The Top 5: Olympic Songs

With the Olympics just a sniff away, I thought I'd do a rundown of the top 5 official (and unofficial) Olympic Songs, particularly as that Muse one is so terrible.

Of course, you want an Olympic song to be strident and preachy and where better to start than with old Whitters...


5. One Moment In Time

The 1988 Seoul Olympics song is your classic power ballad, dripping with the requisite aspirational shiz that Americans love (and, let's be honest, do pretty well).

It's all dreams, self-determination, destiny and being free, and belted right to the back row by the dear-departed Whitney Houston.

Nobody could have done it better, although there is the slight whiff of anti-commie propaganda, which I'm willing to overlook just this once.

Entertainment Weekly called it a "majestic carpe diem chest-thumper" and who are we to argue?

4. Amigos Para Siempre

Ah, the summer of 1992 when Spain was in vogue as literally tens of people tuned into Eldorado and the Olympics landed in Barcelona.

This forgotten gem was understandably outshone in a lot of the coverage by Barcelona sung by Freddie Mercury and Monserrat Caballe; an anthem made all the more emotional because Freddie Mercury had died the previous November.

This chugs along nicely and says all the right things about international friendship and how pleasant we should all be to one another.

The cheesy Spanish guitars place this firmly middle of the road. And in this case (only), that's no bad thing.

3. Reach

Oh Glo, you outdid yourself with this spine-tingling drum-fest. Very well done indeed.

The dreams, digging deep and grasping eternity metaphors - evoked so well in One Moment In Time - are back (with bells on) and we're invited to reach and once that reaching has been achieved, all will be well with the world.

The drums are a masterstroke and Gloria's stirring performance lifts this above the usual power ballad territory. Smart stuff.

2. You And Me

Oh, hello, Sarah Brightman's back for Beijing 2008 looking a little tauter in the face, but moving on...

Another duet for our Sarah, this time with Liu Huan, who's a big deal in "Mandopop" and a music professor to boot.

It's a lot simpler than Sarah's previous effort and is all the better for it. We're told that we are 'all family' meeting in Beijing, with a strong choral background providing many voices to underline the point.

(On a side note, the performance at the Opening Ceremony is awesome. THEY'RE ON A FUCKING GLOBE!)

And here's the HQ version:

1. Dancing Queen

Alright, I know, it's not an official Olympic song, but for me nothing captures the spirit of togetherness (and by extension, the Olympics) more than an uplifting singalong.

Performed at the Sydney 2000 Opening Ceremony, Dancing Queen is a genius choice, even if it's not about the Games.

Kylie knocks this one out of the stadium, even though you suspect her hat's going to fly off and injure a small child in the audience. She has spoken in interviews how this performance was like a renewal in her life, when she discovered her inner showgirl.

Without this performance, us gays would be a lot glummer.

Thank you, Sydney.

Turn this UP!

Have a good Olympics!

My Latitude

I've concluded that going to a festival is like having a baby. You have no real idea what it's like until you experience it for yourself.

So, at the tender age of 35, I set out last weekend for my first ever festival: Latitude in Suffolk with some friends.

I'd always been put off by the cost, the hassle, the mud, and most importantly, festival wankers. The sort of people you see walking around sporting a litany of coloured wristbands (even though it's fucking November) like trophies of smugness.

But any reservations I had evaporated the instant I stepped onto the site. There was the buzz of people, the thrum of music from distant stages and the tempting smell of the burgers.

It's safe to say I loved it.

Yes, the weather was rubbish at times, and yes the beer was expensive, but in the end it didn't matter because the 'fuck it' mentality takes over and it's addictive.

Until this weekend, I have never had a conversation in the *middle* of a dancefloor with a part-time beekeeper about Mark 1 Ford Escorts.

The music wasn't bad either.

After this weekend, I can thoroughly recommend Sharon van Etten, Lianne La Havas and Bon Iver, artists who had previously passed me by.

The wonderful M83 were... wonderful. I love how slick, produced artists translate their sets into guitar-heavy, mosh-athons.

Comedy-wise, Josie Long was engagingly ranty about the shits in government, but the highlight for me was Pappy's who performed their new show, Last Show Ever! I laughed like a loon, although admittedly under the influence of Tuborg. If you get a chance, see it. And meeting them afterwards was a bonus!

Pappy's

But what really made it perfect was laughing with my friends at the various stupid things we did and said, none of which I could commit to this blog in a way that conveys how funny they were. Even the Princess Diana stuff. You really had to be there. And be us.

