As usual lately, there’s no time to go into too much detail, but Rupert Wyatt’s glossy sci-fi yarn is technically spotless, well-acted by all (including Andy Serkis in the virtual monkey suit, James Franco as the sympathetic human, and a near-unrecogniseable Tom Felton playing another sadistic bully.  It follows the premise of the 60s saga closely, but not exactly, and the CGI is less credibility-stretching than the plot. But, then, it is Planet of the Apes.

I should mention Patrick Doyle’s enjoyable score.

With Rise of the Planet of the Apes, you know exactly what you’re going to get, and if that’s something that appeals to you, this does it about as well as you could hope.

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Now available for pre-order is a side-by-side compilation of works by avant-garde composer Penderecki – probably best known for Threnody‘s inclusion in The Shining and The Children of Men – and Jonny Greenwood (yes, that bloke from Radiohead, who also did the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood).

While it works beautifully in the medium of film, Penderecki’s clashing tones are just too hard on my ears to enjoy in a listening-for-pleasure context (Polymorphia is bloody terrifying!). I had that exact problem with the last Manorexia album, remember? Still, I know plenty who aren’t scared off by such things and will probably enjoy this very much. I find Greenwood’s tracks much easier to take than Penderecki’s, and think it’s all beautifully composed, even if I’m trembling under the sofa.

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The album, available from 13 March, can be pre-ordered from the Nonesuch store now. A concert featuring all of the music on the album will take place at Barbican Hall in London on 22 March, performed by the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra, who played on the recording, led by Penderecki and Marek Moś.

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(Click to enlarge)

Funny, but I tend to get the opposite of that – he’d be banging on about it through the romantic meal, while I’m trying to watch TV, etc.

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No time to type today, so I’ll just link you to a very fine song by Australian blues-jazz singer Lanie Lane. There’s something about her that makes me think she should be on a David Lynch soundtrack.

This makes me feel so incredibly old. It’s not that it’s aping the 80s – we were aping the 80s back in the 90s, after all. Nope, it’s that it goes to such lengths to pretend to be from that unseemly decade, in all its mixtape-and-batwing-sleeves glory.

The song is catchy enough, with a simple funk-bass hook and maddeningly infectious chorus. Friends – another lot from Brooklyn, apparently – seem to be singing about independence in relationships – but I bet you were paying more attention to the shoes and thinking, “I had a pair of those!”

It’s the video that brought a smile to my face. I wonder what the hipster bands of 2040 will be ripping off from this decade.

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I figured a film about a teen assassin starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett was a pretty safe bet, but there are just too many credulity-stretching head-scratching moments for Hanna to be any good.

THE FILM

Hanna Heller (Ronan) is a 16 year-old raised in a secluded cabin in Finland by her paranoid father, Erik (Bana). He has trained her since infancy to be the perfect assassin, teaching her several languages and encyclopaediac information – but denying her any contact with the outside world.

When Hanna decides she is “ready”, she presses a button on an old transmitter to alert a shadowy organisation to her presence. Erik, who has prepared her for this moment, immediately flees to Germany and arranges to meet her there later, while she waits for her unknown enemies. After killing a couple of the armed forces who show up to collect her, she is taken to a research facility from which she almost immediately escapes.

Hanna befriends another teen while on the run, and integrates herself into their hippyish family – but soon the baddies are back on her trail again.

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THE FLAW

There’s a key moment where Hanna is hiding under a bed, and goes to considerable lengths to make sure that the Ultimate Big Bad, Marissa Wiegler (Blanchett), doesn’t find her.

If Hanna is such a kick-ass assassin, why doesn’t she just grab Blanchett’s legs and pull her onto the floor and then kill her? She’s already demonstrated that she can kill with her bare hands.

There are numerous moments when she has the opportunity to kill, and yet she doesn’t take it – despite it being made clear that she has very little in the way of empathy or fear.

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HOW IT WOULD HAVE ENDED

Hanna grabs the bad lady’s feet, flips her on her back and snaps her neck – thereby ending this poorly-paced and badly directed wasted opportunity about half an hour earlier than its eventual, spluttering halt.

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THE VERDICT

Despite an excellent cast and enjoyable Chemical Brothers soundtrack, the sloppy pacing and plot holes ruin everything. Him Indoors reckoned it “scraped one star”, whereas I’d have given it a moderately watchable two stars. Neither indicates a very good film, and that’s disappointing. Still, it’s 71% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes indicates our low opinion is in the minority. Perhaps other people were more willing to be baffled.

