Back to the Bloc

The choice of what to focus this blog on was made very easy by the discovery of a news story i stumbled across completely inadvertently while having a quick look at the Guardian's music section - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/06/bloc-party-new-album.

Yes, that's right, according to the guitarist Russell Lissack Bloc Party will be recording new material by the end of the year, with a view to more albums and live tours. Now anyone who knows me properly will know just how happy this news made me. Bloc Party are my favourite band ever, their debut album 'Silent Alarm' is one of my favourite albums ever, 'This Modern Love' is arguably my favourite song ever, or at least it's the one that consistently springs to mind first when that question is posed and when i saw them almost a year and a half ago at the o2 academy in Sheffield it was one of the best gigs i've ever been to. So it's safe to say it's a good bit of news that when they split up over a year ago, it was merely a hiatus rather than a true conclusion to them as a band.

It really has made my day to know that there will quite possibly be another Bloc Party album, that i might get a chance to see them again live. Now bands reforming doesn't always mean a return to past glories, as often as not they're a dissappointment and the suspicion won't go away that the return was inspired as much by profit margins as the pursuit of musical brilliance, but i really hope this isn't the case here. I suspect it isn't as Kele has had a successful time as a solo artist with his more dance orientated debut solo abum, 'The Boxer' earning good reviews and plenty of plays on my iPod. The guitarist Russell has just finished touring with Ash after being their guitarist for the duration and has his own side project in the band 'Pin Me Down'. These are people who could find success elsewhere if they chose to, but are returning to Bloc Party so i'm definitely hopeful that i won't be let down.

The fact that i found out this news on my last day of university for this year, a day where i got two pieces of work back with grades i'm happy with and a day where i'm really beginning to look forward to all the plans that are beginning to take shape for the next couple of weeks only adds to my current almost uncharacteristically cheery mood.

The great thing is there's nothing scheduled for the next couple of weeks that is inevitably going to spoil my mood. That's not to say there won't be something, almost certainly there will be, but at least i can go into the next few days genuinely optimistic and positive about how things are going to pan out.

To finish this blog i'm going to post a list of my top 5 Bloc Party songs at the time of writing (it changes often enough so i can't promise it won't have changed by the time you read it, but the songs chosen will remain great regardless.)

5. Blue Light

4. Halo

3. So Here We Are

2. SRXT

1. This Modern Love

A Day of Sunshine and Economics

Short post today; i've spent the evening writing an essay on the economic crisis, more specifically why the US Treasury bailed out AIG but left Lehman Brothers to fail. As i said yesterday, i struggle with the economics side of politics. It's definitely my weak link in politics, the jargon throws me and i find it utterly baffling at times. However i've tried my best and i think i've made sense throughout the essay even if i haven't necessarily wrote the most challenging or original essay.

I have to have something on in the back ground while i work, either music or tv, i can't work in silence i find it actually distracts me more, which i know makes no sense, but there you go. The music side will influence the song choice at the end of the blog, but for a large part of this evening i was watching the Chelsea v Man United game. It wasn't a classic definitely, but compared to some of the games between the traditional big 4 sides in England, it was pretty entertaining. A few thoughts struck me while i was watching; firstly Torres still looks worryingly short on confidence and sharpness, which i don't think can be blamed on the past injuries, because he does look physically fit. Secondly Man United looked a lot more assured throughout than Chelsea but they deserved a penalty right at the end when Evra took Ramires down. I wonder if Ferguson or Phelan will come out with some comment about the referee tonight? I prefer Man United to Chelsea, but i definitely like Ancelotti a lot more than Ferguson, just because of how they come across in media interviews and the like.

I absolutely loved the weather today, even though it made it much harder to focus on my work. I've talked about just how big an impact a blue, fairly cloudless sky have on my mood for a day, and that was the case today. The sun put me in such a good mood this morning there was no way i was going to spoil it, at least initially, by thinking about the economics of politics.