As I write this, the day after, I'm dehydrated, tired and ill. But grinning like an idiot.

So that's festivals then.

I even had to think twice about cutting my wristband off.

Mr Blue Sky V

Aah. A typical summer scene.

Typical for me anyway.

Often on my drive home from work in the afternoon, I take a scenic route across the Berkshire Downs near the Uffington White Horse.

The other day, I was struck by the yellowy-green of the fields contrasted with the blueness of the sky.

So I Instagrammed the shit out of it.

Too Old To Be Watching Cartoons?

I'll admit it. I've been watching cartoons.

I'm in my (ahem) mid 30s. Should I be doing this?

Well, I suppose I could get caught doing much worse. But what lies at the heart of this is my love of Tron.

I remember being taken to see the first Tron movie way back in the early 80s, and being won over with its 'futuristic' style and state-of-the-art computer graphics.

Fast forward 17 years and the first promo for Tron Legacy had my heart racing.

The actual film was, to be honest, devoid of charm and a decent script - even the CGI of Jeff Bridge's face was shonky.

But I loved the design, the updated 'futuristic' vision, and - oh - the light cycle sequence. The soundtrack courtesy of Daft Punk was also a winner.

And now comes Tron: Uprising, a new cartoon from Disney XD and I'm hooked.

It's set between the two Tron films and tells the story of Beck, a young freedom fighter taking on the oppressive regime of... er, computery evil shits.

Without wanting to sound like a purist wanker, the slick design elements and the funky uber-cyber soundtrack of Tron Legacy have been successfully carried over into the cartoon.

But more importantly, it's a weekly dose of Tron.

Mr Blue Sky IV

One of the things I look forward is the two week period around midsummer when the sun is actually up when I'm driving to work.

For the past week, it's been cloudy, wet or both - but not this morning.

I had to pull over to one of the best vantage points on my way, the windfarm at Watchfield.

I like the way all the turbines are in the same position.

Tomorrow Never Dies: Assessed Acrostically

Bond in freefall. How apt.

The script is arguably one of the weakest Bond scripts ever.

There is so much painfully clunky exposition from the very beginning. All the books and articles about TND describe a ‘troubled production’ – spin for absolute fucking chaos behind the scenes – and it really shows when actors are saying things like “He practically invented techno-terrorism” and “Able to topple governments with a single broadcast”. One suspects some of the later drafts were, in fact, written in crayon.

Oh my God, who hired Teri Hatcher?

She’s woefully miscast as someone who has a deep emotional connection with our favourite secret agent. Instead, she phones it in. From a hillside with a dodgy signal, presumably. And why did she need to get her be-knickered bottom out and show off her suspenders? It’s boorish, classless and seedy. “What’s the matter, James? Did I get too close?” Nobody cares, Teri.

Michelle Yeoh on the other hand...

She is a revelation: tough and independent, the banter between her and Bond is genuinely enjoyable, and she knows one end of the gun from the other. The strongest Bond girl since Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Occasionally brutal.

There are a few nice touches of badass Bond in TND and at least gives us hope that director Roger Spottiswoode is trying to keep a cruel and clinical edge to the central character. The way Bond knifes a baddie squarely in the chest at the start of stealth boat assault – and especially Elliott Carver’s death at the hands of his own drilly thing – are a throwback to Connery’s Bond, and this is no bad thing.

Rely on Pierce Brosnan to fuck up an accent.

Remember in Goldeneye when Bond rocks up to the Casino in his DB5, he greets the valet with a mangled “Bon soir, Pierre, ça va bien?” That’s nothing to his terrible ‘Mein Büro hat ein Auto reserviert” in the airport in this film. I got a C at GCSE German and even I could do better than that. All that money and they couldn’t get that any better?

Reprehensible plot holes.

At the end, aboard the stealth boat, Carver is in full flow with his ‘I-may-as-well-tell-you-all-my-maniacal-plans’ speech and Bond takes Gupta hostage and demands the return of Wai Lin because her and Bond are going to ‘finish it together’. Carver shoots Gupta and Bond blows everything up, not even caring about her. The whole thing is just nonsense – and there are far too many of these foggy interludes.

Odd choice of locations.

We’re not bowled over by exotic vistas but Hamburg looks nice enough. I might go there one day.

Who did they want to play Carver before they hired Jonathan Pryce?

