Tom Bonnick

Martin Crimp’s The City — which was first performed in 2008 but feels older; as if perhaps it could have been written at any point in the last thirty years — is a strange, increasingly alarming play: after initially giving the impression of being a (slightly awkwardly staged) kitchen sink drama of sorts, it rapidly evolves in the latter half into a more surreal, often-disturbing dramatic experience that has something of Pinter or Sarah Kane about it.

It is ostensibly the story of a horrifically unhappily-married couple, Clair (Selina Boyack, pictured) and Chris (Ronnie Simon), who both treat their relationship like a game of chess in which one can only have an advantage by seeing several sentences ahead in a conversation — wedlock as psychological warfare.

Crimp is fascinated with language and meaning, components which form the structural basis for the play. Clair and Chris tell each other anecdotes and relay episodes from their days at work and home (Chris has an unspecified office job and Clair, perhaps in a moment of overly heavy-handed symbolism, is a translator) — and then Crimp distorts his vision of the world by following up these anecdotes with a discomfitting existentialist surrealism.

The effect erodes both the distinction between truth and fiction, and the audience’s certainties, until it is not entirely clear what is really happening and what only belongs in the minds and words of his two lead roles.

Periphery characters are introduced and hover on a threshold between reality and fantasy. A neighbour comes to complain about the noise being made by Chris and Clair’s daughter playing in the garden and her grievances transform into a powerful, rather terrifying monologue discussing an unnamed war taking place somewhere abroad, in which her husband is involved in some capacity and which demands of its participants particularly brutal acts of violence — it is one of the play’s most interesting and shocking scenes. Later, in the final moments, the daughter herself emerges and plays a piano piece from behind a screen at the behest of her parents and Jenny, the neighbour – the women all wear the same pink jeans and appear to be morphing into one another; their identities somehow interchangeable.

The Tron’s Changing House theatre is a fantastic space for this production — dark and slightly claustrophobic — and director Andy Arnold, on typically excellent form, maintains tight formal control over his cast. Boyack and Simon enter the play standing unnaturally far apart; both upright and rigid, and Simon does not let go of a tightly-gripped briefcase for some time: between them they create a vaguely unnerving atmosphere from the very beginning, which is only fully articulated with the introduction of the surrounding cast.

This is a uniformly outstanding version of Crimp’s story, made so by Boyack’s icily brilliant performance and Simon’s pitifully spineless one.

Tom Bonnick

Everything that’s wrong with Stewart Laing’s adaptation and direction of Puccini’s immensely popular 1896 opera La Boheme — performed in Glasgow by the usually superb Scottish Opera — seems to be a consequence of the dramatic modernisation to which it has been subjected. That sounds like there’s a lot that’s bad, which isn’t true, really — one aspect in particular doesn’t work, and its general wrongness permeates the rest of an otherwise fine and sometimes excellent production: the result is a slightly confused and occasionally bittersweet pill.

Laing’s fundamental mistake is in believing that the prevailing cultural atmosphere of nineteenth-century bohemian Paris could be satisfactorily evoked by a more contemporary New York hipster scene. What was already a fairly insubstantial story — redeemed by Puccini’s powerful score — has been rendered almost non-existent by the crippling emotional constraints of modernity, and all of the male leads — supposedly a group of writers, philosophers and artists — are unconvincing as anything other than boorish pseudo-intellectuals whose lives we are given no good reason to invest in.

Chief amongst them is Rodolfo (Avi Klemberg), a writer, who by the end of the first act has fallen in love with upstairs neighbour Mimi (Celine Byrne). The dramatic and romantic pinnacle of Act I should, in an ideal world, be O Soave Fanciulla, a heartfelt, rousing duet in which the couple proclaim their mutual adoration. Byrne, who is outstanding throughout, brings real commitment to the scene, but Klemberg delivers his lines without passion or urgency — a situation not helped by uniformly prosaic and unimaginative supertitles and some shaky acoustics for the first half-hour.

Things pick up in Act II, which has been transported to an über-cool art gallery from its original, somewhat less glamorous setting, with dynamic crowd scenes, improved depth of sound and a quicker pace — and we’re also introduced to Musetta (Nadine Livingston), the former beau of Rodolfo’s friend Marcello, who steals the show with diva-esque antics and fantastic stage presence.

When the inevitable final-act tragedy arrives, it feels grating (however expected): the setting and characters simply aren’t imbued with the pathos or richness of feeling required in order for an audience to care, and when Rodolfo declares to Marcello that he’s scared and thinks Mimi is dying, he may as well be offering his buddy another beer, for all the lack of sentiment.

In the hands of conductor Francesco Corti, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera give a terrific rendition of Puccini’s music, which really leads one to the conclusion that this is a production best enjoyed with eyes firmly closed. As well as a disappointing translation of Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa’s original libretto, staging (Act II excepted) is truly dismal — the large space is made to feel bland and empty.

Byrne’s first-rate performance only throws into sharper relief the deficit in Klemberg’s — although in fairness, this is largely because of how little he is given to work with. Mimi makes ornamental fake flowers and Rodolfo is a poet — it should be the other way around.

