For Whom The Belle Tells

Ick. Should have been at an indiepop all-dayer but spent all day suspended upside down in a huge vat of Lemsip* instead. Talking of all things medicinal, in case you haven't noticed former PV blogroller Dr Brooke Magnanti has outed herself as Belle de Jour.

During the media storm in the early years of BDJ your bemused blogger was often emailed asking for an opinion on her true identity. In truth, I didn't know for sure, but I did once give a clue to check which blog first linked to BDJ and where they got their lead. The first blog to link to BDJ was in fact this humble blog, Parallax View. And the lead? An email from a fellow blogger casually asking whether I'd noticed on the UK Blogs aggregator a blog by a prostitute. The blogger? Oh, you're ahead of me...Dr Brooke Magnanti.

See? Sometimes Dead Kenny does know how to keep his gob shut (well, just about). Who knew?

*Other flu symptom medications are available.

The Strife Of Brian

The Damned United, Odeon Telford, Monday April 13 2009, 8.45pm.

The makers of The Damned United decided that David Peace's dark brilliant fictionalisation of Brian Clough's doomed 44 day tenure as gaffer of 'dirty Leeds' clearly wanted bloody shooting, despite the structural difficulties of filming a novel that was driven by an increasingly despairing and hugely controversial internal monologue.

Lacking privy to Clough's imagined personal thoughts but having access to TV footage from the time, the film seems a little more factual and even-handed than Peace's book, and what is lost in terms of stylised psychological torment is replaced by a stronger focus on the on-off relationship between Clough and his assistant manager and scouting genius Peter Taylor.

The resulting film is not without its flaws (erratic casting in the supporting parts and slight tendency to sentimentalise being the major contributing factors to an occasionally uneven feel) but remains a highly entertaining addition to the footie film canon, with an astonishing recreation of Clough by the ubiquitous Michael Sheen and strong supporting turns by Timothy Spall as Taylor and Jim Broadbent as Cloughie's Derby chairman making this compulsive viewing for anyone with even a passing interest in the green-jumpered gaffer.

Parallax View Albums Of The Year 2008

Further apologies for the recent gap in transmission, but to get things moving again here's our rundown of the best albums released in the UK for the first time in 2008. We can't pretend to have heard all of the albums released in the time period, but of those we did these were the best, and in this precise order.

1. VELOCIFERO - LADYTRON
2. Stainless Style - Neon Neon
3. Santogold -Santogold
4. Fed - Plush
5. Stay Positive - The Hold Steady
6. Youth Novels - Lykke Li
7. Alas I Cannot Swim - Laura Marling
8. Hold On Now Youngster - Los Campesinos!
9. Dear Science - TV On The Radio
10. You & Me - The Walkmen
11. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
12. Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp
13. Alpinisms - School Of Seven Bells
14. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
15. We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed - Los Campesinos!
16. Only By The Night - Kings Of Leon
17. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
18. In Our Spacehero Suits - Those Dancing Days
19. "Couples" - The Long Blondes
20. Kensington Heights - Constantines
21. Neptune - The Duke Spirit
22. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke
23. Fortress Around My Heart - Ida Maria
24. For Emma Forever Ago - Bon Iver
25. Box Of Secrets - Blood Red Shoes
26. El Rey - The Wedding Present
27. Knowle West Boy - Tricky
28. Blood Looms and Blooms - Leila
29. Thomas Tantrum - Thomas Tantrum
30. Oceans Will Rise - The Stills
31. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
32. Oracular Spectacular - MGMT
33. Reality Check - The Teenagers
34. Chemical Chords - Stereolab
35. Waited Up 'Til It Was Light - Johnny Foreigner
36. X Marks Destination - The Whip
37. Nouns - No Age
38. HLLLH - The Mae Shi
39. Rosie and the Goldbug - Rosie and the Goldbug
40. Falling Off The Lavender Bridge - Lightspeed Champion

Feel free to use the comments facility below to vent your spleen or link to your own list(s).

