeces inside the ir wri nkly ol d bottom s? Oh. j ust si t dow n, you ol d fart .

The Boutique Bands and Booze Tour: Thursday 9th November The Waterfront Li ve acts featu ring Lo Fidelity Al lstars, RegularFries which is brought to you by DJ' s Midfield General and Cut laRoc. it 's wort h going just to see what kind of music people with names like that pl ay if you ask me. £ 8 .50 advance

..

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Hy's The Loft Manhattans Ikon Liquid Time The Waterfront Mojos Po Na Na 's Rick's Place Canary Cue Club ABC Cinema Cinema City Odeon UCI Ster Century Maddermarket Norwich Arts Centre Norwich Playhouse Theatre Royal UEA Studio Norwich Puppet Theatre King Of Hearts UEA Union Ents Norwich Castle Museum Scoot Talking Pages the best firework displ ays avai lable in th e c ity. Plus there is a fun fai r where you can win t oy s (probably without qualit y control) ... and all on your doorst ep. Just try not t o burn yourself. an d rap up warm, and try not t o get mugged by t he pi keys .. . it's not very nice.

Beryl Bainbridge: Monday 6th November UE A - ?pm Autho r of The Botle Fac tory Out ing , Master Georgie and Every M an For Himself comes to Lecture Theatre 1 to disc uss her books and answer questions . £2.50 ( NU S) The Brook Street Band: Thursday 9th November Norwich Art s Centre - 8 pm Apparantl y this programme will feature w il d and dramatic music tak ing in count ries along it 's grand tour. that is Italy, France , Germany and England . £6.50 ( NUS) King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys: Friday 1oth November Norwich Arts Centre- 8 .30pm An R&B and swing band of 8 high energy performers. £8 (NUS)

Pam 's House: Saturday 11th November UEA This is when t he LCR magic ally t urns into a big house owned by t his wom an c all ed Pam and she let s everyone come in and dance and drink and doesn't make you c lear up after wards. She does charge you entrance fee th ough and she likes t o rema in myst eri ou s so you wi ll never meet her to say th ankyou. £7

The Full Diamante!: Friday 10th & Saturday 11th November Norw ich Playhou se - 8pm Fem ale impersonator Ceri Dupree present s a g litt eri ng 'one man, 21-wo man show' . Cat wa lk parade inc ludes Pam ela Anderson. Sh irl ey Bassey, Tine Turner and Geri Halliwell. Over two hours on st age and a live band all for yo ur ple asure. A tast eful and refined eveni ng for al l guaran teed. £ 8 .50 (NUS)

Craig Charles : Tuesday 14th November UEA Craig Charles of Red Dwarf fame brings us a night of stand up comedy. The joy of which can be barely contamed.

You 've seen Robot Wars? £6

Buggln Out with Def Tex : Saturday 11th November Norwich Art s Centre - 8.30 pm A hip hop spectacular comes to Norwich to wow you with the hip of hop.

Wednesday, November 1, 2000

016 03 621155 0 1603 623 5 59 01603 6290 60 01603 621541 01603 611113 0870 6078463 01603 632717 01603 622533 01603 619961 01603 660288 01603 627 4 78 01603 624677 01603 62204 7 01603 621903 0870 0102030 01603 221900 01603 620917 01603 660352 01603 766466 01603 630000 01603 592272 01603 629921 01603 766129 01603 508050 01603 223624 0800192192 0800 600900 Genetics, Appearance , Cognition and Art: Tuesday 14th November Sainsbury Cent re for Visual Arts - 6pm8pm A panelled di scu ssion involving professors and import ant people . The talk is on the issues of t he represent ation of peopl e in aurh ority ag ain st t he facelessness of sc ience. A cont raversial and exciting one to be sure.

Free for student s!

Nell lnnes - "lnnes Own Words ": Tuesday 14th November Norwi c h Art s Centre - 8pm A night of music and comedy. Get ready for stories, songs and surreali sm.

Oooh , sounds like life on the corridors of Suffolk Terrac e. £8 ( NUS) Mlchael Palln: Wednesday 15th November UEA - ?pm Another v. famous name on Norw ich-i an soil , and they 're not just in Norwich they're right here amongst our concrete and talk ing to us! Cool. £ 2.50 (NUS)

Listings were written and compiled by Catherine Everett, Adam Chapman and Merek Cooper. All details were coiTect at the time of going to press.