Tom Bonnick

As of March 8, awards season may have been over, but for all of you haters who thought that would mean idly speculative newspaper commentary also being done with for the year — ha! Think again. For what would any “significant” cultural event be without its post-game analysis, I ask you? Possibly all the better for it, but that’s a story for another day.

Oscars night yielded few real surprises, but critically, just enough raised-eyebrow, I-sort-of-wasn’t-expecting-that moments (at least in the last half-hour) to make following the whole thing on YouTube and blog feeds not seem like the biggest waste of time imaginable (that would be watching the Grammys).

Devoted followers of these pages — and while we’re on the subject, I know there are some; I got sent all kinds of pissy letters after last issue demanding to know what I have against the Academy (for the record, nothing; I just think they’re a bunch of slightly reactionary sentimentalists who only sometimes get things right) — will remember that I predicted that Avatar would win Best Picture, but that Katherine Bigelow would win Best Director for The Hurt Locker.

In the event, The Hurt Locker did rather better than that, winning — as if anyone needs reminding — not only the top two prizes, but also statues for Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, and some sound awards no-one really cares about. As much as it’s never a good idea to look a gift horse in the mouth and question how or why Bigelow’s low budget, little-seen Iraq movie did so well, its victory over Cameron’s behemoth does have some interesting lessons.

It’s quite likely that the reason The Hurt Locker so trounced Avatar is because this year, for the first time, the Academy introduced a system of weighted voting, and so whereas on previous occasions, everyone just chose one film, this time the shortlisted nominees were ranked from one to ten. Avatar, a film which polarised opinion, will certainly have got a lot of first-place votes, but probably not so many second or third choices. The Hurt Locker, on the other hand, evidently fared very well all round. The fact that there were twice as many nominees will also have helped Bigelow’s chances: ten films dilute the vote and reduce the chance of a runaway winner, which Avatar looked sure to be at one stage. Finally, The Hurt locker won because the anti-Hurt Locker campaign simply kicked in too late: by the time one of the film’s producers had been barred from the ceremony for sending anti-Avatar begging letters to voters (hey guy, here’s a tip: if you’re not Harvey Weinstein, don’t try muscling a win. That’s not for novices) and mutterings of plagiarism and lawsuits had begun to emerge, most voters had already cast their ballots.

And so, with that mystery solved, on to some of the other questions the evening presented: namely, would Steve Martin be funny? Why was Lauren Bacall not being allowed to accept her Honorary Award on the night itself? And, with Precious nominated in so many categories, which token black face (Morgan? Denzel?) would the camera cut to at every mention of the film’s success?

Well, the answers are, respectively, “Sort of, but only sometimes” (best joke of the night: “Everyone who works with Meryl comes away thinking two things – ‘can that woman act’, and ‘what’s with all the Hitler memorabilia?’”), “Because the Academy are idiots who think Hannah Montana has more star power than The Woman Who Was Vivian Rutledge”, and “Oprah”.

I think that about wraps everything up. The only question I have left is, why are there butterflies all over Bigelow’s dress?

Hazmat suits, scones and a journey to Royston: Tom Bonnick joins the Glasgow University Amnesty society for a week of protest

I am sitting on a train headed to Buchanan Street, where I will meet members of the Glasgow University branch of the human rights charity Amnesty International, who are going to a Shell petrol station to protest against the multinational’s activities in the Niger Delta. In front of me are lots of adverts. Most of them seem to be for shampoo, and one boasts “a unique cassia complex,” which sounds vaguely Freudian. How many of these products would Amnesty object to, I wonder?

When I reach Buchanan Street I meet Ruth Hickin, the chair of the Amnesty society. Ruth is in her final year of an English degree and not at all like how I imagine serious student activists who are willing to give up their weekends standing outside a Shell station to be — she is very funny, unintimidating, and doesn’t appear to make her own clothes out of hemp or light incense candles wherever she goes.

Gradually more and more people arrive until eventually there are around twenty of us. Those who have gathered are made up of a coalition between Amnesty supporters and members of the Climate Action group in Glasgow whose interests — for obvious reasons — align with those of Amnesty in this instance. Ruth and Cameron Dron, who is in charge of the Climate Action team, both seem happy with the turn-out. “It is a Saturday morning,” Ruth reminds me. Apparently she can predict how many people will come based on a formula of the number who say they will take part on Facebook, divided by three. A few people seem a bit suspicious of my presence. “What angle are you going to take?” someone asks. “I don’t have an angle!” I protest, and think to myself, “yet.”

We have to walk to Alexandra Parade to get to the nearest Shell franchise — a few weeks previously, everyone tried doing this protest at a Shell garage that was thought to exist on Woodlands Road, but when they arrived they found that it had been bought out by Sainsbury’s, who evidently are not an emblem of corporate malfeasance in the same way. At this point I have the feeling that the activities of the Amnesty group are endearingly reminiscent of Dad’s Army. During the walk I try and get the environmentalists to like me by proudly proclaiming my unbroken three-year stretch of not flying anywhere. They congratulate me in the encouraging manner an adult might adopt when talking to a child with a drawing.

