Movie Review: Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces), by Pedro Almodóvar.

Broken Embraces has, by all accounts, all the ingredients that have made the recent string of Almodóvar movies great: women and men on the verge of a nervous break-down, passion, drama, death and Penélope Cruz. This time around, 'though, the mix doesn't ignite: the movie ends up making for a boring two hours.

The plot involves Mateo (Lluís Homar), a blind script writer and former movie director who reveals to his young collaborator the story of how, some 14 years ago, he was involved in a passionate love affair with Lena (Penélope Cruz), the actress in his last movie and also the girl friend of the rich old tycoon producing the movie. The love story turns into drama when the tycoon finds out about their affair, leading eventually to a death and to the loss of Mateo's eye sight.

Along the way, Almodóvar offers us a string of cinematic gimmicks such as movies-in-movies and, in Lena, countless references to classic divas and film roles, from Audrey Hepburn to Kim Novak. The styling is perfect as ever, and Penélope Cruz a joy to watch. There are also the type of surreal scenes that Almodóvar excels in, such as when a lip reader reads back to the tycoon the none-too-flattering remarks about him spoken by Lena on a surveillance tape.

Where the movie goes wrong, 'though, is in the plotting. Too much time is wasted in unimportant details in the present-tense story line, leaving too little room for the supposedly passionate love story in the flashback scenes. The illicit affair is jumped into with hardly any build-up; and apart from two or three scenes where we see the couple involved in passionate kissing, the passion is mostly talked about (and talked about and talked about) or happens offstage, behind closed doors.

Broken Embraces thus never lives up to its potential, ending up as a movie that talks about passion but fails to deliver it. The most disappointing of Almodóvar's movies since High Heels.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Music Review: Manafon, by David Sylvian

In order to appreciate David Sylvian's new album Manafon (or to at least understand where it's coming from), one shouldn't attribute to it the labels usually attached to Sylvian, or to his co-musicians on this album. Alternative, rock, pop, free jazz, electronica: all these categories don't fit. In a recent interview, David Sylvian explained that he wanted to create music chamber. And that is exactly what Manafon is: contemporary classical chamber music.

Conceived as a sequel or a companion piece to 2003's Blemish, the album on which Sylvian broke the most radically with his pop/rock-past, Manafon is built around improvised music recorded in three sessions held in Vienna (with, among others, Christian Fennesz and the members of the contemporary classical music group Polwechsel), Tokyo and London. Sylvian then wrote and added the lyrics to the music over a span of a few hours, without doing a lot of refining or reworking - his style of improvisation, as he puts it in this interview.

The album opens with its most accessible piece, Small Metal Gods (the only track likely to get some radio airplay); but is followed immediately by The Rabbit Skinner, which is arguably the most inaccessible track on the album. On this track, as on the next, Random Acts of Senseless Violence, the discordant nature of the music is heightened by Sylvian's vocals going not with, but against, the instrumental improvisations. On other pieces this is not the case: here the vocals are woven into the instrumental tapestry and become a part of it, such as on Snow White in Appalachia or the title track - although, when vocals and instruments do come together, it feels more like a chance meeting than a deliberate one. Apart from Sylvian's voice, the one constant factor in the instrumental set-up is Christian Fennesz's guitar and his harsh-sounding, but very organic-feeling, electronic effects. These effects create a structure which holds the various pieces together in much the same way that Sylvian's voice does, by adding a very rewarding resonance to the discordant electronic or acoustic sounds of the other musicians.

Small Metal Gods is the only piece told in the first person, and thus, most likely, the most auto-biographical, featuring lines like "Small metal gods /From a casting line / From a factory in Mumbai / [...] Cheap souvenirs / You’ve abandoned me for sure / I’m dumping you, my childish things / I’m evening up the score" which leave me wondering to what degree the song is a refutation of the Hinduist/Buddhist philosophies that Sylvian has embraced over the last decade or more.