Mega Tilly

How cool would it be for the mighty Moshi Moshi Records to score a really, really big hit single? That weird prospect has become a greater possibility than ever before with the news that Radio One have playlisted 'Beat Control' by Tilly and the Wall (out in stores this week, including on heavy 7" vinyl).

We'd kinda forgotten about TATW and their tap-dancing percussionist since seeing them in quick succession a few years back, but new album O is receiving the best reviews of their career, and Beat Control finds them sufficiently focused on the business of producing a Proper Pop Single to ease them into a position where mainstream recognition is a viable target.

The end result is so delirious with melody it could be Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine resurrecting a neglected Monkees classic, a veritable Wall of Sound that fully deserves the accolade of Parallax View Single Of The Week.

Forward Marches!

You can't beat a bit of bull-y on a Sunday night, so your bovine blogger has decided to investigate the burgeoning indie-rock scene in nearby cattle town Hereford. Last time your carousing correspondent visited there we remember little other than a drab 0-0 draw between the home town and Telford United, and making cows eyes at a phenomenally-racked barmaid with a twin strikeforce that put the then-Conference outfits to shame. There's clearly something they've been putting in the water since, as guitar thrills are currently spreading like anthrax in an area hitherto best known musically for Mott the Hoople and the dead half of The Pretenders.

Our favourite new band name this week belongs to How To Dress For Cricket who deliver hard rock beamers and may yet have some wrong'un's up their sleeves. Even more promisingly, Pencil Toes manage the impressive feat of recalling Lush with their spiky, spidery soundscapes. Meanwhile, Bayonets offer a slightly less subtle form of attack with their post-rock bombast shown to best effect on the atmospheric 'The Battle Of Hand And Heart'.

Of course, no scene would be present and correct without an iconic club night and an all-girl jazz/techno/dutch supergroup who confess to more enthusiasm than talent. But the act with best chance of breaking Hereford into the mainstream moo-sic scene is cheeky acoustic-pop scamps Rupert and the Robbers whose 'Bad Hour' is set to steal hearts with its swoonsome strum lovely enough to give down time a good name.

Nothing lasts for heifer but Hereford certainly seems to be a happening scene in the here and now. Just don't be asking me Wye, Reg!

Grace Bothers

Savage Grace, Electric Cinema, Birmingham, Saturday July 26 2008, 4.30pm.

CAUTION: CONTAINS MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS.

This is your intrepid inquisitor's first visit to the Electric Cinema since it was re-opened to much blogging hullabuloo a few years back. It's now touted as the oldest operating cinema in the UK, and it is a grand building, although your long-in-the-tooth loafer remembers it rather differently in its' Tivoli guise in the 80s, when it was considered something of a sleazepit where we made furtive forays to see B-movies like James B Harris' Cop and Craig R Baxley's criminally-under-rated Action Jackson. Visiting the cinema now feels a much more welcoming, middle-brow experience, with plush sofas; pretty, friendly box-office staff and a silver spoon to go with your white chocolate and raspberry ice-cream.

Tom Kalin's Savage Grace is the cinematic fare this afternoon, a film that is apparently attempting to re-construct the events leading up to the savage murder of a socialite by her troubled young son in 1972 London. The film is pretty to look at and mostly watchable, contains some strong performances (notably Moore as the doomed diva) but has too many serious flaws to be considered a success. Any film of such relatively short length is going to suffer from the episodic structure imposed on it here, leaving the viewer to struggle to get their teeth into the filletted fare on offer, and as a psychological study it's a non-starter as we're left none the wiser at the end of the film why the son takes the knife to his mother then calmly orders a Chinese.

Wikipedia's references to the real-life case would suggest that the film has played fast-and-loose with many of the facts of the case, something that would have made more sense if it had made the story more interesting not less. As it is, Kalin has made a film that brings to mind past movies like Mommie Dearest; Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?; The Sheltering Sky and Ma Mere, but only serves to highlight their relative superiority to the shallow showboating on offer here. Although any film that reacquaints us with elfin curveball Elena Anaya from Sex and Lucia ain't all bad so gracias for that.

Related link: Moore happy to embarrass kids.