I have decided to follow the Amnesty society around because I have no idea what they get up to, or whether whatever that might be takes place to any effect. Although I have only ever noticed them on campus when they are symbolically imprisoning themselves in chalk squares on the hill approaching the library, I have recently learnt — via the student newspaper of another university, much to my chagrin — that the Glasgow body is one of the most active in the UK.

Ruth is emphatic that what they do matters. “We try really hard to raise awareness around campus … in Burma, they have no access to free press, so we went into the library and put these flyers into newspapers [she shows me a flyer with the words ‘You could be in prison for reading this’]. We try and get signatures on a petition or letters signed to a particular politician. And in our meetings, we’ll educate ourselves and then try and do something constructive and get the public to do the same.”

When I talk to Niall Couper, from Amnesty headquarters in London, he is also very enthusiastic: “Student branches are an integral part of how Amnesty operates … I’m always amazed by both their enthusiasm and creativity. It is such dynamism that helps keep the organisation alive and buzzing.” I try speaking to a representative of Shell to find out if the campaigns against their operations affect how they do business, but they don’t return any of my calls.

As we get closer to the supposed Alexandra Parade location I spot what looks like a BP garage in the distance. Ruth appears horrified. “You all hold back; I’ll see,” she instructs. A few minutes later she comes running towards us, slightly out of breath but smiling. “I think I would have built a Shell station if there wasn’t one there!”

Suddenly bags are produced containing the props necessary for the protest: everyone has a white boiler suit to put on, as if they were at the site of a toxic spill, and the plan is to descend upon the garage and stage a clean-up. The boiler suits have a Shell logo on the back with the word “GUILTY” written underneath. The same people who want to know my agenda ask if I will put one on, but I have the unimpeachable excuse of journalistic integrity demanding that I not become part of my own story. I’m also slightly worried that we might all be mistaken for nu-ravers.

All of a sudden things become a lot more disciplined and efficient-looking. Ruth has gone from seeming like Captain Mainwaring to a teacher on a school trip: “If Cameron or I blow the whistle it’s time to leave.” Directions are given for where everyone should stand, what to do if the police arrive and how to treat members of the public: “Just be nice. Let’s be positive whatever happens, and be polite. We’re not doing anything wrong.” Everything is very democratic. Cameron asks if everyone wants to vote on whether or not they should end the protest by stretching the banner across the drive-in to prevent cars from entering, but the group defers this decision until later.

When we reach the Shell station everyone spreads out, walking around the forecourt with mops and brooms, while two people stand at the front holding a large banner with ‘Make Shell clean up their act’ written across it. It is all very professional looking, if somewhat juvenile in spirit. One or two people seem to get a little carried away and actually start cleaning the fixtures.

This brings me to an early suspicion I have about student activism of the sort practised by Amnesty: that it doesn’t really achieve anything, but is still a convenient means for privileged young adults to massage their liberal consciences. Ruth is adamant that this is not the case. “I can’t speak for everyone, but the amount of time and effort that people put in Amnesty put towards doing campaigns — and often not getting a very positive response from the public — I can’t imagine anyone would be doing that to feel good about themselves.”

After half an hour two police cars show up and I hear a whistle blowing. Everyone congregates around the banner and Ruth speaks to two officers. They start writing lots down in a notebook, which makes me feel inadequate. Five minutes later they walk back to their squad car. Ruth tells everyone they’ll be allowed to stand in front of the garage with the banner for the rest of the hour, but that they have to stop the cleaning shenanigans. The police are friendly and eminently reasonable. The forecourt, they explain, is private property, which is why that part of the protest has to stop. They want everyone to leave within the hour because this is near Royston, and do I know what kind of people come here? Local gangs, they claim, choose the surrounding area as the place to settle whatever disputes may have arisen, and we all seem terribly well brought-up and not the kind of people who should stick around. My hands are getting quite cold, so after another ten minutes I leave.

The next time I see members of Amnesty is the following Wednesday. Ruth is selling scones on University Gardens. I ask how many have been bought. “Six so far,” she answers, with the same, there-is-a-Shell-station-there-after-all grin, “but we’re expecting a rush between lectures.”

If external perception of Glasgow’s branch of Amnesty is very positive, I am curious as to how things look from the inside. Is student activism on the wane? On this point, Niall is indefatigably optimistic. “Completely not. For Amnesty, the opposite is true. We’ve seen a growth in student members … and we’ve seen a surge in activism. In a shrinking world, global issues are becoming more and more relevent and students have grasped this new reality better than most.”

On the evening of Scone Day there is a fundraising gig being held at 13th Note. My musical tastes do not extend far beyond Miles Davis or Pixies, so I drag along our Music Editor with the inducement of alcohol. The bands playing are certainly very enthusiastic, although I find it distracting that the lead guitarist of one seems to have walked off the set of Starsky and Hutch, down to velour waistcoat and afro.

Still, there are a lot of people in the audience, and when I ask Ruth how many of her baked goods she managed to offload she answers casually; “Oh, all of them,” as if this was always going to be the case.