So eventually i got the essay done, i managed to watch a game of football, listen to lots of music and spend a load of time with friends in the sun. It wasn't the most structured day, but i got everything i needed to done while also managing to have fun. Surely that has to be counted as a good day?

The song today is one from an album that helped me get a few hundred words written, an album i hadn't listened to for quite a while, an album which i go through phases of being very dismissive of it.

A Quarter Life Crisis

I think i might be having a quarter life crisis.

I'm panicking about the future. I'm feeling simultaneously too grown up and nowhere near old enough. I'm repeatedly struck by an intense urge to pack everything in and completely change what little i have that resembles a career plan. I'm seriously tempted to just screw everything up and i have no idea why. It's probably only the barren desert of my bank account that has stopped me from splashing out on some completely impractical and unnecessary luxury. The furthest i can go atm is a packet of McCoys salt and vinegar crisps or if i'm feeling really fancy maybe some party rings.

In other news it looks like this particular stage of the unrest in the Ivory Coast is nearing its conclusion as troops loyal to the UN recognised victor in last years election, Ouattara close in around Gbagbo and several of his generals attempt to arrange the terms of surrender. Even once he's gone, if as seems likely he will be soon, that will only mark the beginning of a very long rebuilding period where Ouattara and other government figures attempt to bring peace to a country that has seen very little of it for decades.

Today i was part of a group that did a presentation on whether US mortgage practices led to the global economic crisis. It's not something i was looking forward to and though i think it went ok, i can't say i'd want to do it again. I've got an essay to finish on a similar topic tomorrow and i can't wait to get it out of the way. I appreciate the importance of economics to politics and i try my hardest to understand at least the basics of it. You can't study contemporary politics or argue for or against much of what is happening in the UK currently without at least attempting to understand the economic reasons and justifications behind it.

However i find it very tough to understand; i struggle a lot with all the different jargon and the various trains of cause and effect that dictate world economics. All the talk of degrees of debt and sums of money which only exist in hypothetical loans rather than physical form makes my head hurt.

Final little piece of news i want to comment on is that Barack Obama has announced what everyone knew already, that he will be running for president in the 2012 election. As of now no-one has come out from the Republican party and said they'd be running, there's plenty of names being bandied about but from what i've seen none of them seem to immediately suggest they could be real competition for Obama.

Today's song is a song by Bloc Party. It's an acoustic version of a song that is potentially my favourite song ever.

NHS - A Service I'm Proud Of

On the 4th page of the 2010 election Conservative Party manifesto, the first one with information on after two with the title and logo and one with a black and white photo of Cameron hard at work, it says these words "Only together can we protect the NHS".

David Cameron today made some noises about backing down on the NHS reforms proposed by Andrew Lansley. At the moment though noises are all it is and i won't believe that Cameron has seen the error of his ways and is actually going to stick to his pre-election pledge to protect the NHS until he's out of office/retired/his plutonium core runs out of juice.

The threat to the NHS is perhaps the most worrying thing about the entire coalition. I was passionately opposed to the rise in tuition fees, i was angry when Cameron proposed that volunteers take up the running of libraries no longer able to afford to stay open, i was frustrated when the coalition let companies like Vodafone off billions of £'s worth of taxes owed to the country and i was unsurprised when it was announced that the family debt burden would soar thanks to Osbourne's budget. But all of that pales in comparison with how i feel about the proposed moves towards increasing privatisation of the NHS.

Of all the many things that make our country great, i'd rank the NHS amongst the most important. It may be far from perfect, there may be a need for some restructuring; but it's moving away from excessively complicated management organisations and putting more money into beds, doctors and nurses so that they can do their job.

He may not have the name of a heroic leader or a nation changing politician, but that's exactly what Clement Atlee was. The Labour Prime Minister's legacy to the country is arguably only topped in terms of 20th century leaders of our country by Churchill and Thatcher respectively.

He, more than any other leader, helped create the welfare state as we know it. There are faults with it, no welfare system is perfect and it has been exploited by people at both ends of the social spectrum, but it is something i'm immensely proud of.

