Wu-Tang Clan at Kentish Town Forum (11 06 11)

Yet another drunken video from a London gig, the Wu-Tang Clan (or should I say Method Man and Friends) delivered a decent performance, minus RZA and Raekwon, which showed that Method man can still do it and that they're still a pretty tight-knit group despite all the years...

Politic 13

Enter the Newground - DJ Kentaro
Introduction - DJ Kentaro
Trust - DJ Kentaro
Chicken Spit/Up to Jah Mash-up - DJ Kentaro
Heard Yer Bird Moved In - Pest
More Styles - The Herbaliser
Put it on Tape - The Herbaliser
Everybody in the Place (Fairground Remix) - The Prodigy
Poison - The Prodigy
Voodoo People - The Prodigy
Moon Sequence - The Herbaliser
Ka Boink!! - The Herbaliser
Up 4 the Get Downs - The Herbaliser
Shattered Soul - The Herbaliser
Another Mother - The Herbaliser
Definition - Black Star
The Bottle - Gil Scott-Heron

DJ Kentaro at XOYO (21 05 11)

Drunken video from Kentaro's gig at XOYO in Shoreditch last Saturday...

Attack the Block

British film is often criticised and many will say that we just don’t make good films in this country. And to an extent, this is correct. Many are made by those that have worked wonders in television, but simply can’t make an entertaining piece when moving to the big screen. Others are overly-sentimental and serve as DVD -fodder for Mother’s Day presents.

Another man making the switch from a career in TV and radio to film is Joe Cornish, making his directorial debut with ‘Attack the Block’. Part of the film-obsessed duo Adam and Joe, it would always be interesting to see what he would produce, and what he has is an enjoyable little piece in ‘Attack the Block’.

Set in South London (oh my days, blood!), the story is about a group of teenagers – with typically poor grammar – trying to defend their tower block from an alien invasion. Typically British, it’s more of a small-scale piece, not overly doing it with special effects and unnecessary drama. The dialogue provides intentional laughs, in a Kidulthood kind-of-a-way, with largely silly characters and situations.  

Joe Cornish will probably not set the cinema world alight, and could easily face a similar path to that of Simon Pegg, starting with a nice, small-scale piece with quality beginning to decline as the budgets and fame increase. But at this stage, ‘Attack the Block’ is harmless fun, with some good comedy moments, elements of some interesting directorial talent and an addition to the recent wave of successful British television makers making the step into film.

Compared to an equally-silly American comedy, this will probably get nowhere near critically or financially acclaimed, with people likely to make the age-old comment that the British just don’t make good films. But being that the comedy is very British, it is probably more due to the lack of international appeal that the film will probably achieve than poor quality. Jokes here are more expected on BBC Three than a cinema screen, and so will miss with many expecting Hollywood shine. And because of that, the British are unlikely to be making a mass invasion in cinemas throughout the world.

13 Assassins

Another year, another film, another new style of film-making from Miike Takashi. This time, the samurai epic.

So, obviously this film is very similar to that of Kurasawa Akira’s ‘Seven Samurai’. A samurai is tasked with a mission, and so has to hastily pulled together a crack team of samurai, of different characters, culminating with a epic battle in a small Japanese village. All pretty solid, standard stuff.

This time round it’s the pervy weirdo Lord Naritsugu that is the bad guy; ordered to be assassinated by his Shogun half-brother. This leads samurai Shinzaemon to seek out a team to carry out the Shogun’s decree, plotting the head him off at a small village. And so goes the first hour of the two hour film.

After preparing for battle, the second hour is then an all-out sword-fest, with the kind of fight scenes that took months of choreographed planning rather than split-second decisions in the face of death. And impressive it is, often exhilarating as the 13 heroes take on over 200 hundred useless henchmen who politely wait to be killed one-by-one.

The first half is not your typical Miike fodder, filmed as any mainstream epic would typically be, but the second half has more of a bloody and violent feel that you would more expect. Serious moments can appear a little comical in places – perhaps one of Miike’s flaws, hindering from  being as revered as his peers – and there is little real character development here among the 13 titular roles. Unlike ‘Seven Samurai’ where the team is considered and thoughtfully put together, here samurai appear here and there, and little is known of them bar their name, with Miike preferring the audience to enjoy their bloody demise rather than create any empathy for them.

But like many of his films before, while all are different is style and content, they all have that little element that makes them typically Miike; mixing both comedy-violence and a sense of disbelief at what you have just seen. While neither his best, nor the best samurai epic ever filmed, it is a joy to see that Miike can make a more serious, accessible film after many years and an extended filmography of gore.

Cold Fish

‘I hope you like cold fish’ is probably the sexiest thing I’ll ever hear a French girl say.


Completely out of context, ‘Cold Fish’ is the latest work of ‘Love Exposure’ director, Sion Sono. Being that it is over four hours long – and not even I can be arsed to sit through a film for that long – I have never seen ‘Love Exposure’, and so this was my first experience of Sono‘s work.

The old ‘based on a true story’, then grossly exaggerated for cinema premise, we see boring, dull, pet fish shop owner, Shamoto and his family’s lives turned upside down when the big and brash, tropical fish shop owner, Murata walks into them.


