Dexy’s Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
Soundtrack to growing up
My parents were on the whole a bit crap when it comes to the Eighties . Not from drugs; my mum was on the other side of the world and my dad revealed to me he managed to melt a vinyl of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, which I can never forgive him for. But they pulled it together for this song, which is one of my first music memories. Dad with a beer in his hand, down on one knee and dancing to this with me. He still does it now when we get drunk at family reunions.

My Chemical Romance - Welcome To The Black Parade
Becoming an emo kid
It’s the winter of 2006 and I’m watching Top Of The Pops, ready to eagerly soak up the normal RnB/dance chart shit. On come My Chemical Romance, clad in their faux military gear and deathly pale make up, and the marching band beat begins. This is it, I think. This moment sparks years of too much eyeliner, hanging round in the square in town looking miserable and only-Gerard-Way-can-understand-me angst. Sometimes, I bring out the Meg Massacre photos for a good laugh

The Smiths - This Charming Man 
Began listening to decent music
Where would I have been if my friend hadn’t put The Best of The Smiths on my iPod for me? I shudder to think. There is something about Marr’s jangly guitars and Morrissey’s voice that is just perfect on this song. I discovered The Smiths late, when I was about 17 and, like the previous emo kid stage, this sparked years of too many vintage jumpers, hanging around parties drinking wine in the corner looking miserable and only-Morrissey-can-understand-me-angst (a stage that is still ongoing I reckon).

Los Campesinos! - You! Me! Dancing!
Soundtrack all the exams and summers
If I could pick the entirety of LC!’s back catalogue then I would because their lyrics are so witty and they just sing about everyday things like thinking it’s a good idea to dance in a fountain when you are drunk. I think I’ve listened to LC! more than any other band over the past summers and Gareth, Kim, Rob et al have been there with all my made up romances, pre-festival excitements, kissing the wrong person at parties, getting too drunk, break ups and just being really bored. But this song in particular reminds me of being locked in a room revising for GCSEs, AS and A Levels, listening to this song and fantasizing about all the summer fun we are going to have. Of course, summer is never really as good as you remember it when you get nostalgic and listen to songs like this.

Franz Ferdinand - No You Girls
I first heard this song on the MTV “scripted reality” series The Hills. Its catchy/dancey lyrics caught my attention right away and I quickly downloaded Franz Ferdinand’s three albums. I was hooked. Franz Ferdinand have been my favorite band since 2009 and this song really hit home due to the lyrics “No you boys never care How the girl feels”. This song can relate to both boys and girls; boys are confusing to girls and girls are confusing to boys. Because of this song/band, my favorite type of music is alternative rock and Brit-pop. Before hearing this type of music, I’d listen to Kiss 108 and everyone knows that’s not real music anymore. You cannot stay in a bad mood when listening to Franz Ferdinand’s songs. They’re so uplifting and elegant.

Trapped Under Ice - Stay Cold
I started listening to hardcore because of an ex-boyfriend. He was always angry and he said this music helped to release your anger. He and I would always fight and I was sick of it so I downloaded Trapped Under Ice’s whole Stay Cold album. The first song I listened to was the title track; the lyrics “You can’t hurt me anymore/I stay cold forevermore/So alone/But you can’t hurt me anymore” meant so much to me. It taught me that you don’t need a relationship to be happy. You don’t have to let someone in. You can be by yourself and be okay. I understood why my ex listened to that music. After that, I downloaded a bunch of hardcore songs. Hardcore kids stand for something and they come together because they have no one else because no one understands why they’re cold-hearted.

The Beatles - Come Together
Yes, the typical first Beatles song. I was watching Across the Universe, a musical that used Beatles tracks. It goes without saying that these covers weren’t as good as the originals but the lyrics were gained an extra something; they were simple, yet lovely. “Come Together”’s lyrics didn’t make much sense to me, along with many other Beatles’ songs, but who doesn’t love The Beatles? I am now a Fab Four fanatic. My room is covered in Beatles’ posters and I’ve gotten a few of my friends to get into them as well. I have 110 songs of them on my iPod. In my opinion, no one can ever compare to The Beatles. Even the songs that don’t make sense are wonderful. The Beatles have showed me that older music is good too. I love artists such as Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and Frank Sinatra because of The Beatles.

Skrillex - Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites
This is the first electronic dubstep song I’ve ever listened to. At first I wasn’t a fan because I thought a good song had to require lyrics. Dubstep and electronic songs helped me get through depression because I love to dance and these types of songs are great to dance to. The fact that dubstep songs have little to no lyrics helps you because you don’t have to think about anything, you just flow with the music.

