McDougall's "Life Hack"

If, like me, you despise the way that McDonald's have replaced the burgers in all of their time-limited-menu chicken offerings with two Chicken Selects in a shamelessly transparent bid to make you pay the same – or sometimes even more! – for less meat, this "life hack" (the concept formerly known as "a good idea") that I invented today may interest you. It's dead simple: in addition to buying the "burger", you buy a Spicy Chicken Snack Wrap from the saver menu for £1.49, take the actually fairly generous bit of chicken out of it, and add it into the bun along with the two Chicken Selects. This will result in a very satisfying and filling burger which, while it will end up costing you a bit more, will still be no more expensive than Burger King.

How to save 10,000 albums (and more) in your Spotify

So, if, like me, you are a Spotify user with a voracious appetite for music who hates playlists, you may have already filled up your 10,000 song limit and been forced to delete stuff. Well I've got a really, really simple fix for this: instad of saving the whole album, just save the first song. That way, it still appears in "your albums", and it's just one extra click to take you to the whole tracklist. This way you can save 10,000 albums. In the unlikely event that you actually fill this up as well, then my next suggestion is to delete all but the latest (or your favourite) release from each artist. When you see it, you'll be reminded that there are are other albums by them you like as well and you can just click through to see them. OK, so I know this is saving 10,000 artists rather than albums, but it does mean that you are highly unlikely to ever run out of space – what are the chances you are going to want to save 10,000 artists?

Dream 25/09/16

I drive to see my old mate Kurt Cobain whom I know from my junkie days and who lives in a decaying mansion at the top of a hill. I leave the missus and kids to have lunch in a pub as I have no idea what state he'll be in. The top floor room of his house turns out to be the most disgusting cesspit full of decaying newspapers, massive spiders, and a bunch of animals including cats, goats, sheep, and two baby hedgehogs that can jump six feet in the air.

Later, Cobain and I go to confront a local Seattle crime boss over Cobain's junkie son, who has holed up in a room at the man's house. The two go way back; the guy used to cheat him on their smack deals. The boss is a shadow of his former self and is on the way out. As his last revenge he plants a bomb to take us out, before Cobain shoots him dead. I manage to rescue the boy, who has overdosed and barricaded himself into his room, before the bomb goes off, destroying the house.

We take him to a rehab clinic where I am hailed as a hero by all my friends, except my ex-wife, who berates me for putting the children in danger even though they were nowhere near the scene. She is shut down by a tough-looking relative of the boy. Shaken by my experience, I decide to stay in rehab for a few days. I enjoy hydrotherapy but keep getting chewed out by the other patients for using their lane in the pool.

Dream 21/11/15 – "Of Premonition and Consequence"

Last night I dreamt I watched this amazing short film called "Of Premonition and Consequence" that I discovered on YouTube. I was like, "I've got to tell everyone to watch this!" and was so gutted when I woke up and realised it was just a dream, I decided I had to make it.

It was all about this kid called Nicky who's at high school in this small town in the late '70s/early '80s and is the singer in this hard rock band that is already really successful and is playing massive arena shows. He is signed to a major label and has this real roguish, rockist manager who has paired him with two older, more experienced session musicians for his rhythm section. The band's main draw is its two guitarists, sexy identical twins called Elizabeth and Shannon who are classmates of Nicky and who have long, wavy, jet-black hair. Nicky's dad hates the whole rock 'n' roll thing and thinks that he should give it up in order to focus on his studies. He is concerned that Nicky is going to get into hard drugs or break his neck stagediving or something.

The story hinges on some sort of supernatural being that can take the form of anyone it wishes. It takes the form of one of the twins. It is perhaps a vampire or some other sort of life- or soul-sucking creature. It uses sex to lure its victims and of course Nicky is lured by it, thinking it is Elizabeth wanting to shag him. He gets gradually drained of life à la Lucy in "Dracula". People think he is on drugs. He always goes to the school's third-floor broom cupboard/chill-out room at lunchtime but finds it is shut or verboten now, so goes to the second floor and finds there is a whole massive bar there, dimly lit, all made of weathered dark wood, real fire burning in the grate. This is where he meets "her". It's kind of a magic place, like it feels as though it shouldn't really exist. Other people are also affected, like the two old rocker rhythm section guys and maybe the manager. There is farcical confusion over who shagged Elizabeth or not.