The remaining eight tracks are basically short stories or narrative poems told in the third person - something of a departure from deeply auto-biographical works such as Blemish. Although this form of lyrics was already present on some of the tracks of the Nine Horses album Snow Borne Sorrow, such as on its masterpiece, Atom and Cell, the lyrics here are less focused, more meandering and more mysterious - a consequence no doubt of the quasi-improvisational manner in which they were written. The lyrics are, much like the music, a reflection on the creative process in times of disillusionment. As Sylvian puts it in an introduction to the album, “Maybe I’m attracted to the stories of individuals who search for meaning on their own terms.” A meaning found in creativity outside the beaten paths, as illustrated in the title piece, about Welsh poet, nationalist and clergyman R.S. Thomas (Manafon being the Welsh town where Thomas was rector).

In summary, then, Manafon is what David Sylvian intended it to be, chamber music full of the discordant, atonal sounds in which some people only hear noise, and in which others find a different kind of beauty; music and lyrics who may be lost on some but end up rewarding and satisfying to others, especially those who take the time to listen and re-listen to it.

My rating: 5 out of 5.

Manafon is published by Samadhi Sound, both as a regular CD and a deluxe edition which also includes a DVD with the documentary “Amplified Gesture” (Note: the deluxe edition seems to be sold out already).

The website www.manafon.com includes interviews, track excerpts, a trailer for “Amplified Gesture” and a video for "Small Metal Gods."

Movie Review: District 9

Maybe it does take the name of a Hollywood name like Peter Jackson to catapult a non-Hollywood science fiction movie like District 9 into the awareness of international critics and viewers, but so much the better. This is one movie that deserves the hype that is currently building up around it.

District 9 tells, in mock-documentary style, the story of a middle-management operative, Wikus van der Merwe, who is pushed into the leading role of evacuating over a million aliens from District 9, the shantytown camp near Johannesburg, where the creatures have been held since appearing in a giant derelict space craft some twenty years ago. As Wikus leads the operation with a mixture of bureaucratic correctness and utter despise for the insect-like creatures, he becomes exposed to a chemical substance from the space craft and from then on slowly mutates into one of the creatures himself; whereupon he finds himself being a prisoner of his employer for the very reason that his altered DNA can trigger the alien weapons which a human cannot. What follows is a story told before, of a man who becomes what he despises most, and ends up having to ally with his former enemies against his former allies.

The story, written and directed by South African born Neill Blomkamp, is an obvious allegory of his country's apartheid past, and possibly also a comment on the xenophobic riots from a couple of years ago which left several migrant workers from South Africa's neighbouring countries killed by an angry mob. The use of a pseudo-documentary style is convenient for showing how far ingrained the racism towards the aliens has become in humans, with little or no sympathy being shown for the creatures throughout all the strata of human society. In this, I was reminded of the treatment that Romanian gypsies currently receive in many European countries, where media, right-wing politicians and un-reflected hearsay contribute to a deep but vague feeling of antipathy, accompanied by openly racist legislation in a number of EU countries, towards this 'alien' people right in our midst.

With its tight plotting, the movie manages to generate a feeling of unease that it does not relent throughout most of its duration, although some of it is mitigated through the cathartic shoot-out at the end. Wikus's mutation into an insect-like alien is highly reminiscent of David Cronenberg's The Fly; I found this not the only similarity to Cronenberg's movies - the said sense of unease and the slightly surreal, claustrophobic atmosphere are other common traits.

I also liked the fact the aliens were truly that - alien - for pretty much most of the film. Despite the human names the aliens were given, the creatures shared very few human traits - apart maybe from a certain gluttony. Again, towards the end, a movie-typical father(?)-son relationship ends up humanising the main alien character, as does the apparent bonding between Wikus and the alien. The last half hour of the movie is why I do not give the movie a 5/5 rating: despite being very entertaining (certainly to science fiction fans), the ending lets in a few of the Hollywood stereotypes that the movie was consistent enough to avoid until then. It can be argued that plot devices like the alien father/son subplot or the human/alien bonding help in bringing the movie's message home, but I think that it somewhat reduces the impact of a movie that for the most part remained intense because it remained different.

Finally, it should also be added that the movie's production is of great quality. Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop and Weta Digital companies have created top-notch special effects, and the aliens are certainly some of the best CGI creatures on celluloid. Also, as humans and aliens alike are variously blown or torn to pieces in very graphic detail, the film is not for the squeamish.