UEfl NORWICH -

139-141 King Street Norwich • 01603 632717

NOVEMBER

OCTOBER Edinburgh & Beyond £5

Tue 31

Comedy tour featuing the Fast Show's Simon Day, Lee Mack and other top acts

OCTOBER3 1 CANCELLED RAG HALLOWEEN DISCO

NOVEMBER Fri 3

Retro-Active

£5

featuring Wham! tribute Faith

Sat 4 Sun 5 Sat 11 Tue 14

James Oz Pink Floyd Pam's House Craig Charles

SOLD OUT £9.50 £7 £6

Comedy from the star of Red Dwa rf and Robot Wars

£12.50 £3.50

Wed 15 Roachford Sat 18 Club Retro Fri 24 Pam's House

tbc

Club night

Sat 25 Jools Holland Tue 28 Levellers

SOLD OUT SOLD OUT

NOVEMBER 8, 7 .30pm £3 CHILL 'EM OUT JAZZ CAFE Performance poetry and live jazz - Slam final: see the UUEAS Creative Writing Society take o n t eams from London and Norwich NOVEMBER 14, 11 pm KARAOKE

DECEMBER SUN 3

SUN 10 TERRORVISION

WED 13 KILLER QUEEN TRIBUTE £5

NOVEMBER CLUBS

£2

£7

EVERY SATURDAY PLUS IN THE STUDIO...

4 NOV • ALL OUR YESTERDAYS ....

60s SOUL 11 NOV • RAWKUS ROCK, NU-METAL, SKATE CORE 18 NOV • PURE AS SOUL MOTOWN AND NOTHERN 25 NOV • WRAITH GOTH, ROCK, ALTERNATIVE 80s

Faith/Mixmag Tour £7.95 featuring Lisa Loud

Reef

£12.50

New date. Old tickets still valid or refunds available before Nov 3

M on 4

Union Xmas Bash

£10

HARD HITTING ROCK

Drum & Bass and Garage club

Sun 3

£12

GODFATHERS OF ROCK

CABARET NIGHT

XLR8

Sat 2

THE MISSION

Free

OVEMBER 21, 9pm

DECEMBER Fri 1

NOVEMBER 7, Bpm £2 TABOO COMEDY TOUR Three comics live on stage Free shots of Taboo

DOVES MELODIC INDIE £8.50 LA DOORS TRIBUTE £7.50 MISTY IN ROOTS REGGAE £8 BIG BEAT BOUTIQUE FEAT. LO FIDELITY ALLSTARS £8.50 WED 15 OYSTERBAND FOLK £9 THU 16 HEFNER QUIRKY POP £6 SUN 19 JTQ ACID JAZZ £9 WED 1 SUN 5 WEDS THU 9

£10

featu ring Bjorn Again

Tue 5

Supergirly

£7.50

Australian comedy duo

Fri 8

Dr Feelgood

£12.50

plus Eddie & the Hot Rods. the Hamsters. and John Otway

Sat 9 Club Retro £3.50 Wed 13 Shane McGowan and the Popes £13.50

FROM 9PM • £4/£3 SU ON THE DOOR

FRI 1

80s NIGHT

£3

Nostalgia with no shame!

THU 9 BOUTIQUE BEATS & BOOZE TOUR £8.50 Live music from Lo F1delity Allstars and Regular Fries, plus DJ sets from Cut La Roe and Midfield General. 8pm-1 pm

FRI10 FUEL

£8

Drum & bass with Andy C, Hype and Zinc, plus hip hop from Chrome, Tags and Force 10. 1Opm - 3am

FRI 17 GARAGE NATION

£9

Ray Hurley, MC 2 Ton, Baron and Nardo plus drum & bass from Randall, Fluid and Dimension . 1Opm - 4am

TICKETS FROM UNION HOUSE BOX OFF CE 10AM-SPM MONDAY-FRIDAY

All pnces are advance only, include any student discounts, and r11ay be s~bJect to a booking fee

F r he latest details, v· "t us on the web at w