He probably dies at the end. The being should be exposed but not destroyed. It escapes or vanishes back into the woodwork. The final scene is a big close-up of Elizabeth's face (or is it her?), tears trickling down her cheeks, reciting the words of one of Nicky's songs which encapsulates the plot perfectly (it's akin to "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac, but more melancholy, with the word "dreams" in the lyrics). There's a sense that perhaps the creature has fallen in love with Nicky as well. The last shot pans away across a field, autumn trees, a shiny, curved-front, steel-and-smoked-glass building prominent, some local business. The whole thing has a colossal Liz Hand/Anne Rice vibe.

Dream 20/10/2015 – "Net"

Last night I dreamt in incredibly fine detail a Canadian sci-fi horror series called "Net", created by David Cronenberg and starring Kevin Bacon as a Pop Tart-eating lawyer. It was all about this boy genius who, back in the '70s, creates this incredibly powerful artificial neural net that instantly became self-aware and so powerful it can alter the laws of time and physics, make people age 40 years instantly, bring the dead back to life, make you travel in time, etc., and he and his brother use it as a toy until the FBI get involved, then the kid goes missing, never to be seen again, and the machine disappears, presumed destroyed, and all the schematics are lost. Then, years later, the kid's brother, played by Bacon, gets sucked back in when all the weird shit that happened years ago starts happening again and he realizes that the machine, and possibly his brother, are still out there, and he spends the rest of the series looking for it as it travels through time wreaking havoc.

There's loads of old green-screen BBC B computers, grainy antique film stock, men in suits, 50s FBI agents, bodies with cataract eyes, scenes of the kid aging 40 years in 30 seconds (truly disturbing). There's also a female character who is disabled in some way. When we first meet her she's dragging herself through the snow on an old-fashioned 70s skateboard, putting electronic tags on lost dogs in the wake of some sort of disaster (an earthquake?). Voiceover: "I felt it was the only way I could atone." She works with Bacon, who keeps trying to get her to eat Pop Tarts. Her mother sends her to work with Frosties. Perhaps she is a cop or a lawyer too. There was even a behind-the-scenes featurette about how Cronenberg came up with the whole idea but had no money so just went to the place in rural Canada where the guy from Starz was filming another series and shouted across the road at him does he want to give him some money to make this amazing new show. It was partially shot in Gary, Indiana, the home of a huge special effects house.

In the title sequence, all shot in grainy dim tones of red, curtains open on a dark stage. We see legs sitting in a theatre box, hands holding a crystal ball. It starts to glow and a woman's screaming face appears. It slips from the hands onto the knees. Printed circuits are visible around the inside of the ball.

Dream 24/06/14

I  have to go on a long mission on the bus to a run-down supermarket in this tatty town centre, which is the only place to get an ingredient I want. It's somewhat convenient for me though, as a friend of mine runs a hairdressing salon next to the supermarket, so I can visit her at the same time.  As I'm walking round the supermarket I meet this sexy goth girl whom I vaguely know who tells me she needs a haircut, so I take her into the little salon, which is deserted, and introduce her to my friend. She sits down in the barber's chair and my friend starts giving her a rather severe feather cut. About halfway through doing the haircut, she suddenly announces that it's lunchtime and that we need to go to the cafe next door before it gets too busy. It turns out that the cafe has become famous on account of its amazing macaroni cheese, which has been hyped to the heavens by food bloggers, and is now deluged by Hoxton foodies every lunchtime. Promising the girl that we'll only be five minutes, she leads me next door into the cafe, leaving her sitting in the barber's chair with her hair half cut.