In summary, District 9 is one of the best science fiction movies of the last years, and does what sci-fi does best, i.e. use the fantastic and the futuristic to reflect upon human nature in the here and now.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Book Review: The Affinity Bridge, by George Mann

The Affinity Bridge contains everything you come to expect of a steampunk novel: automatons, airships, steam-driven cars and grisly murders in the smog, all this set, of course, in Victorian London. For good measure, author George Mann also throws in zombies and the purported ghosts of dead policemen. The good news is: the mix works.

The novel follows the investigations of Sir Maurice Newbury, an agent in the service of Queen Victoria, and his assistant Veronica Hobbes, as they look first into a series of murders in, yes, Whitechapel; and then into the crash of an airship and the disappearance of its automaton pilot; only to find out that both events are related. Along the way, the investigators come face-to-face with would-be-assassins of various ilk, and both of them have to face their personal demons - an addiction to laudanum for Newbury, a sister in a mental institution for Hobbes.

The characters are engaging, the plot moves along at a fast pace and is highly entertaining. The setting and the time period are well depicted without resorting to gross imitations of pseudo-period talk.

While the story does not really touch on some of the social issues inherent to the steampunk setting (or for that matter, found in the stories of the novelist who inspired the movement, H.G. Wells), i.e. the huge class discrepancies of the Victorian age, Mann does reflect on the not always positive intrusion of scientific progress into the everyday life by playing off Newbury's fondness for new inventions against Hobbe's dislike of the noisy, steamy and awkward new machines.

There are a few negative points to the book: the writing is at times stilted and awkward, resorting too often to stating the obvious; not least in the action scenes in which the narrative is too long-winded to be effective. Some of the dialogues are marred by overly long passages of exposition. My other, minor, point of criticism is that none of the steampunk ingredients are terribly original, all has been done before. The automatons, for example, are highly reminiscent of certain Doctor Who villains, which may not be a coincidence seeing that Mann has written Doctor Who stories in the past. But, as said above, Mann makes the stew of ideas work, which is what matters.

Overall, I give this book a 3.5 out of 5 rating.

Note: George Mann continues the adventures of Newbury and Hobbes in the recently published The Osiris Ritual.

Music Review: Battle for the Sun, by Placebo

It's every rock/pop performer's curse: bring out one master piece, and everyone expects you to repeat that performance over and over again. Placebo's master piece was called Without You I'm Nothing and it came out in 1998, and ever since, it seems, every album was greeted either with derision or with relief that the band hasn't sunk yet.

Battle for the Sun, the trio's latest release (with new drummer Steve Forrest), doesn't sink either - and some even call it a return to form after the last albums. Personally, I think that Meds was better, but while Battle for the Sun is not as good as it could be, it is still better than most fare out there. The group's style hasn't really changed over the years, built as it is around the driving vocals and guitar of front man Brian Molko as well as Stefan Olsdal's churning bass. The sound doesn't really change on the latest album either - even if on some tracks of this album are more mainstream than alternative/punk, and have had brass instruments and strings added. But the group still knows how to rock, and that's the most important thing: the title track, the single For What It's Worth, Bright Lights and Ashtray Heart are all brilliant.

One problem I have with the album are the lyrics on a couple of tracks, such as on Come Undone. As sharp as they are on most tracks, on some they seem to have been put together with the aid of a dictionary in order to find words that rhyme; the result is a bit like silly, clumsy europop poetry.

Battle for the Sun is one of those albums that grows on you the more you hear it, and despite the straightforward seeming sound, there are enough bits and pieces to discover upon repeated hearing.

Overall, I give the album 3.5 (bordering on 4) out of 5.

Book Review: The Cities of the Fantastic series of graphic novels by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters.

The Cities of the Fantastic (or Obscure Cities, as they are unofficially called, based on their original French name, Les Cités Obscures) graphic novels are the works of two Belgians, artists François Schuiten and writer Benoît Peeters. The series is set on a continent vaguely reminiscent of Europe, with cities called Brüsel, Genova, Pahry etc. The world is also often called "counter-Earth", and in several novels, passages between our world and "counter-Earth" are shown to exist.

The novels almost always follow explorers, cartographers or urbanists as they explore the mysteries of cities or buildings, only to be confounded by them. Illusions within illusions, manipulations of the individual for the "greater good" of a city or a regime, the effects of rapid urban and technological change on individuals, all these are recurring themes of the novels.

