From the brief heyday of the Czech new wave, Jiri Menzel's 1968 Oscar winner (Best Foreign Language Film) retains much bawdy charm and a bravely downbeat ending. A young railway station apprentice in a small town, oblivious to the climax of WWII, longs to get laid, finding relief with a comely Resistance fighter. More witty, imaginative and romantic than it sounds.
Born in Miami but weaned on the mid-'60's coffee house scene around Boston, Smither remains a strangely undiscovered talent. The 11th album of his 33-year recording career is a masterclass in deftly-picked country blues guitar, drawing on Lightnin' Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt (a sunny-side-up cover of "Candy Man") alongside the more lugubrious Fred Neil. Smither's weathered old pipes are a joy as he tramples over melting chords like a bear with a migraine.
Patrice Leconte (Ridicule) brings a sombre poetic realism to this elegiac meditation on the nature of fate and the road less travelled. Johnny Hallyday, battered and craggy with gravitas, is awesomely iconic as the taciturn gangster who encounters Jean Rochefort's inquisitive retired schoolteacher. The two men are inexorably attracted, seeing in the other the tragedy of the life they never lived.
The umpteenth retail release for this era-defining cash-cow of Scottish junkies, and the cracks are now beginning to show. Yes, it's a beautiful burst of propulsive film-making, but after the likes of Jesus's Son and Requiem For A Dream, it seems a little too eager to please, a little too chipper, too Ewan McGregor to be wholly credible.
Roddy Frame has announced details of new album, Seven Dials.
Seven Dials will be released on AED on Monday May 5h 2014.
It's Frame's first since Western Skies in 2006, was recorded at West Heath Studios in London and co-produced with Seb Lewsley.
The track listing for Seven Dials is as follows:
White Pony
Postcard
Into The Sun
Rear View Mirror
In Orbit
Forty Days Of Rain
English Garden
On The Waves
The Other Side
From A Train
Bob Dylan’s fantastic new album opens with a train song. Given the wrath to come and the often elemental ire that accompanies it, not to mention all the bloodshed, madness, death, chaos and assorted disasters that will shortly be forthcoming, you may be surprised that what’s clattering along the tracks here isn’t the ominous engine of a slow train coming, a locomotive of doom and retribution, souls wailing in a caboose crowded with the forlorn damned and other people like them.