We're the first lunchtime customers in the cafe but the old Italian guy and his son who run the place are already madly busy. Dozens of piping hot dishes of macaroni cheese are already plated up and sitting on the counter, like half-poured pints of Guinness on the bar of a Dublin pub. The old guy greets us, we each take one - my friend tells him to put it on her tab - and we sit down at a table and start eating and gossiping. It really is remarkably good, and we're so busy nattering away that it's only half an hour later that we realize we've left the goth girl in the barber's chair.

Hurriedly we dash back into the salon, but the girl is gone. I feel guilty so I go out to look for her. It starts to rain. Eventually I find her huddled in the doorway of a delivery entrance at the back of the supermarket. She is crying so I sit down next to her and put my arm round her and comfort her. At first I think she is upset about her hair being only half cut, but it turns out that she is in some kind of trouble with this psychotic drug dealer guy.

Dream 08/02/14

I'm in the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Lots + Lots!!" which is based on book and lyrics by Lerner & Llep. It is over three hours long and the music is stunningly beautiful, the best he has ever written, like a cross between Adam Guettel and Tori Amos. The plot has an anthology structure, with four unconnected segments about ordinary people who do extraordinary things. One is about a woman scientist who discovers a new ultra-amazing molecular multivitamin extracted from citrus fruit that can be used to help treat depression. Another is about this girl who has a choking paraphilia and pretends to hang herself with her belt to freak out school bullies. A female friend and I are in this segment. On the school campus we have to fight our way through a densely packed cornfield to get to the main building. We meet the girl who tells us her story then we see her doing her thing (hangs herself by her belt with her toes just touching the floor, gets pleasure from choking). We get worried that one day she will accidentally kill herself. When we decide she's had enough we take her down, dress her in her pyjamas and gently lay her in bed.

Mittyesque

Jonah DeSoto is renowned as one of the world's greatest explorers, always ready to put himself in danger in the pursuit of scientific truth... and the occasional bit of treasure. But his globetrotting lifestyle puts heavy strain on his relationship with his wife Nicolette, who shoulders the burden of looking after both their sickly son Timothy and her infirm mother. After Nicolette's mother dies in a bizarre accident, she makes Jonah promise that he will be there for Timothy's ninth birthday party, which the boy must have in hospital. Jonah arrives back in London in good time, but his treasure-hunting past finally catches up with him and he is swept up in a fantastical adventure that results in him missing Timothy's birthday party, leading to a ferocious bust-up with Nicolette. In the doghouse with his wife and in danger of losing her to his ladykiller best friend, Jonah must find a way back into her good graces before it's too late to save his marriage and his relationship with his son.

© John D. Buchanan 2014

Dreamstone Origin

Aeons ago, in the time before time, in the midst of a great war between darkness and light, the Elder Beings forged the most precious and powerful object in the universe: The Dreamstone. Using its magical powers, they were able to send out good dreams every night to sleepers everywhere, knowing that as long as laughter and joy and the power of imagination thrived, the forces of evil and darkness would never prevail. Before they passed into history, the Elder Beings built The Voice of the Planet Dreamstone, a vastly powerful artificial intelligence which oversaw the creation of, and acted as a mentor to, the Council of Dreams, a group of elite scholars from across the universe who were trained as Dreammakers. They would make dreams and maintain order in the universe, and the Lord Highest, leader of the Council, would nightly use the Dreamstone to send out dreams to sleepers everywhere.
 

For millennia the Council endured, keeping peace in the universe, until one day an ambitious young Dreammaker named Zordrak became obsessed with the old ways. He coveted the power of The Dreamstone and the position of Lord Highest, which was then held by a kindly older man, and came to believe that the forces of evil and darkness were stronger than those of goodness and light. He corrupted good dreams into nightmares, believing that in this way he could seize power. But his treachery was discovered and he was banished from the Council. Before he was flung into the depths of space, he used his evil powers to transform himself into a hideous, monstrous beast, swearing revenge on the Council and in particular on the Lord Highest.

