A SINGLE MAN
STARRING COLIN FIRTH, JULIANNE MOORE, NICHOLAS HOULT

This was an excellent film high on style, atmosphere, cool, observations and emotions. Some of the acting particularly amongst the 2 leading actors was exceptional. It concerns George Carlyle Falconer whose gay lover dies in a car accident ata tragically young age. When this happens its as though George’s life stops. The background to this is the Cuban missile crisis which has just been averted. This affects George’s work as a lecturer and he attempts to make sense of it in a lecture. This profoundly affects one of his students an effete young man – Kenny Potter who like several others becomes attracted to him. However he is middle aged which he seems to be reminded about by everyone. Even his lover calls him “old man” albeit in a playful way. He has 1 true favourite friend in a world of fake people. Her name is Charley a stylish spinster who still likes to party and takes dramatic care of how she dresses as you would expect in a Tom Ford production (he of Mad Men) fame. There are many camera shots of peoples eyes. George dresses very elegantly at all times and drives a terrific looking polished car.  The main character is played very well by Colin Firth. It appears to be very like the book by Isherwood and might make a good play. There is much use made of colour too.

PUBLIC IMITATION LIMITED AND THE SEX PISTOLS EXPERIENCE AT THE NEW ROSCOE
18.02.10.

Public Image Limited were a  controversial off shoot from the Sex Pistols begun in 1978 at the behest of John Lydon formerly Johnny Rotten. He got together a talented group of musicians in order to make some proper music combining many different influences such as dub, avante garde, rock, punk. They terrorised the establishment in the late 70s and even to this day Lydon still retains a King of the disaffected despite his LA post code, fear and respect.

This PIL are a very accurate tribute band especially John Lydon. He was quite creepy and scary with some staring, heckling, acid sarcasm and berating the middle aged (bar a few vaudeville looking women) audience for not dancing. This kind of antagonistic front man has gone now; just look at the criticism Liam Gallagher got after his Brit antics! He wore a square shouldered check jacket accompanied by strange movements and faux disco dancing. The drummer was very competent, fast just like Martyn Atkins, original PIL drummer. Jah Wobble was excellent too, that's one thing that I really like about PIL - the instrumentation. They did a lot of the 1st album - Annalisa, This is religion with its haunting sombre tones.Death Disco is always good to hear with its ground breaking arpeggiated staccato guitar and dub inspired bass. PIL included well known songs "This is not a love song" with its cheesy night club bass and exhortation to capitalism, a message to McClaren maybe? They only got 1 dancer a smooth svelte looking guy in a suit strangely enough. *

The fake Sex Pistols came in looking like Pretty Vacant era TOTP Pistols. Lydon with Destroy tee shirt, Steve Jones knotted hanky on his bonce and a beefier pre smack Viscious marauding on bass. They ripped through Pretty Vacant and then a lot of Bollocks stuff - Bodies (still unpleasant), Holidays in the Sun (a brilliant record), Submission with its subterranean feel. Perhaps Sid could've done with some blood on him to get that dreadful American tour feel. Not bad although this material sounded more familiar than PIL’s dark material.