What follows is a pretty standard offering, with violence, blood and sex thrown in for ‘shocks’, and it’s all pretty entertaining, in a popcorn-movie kind of a way. Despite being another long film, it rarely drags, with some nice camerawork to contrast industrial Japan in the shadow of Fuji-san.


There are attempts to add the odd psychological element here and there, though these never get too deep, as ‘Cold Fish’ plods along its dirty, sexy, bloody way. Don’t search for any hidden meanings here; there’s; little fishy about this one.

15 Storeys High

One month and one day ago I had just checked-in to the Grand Arc Hanzomon Hotel in Tokyo. Getting the lift up to the 15^th floor (Japanese 15^th floor), I then placed my bags down, showered and sat wondering how to spend the last night of my trip to Japan.

Within seconds, the decision was made for me.

Standing in the middle of my room, I began to feel the floor beneath my feet sway. It was not too dissimilar to the feeling I get when a double-decker bus goes past. But, the swaying began to get bigger and bigger. Soon, the whole room was moving as my balance was rapidly declining. I was able to catch a quick glance out to the National Theatre next door; people were streaming out, before I was thrown on to the bed. It was then that it hit me: This was an earthquake!

The next few minutes were blurry and shaky and probably against all earthquake safety advice, as I clambered out of my room into the hallway.

Making my way down the fire escape, as the building was still swaying; it was like a platform game, having to move various obstacles off the stairwell to free my path. I’ve never made my way down 14 flights of stairs so fast.

What then followed was confusion: What has just happened? How big has this been? Where do I go? The calm and polite staff carried on with their roles; a smiling, middle-aged man insisting the building was ‘earthquake-proof’. But, as an ignorant foreigner, from a land where natural disasters equate to heavy rain, I still felt unsure as the aftershocks kept coming.

After an evening of sitting in the hotel’s banquet rooms and a night of constant aftershocks back in my 15^th floor room, I went down to the reception area the next morning to find the strangest of things:  A girl blowing up helium balloons for what appeared to be a wedding. And indeed, having checked-out and sitting in the lobby area before moving on, there was indeed a wedding in the hotel that very morning.

Also that morning, looking out of my window to see if the traffic jams out of Tokyo remained, I saw only joggers and the occasional car going passed. In fact, I saw a number of joggers.  

There were a lot of joggers in Japan, particularly as my hotels were next to Osaka-jo Koen and the Imperial Palace. All warps of life; all ages, shapes and sizes. The Nihon-jin go for a jog. So, they were damned if they were to let a major international disaster prevent them from their Saturday routine.

While the signs of the previous day’s event were apparent: Shops disposed of supplies; disrupted transport services; Tokyo’s bustling streets not quite as busy, life, to an extent, carried on as normal. While some left the city, others remained and went to work as if any other day.

Before I went to Japan, a friend sent me a link to the BBC Three situation-comedy series ’15 Storeys High’.  Like most things on BBC Three when I was at University, I missed it. But, starring Sean Lock, whom I like, I had often perused the DVD case.

When back from Japan, I ordered the DVD online for the nice price of £5. I then proceeded to watch it over and over, enjoying its slow pace and deadpan humour, as you’d expect from Sean Lock.

Mixing, as it does, the situation-comedy of Vince, a moody, sour-faced life guard, and his scared-of-life lodger, Errol, and the sketch comedy of the lives of the other residents of the Kennington tower block in which it is set, the show has a great balance and fresh feel.

Well acted by Sean Lock and Benedict Wong throughout, ’15 Storeys High’ follows the route of most British sit-coms, looking at the dull and depressing lives of two men that live together. ‘Peep Show’ has its point-of-view perspective; ‘The Office’ has its documentary style; ‘The Thick of It’ has its fly-on-the-wall feel; and ’15 Storeys High’ has its mix with sketches of the lives of others that you would never normally see.

Probably not a typical snapshot of life in a tower block, ’15 Storeys High’ does show the varied lives of those living in Britain today, with a very British sense of humour.

Some have criticised the Japanese attitude upon my return to London, but if an event like this were to happen here there would be widespread panic that would be at the detriment to all. One only has to look at the mass panic-buying of supplies when a few inches of snow fell to see how the British would struggle with a major earthquake, tsunami and threat of radiation. For that the Japanese have to be admired.

With widespread damage, money and possessions lay strewn across the land, yet police in Miyagi Prefecture have reported rates of much higher than usual handing-in of money found. Despite all that has happened, life will carry on as ever; the normality perhaps providing comfort to those whose lives have been affected.

I’m able to sit here, now on the other side of the planet, watching progress of the situation, able to comment on comedy series that I have watched and enjoyed, as my life is as it was before. But, with further earthquakes hitting Japan and the nuclear threat being raised to maximum, no one can say what will happen next. One hopes the end is soon, and that the Japanese resolve will not need be tested further.

Ban, the dog found 3 weeks after the earthquake, floating on debris a mile out to sea, sets the example for the rest of the world. Ganbatte!