Now able to survive the freezing blackness of space, he came at last to rest on the dark, barren side of a small backwater world where a race called the Urpneys were beginning their first tentative steps toward civilization. These primitive beings worshipped Zordrak like a god, and he decided to shape their civilization to his own ends, building them into a mighty army subject utterly to his iron will alone. Trapped in his new, monstrous form - for, bereft of his magic books, he had no way to change himself back - he decided to bide his time, knowing that the Lord Highest would come for him one day and that when he did, he would be ready.

Zordrak's beautiful sister Zarag had been courted by the Lord Highest and had fallen in love with him, but when Zordrak was banished she rejected him and set off into space in search of her brother, believing that there must still be good in him and that she could help him. Zarag at last located her brother and found him in his new home under the Black Mountain of Viltheed, where his Urpney slaves had built him a vast throne. She entreated with him to renounce evil and come back with her to their home planet, but Zordrak could not bear to look at her, for her beauty reminded him of all that he had lost - and so he cursed her, making her hideous like himself, and trapped her spirit in a bottle where she would languish for two thousand years.

At last news came to the Council that Zordrak had survived, and of his whereabouts. The Lord Highest knew that Zordrak would never rest in his struggle to obtain the Dreamstone, and that in the process he could wreak havoc across the universe. Blaming himself for Zordrak's crimes - for the young Dreammaker had been his pupil and his responsibility - he vowed to watch over Zordrak, forever if needs be. He made the extraordinary decision to move the Council's entire base of operations to the planet that Zordrak had made his home, even though this meant taking the Dreamstone - the very prize his enemy craved - with him. He dispersed the Council and sent each Dreammaker home to his own galaxy, there to watch and wait in case more followers of evil sprang up. He was not afraid of being alone, for he knew that he could always call on The Voice of the Planet Dreamstone any time he needed its help.

When he arrived, he discovered that the other side of the planet was lush and verdant and home to another species, the Noops, whose civilization was also in its infancy. They too revered the stranger from the stars but left him to his own devices. He built himself a castle and made it his home, continuing to send out dreams to the sleeping universe night after night, becoming a guide and protector to the Noops. Once they were sufficiently advanced to understand what it was he did, he had already long passed out of living memory and into legend. He had simply always been there, so very old, they said, that he was old when the moon and stars themselves were young.

The Dreammaker, as he was now simply known, needed allies who could help him safeguard the land and watch over Zordrak. In the thick forest he found a more advanced civilization, the plantlike Wuts. He made contact with them and bought their loyalty with the gift of magic. In return, they agreed to be his spies and the guardians of the land. But he kept the secret of the Dreamstone safe from all.

For some two thousand years, the Dreammaker, keeping himself alive though the power of the Dreamstone, benevolently oversaw the evolution of the Noops' civilization into a utopian, agrarian society of simple, peaceful folk. Meanwhile, Zordrak moulded the Urpneys into a lethal, single-minded war machine, at the same time manipulating the Urpney gene pool to eventually breed a super-genius, Urpgor, who became his primary strategist and inventor of military technology.

Magic became deeply ingrained in the Wuts' society. They learned how to grow trees with magic leaves on which they could surf through the skies, and make staffs topped with powerful energy globes that could function both as weapons and communication devices. The Urpneys made sporadic raids on Noop territory, which were swiftly repulsed by the Wuts.

This fragile status quo existed until one day, a young Noop named Rufus, a well-intentioned but head-in-the-clouds wastrel, was fired from his third job in three weeks for daydreaming, and his girlfriend Amberley, in a flash of inspiration uncommon to her kind, suggested he go and try to get a job with The Dreammaker.

He could never have begun to imagine the world he was to enter, nor the titanic struggle that was about to ensue: a world of mystery, magic, adventure, and terrifying enemies, where he and his friends would be thrust into mortal danger and the fate of the whole universe would hang in the balance.