I've spent a lot of time looking at the health care system in the US and in my opinion any move towards that is a very worrying move in the wrong direction. To claim privatised healthcare systems exploit the poor while serving the rich is an over simplification, but any system where your access to health care is related to your pay check will inevitably favour the wealthy. In the US it's estimated to cost $12,000 per year to insure a family of four, pharmaceutical companies wield terrifying levels of power and influence and people suffer for years with treatable illnesses simply because they can't afford the treatment.

What's being proposed by Lansley isn't anything near that level, but it is definitely a move towards it, it opens the door to companies like Care UK to extend their power over the NHS and it will force GPs to spend more time being middle men between the NHS and private healthcare companies, than seeing patients. In the Conservative manifesto they explicitly state that increasing the availability of GP's is important, yet key elements of the reforms run counter to that.

The British Medical Association is advocating "evolution over revolution" in the NHS, with 61% of the doctors who replied to their online poll believing that the reforms would lead to them spending less time with their patients.

I believe that both on ideological and practical levels, the NHS is something that must be defended. Both the Coalition and the previous Labour government have seemed to try and suggest that free market competition makes everything run better, something which i've never seen any concrete evidence for when it comes to structures as complex and important as the NHS.

From my understanding of the proposed reforms they seem to be simply a recipe for a more fragmented and confused system, where patients see less of their doctors and private companies interests begin to be placed above the crucial factor of the level of care being provided.

Two articles i've read (1 in the Guardian, 1 in the Financial Times) have suggested that NHS reforms could be the Coalitions equivalent of the Poll Tax. I think it's possible it could be in the sense that when historians look back it could prove to be the moment the coalition lost any chance of recapturing the public's support as the recession drags on, Osbourne's cuts hit poor and middle class families hard and the nations young adults are saddled with crippling debts just for the opportunity to go to higher education. Attacking the NHS, when their popularity is already shaky could prove to be the final straw.

Cameron needs to wake up to the fact that he didn't win the election out right, even with an abysmally poor Labour party as opposition he couldn't win a majority and a large proportion of his votes were as much a vote for generic change as any particular enthusiasm for the Conservatives. If you consider that the majority of both the Lib Dems and Labour are opposed to these reforms, and between them they got 52% of the vote in the 2010 election, you could argue that just within the people who voted for the two other main parties there is a majority of the nation that didn't vote for these proposals.

To finish this blog i'll post the only song that's really appropriate, the superb Andrew Lansley rap. Got to love a bit of politically charged protest music.

7 & a Half Films in 48 Hours

I want to precede this post by saying Happy Mothers Day to my mum. I'm incredibly grateful to her, she's always been very supportive and enthusiastic about the various things i've tried to achieve so far in my life. She's a pretty incredible woman definitely. She's kind and compassionate and a constant inspiration to me.

Right onto the main basis of this post.

Over Friday and Saturday i watched a LOT of films. Seven and a half to be exact, this blog will be a collection of brief reviews of those films, in the order in which i watched them. All of them were watched with the friend who i mentioned in a previous blog had come to visit.

The Hangover (Phillips, 2009)

Now i'd imagine the majority of people have seen this film, the tale of 3 men who wake up after a ridiculously heavy stag do with no memory of what happened to them, or where the groom to be is. What unfolds as they piece the night together clue by clue is in places hysterically funny. The hit ratio of the jokes in the film place it in the upper leagues of comedy; from the withering put downs, bizarre one liners, farcical situations they end up in to the almost show stealing cameo there are so few bum notes played that it's remarkable when compared to a lot of the equivalent comedies released in the past few years.

4/5

Zombieland (Fleischer, 2009)

I've written about this film a couple of times so i won't ramble on for too long, but after watching it again i can at least add that it stands up to repeat viewings better than most films do. The jokes are still funny, the action still dramatic and the characters still utterly brilliant. Woody Harrelson's 'Tallahassee' is one of the most entertaining characters to be seen on screen for quite a while, and he's also up there with the most bad-ass as well. It remains a definite favourite of mine.