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Another painfully obvious choice. There are a few curveballs later in the list, trust me.

You have to remember that rock music pretty much sounded like this

or this

so the Chilis genuinely were remarkable when they came along.

Although Taste The Pain

was the first song I heard by them, Give It Away was, I felt, the moment when it all came together. There was always something slightly weird about them, which really worked. Even the early singles of their later Dad-Rock phase worked pretty well, though it’s been a long while since they did anything good. This, though, reminds me just how good they really were.

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What’s with the floppy hair? Hmm. OK, so RE6 has been given a 20 November release date, which might give me enough time to play one through five. What? I haven’t played any of the Resident Evil games? In my defence, I’ve started to, but I just can’t get on with the mechanics. 

Don’t get me wrong – I loved watching RE5, and thought it was a spectacular-looking game. The films are trashily enjoyable, and there’s really no reason I shouldn’t count the highly-regarded Resident Evil 4 among my favourite ever games – except that they have this stupid system where you’re pinned to the spot when aiming. I mean, what’s with that? Will they ever change that? Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS does indeed apparently dispense with the nailed-to-the-floor style of gameplay, so there’s hope. (It would also help if they didn’t have the limited ammo and crappy inventory – both of which proved immensely frustrating.)

The official blurb, which suggests that the president is himself a zombie (aren’t they always?):

It has been ten years since the Raccoon City incident and the President of the United States has decided to reveal the truth behind what took place in the belief that it will curb the current resurgence in bioterrorist activity. Due to be by the President’s side is his personal friend and Raccoon City survivor, Leon S. Kennedy, but when the venue suffers a bioterrorist attack, Leon is forced to face a President transformed beyond recognition and make his hardest ever decision. At the same time, Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance member Chris Redfield arrives in China, itself under threat of a bioterrorist attack. With no country safe from these attacks and the ensuing outbreaks, the entire world’s population is united by a common fear that there is no hope left.

Again: if most people are zombies, then what do zombies eat when they can’t get zombies? Other zombies?

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This might surprise you, but I don’t really read fantasy fiction. You might have gleaned otherwise from the slew of Terry Pratchett and JK Rowling books on my shelf, but those are two of the most widely-read authors in Britain. I’m not much of a reader lately, but my go-to fare is more of the Michael Crichton variety. I enjoy clean, efficient, unobtrusive prose – which also explains the few Stephen King books that share that shelf.

So that’s the real reason for the Greg Keyes novels, which came recommended from a friend. When I heard he was writing the Elder Scrolls spin-off books, I instantly understood why he’d been chosen, since his world and Bethesda’s are so similar as to seem interchangeable. What they share is a mundane sense of the magical – its presence is as low-key and matter-of-fact as the sci-fi in Battlestar Galactica. What’s kept in the foreground is the real drama of a highly-charged political situation, and the carnage of its graphically-described battle scenes. In that, it’s closer to one of the many dramatisations of the Tudor royals than your usual Elves-and-sorcery nonsense.  The first novel, The Briar King, starts with a prologue battle as the slave-queen Virgenya overthrows her oppressors. Centuries later, her descendant Anne is a wilful brat who is forced to escape a murderous plot. The four novels cover her transformation into the “Born Queen” for the inevitable showdown.

One of the notable features of the saga is that it eschews the standard LOTR-style fantasy lore and instead invents its own monsters and magic. This makes the quadrilogy one of the most unique and memorable I’ve encountered. This is against the backdrop of a richly detailed and convincing setting.

The thing I particularly like, as I mentioned in opening, is the writing style, which is what I’d refer to as “prose script” – it’s almost like a screenplay and is of the variety that makes you forget that you’re reading. It’s the antithesis of the jarring overstylisation that plagues many acclaimed writers – I’d rather find myself so engrossed in the action that I’m no longer aware that I’m reading text off a page.

I know a book is good if I find myself staying up half the night to finish reading it, and there were many bleary-eyed three-a.m. sessions with these.

As you’d expect, if you’re a fan of fantasy, give these a whirl – but equally if you’re not, you’ll likely enjoy them too.

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This hilarious spoof news broadcast was among the items I bought with my Christmas money. What’s truly frightening is that only the fashion dates it – television is just as banal and irritating nearly 20 years on. Created by comedians Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci, it started out as a radio show called On The Hour before being adapted for television.

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What I most remember is the spot-on parody of MTV. Even though the music has moved on, the stereotypes are still just as wryly accurate now.

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