Aerosmith - Walk This Way
I’ve been listening to Aerosmith since I was in a car seat. They’re my dad’s favorite band. When I became a teenager, I asked my dad if I could borrow his Aerosmith CDs; the rock legends has opened up the door to classic bands such as Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, and Metallica. On June 26th I’m seeing Alice Cooper/Iron Maiden because of this type of music.

“This is a story of boy meets girl.”

So says the narrator in the opening sequence of (500) Days of Summer; “but you should know up front, this is not a love story”. This could refer to any number of themes within the film, such as gender role-reversal between Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) and Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) or the fact that the ideology of ‘love’ in romantic comedies is not adhered to. On the other hand, it could mean that from the beginning of the film, the audience is aware that this is not a classic linear narrative as often found in romantic comedies; it is quite literally not a love story. Instead, those of you who have seen the film will know its non-chronological structure uses each scene as one day in Tom & Summer’s five hundred day long relationship. But is this narrative structure merely a gimmick as some critics have suggested or an innovative choice that refreshes the long-stale romantic comedy genre?

For starters, the characters are quite unconventional in the romcom world. Okay, they’re still young, white and attractive, but that’s Hollywood’s problem. You’ll see very few indie kids/hipsters in a big romantic comedy; there won’t be any mention on The Smiths either, and the lead couple won’t be seen shouting “PENIS!” in a crowded park. Perhaps the ever-growing cult popularity of the film is partially responsible to mainstream taking a bit more notice of alternatives to the norm.

One other thing that (500) Days does differently is that shows the difference between the content of what is told to us in the narration and what is shown onscreen. For instance, very early on in the film, we see a scene between Tom and Summer; they’re sat on a bench, holding hand and smiling at each other with an engagement ring on Summer’s finger. This one shot, along with the evidence that this comes late on in film’s “timeline” connotes the intimacy and the happy ending we’re used to seeing in romcoms. But hang on a second, haven’t we just been told that there is no happy ending for these two? Already, (500) Days is playing with and creating conflict between is shown and told, audience expectations and narrative conventions.

This conflict sustained throughout and also used for comedy value. Take one of the film’s most iconic scenes; after the couple have sex for the first time Day 34, Tom walks to work, soundtracked by Hall & Oates’ “You Make My Dreams”, as passers-by begin a dance number. There’s lip-syncing, cheesy dance moves, Disney birds and a Han Solo cameo; it’s what every guy (would like to) experience after sex with the girl of their dreams. Tom finally reaches work, enters the lift just as the doors close, and when they open again an intertitle transports us to Day 300, giving us a wonderful jump cut to a downbeat, bedraggled, post-breakup Tom shuffling out of that same lift. This has a comedic effect as Tom has gone from overwhelmingly happy to depressed in a short space of time, swung from one emotional extreme to the other; but also creates tradegy and sympathy for Tom. Anyone can relate to that just-dumped feeling. By using intertitles, to pass the time quickly and to compare & contrast, the film undermines Tom’s fantasy of love as fleeting. The notion of everlasting love, which romantic comedies thrive on, has been undermined.

And this is not the only way that the film’s structure undermines Tom’s view of love (gained from a total misreading of The Graduate). The narrator tells us toward the beginning of the film that “most days of the year are unremarkable… most days have no impact on the course of a life”; but because the film is cut up into segments of days, it exaggerates how each day does in fact have an impact on the overall course of the characters’ romance and lives. The audience has more awareness of Tom and his actions than Tom himself. Often this invokes dramatic irony, making Tom’s viewpoint within the film redundant since, unlike the audience, he is not aware of the causality between the different narrative days. For instance, early in the film on Day 154, a montage of images of Summer is narrated by Tom pointing out the different aspects of Summer he loves; “I love her smile. I love her hair. I love her knees. I love how she licks her lips before she talks. I love her heart-shaped birthmark on her neck. I love it when she sleeps” and declaring he loves her. Later in the film, on Day 32, the same montage is repeated, except now Tom hates all these things about Summer he saw positively before (“I HATE THIS SONG!”). As the character of Rachel, Tom’s little sister and probably the wisest person in the film, suggests to Tom, once their romance is over he becomes an unreliable narrator, remembering only the good things, and nothing he doesn’t want to. Perhaps this is the purpose behind the film’s narrative structure; to show the ambiguity and absurdity of the love story through informing the audience moreso than the main characters.