I am surprised at how mild the sentiments of a lot of the Amnesty members are — contrary to my initial expectations, it is not the hotbed of irrational and sporadic radicalism or headine-grabbing antics for which its parent organisation has a reputation. In fact, it all seems very harmless, well-intentioned and — to a point — effective. As long as they’re satisfied with spreading the word and keep the chalk-prisons to a minimum, Amnesty’s presence on campus may well grow and grow.

Amnesty hold meetings every Tuesday at 5 pm in the QMU, and on March 21 are holding a gig at Stereo. Doors open at 7.30 pm.

Tom Bonnick

There is a lovely advert floating around on the Internet featuring Martin Scorsese, in his capacity not just as acclaimed director, but also dedicated film preservationist. He claims to have unearthed three pages of never before seen Hitchcock material, which he will endeavour to commit to film exactly as the master of suspense would have done himself, and the result is a very clever, lovingly crafted pastiche. I shan’t spoil the ending here, but suffice to say, it isn’t just a promotion for the World Cinema Foundation.

Shutter Island, Scorsese’s first feature film since 2006’s The Departed, is just as ridden with Hitchcock-ian tropes and horror cliché, but to far less endearing effect: it was only when the credits started rolling at the end that I realised that this time the director is being serious. Shutter Island isn’t a parody, or a viral marketing campaign; it’s just very disappointing.

The year is 1954, and Leonardo DiCaprio — who, it has been widely noted, was clearly so taken by the South Boston accent he cultivated for his last outing with Scorsese that he has simply refused to relinquish it here — plays Teddy Daniels, a US Marshal who arrives by boat to investigate the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane (what else?) located on the eponymous island.

Evidently, the four-year break from filmmaking has not been good for Scorsese. He is like an addict, and his drugs are movies — I mean that in a good way — but this is one big overdose, taken (or made; I’m not really sure how this analogy is working) to combat the withdrawal symptoms. Everything about Shutter Island is produced on a grandly cinematic scale, except for the story, which, beyond its ability to treat the camera to yet another money-shot of precipitous cliff faces, is handled with faint indifference.

And this is a real shame, because deep down, there actually is quite a good tale to tell — indeed, one that has already been told, in the novel by Dennis Lehane which is the film’s source material. The story is rather odd and a little convoluted sometimes, but, if Scorsese hadn’t allowed himself to get so bogged down in obeisance to directors of yore, one that could have been told engagingly and with real panache.

Instead, what we have in Shutter Island is a piece of work which is practically forensic in its homage to the thriller genre, but almost completely devoid of passion. The twists upon which so much of the plot hinges (and again, I shan’t ruin them here, but I’d say that it’s pretty damning that I have fewer qualms with doing so for a film than a commercial), however intellectually challenging — which is still only a little bit — are uninteresting, and when the big reveal comes, even it feels like one which has been used a few too many times before. There are, it’s also worth mentioning, far too many puzzles being wound and unravelled at once, and if it feels like I haven’t given any real information as to the actual story, it’s only because with the slightest nudge the whole sandcastle of mystery would collapse at my feet.

Perhaps Scorsese realised all this, and compensated accordingly with a cast list that gives new meaning to the aphorism embarrassment of riches (it really is rich, and they should all be embarrassed to be included in it). The credits read like a who’s who of gothic character actors: Ted Levine (otherwise known as Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs), John Carroll Lynch (or, The Guy Who Probably Dunnit in Zodiac), Jackie Earle Haley (soon to play Freddy Krueger in a Nightmare Before Elm Street remake) and, best of all, Max von Sydow.

I did my very best to care about a film with so many excellent faces attached to it — honest, I did. But Shutter Island is the filmic equivalent of a super-group, and so perhaps it makes sense that it’s nowhere near as good as any of its influences — after all, who’s ever liked Velvet Revolver more than Guns ‘n’ Roses?

Tom Bonnick

I have come to meet Mark Kermode prepared with a story of strange coincidence which I hope is enough to make him like me. Now, normally this isn’t a concern when I interview people — I have enough trouble getting my family to like me, without having to worry about complete strangers as well — but when Kermode doesn’t like something, he really doesn’t like it, and of this possibility I am nervous. On his BBC Radio Five Live show with Simon Mayo, he calls Keira Knightley “IKEA Knightley” because her acting is so wooden (although he insists to me that this is not his gag, but one submitted by a caller to the show), and he has been ejected from screenings at Cannes for booing too loudly (so I hear). Anyway, onto my story.

It is Tuesday, February 9, and I am in Glasgow. However, I could be in London. Obviously, that’s true a lot of the time — I could be in London tomorrow if I really wanted to be! — but on Tuesday, February 9, I could be in London for a very specific reason. After having arranged my interview with Kermode for the 9th, I am invited by a PR company to a screening of a new film, Green Zone, and then to a press conference with the film’s stars, chief amongst them one Matt Damon. I can’t go to the event because I would miss a whole week of classes, which I did too much last term, and because it’s on the 9th as well and I’ve already arranged to meet Kermode. What’s odd — fantastic, even — is that, as well as Matt Damon, a British actor called Jason Isaacs (you will know him as Lucius Malfoy, unless you watched a lot of television in the ’80s) will also be there for me to ask questions of, and Jason Isaacs, I have recently learnt, is not only Kermode’s favourite ever actor, but also the man he would like to play him in the film of his life. So, Kermode, what do you think of that?