5/5

Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Wright, 2010)

Edgar Wright's film of the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley is great. He manages to capture the wonderful geekiness of the subject matter without alienating more neutral viewers; the film is packed with video game, film and music references that definitely add to the film as a whole, yet never distract from the over-arching plot. In the lead role Michael Cera plays Scott in his typical Michael Cera fashion; though a good actor, his performances are starting to get frustratingly repetitive and this impacts on the film for me. It's also that his character is in some ways not all that likeable; he treats several other characters really quite poorly, and though that is part of the point of the narrative, in that he is forced to change by the events that unfold, it stopped me connecting with the film as much as i might have. However that issue aside the film works well and includes some brilliantly realised fight scenes which deliberately riff off of games such as Street Fighter and other classics.

4/5

Collateral (Mann, 2004)

Now we didn't actually watch all of this on Friday, we were too frequently distracted, talking about all sorts of things and watching funny videos on Youtube, so eventually we gave up on the film for something less demanding of our attention. I've seen it before though and really rate it, it's a very entertaining if a little generic thriller. Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx have a good degree of chemistry on screen, full of tension and power struggles and the action scenes are dramatic, as you would expect from a Michael Mann film; a scene in a nightclub is particularly impressive and well shot. The film could definitely use a bit more heart in terms of the characters and the cinematography is at times more distracting than it is enjoyable. Overall though it's enjoyable and the relationship between Cruise and Foxx's characters is intriguing.

4/5

Transformers (Bay, 2007)

This film is exactly what you'd expect from a Michael Bay film about giant robots fighting a war on Earth, i.e, idiotic, explosive, dramatic and frenetic. It's not an intelligent film nor is it one which spends much time or energy developing characters or logical exposition. However it is entertaining and some of the action sequences are as good as any you will see. So it all ends up being a question of what you're looking for in a film, if you go in expecting nothing more than an entertaining couple of hours of nonsense then there's every chance you'll enjoy it, however if you're looking for something a little deeper then you'd be dissapointed.

3/5

Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring

This was the first time i'd seen the extended cut of the first LOTR film and i was impressed. The additional bits were often subtle and understandably cut from the already lengthy cinematic version, but they added little bits of depth to characters or events and was well worth watching. I love the LOTR films, i always reference them as an example of a film/films which managed to do justice to it's source book. In fact i might even argue they improve on the books; they're great books but Tolkein doesn't half ramble on about the family trees of the characters and at points his descriptions of locations is unnecessarily complex. I have huge respect for the man's imagination and am in awe of the world he created, but the films manage to capture that world while losing some of the less needed embellishments. Two things stood out while i was watching it last night were just how brilliant the original score by Howard Shore is and how ridiculously beautiful the New Zealand scenery is. A superb film, both the original version and the extended edition.

5/5

Wanted (Bekmambetov, 2008)

This is a film where James McAvoy's office worker is introduced into a world of a secret fraternity of assassins, led by Morgan Freeman's 'Sloan'. It's a film which is utterly ridiculous from start to finish, brutally violent in several places and has some of the most predictable twists i've seen in a while. It's not without it's merits; the action scenes while utterly unrealistic are spectacular and audacious and the plot moves quickly enough that you can easily get caught up in the events unfolding even as you're aware of their utter lack of logic.

2/5

Despicable Me (Coffin & Renaud, 2010)

This animated tale from Universal Pictures is without a doubt one of the most adorably lovable films i've seen in ages. It's a definite rival to some of Pixar's best work and in the young female character Agnes has a child so cute it not just is the arguable equal of 'Boo' from Monsters Inc, but threatens to make anyone a little bit broody. The plot revolves around a super villain (voiced by Steve Carell) and his plans to steal the moon, aided by a mad scientist and a horde of hyper-active yellow minions. He ends up adopting 3 orphans, merely as a means to acquire a shrink ray, but unsurprisingly finds himself warming to the children. It's a brilliant feel good film, wonderfully animated and voiced throughout and i would recommend it to anyone.