As well as changing the audiences’ ideas of the love ‘story’, (500) Days challenges critics too. One complaint from those who enjoy romcoms is that critics of the genre place too much emphasis and focus on the memorable happy ending, with the rest of the narrative disappearing from critical discussion, especially of the middle section. By placing the events of Tom & Summer’s romance in non-linear structure, the film in fact places importance of the oft-forgotten middle section. Unlike conventional linear films, the audience has to actively link the events in the middle of the film and organise them into a linear sequence within their own minds in order to create the overall story; making some sense of what they’re seeing on screen. A prime example of this is the reappearance of Day 488 at the end of the film. Beforehand, this had alluded to the stereotypical ‘romcom happy ending’ for the couple. It not until this scene is shown again that the true interpretation of the ending and the overall story can be pieced together; we’ve already been told Summer is engaged to someone other than Tom, a short while after the two broke up. When you look at Day 488 for a second time, you begin to notice the mise-en-scene of the autumnal setting; the grey clouds and the character’s black outfits suggests an unhappy ending, if we believe the standard romcom rules.

Yet, in some ways (500) Days is still your typical love ‘story’. I would argue that it can only try to break from the normal narrative structure because the conventions, cliches and tropes of romantic comedies as well as classic linear romances has been so thoroughly repeated, so the audience already has pre-conceived assumptions and expectations. The narrative structure of romantic comedies have been described as tired and predictable, widely depicted as slavish and formulaic, adhering to well-worn and obvious conventions. It’s the simple equation of “boy meets girl; boy and girl face obstacles in their union; boy and girl conquer obstacles to find true love”; it’s essentially Romeo & Juliet… without the suicidal ending. Let’s not forget that the narrator reminds us “this is not a story of boy meets girl” showing the film’s awareness of such narrative conventions through the use of three simple words. However, it is only because an audience is to this familiar narrative structure, and furthermore the linear narrative structure in most films, that (500) Days of Summer can subvert this. Like another alt-romantic comedy of recent years, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, it eschews the preoccupations of the rom-com even while being understood as belonging to the genre, and this can mostly be accredited to its non-linear narrative structure.

So is (500) Days gimmicky? Toby Young, critic and source writer of another conventional/unconventional romcom in How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, commented that “taking the best bits from other movies and rearranging them in a non-linear sequence does not make for an original film”. Either way, (500) Days of Summer has prompted questions of the love ‘story’ and we can only look at films in the future to see if it will reinvigorate the genre.

More “Highway To Hell” than “Stairway To Heaven”, Rock of Ages might possibly be the funniest film I have seen all year, but not intentionally. First of all, I’d like to apologise to everyone in Screen 12 for the 21:15 showing at the Cornerhouse i Nottingham last night for our whispering, giggling, snorting and generally trying really really hard to suppress laughter, not at the scripted jokes, but during the serious, dramatic bits. I’m sorry. You should ask for a refund for our disruptive behaviour (or for the fact that Rock of Ages is rubbish) but you should have been listening to our commentary.

Because this is the problem with Rock of Ages: when it tries to be funny, on the whole it’s not. But when the film attempts to seriously (albeit slightly cheesily and in a clichéd manner) to talk about how “rock and roll will not die” and “sticking it to the man”, it’s bloody hilarious. The opening sequence in The Bourbon Room looks like how my Nan would imagine a gig to look like or somebody making a very poor music video for Ke$ha. Everybody having supposedly wild, raucous fun, chugging on bottles of Jack Daniel’s and swinging from every available raised surface, but with it all looking a bit too squeaky clean and choreographed; it’s rock with out the edge; it’s the good time that nobody actually ever has in real life.

“Is it going to be cheesy?” whispered my friend as the credits roll up. Well, yeah, I thought, it’s a musical and so you have to give it a bit of leeway in the cheese department and be a bit open-minded. No one breaks out into song any time they show any vague emotion, e.g. Hairspray, director and producer Adam Shankman’s previous song ‘n’ dance affair, which I actually quite enjoyed, and even goth favourite Nightmare Before Christmas has a whiff of cheese about it. But Hairspray got the balance right between the clichéd teenage dream of TV and the serious issue of intergration, racism and not judging by appearance. Plus, its lead character, dance numbers and casting of Zac Efron were targeted at tweenagers without being too close High School Musical. In comparison, I’m left wondering who Rock of Ages’ done-to-death clichés of rock and roll are for. Definitely no one who has actually lived and experienced the late ’80s hard rock scene like main player Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise), who are in it mainly for a bit of a nostalgia trip. You can’t imagine Mick Jagger or even Axl Rose genuinely calling someone his “rock and roll brother”, can you? Instead, it’s probably aimed at those a few years younger than the naive central couple Drew and Sherrie (Diego Boneta and Julianne Hough, respectively), one of whom has just moved to LA from Olkhoma and ends up being a stripper, and the other a wannabe rocker who ends up in a boy band. I still think Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens were more genuine.

Maybe if Rock of Ages had been brave, taking the piss out of itself a bit more and been a bit more satirical, it could have passed for a good film. At times it manages it, like Alec Baldwin’s club manager Dennis Dupree saying to Sherrie “Let me guess, it has always been your dream to sing. In high school, you played the lead role in Sound of Music and someone, probably your Aunt Betty told that you had some ‘real talent’ so you dumped your jock boyfriend and moved to LA to find fame.” 

