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Every Picture Tells a Story by Rod Stewart
Every Picture Tells a Story by Rod Stewart
1971 | Rock
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"There is certainly a rasp to my voice [LAUGHS]. It's not quite as bad as Bonnie Tyler's but it is raspy. Rod Stewart wasn't a big influence on me as a singer though. I don't really sound like anybody. In the same way that Ozzy doesn't sound like anybody or Alice Cooper doesn't sound like anybody. You get these boyband singers now that are all very similar. Even in the old days, you could swap round some of the Motown singers and you wouldn't really know the difference. Singer wise, I loved Mark Bolan; Noddy Holder; David Bowie; Alex Harvey; Russell Mael; Steve Harley; Brian Ferry; Sammy Hagar; Phil Lynott. All that lot go into a bucket but I still don't sound like any of them [LAUGHS]. Mutt Lange was a huge influence on my singing: he can play anything, do anything. He was pushing and pushing. I remember the first time I ever met Lou Gram from Foreigner. He said: 'tell me, did Mutt make you feel like you couldn't sing either?' and this was fucking Lou Gram, right? He'd make you do it again and again. He would push and push until you'd be right on the edge of losing it. Sometimes that worked and sometimes you felt like your spirit was being destroyed. Physically, you're going into spaces in your head and your chest cavity that you've never been. But he would've done it with anybody: look what he did with Brian Johnson, he put him through the bloody ringer with Back In Black but look what he got out of it. And that's why I don't complain. Rod Stewart was the first album I ever bought with my pocket money. The version of 'I'm Losing You' is just genius but my 'in' to that record, as it were, was 'Maggie May' because it was all over the radio at the time. It was rock but it was pop rock: it's not been influential in terms of how we sound but I absolutely love it."

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The Death Of Stalin (2017)
The Death Of Stalin (2017)
2017 | Comedy
Death…. Torture…. Child Abuse…. LOL??
Armando Iannucci is most familiar to TV audiences on both sides of the pond for his cutting political satire of the likes of “Veep” and “The Thick of It”, with his only previous foray into directing movies being “In the Loop”: a spin-off of the latter series. Lovers of his work will know that he sails very close to the wind on many occasions, such that watching can be more of a squirm-fest than enjoyment.

Rupert Friend (centre) tries to deliver a eulogy to his father against winged opposition. With (from left to right) Michael Palin, Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi and Simon Russell Beale.

It should come as no surprise then that his new film – “The Death of Stalin” – follows that same pattern, but transposed into the anarchic and violent world of 1950’s Russia. Based on a French comic strip, the film tells the farcical goings on surrounding the last days of the great dictator in 1953. Stalin keeps distributing his “lists” of undesirables, most of who will meet unpleasant ends before the end of the night. But as Stalin suddenly shuffles off his mortal coil, the race is on among his fellow commissariat members as to who will ultimately succeed him.

Stalin…. Going… but not forgotten.

The constitution dictates that Georgy Malenkov (an excellently vacillating Jeffrey Tambor) secedes but, as a weak man, the job is clearly soon going to become vacant again and spy-chief Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale) and Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) are jostling for position. (No spoilers, but you’ll never guess who wins!). Colleagues including Molotov (Michael Palin) and Mikoyan (Paul Whitehouse) need to decide who to side with as the machinations around Stalin’s funeral become more and more desperate.
The film starts extremely strongly with the ever-excellent Paddy Considine (“Pride”) playing a Radio Russia producer tasked with recording a classical concert, featuring piano virtuoso Maria Yudina (Olga Kurylenko, “Quantum of Solace”). A definition of paranoia in action!

Great fingering. Olga Kurylenko as Yudina, with more than a hand in the way the evening’s events will unfold.

We then descend into the chaos of Stalin’s Russia, with mass torture and execution colouring the comedy from dark-grey to charcoal-black in turns. There is definitely comedy gold in there: Khrushchev’s translation of his drunken scribblings from the night before (of things that Stalin found funny and – more importantly – things he didn’t) being a high point for me. Stalin’s children Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough, “Nocturnal Animals”) and Vasily (Rupert Friend, “Homeland”) add knockabout humour to offset the darker elements, and army chief Georgy Zhukov (Jason Isaacs, “Harry Potter”) is a riot with a no-nonsense North-of-England accent.

Brass Eye: Jason Isaacs as the army chief from somewhere just north of Wigan.

Production values are universally excellent, with great locations, great sets and a screen populated with enough extras to make the crowd scenes all appear realistic.

Another broad Yorkshire accent: (the almost unknown) Adrian McLoughlin delivers an hysterical speaking voice as Stalin.

The film absolutely held my interest and was thorougly entertaining, but the comedy is just so dark in places it leaves you on edge throughout. The writing is also patchy at times, with some of the lines falling to the ground as heavily as the dispatched Gulag residents.
It’s not going to be for everyone, with significant violence and gruesome scenes, but go along with the black comic theme and this is a film that delivers rewards.