He looks like a desperate last-minute booking in place of the actor they really wanted. I have never ever seen an actor so obviously phoned on a Friday afternoon and told to report to set the next Monday morning. And the worst thing is, Pryce is not a terrible actor, but even he can’t pull off the material given to him. He’s not sinister at all but he tries, bless him, overacting as if his pay check depended on it. Notable mention must go to his terrible typing-acting while writing headlines on his big screen. Just like with Pierce’s accents, couldn’t they have done something to make it better?!

Put it away, love

Needless and lazy puns abound.

And they don’t even really work 95% of the time. “You’ll have to kiss it off”, “You always were a cunning linguist”, “It’s amazing what they’ll print these days” are among the worst offenders.

Easily one of the best things about this film is the soundtrack.

David Arnold really hits the ground running with his first Bond score. It’s lush, brash and sophisticated when so much of the rest of the film isn’t. The pre-credits sequence, the car park chase and the helicopter flight into Saigon are strikingly good, but it’s the kd lang song over the closing titles that steals the show, soundtrack-wise. I have ranted elsewhere on this blog (here, in fact) about my theory that kd lang’s Surrender was replaced as the main theme by Sheryl Crow only because the latter was more bankable. Good job, David.

Very well-executed chase sequences.

The set-piece action scenes are one of TND’s strongest features. The pre-credit sequence, the printworks chase, the car park chase and the motorbike chase through Saigon are rollicking good fun. Yet again, the Bond stunt team show their worth to the franchise. Oh, and the banner surfing down the side of Carver’s skyscraper is pretty neato as well.

Explain to me what Dr Kaufman is for, please.

I suspect that he was a good idea on paper: a creepy and evil doctor of death. The on-screen result is altogether more pantomime-ish and weirdly pitiful. And for someone so apparently skilled at killing, he looks like he can’t even hold a pistol properly. Thank God his death was swift and cold-blooded. I couldn‘t have stood much more of that.

Really? Is that how Bond behaves ‘under cover’, insulting and provoking his host?

At the Hamburg channel launch, Bond comes across as a right dick when he meets Elliott Carver. We know Carver’s the bad guy, Bond knows he’s the bad guy but Bond is unnecessarily provocative and doesn’t behave like the banker he is supposed to be. Think back to when Bond met Auric Goldfinger at the golf club. It was sparky and understated. He didn’t get all up in his shit and then make lazy jibes. Yet again, TND lets itself down by its inelegance.

"Don't go for second best, baby..."

Did you know?

Nichola McAuliffe – Sheila Sabatini in the excellent 90s medical sitcom Surgical Spirit – is the voice of Bond’s BMW. You’re welcome.

Is it me or is Pierce Brosnan ‘wider’ than he was in Goldeneye?

No, he is. The excellent book The Making of Tomorrow Never Dies by Garth Pearce quotes his personal trainer, Richard Smedley: “Pierce was about 20lb heavier than in Goldeneye and he wanted a strong look”. The sort of strong look brought about by... pies?

End titles. kd lang to finish, saving the best for last (see above).

So what conclusions can we reach about Tomorrow Never Dies?

It has buckets of promise and delivers occasionally, but is let down by a patronising script and a leaky plot. Too often, I found myself wincing at the dialogue. The action sequences are top notch. It’s just a whopping shame about the bits in between.

And I never got round to discussing...

i)              Carver never changing his shirty-coaty thing;

ii)             All the now-famous actors on board the British ships (half the cast of Downton Abbey and Gerard Butler); and

iii)           Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer acting together as if As Time Goes By doesn’t even exist!

Roll on The World Is Not Enough for next month’s BlogalongaBond!

Do you agree with my review? Let me know below or on the Twitter.

The Most Evil Garden Accessory Ever?

A new scourge has entered my life.

Our neighbours have installed wind chimes and they're driving me insane with their incessant tinkling, clinking and dinkling.

It didn't help that they installed them on the windiest weekend in recent memory.

I get the idea: they're supposed to be relaxing... but I've come to the conclusion that they're incredibly antisocial. I wouldn't enforce my music tastes on the entire neighbourhood by playing my music to the volume of said wind chimes.

And you can be damn sure that people would be more likely to complain if I did that than about the wind chimes.

So what do I do? Here are my options:

1. Go to the neighbours and ask them very nicely to take them down
2. Put an anonymous note through their door explaining that I hate them (the chimes, I mean; I'm British, I've never even met these people)
3. Shin over the fence at night and sabotage them
4. Do nothing and fill up my Twitter timeline with my frustrations

Has anyone else suffered from this? All help gratefully received!

(Thanks to http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ for the picture)