Immediately, he launches into an animated set of questions directed at me about the film I’m missing. “For Green Zone? Oh, it’s great, have you seen it?” No, I tell him, unfortunately I have not. “Oh, it’s great. [Paul, the film’s director, who also made the Bourne trilogy with Damon] Greengrass has kind of cornered that particular way of making things that are fictional look completely non-fictional.”

Mark Kermode in person bears little resemblance to the Mark Kermode we see and hear on television and radio. He has crafted a very distinctive on-air persona for himself; a man of scathing put-downs, inflexible opinion and what occasionally feel like sentiments so unfathomable and seemingly arbitrary that they must surely have been picked out of a hat at random (this week I’ll like… Robert Pattinson, and pick a fight with… Helen Mirren).

In the flesh, however, little of the iconoclastic bravado for which he has become — perhaps unfairly — famous is on display. Maybe it helps that he has fewer microphones pointed at him than usual, or maybe that he is not in one of his characteristic Reservoir Dogs suits — he is dressed, disarmingly casually, in jeans and a pullover (although I am pleased to report that the trademark quiff remains in tact).

In any case, he is charming and eminently reasonable at every turn, although this latter quality seems to take some measure of restraint to achieve. At one point in our conversation together, which takes place in a dimly lit, underground room at Malmaison, I ask about Kermode provoking other critics, and whether he has ever been convinced by the persuasiveness of one of their arguments about, how, say, High School Musical 3 or Basic Instinct 2 really aren’t is good as he says they are.

“It’s not really a matter of that [being persuaded],” he begins, leaping upon the question with customary vigour. “It’s more a matter of responding honestly to what you think about a film. Clearly there is no right or wrong answer to any of this.” This feels like quite a significant admission to come from a man with such self-belief. Kermode ignores my startled expression and continues.

“I think historical context is important — understanding what a film is, where it comes from, what it’s trying to do is important, but beyond that your response to it is all there is. People say, ‘Oh, you’re very subjective in your reviews.’ Well, everyone’s subjective! The question is whether or not you’re upfront about it, whether you pretend that what you’re doing is providing some sort of everyman service, which is baloney.” This sounds to me a little like a case of the critic doth protest too much, but Kermode is adamant and unflappable, rather than defensive.

“The idea of objective criticism is fundamentally flawed — for a start, the way people react to movies is so strange and so personal. You have to understand that people will disagree with what you think, and that’s fine. It’s surprising when people don’t understand that ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’ is a joke — everyone thinks they’re right, but on some level they understand that’s a ridiculous position to hold, and the reason I say it is it’s funny; it’s patently absurd. Most of the people I annoy, which is clearly a healthy amount — and if you’re not annoying at least half your audience, at least half the time, then really you’re not trying — most of them don’t get that it’s a joke. I do believe these things, and passionately, but I also understand how ridiculous it is to say ‘I’m right, you’re wrong.’”

Part of the reason for Kermode’s departure from the received critical wisdom on various films is his love of genre cinema. For years he has been an advocate of overlooked and under-appreciated films of all kinds: where his fellow critics have seen tawdry video-nasties or silly horror pastiche, Kermode sees brilliance. But, I want to know, how does he view the current cinematic landscape?

“The most encouraging thing is that international boundaries seem to be breaking down more and more, and what used to be a necessarily slightly limited international film market is now flourishing, although they have a fight to hold their own against the big Hollywood blockbusters. That’s not to say there won’t always continue to be interesting Hollywood movies, but right now these are the movies that I’m most excited by.

“I see more movies now than I ever did before — every week, rather than there being five or six movies released there are ten or twelve, and in amongst all that stuff there are just as many gems as there always used to be. It is true there are distribution problems — that’s why arthouse independent cinemas are so important. But also, audiences have to vote with their feet — the way things change is by people turning out to see foreign language or arthouse films.

“I mean, it is a problem if you have a multiplex cinema in which Avatar is showing on three screens. That’s the funny thing — the rise of multiplex culture didn’t really give us more choice, it gave us the same, if not less, choice. But the stuff is out there if you’re looking for it.”

Kermode is in Glasgow because he has just written a book, It’s Only a Movie, which is made up of an intriguing mixture of autobiography and film criticism. I think it’s fair to say that the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts: the book is a fascinating collection of stories, but sometimes it reads like little more than a list of its author’s foibles and pet peeves (in this respect it is sort of like any novel by Stephen Fry, each of which, without exception, contain at least a page devoted entirely to pieces of trivia of which Fry is obviously particularly proud). In the case of Kermode, I swiftly learn that his favourite piece of dialogue in any film comes from Flesh for Frankenstein and takes place as one character is being disembowelled (“To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life… in ze gall bladder!”), and that one of his “favourite works of literature of all time” is the BBFC’s report on The Evil Dead, which includes such immortal lines as “Remove entirely the second shot of headless torso spurting blood on man’s face as he lies on top of it.”