© John D. Buchanan 2014

"The Dreamstone" © Mike Jupp 1990

The Best of 2013

It's that time again, folks! I've spent literally months sequencing this selection and I think it may just be the best one yet. It's quite Japan-centric this year, but there's still the usual eclectic mix of genres and languages you've come to expect and love. The selection may be downloaded here. Plug in with an open mind, play and enjoy!

1. "Forbidden Love" by Abel Korzeniowski, from the album "Romeo and Juliet"
The greatest love story ever told finally has the soundtrack it deserves thanks to Polish wunderkind Korzeniowski, who, when movie legend James Horner's completed and fully recorded score was inexplicably rejected at the last minute by the film's producers, stepped in and – in just six weeks – wrote this sweeping, indescribably beautiful replacement.

2. "Mou Nakanai to Sora ni Chikatta Hi" ("The Day I Swore by the Heavens That I Would Weep No More") by Gakido, from the album "'s Note"
The now tragically defunct Tokyo band's epic tribute to their late bandmate Piyo, who died in a car crash in 2010, is replete with duelling vocal harmonies, insanely rubbery bass skills and probably the only use ever of the harmonica in a visual kei song.

3. "Music" by Sakanaction, from their self-titled album
Amazing retro-futurist disco-funk epic from one of Japan's best-kept secrets, superstars in their homeland but virtually unknown in the West.

4. "17 Crimes" by AFI, from the album "Burials"
The Californian death-punks blast back with this thrilling anthem to doomed youth, arguably the most immediately accessible track they have ever recorded.

5. "Alone" by Falling in Reverse, from the album "Fashionably Late"
Frontman and band mastermind Ronnie Radke gleefully tears up the rulebook and flushes the pieces down the toilet, calling out his "haters" on this truly unique, utterly original, foulmouthed and frequently hilarious fusion of electro, metalcore and gangsta rap.

6. "Breakaway" by Celine Dion, from the album "Loved Me Back to Life"
The Québecoise pop diva with the voice once described as "like an iron fist in a velvet glove" blasts back with her best song in more than a decade, a heart-wrenching ode to self-doubt and longed-for emancipation.

7. "Alchemist" by Acidman, from the album "Shinsekai"
The enduring Saitama indie rockers turn in this absolutely gorgeous, transcendent anthem inspired by Paulo Coelho's allegorical novel of the same name.

8. "Xanadu" by Screw, from their self-titled album
Major debut single from the dark-hued, hard-rocking visual band who this year were finally and justly rewarded with a ticket to the big time after four underground albums.

9. "Gunshotta" by Machinedrum, from the album "Vapor City"
American-born Berliner Travis Stewart is at the absolute bleeding edge of electronic music with this ultra-futuristic "slowfast" mélange of jungle, ragga and RnB.

10. "Uns Gehört die Nacht" ("The Night Belongs to Us") by Blutengel, from the album "Monument"
The vampire-obsessed Berliners tear up the floor with this almost impossibly epic, 80s-influenced futurepop anthem.

11. "I Wanna Be a Warhol" by Alkaline Trio, from the album "My Shame Is True"
Thrilling return to form from the gothic pop-punk heroes, a yearning paean to obsession with a chorus that unfortunately, and highly amusingly, sounds like "I wanna be a warthog".

12. "First Sight" by The Devil Wears Prada, from the album "8:18"
Ensuring that metalcore remains relevant in the 21st century, the Ohioan quintet show why they are the best band in the scene today with this gut-ripping yet melodic display of aggression.

13. "Passion Theme" by Pino Donaggio, from the album "Passion"
Giallo veteran Donaggio's stunningly gorgeous orchestral score for campmeister Brian de Palma's latest lurid straight-to-video shocker is one of the best things about the movie.

14. "Teeny-Tiny Star" by Baroque, from the album "Non-Fiction"
The seminal oshare band sometimes known as Kannivalism return after a eight-year hiatus with this effervescent, life-affirming nugget guaranteed to plaster a smile on any face.

15. "Seasons" by Div, from the album "Zero One"
The young Tokyo quintet demonstrate why they are the best oshare act in the scene right now with this incredibly lush, openhearted, instant pop-rock classic.