Schuiten being a trained architect, it is not surprising that architecture, and in particular urban architecture, plays a starring role in the books. The Great Walls of Samaris showcases a city made of shifting scenery, in Fever in Urbicand, a giant cube throws the city of Urbicand (and the life of an urbanist) into chaos. In The Tower, a man explores a city set within one seemingly endless tower. In Brüsel, the authors take up the plight of their real-life hometown, Brussels, and the destruction of its history by all-too-rampant modernisation. The Road to Amiliafeatures a zeppelin ride through much of the continent of the Oscure Cities, showcasing the extravagant architecture of a good many of them.

The stories are always highly complex, and not all their mysteries are resolved in the end. The tone is usually rather bleak, happy endings are rare. The world, and the themes, are in the tradition of Jules Verne and other 19th century science fiction novelists (if the books fit a style at all, it would be steampunk). The books' visual style uses many elements of Art Nouveau, while people's clothing ranges from the 19th century to the 1920s (although time doesn't stand still in counter-Earth: in The Invisible Frontier, which tells the story of a nascent fascist empire swallowing its neighbours, clothing and hair styles progresses to those of the 1930s/1940s).

The style of the illustrations varies: most books are told in sumptuous colours, but others use black and white drawings reminiscent of period etchings; one book, L'enfant penchée, utilises both photographs and drawings. The world is presented in amazing detail: every panel seems to ooze with incredible inventions that make the world come alive, and render the fantastic setting utterly believable. It is no wonder that the novels have spawned a cult movement that debates and dissects every invention and every theory voiced in the books.

The journey into the mysterious Cities of the Fantastic began in 1982 with the publication of The Great Wall of Samaris; the latest outing is the two part La Théorie du grain de sable, published in French in 2008 (and not yet published in English). So far, there are twelve official comics, and a series of spin-offs, such as tourist guides, newspapers and audio plays. Casterman, the French editor, has announced for 2009 a new edition of the outstanding The Archivist, a book consisting entirely of annotated one page spreads depicting various cities. A complete list of publications (in English) can be found under Les Cités Obscures on wikipedia.

I can highly recommend these graphic novels to anyone interested in steampunk, in intelligent comics and in discovering utterly believable "strange new worlds" while being thoroughly entertained.

Rating: 5 of 5.

Official website: Urbicande.be (in French).

Movie Review: Brüno

The title of Sasha Baron Cohen's 2006 movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, at least indicated at a plotline carrying that movie. His latest outing, Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt, points to just what the movie is: a series of skits designed to expose the homophobia in much of American culture. Along the way he also showcases parents willing to expose their toddlers to about anything in order to get them into show business; charity PR consultants who don't know the first thing about current world affairs; and celebrities who, when asked to sit on people, are more concerned with their image than with the 'chair people' they sit on. All this is not always done in the best of taste, but it is hilariously funny. Brüno may just be the funniest comedy since, well, Borat.

The movie also leaves you admiring Cohen's courage as you see him chased by an angry mob in Jerusalem, or thrown at with metal chairs while making out with another man in a pit fighter cage.

For me there are two main items where the movie falls short (apart from the minor issue of a missing plot): Cohen doesn't know when to finish a joke - some scenes carry on well beyond their punch line and thus lose much of their momentum. The other criticism that can be levelled at the movie is that Cohen went looking for homophobia where he would predictably find it: in the army, with redneck hunters and conservative Christian preachers. Borat gained much of its social relevance by exposing racism and antisemitism in average people. This type of more subtle observation is missing in Brüno.

Ahead of the movie's opening, the media made much of the fact that in their view, Brüno's antics did more to enforce gay stereotypes than to expose homophobia. Time magazine ran an article on how negative comments on Twitter by the gay community caused the ratings to fall dramatically within two days of the movie's opening in the US. Personally, I have heard very few negative comments by the gay community, and even Germany's usually übercritical Spiegel magazine carried an article that the gay & lesbian organisations in Europe had a generally favourable view of the movie.

Granted, there were a couple of clichés the movie could have done without - such as the various sex devices and gimmicks. However, given the hyperbole dished out by Cohen, I fail to see how people could take Brüno's antics as a real representation of a gay man. And if there are some people who do, well, quite frankly, then the joke is on them.

Rating: 4 out of 5.