If anything, Kermode comes across in the book not as a man of uncompromising conviction but rather, as slightly sophomoric in nature; perhaps too idiosyncratic in his opinions — a man whose tastes seem more like those of a character from Juno. This is not to say that It’s Only a Movie is anything less than entirely enjoyable — on the contrary, it feels remarkably uninhibited. Kermode employs an interesting conceit of approaching the story of his life as if he is casting it for a movie, in which he is played by Jason Isaacs (of course), Helen Mirren is played by the Queen, and the various peripheral figures in his life are filled by such luminaries as Julianne Moore and, less glamorously, Ian Hislop. The effect is one of meta-biography: as a narrator, Kermode comes in and out of his story, editing at will. Was this always the way he knew he would write the story?

“What I was trying to do was see whether I could write the way I talk, because in many ways the thing I’ve enjoyed about film criticism is being able to talk about movies in the way I think people genuinely do talk about them — passionately and without moderation; anecdotally. It became an autobiography that was remembered almost entirely through the films that I watch, because that is pretty much how I remember things.”

In the book and in person, Kermode’s unabashed, infectious cinephilia is wholly transparent, and the longer we are together, the more I realise quite how accurately he has captured that conversational, anecdotal tone he was aiming for in the book, if only because he is equally prone to digression both on the page and off it. Practically out of nowhere, he announces to me how ludicrous he finds the declarations of authenticity that serious drama and horror films are wont to introduce themselves with.

“I love that phrase — inspired by real events. As opposed to what, exactly? Nowadays it’s a kind of movie shorthand for ‘you need to take this seriously because it’s true!’ The classic example of that is the thing at the beginning of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: “The events you are about to see are real”. Well, they didn’t happen in Texas, they didn’t happen with a chainsaw, and there wasn’t a massacre, but other than that…”

He is also far more interested in talking about his favourite movies than about himself. Eventually — perhaps inevitably — our conversation devolves into an argument about vampire films. Horror films are a particular passion for Kermode (he has a PhD in English and American horror fiction) and his favourite film of last year was Let the Right One In; a strange, beautiful vampire film made in Sweden about a lonely boy who fantasises about escaping his life and then meets a young girl who seems able to offer him some solace (needless to say, she has a thirst for blood).

“The interesting thing is that there really isn’t a tradition of Swedish vampire films — it sort of came out of nowhere. And of course, although on one level it is a genre film in that it’s a vampire movie at a time when there happens to be a load of vampire films, just how connected to them it is I think is a moot point.

“Suddenly everyone’s saying, why is there a resurgence in vampire films now? One of the arguments is, if you look at the classic vampire movies, they flourished in a period of economic depression and somehow there is an economic underpinning to all this.

“What’s really interesting about Let the Right One In is how little it owes anything to these stories. For a start, as opposed to most vampire movies, it really isn’t to do with sex at all, and in fact they’ve gone to some trouble to take the sexual element that’s in the novel out of the film. To me, Let the Right One In is a story about anger at being bullied. It’s about childish rage, and that sort of impotent feeling you have when you’re a kid who’s not in control of their surroundings.

“The recent vampire thing is very interesting — it’s peculiar that it’s happened when it has. Now, everyone thinks Vampires are saleable. And during the last big wave of these movies, there was that great boring cliché that vampire movies are all about AIDS, and the idea of that dates back to Dracula and Bram Stoker, who it was held for a long time had died of syphilis.”

The irony that now, the current biggest vampire craze is all about abstinence, rather than AIDS, is not lost on Kermode.

“I really like the Twilight movies! They’re in that wave of classic gothic romance, they’re all to do with desire and repression and the forbidden. I actually think when all the dust has settled people will see the Twilight books and movies as significant—” At this point I interrupt. I am an unreconstructed fan of the Twilight films, but surely, not the books? He sticks to his guns. “Look, they’re not awful. I think they’re perfectly fine.”

He is smiling earnestly at this, practically inviting me to disagree with him whilst simultaneously assuming a look which says ‘What? I haven’t said anything unreasonable, have I?’

“Not awful” is, I suspect, the closest I will ever come to getting Mark Kermode to concede on anything. I have time for one more question, and the one I ask is sort of a cheat. You’re a film journalist, I tell Kermode — you do this kind of thing for a living. What would you ask Mark Kermode if you were sitting where I am? There is a slightly awkward silence.

“I don’t…” he begins, unsurely, and then recovers almost instantly, the note of confidence back in his voice: “If I was in your position, I’d ask why I wasn’t interviewing Jason Isaacs.”

It’s Only a Movie is out now in paperback, RRP £11.99

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah for anyone to describe a record released before spring’s even broken as one of the best of the year with a straight face, but perhaps that’s only appropriate when the record in question has an even greater degree of audacity about it. Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here certainly has that. His first album in sixteen years — a period of time blotted with stints in jail and rehab — has an assurance and sense of mastery that makes the competition look like a bunch of bloated charlatans, a feat even more impressive for the reason that Scott-Heron has ventured far outside his usual mode of spoken word-inflected R&B and incorporated elements of electronica, minimalism and soul-ish vocals, creating an aesthetic which is both contemporary and timeless.

