Review: Anna Karenina (film)

Like the sainted Karenin himself, this is an easy film to respect but a tough one to like.

Director Joe Wright and Script writer Tom Stoppard have taken the magic realist approach to AK - most of the film takes place within an endlessly plastic, unfolding theatre. So for example, as the scenery rises and falls, Oblonsky's office of pirouetting bureaucrats gives way to a St Petersburg street scene, to a restaurant and to a formal dinner in quick succession. 

Levin's ascent above the stage into the rafters where the poor live to see his ailing revolutionary of a brother is a great touch. Best of all, the horse race scene where Anna 'falls' publically' takes place in spectacular fashion on stage while the cast watch from the audience.

It not only looks amazing, but it never lets you forget the double artificiality of both fiction and aristocratic Russian life. Levin's rural scenes - the most didactic in the book - are unsuprisingly shot much more naturalistically. An escape from artifice? 

What the film really needed to complement this was inspired casting - a central love triangle equal to the story - and encouragement to emote enough to be heard amid the tricksiness of the story. But Keira Knightly, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Jude Law, while not disgracing themselves, just don't grab the film by the emotional scruff of the neck and make it live amid all this cleverness.

AK can only enhance Joe Wright's reputation as a director, but it's not a film to remember beyond that.

Thoughts on sincerity in metal

Metal places more emphasis on sincerity - sometimes verging on high-minded seriousness -  than I'm used to the ironic world of indie rock (and writing about same).

You hear this sincerity - a reaching for the grand statement - in the length, ambition and technical precision of metal music. You see this sincerity - a curdled Romanticism - in the over-elaborate band names and record sleeves. You read this sincerity - a naive-in-the-best-sense questioning - in its addressing of political and philosophical themes lyrically.

Metal culture embodies a simultaneous reaching for and rejection of sophistication.

All of this is not to say that metal tropes can't be invoked with irony or knowing by its practitioners: for example Steel Panther [cough], but also in another way thrash bands inheriting punk's half-satirical alienation pose. But the scene does not generate its own sly constant auto-critique in the same way that indie or nostalgia rock does.

The mild hazing which passes for interviews in indie circles promotes a self-defensive and ironic relationship towards music and writing about music. 

If indie tends towards being driven by aesthetics and resisting values, does metal tend towards being driven by values and resisting aesthetics? Is indie essentially post-modern while metal remains rooted in the modern?

To illustrate this line of thought, it's worth comparing and contrasting Metal Hammer or Terroriser with The Stool Pigeon or the NME. In metal magazines the artist remains on their pedestal, is subject to reverence, in a way that only the dead or the legendary are in other scenes. It is taken for granted that the band will have something to say - and one of the problems with the writing is that the interviewer rarely drops out of a hagiographical mode.

Over this week, I'll be continuing my writing about metal by enthusing about a few of my favourite acts as well as looking how they relate to this model of sincerity.

All contributions to this chin-stroking free for all most welcome.

Butcher Babies caption competition results

Recently I wrote about Butcher Babies playing to the boob gallery in Metal Hammer and the rather sad things that says about the magazine, the band and the subculture, in that order of culpability.

Spleen vented, I invited you to provide satirical captions for the BB's poster in Metal Hammer, which looked like this.

I said I would include the best three entries, but since only four people entered, I decided to be a merciful judge and not consign one entry to the oblivion of obscurity. 

So, allow me to present your Butcher Babies poster-remixers with awe and gratitude: John, Rachel, Stef and Tom, thank you very much for brightening our day. And a metal NB: the last one is a Motley Crue reference, apparently.

 

5 Links and a Picture - Sunday 1 July

Fake meat: is science fiction on the verge of becoming fact (Guardian Friday 22)

There is a Birmingham Metal Festival. I am eyeing up Infernalfest (22 September) with cautious interest.

Jonathan Coulton on The Decline of Scarcity (via @onlystephan)

"We should have sent the poets" - as much Rio+20 analysis as I can stand to read out of work, courtesy of The Guardian.

Any And All records - Dada attempt to sign everyone so that there will be no more unsigned artists in the world. We like.

And .... rare sighting of Yorkshire Minisaurus in its natural moorland habitat

Los Vengadores!

When a friend went to Bilbao recently, she came back with a back issue of The Avengers in Spanish. And, what is more, a Stan Lee/Jack Kirby original from 1978 (at least in Spanish form)! Here are my favourite panels.

1. A leopard bouncing off Captain America's shield. Great idea, kinetic execution, love the typography

2.Hank Pym/Giantman is so happy to see Captain America return safely from safari that he gives him the bumps. Hank - this is not doing your modern reputation (post-Ultimates) as an overcompensating jerk any favours, mind you.

3. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver have secret identity clothes in the same colours and patterns as their costumes. Genius. Also, and ditto, the Avengers advertise for new recruits in the paper like anyone else.

For some reason (grr Blogger) these next two panels won't upload the right way up, but I loved the surrealism of the hammer-circle in the first and the Kong-isms of the second.

Bonus Butcher Babies feature - satirical caption competition

Recently I wrote about Butcher Babies playing to the boob gallery in Metal Hammer and the rather sad things that says about the magazine, the band and the subculture, in that order of culpability.

In the interest of light relief, I've decided to run a quick caption competition to 'improve' the BB poster the magazine gave away as part of their Road to Download feature. Sometimes satire is a better response than po-faced critique. 

Here's my best attempt so far to get you started.

The rules: no misogyny, be funny, judge's decision final. All suggestions by end Monday 25 June. Best three suggestions included in the blog next week.

This week's links - deconstructing Limp Bizkit and Download

Stop. Being. Tits - awesome article from @Eve_Barlow about depressing, rather coercive culture of boob-flashing at Download. 

"I’m not going to paint a picture of rapey tragedy - some of the girls were up for it (if you consider Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo up for it) but many looked hesitant, almost reluctant and caved into flasherdom at the very last second."

It's good to know someone else - with a considerably bigger readership than me - is flagging up that while metal may be awesome it maybe needs to resit feminism 101 at some point.

And more Download, with a review by Bryce (AKA @Wreckferretzero) parts one and two. 

"On Kyuss: Song. Silence (to get their breath back & drink water). Song. Silence. Song. etc... He did say thank you just as he left the stage. That was it."

 

And finally Richard Warrell (AKA @TheRamblingElf) deconstructs nu-metal through a highly enjoyable academic analysis of Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit

"Instead of offering a full-fledged alternative culture for audiences to immerse themselves in, Limp Bizkit’s nu-metal sound left its ideological definition open and vague, defining itself only as being in opposition to many mainstream, conformist ideals, but not offering any alternative approach."

Somewhere right now, Fred Durst is stroking his chin in ponder-satisfaction.