Another big problem with Rock of Ages is that Stacee Jaxx is supposed to “spew out three things: Sex, hateful music, and…sex!”. But Tom Cruise just isn’t sexy. I know he was at some point; I have seen Top Gun and Interview With The Vampire but this is not an ageist thing. Probably because old rock stars don’t have that much sex appeal until you see them perform and Tom Cruise just never quite performs in this film. He walks around shirtless and swaggering, like someone trying too hard to be sexy, and if high school taught us anything, it’s that trying too hard is neither cool nor sexy. Maybe it’s the stiff wife, the Scientology image, the couch jumping, the continuing list of bad films… I just can’t accept him being sexy. I’m now going to list Tom Cruise or any likeness to him as one of my biggest turn offs. And the film tries to be raunchy but just gets it all wrong- take for example the ‘sex scene’ between Jaxx and reporter Constance Sack (Malin Akerman). They gyrate and grope for a bit in an intentionally hilarious manor, and then it cuts to another scene. That would have been all well and good, and complaint with the PG-13 certificate, if they had left it at that. Instead, they then cut back to the two of them still in their underwear, complete with post-coital panting and “that…was….so…good”. Hang about, they managed to achieve orgasms whilst still 100% fully clothed and minus penetration? “Are we missing something?” friend and I whisper to one another. “That’s how you have sex? We’ve been doing it ALL wrong!”. Cue more inappropriate for cinema laughter.

In the end though, Rock of Ages stops being so bad it’s funny to just being bad. As one of the film’s championing songs, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Belivin’ points out, it goes on and on and on and on. The minute the final credits rolled up, me and a friend said right on cue “God, let’s go get a strong drink now” and “I need a cigarette immediately”. Not because we were inspired by the rock ‘n’ roll behaviour but because we were bored.

Some of you will berate me and call me a hater for not being ‘in the spirit of things’ and ‘having a laugh’ which is what musicals are ‘supposed to be all about’ and ‘not taken seriously’. Trust me, I had a laugh, but at Rock of Ages, not with it.

girl-interrupting

How do a poor, white, trailer trash family in trouble, make $50,000 quickly? Chris Smith’s (Emile Hirsch) answer is to hire the titular Killer Joe (Matthew McConaughey), a corrupt cop with a job on the side bumping people off for a small fee and get him kill his mother in order to claim the insurance money. So far, so predictable crime thriller. That is, Joe claims Chris’s younger sister, the slightly mad Dotty (Juno Temple) as his ‘retainer’ and it all starts to become a bit weird. Not so predictable thriller now eh?

Well, one genre the trailer for Killer Joe doesn’t scream at you is comedy. Yes, it’s a suspense-filled, ultra-violent crime thriller-cum-redneck Western, but it surprisingly tips the balance with genuinely funny moments. Most of these are at the expense of the stupidity of the Smiths, namely the father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), but the funniest are at the absurdity of this psycho murder mixed in with the everyday. For example: after pummelling someone’s face in, Joe insists they all sit down to dinner as a family and tuck into some chicken wings. Dotty is madly oblivious in her own little world and Chris, noticing his step-mum’s face is covered with blood, simply comments “Sharla, your mascara has run”. There will be blood and, erm, KFC.

It’s as if the psychotic Joe has slowly permeated the family and sent them all a bit mad. Matthew McConaughey, who I have mainly seen strutting around topless in chick flicks like Failure to Launch, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days and this year’s Magic Mike, wouldn’t have been my first choice for Joe based on his track record; I guess being from Texas himself he already had the accent. And yet McConaughey has given what critics are calling “the performance of his career” and I have to agree with them. He plays the part with the cunning of a psychopath who is about charismatic, charming and funny enough for you to laugh at from the safety of the cinema seats, but this merely hides his propensity for violence which ends up being completely shocking. You don’t want to mess with him but, unfortunately, the Smiths have. Emile Hirsch is on form as in the supporting role and Juno Temple doesn’t exactly break away from her ‘kooky’ typecasting, but this is just a minor quibble in comparison to the high standard of acting.

Fans of the sharp, stylish blood, gore and genre-bending styles of Tarantino, Matthew Vaughn and The Coen Brothers will be in for a violent treat. However, what this film highlighted for me when watching was how I respond to violence against women as opposed to violence against men on screen. I had to look away when a woman got punched but I could just about watch a man getting his faced smashed in with a can of Libby’s Pumpkin (an all-American pop culture reference that you will not forget after this). So I’m stuck as to how to describe my favourite film of 2012 so far. The best I can do is: It’s like the modern western world of No Country For Old Men met with the hilarious cartoon violence of Pulp Fiction.