Mercifully, the intermittent drug abuse hasn’t tampered with Scott-Heron’s powerful, gravelly baritone. Opening track On Coming From A Broken Home and the incredible Where Did The Night Go both recall The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, with their spoken vocals and sparse, synthesised beat, but they are more mellow, indicative of Scott- Heron’s advanced years and ascendence to the position of American Blues’ elder statesmen. There is a moving rendition of Robert Johnson’s Me And The Devil, which Scott-Heron somehow contrives to makes more desperately baleful than his predecessor, and an excellent concession to his piano-playing R&B days with I’ll Take Care Of You. It may not have the urgency of some of his earlier work, but I’m New Here proves unquestionably how relevant a figure Scott-Heron remains.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Jeez, there sure an awful lot of overblown, self-important snooze-fests in the cinema at the moment — in fact, it seems like this happens around this time every year”, then you must have found yourself in the month of February, for awards season is upon you. Now is when studios drop their powerful biopics about washed-up musicians, poor-kids-overcoming-adversity melodramas, and films starring Meryl Streep on the public, because if there’s one thing that makes a studio executive extra-special, it’s the motivation they can draw from the delusion that what their picture needs to succeed isn’t, y’know, better acting, but more exposure.

But before I begin with this year’s trophy-bait, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to cite what is now being referred to in every appropriately cynical discussion of the Academy Awards as The Dargis Stipulation, so-named after its progenitor, New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis: “Let’s acknowledge that the Oscars are bullshit and we hate them.” At least half of that sentence is definitely true. The Oscars are bullshit; of that there is no question, but I’m not sure about hate. Either way, they do at least manage to provoke something more than mild indifference, which is all the Golden Globes ever seem to manage. And on that note, to the movies!

The two pieces of Academy Awards shenanigans that have garnered the most column inches this year have been the announcement that there will be ten pictures shortlisted in the Best Picture category (a move made in the hope that it will provide a desperately needed television ratings boost), and latterly, that amongst those ten are Avatar and The Hurt Locker, whose directors, James Cameron and Katherine Bigelow respectively, are ex-husband and wife. Cameron and Bigelow will also be competing for the Best Director award, and my money is on a break with tradition and the two prizes being divided between them: Picture for Avatar, Director for The Hurt Locker.

This is not, I hasten to add, because Avatar is the better film. On the contrary, it is probably the worst film nominated (maybe apart from District 9). But critical respect falls far short of money as a measure of power in Hollywood, and whilst The Hurt Locker may have plenty of the former, Avatar is now the highest grossing film of all time, which, unfortunately, counts for far too much.

Sid Ganis, president of the Academy, will want Avatar to win because this will also encourage good ratings: the public are only interested in watching films collect statues if they’ve actually seen them in the first place, and the intersection on the Venn diagram of “All people” and “People who have seen Avatar” is now extremely large.

Nonetheless, Bigelow should win for Best Director, and not just because she deserves it, but because the time is right. It is shocking, even for an industry more sexist than the selection criteria for the Playboy Mansion, that there has never been a female recipient of the Director award at the Oscars. If they don’t give one out this year, they never will: The Hurt Locker was the most tightly controlled piece of film-making, bar none, last year — an achievement made even more remarkable by the fact that is an action movie, a genre which is generally produced with the guiding principles that lots of explosions will suffice in lieu of anything else, and that characterisation or plot development are for sissies.

This split may upset the usual rule of handing the Best Picture and Director trophies to the same film, but it would also honour a rather less orthodox tradition, last evidenced in 2006, of giving the Picture prize to the lesser film with the inexorable momentum behind it, and then awarding Best Director to the superior film as a consolation. Four years ago it was a case of Hollywood patting itself on the back for producing what it saw as a genuinely intelligent examination of race in America, but was in fact two hours of mindless platitude (the lamentable Crash), at the expense of an infintely better film (Brokeback Mountain) which, ironically, actually did confront controversial “issues”. This time around, Cameron’s CGI and 3D wizardry (not to mention all that money) seem likely to earn Avatar the top prize, thereby necessitating that voters ameliorate their liberal consciences by handing Bigelow the silver medal.

As for the acting awards, they appear to be haven been practically pre-ordained for months, and much as the Academy doesn’t seem to like being dictated to, it would almost take an act of God to prevent Jeff Bridges going home with a (much deserved) Best Actor statue for Crazy Heart (one of those washed-up musician biopics) or stop Sandra Bullock winning for The Blind Side (impoverished children again). Equally, why anyone even bothers including a Best Animation shortlist is completely beyond me: the prize should just be given, automatically, to whatever Pixar released in the last year (the outstanding Up, in this case).

Still — and at the risk of completely invalidating every prediction I have just made — who can really say? To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oscars voters are different from you and me; a notoriously fickle bunch, prone to all kinds of whims and fancies to which we common folk are not privy. Maybe Inglourious Basterds will surprise us all and sweep the board (I sincerely hope that it doesn’t). Even though I know it cannot be; that the prize belongs to Jason Reitman, I want more than anything else for Armando Iannucci and his cohort of funnymen to win the Adapted Screenplay prize for In the Loop. I’ll leave you with this. For fans of conspiracy theories, take note: in the categories of Best Picture, Director, Actor and Actress, my frontrunners (Cameron, Bigelow, Bridges, Bullock) are all alphabetically first in their respective shortlists. Make of that what you will.