4/5

Right as always i'll finish this blog post with a song, the first one that came on this afternoon when i stuck my iPod on shuffle.

A Tired and Annoyed Forest Fan

I'm very frustrated right now. Forest were playing today on tv, away at Leeds and we lost 4-1. That would have left me in a bad enough mood on it's own, but it was the nature of the defeat, or more specifically one moment in the first half, which has caused me to be so annoyed. Forest had been outplaying Leeds, looking assured on the ball and seemed by far the more likely side to score.

Then in the 36th minute Chris Cohen was sent off for a tackle on McCartney which was undoubtedly hard, but indisputably got all the ball and almost nothing of the man. It was a ridiculous decision by the referee and the linesman, definitely influenced by the reaction of the Leeds crowd, the Leeds player who stayed down like he had been seriously injured, their manager, Simon Grayson who ran on the pitch and the other players who crowded the referee immediately.

It was yet another example of why there is a real need for video evidence to be available to officials; at full speed the tackle looked dramatic and the reaction of the people around made it seem much worse than it was, if there'd been the opportunity for the ref to watch the tackle back and see that Cohen won the ball and at most it deserved a yellow card.

That decision changed the game, it went from an away game against good opposition where we looked like we might come away with a deserved win, to a heavy defeat, even if the score line was highly flattering to Leeds overall.

That's all for tonight as i'm knackered and this is the first point i've had the time to write today. As always, a song to finish; today it's a song from one of my favourite singer-song writers atm, someone who is just starting to get a bit of media attention. Her name is Hannah Trigwell and she's from Leeds.

Sucker Punch

Zombie Germans, cyborgs on a bullet train, orcs guarding a dragon and giant robotic samurai. If these sound like the creations of a hyper-active teenager’s imagination; it’s because that’s exactly what they are. Sure Zach Snyder may be 45 but at heart he is still just as much of an excitable teenager as the people who will likely make up the majority of the audience for his latest film.

He’s a director with a deep affection for graphic novels and it’s been clear to see in his past films, 300 & Watchmen especially. Those two were based on pre-existing texts, but Sucker Punch is entirely drawn from his own staggeringly vivid imagination.

The film tells the story of a group of girls, led by Emily Browning’s ‘Babydoll’, attempting to escape from a 1950’s mental asylum, the escape shown through a combination of their real life exploits and fantastical dream sequences where the girls battle to acquire items they believe will lead to their escape.

It's a film about escaping from a dark and threatening reality, about hope and the way that sometimes sanity can be a very fragile and ambiguous thing.

The other girls are definitely lacking a little depth; Jena Malone's 'Rocket' and Abbie Cornish's 'Sweet Pea' are given some development as sisters, the younger, innocent one and the older, protective one respectively. Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung get very little to do apart from provide back up in fights and give pretty generic emotional reactions to the action around them.

The films strengths are in the dream elements, where Snyder’s full creativity is let loose in some of the most exciting and wonderfully excessive action sequences around. A fight with steam powered zombie German soldiers (yes you read that sentence correctly) in a World War 1 battlefield is a particular highlight, the combat frenetic and brutal. It's a scene which captures the love for spectacle which defines what makes Zach Snyder such an exciting director; a ruined cathedral amongst a bombed out and desolate landscape, zeppelins and bi-planes weaving in and out in a fascinating dog-fight and artillery thumping into no-mans land; all this is simply background action to the small group of girls fighting their way through the trenches.

The film has its flaws; the first two acts lack any real sense of peril, it’s questionable whether the girls being so scantily clad throughout contributes much to the plot and at times the whole film feels more like an extended music video than a feature film.

But what a music video it is, visually stunning throughout and has one of the best opening scenes i can recall; a darkly dramatic montage set to a melancholy version of the Eurythmic’s classic “Sweet Dreams”. It's intense, loud and visually arresting, setting the tone for the rest of the film.

The film is exciting and action packed, making up for what it lacks in character development with some stunning set pieces and a brilliant use of music.

4/5

To finish the blog i'll post that version of "Sweet Dreams", sung by Emily Browning.