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Whatever and Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five
Whatever and Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five
1997 | Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I don't know how I came across that album to be honest. But again, some of the lyrics, oooh! Have you seen them live? Brilliant. Fucking brililant. Like a punk rock & roll trio with stand up piano, bass and drums. When we saw them, it was Shepherd's Bush and I wasn't expecting it to be so full on. But the way they create what they do on stage and live – it's almost like three jazz kids who ended up writing quirky pop songs. Their drummer is phenomenal, they all were. The bass player uses distortion at times and Ben bangs the hell out of the piano. I remember that gig really well. Remember when Matt Lucas had the character George Dawes? He was in the audience at that gig. And everybody in the room knew he was there. Everyone was locked into him and someone shouted out 'Tell us the scores George Dawes' and I felt really sorry for him! But it was just a really amazing gig and it's a great record. Rough but brilliant."

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Deerskin (Le Daim) (2019)
Deerskin (Le Daim) (2019)
2019 | Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
7
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Deadpan horror-comedy from our French friends. Middle-aged man Georges (John of the Garden) pays an eye-watering sum for a suede deerskin jacket and moves into a hotel in a remote town. He is clearly in the midst of some form of crisis, even before the jacket starts talking to him. It turns out the jacket has a dream, one which Georges shares...

Starts off in a vein of low-key weirdness and gradually gets more and more absurd as Georges' obsession grows and he is joined (sort of) by a young waitress who's desperate enough to believe some of the lines he comes out with. Very much a slow-burn comedy, but an effective one... except that the situation eventually gets so improbably ridiculous that the writer-director clearly couldn't think of a way of resolving it, so the film stops abruptly and not very satisfyingly after a brisk 75 minutes. Shame; entertaining in a quirky way, mainly because of Dujardin's central performance - worth seeing just for that.
  
The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae
The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae
Stephanie Butland | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry
8
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Ailsa Rae is a woman with a terminal heart condition, until the day she receives a heart transplant. Ailsa is adjusting to life, a life that actually has a future. Now Ailsa is no longer dying she has to start living, but it’s hard. She’s struggling with her relationship with her mother and the father she’s never known, and coping with emotions controlled by a heart that isn’t really hers. Is it ungrateful to be so unhappy when your very existence is a gift?

Ailsa Rae is quirky and bold. She writes a blog about her illness and subsequent transplant, asking her followers to assist in some major life decisions. It’s a very clever device as whilst she is writing for her blog followers it feels like she’s talking to you so it fully engrosses you in the story. There is of course a love interest in there somewhere, but it’s not cliché. In fact in true style of Ailsa’s new life, it’s complicated. I really enjoyed this.