Joshua Ferris’ first novel, 2007’s Then We Came To The End, announced a bold new voice in American fiction — one which lay somewhere between Don Delillo (whose own work of fiction, Americana, gave Then We Came to the End its title) and Jonathan Franzen. In that instance, Ferris’ reach did not quite exceed his grasp, so to speak, but what the novel lacked in structural finesse, it more than made up for with the author’s bold style (it is written in an unusual first person plural and narrated by a sort of collective conscious) and ambitious bravado.

His second book, The Unnamed, speaks of the same disillusionment and urban anxiety as in Then We Came To The End, but it comes with a greater sense of authorial capability and sophistication. Ferris seems to be carrying through to their logical conclusions the moral and philosophical quandaries that he touched upon in his debut work — equal parts of Emersonian counter-culture and quintessentially twenty-first century ennui.

This time, his protagonist has a name, Tim Farnsworth; a man who, upon receiving a non-specific terminal diagnosis, decides to walk out on all the monotonous routines and constituents of a normal life — job, wife, family — literally. That is, he begins going on walks, compulsively; longer and longer walks which are obviously meant to symbolise a gradual estrangement for Tim from life itself.

The conceptual existentialism which this plot device evokes is cleverly established, and Tim’s sense of angst is made nicely believable, but I couldn’t help but miss the ultra-perceptive brand of laconic realism that Ferris had developed in his earlier work, and particularly the short stories he has had published in the New Yorker (in fact, if you only have ten minutes to spare, I would advise that you stop reading this newspaper right now and search for The Dinner Party on Google instead). Call it nostalgia, but I found some of The Unnamed’s most emotionally honest passages to be those which take place in offices, the same environment in which the events of the first novel are located.

Still, there is an awful lot to be impressed by here, and I suppose an author branching out is (usually) to be commended. What the narative loses from Ferris’ abandomnent of realism it more than makes up for with a vitality and poignancy that was, perhaps, missing in his earlier work

More than anything, though, The Unnamed is reassuring — not with regards to its subject — but for the reason that it cements its author’s reputation as one of the most interesting young literary figures currently at work.

The Unnamed is out now in paperback, RRP £12.99

Tom Bonnick

Youth in Revolt begins like any other Michael Cera film. It has the same faded colour palette, earnest exclamations of indie-cool (this version of Cera wants to be a writer, thinks Ol’ Blue Eyes should be played on an hourly basis, and rents La Strada for fun) and has its protagonist endure the same wistful yearnings to escape his square, adolescent virginity.

Mercifully, director Miguel Arteta dispenses with all these bland pleasantries fairly efficiently, and what emerges from the wreckage (quite literally — half an hour in, Cera causes millions of dollars worth of damage when he blows up a trailer, a convertible and a storefront) is wholly unlike Juno or the execrable Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

Adapted from C.D. Payne’s influential 1993 novel, Cera plays Nick Twisp, who falls in love with a rather enigmatic, equally improbably-articulate girl named Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), almost immediately upon meeting her, during an encounter on holiday at a trailer park to which he has decamped with his mother and her trucker boyfriend to escape some angry sailors.

Soon realising Sheeni isn’t too interested in him (favouring her futurist poem-writing windsurfer boyfriend, Trent), Nick concocts an alter ego for himself, the rakish François Dillinger (also Cera, in what must be his first different role in years), who encourages the relationship forward with pseudo-suave aggression and a cigarette permanently dangling from his lips.

And from there, the story takes an odd turn, not entirely for the worst, as indignity upon indignity is heaped upon Nick, a few misguided attempts at romance spiral into a cross-country crime spree and a straightforward boy-meets-girl comedy is transformed into a mock-epic of Homeric proportions.

Arteta has had to abandon several of the peripheral plot elements of Payne’s original, but he succeeds in retaining the picaresque tone of the story and Nick’s character, who along with François, become a sort of cross between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and Bonnie and Clyde.

And, even though only half of Cera’s performance feels particularly original, he is still perfectly cast as both halves of Twisp — his impassive face and slightly pallid complexion are used to great effect, and the few truly excellent moments of visual comedy tend to arise from seeing him cowering somewhere in a state of near-undress, hands hovering protectively over his boxer shorts or wrapped uncomfortably around his chest. As Dillinger he is (rightly) more exaggerated and less believable, but no less enjoyable.

If it ever feels slightly strange that Cera is still playing sixteen year olds, the feeling does not last long. Supported by an excellent cast (which includes Ray Liotta, Fred Willard and Steve Buscemi in occasionally scene-stealing cameo roles), he carries the film so capably and to such enjoyable effect it almost erases any memory of his ersatz performances in Paper Heart or Nick and Norah.

Guardian has some great Youth in Revolt prizes to be won. To find out more, click here.