16. "Vanilla" by Haruka to Miyuki, from the album "Cyanotype"
An astonishing, incendiary racket made by two tiny Japanese girls with childlike voices who look about fifteen but who clearly have old, world-weary souls.

17. "Taigh an Uillt" ("Taynuilt") by Joy Dunlop, from the album "Faileasan"
This love letter to the Argyllshire town of Taynuilt and its people, complete with Disneyesque interludes of flute and violin, is stirring, stunning, preposterously beautiful – music to stand atop a mountain to, arms outstretched. Were there any justice, this would have been the theme song from "Brave".

Wedding dream

A friend of my daughter's is getting married, aged just 13. We get invited to the wedding, in the beautiful manicured grounds of a Japanese temple, and I meet her mother Ti (pronounced Tai), who is Malaysian or Burmese or something - a soft-spoken, fiercely intellectual, Aung San Suu Kyi type - and a portly, mustachioed Indian man whom I take to be her father. Part of the ceremony involves the bride in a sort of ritualized wrestling with her bridesmaids, who are dark, heavyset girls. When the groom, a smart, bookish-looking boy no older than the bride, is finally produced, I am surprised that he is white. But later at the reception I discover in conversation that the bride's father died when she was very young, and that her stepfather, with whom she has lived for years, is also white. He couldn't be there for some reason; the Indian man whom I had taken for her father is in fact the mother's lawyer, a family friend.

Dream 03/11/13

I wake to the sound of a ringing phone and discover I am in a tiny, shabby, sparsely furnished apartment. I answer the ancient bakelite phone and a guy asks to speak to Chini, wants to know whether he can come round and hang out, make some tunes. An African dude, apparently Chini, appears and grabs the phone, starts talking to the other guy. I look out the window to blazing sunlight. It is immediately apparent from my surroundings that I'm not in Kansas any more. Where the hell am I, and how did I get here? Chini is ready to go to work, so I follow him downstairs and we exit through a small closet door into the department store where he works. He tells me to come back later for lunch, then disappears. After wandering about the store for a bit, I go outside and, strolling around a street market, I discover from road signs that I am in Durban, South Africa. I spend the morning walking about town before going back to the apartment building, but it's not how I remember it - the department store has disappeared and seems to have been replaced by a series of luxury apartments and offices. I wander around asking for Chini, but no-one knows when he will be back. From the way they talk about him, it sounds as though he is a person of some importance, rather than a lowly department store clerk. When I finally find him, he takes me back to his apartment, which has turned into a preposterously plush mansion complete with fountains and views over a sort of hanging gardens of Babylon. He tells me he's going to get changed for dinner, then proceeds to remove his trousers right then and there. I don't know where to look.

Elysium

Just saw Elysium in what I think was full IMAX at the O2 (formerly the Millennium Dome). Stepping inside this monolithic temple to entertainment is a truly surreal experience somewhat akin to entering Elysium itself. South African Neill Blomkamp's new film, about a man desperate to get to the offworld paradise of the super-rich in order to heal himself of a lethal dose of radiation poisoning, is a grand sci-fi spectacle heavily indebted to both Mad Max and Aliens and starts off, at least, as an intriguing social parable which clearly aims to draw parallels with today's gulf between rich and poor. It's intelligent and interesting - and then, about halfway through, it turns into a completely different movie which is primarily stuff blowing up. There's a ludicrous overuse of shakycam, so much so that during many of the action sequences it's actually hard to tell what is going on. None of the characters is particularly likeable or memorable and it's hard to care about any of them. Sharlto Copley's preposterously over-the-top, psychotic supervillain Kruger gets all the best lines, but half of them are incomprehensible, so thick is his Boer accent. Another pivotal character has exactly the same problem except with a South American accent. Taken simply as a sci-fi spectacle it's awesome and is definitely worth seeing, but it's not nearly so incisive or intelligent a social critique as its director obviously thinks it is. On the strength of this showing, Blomkamp shows promise, but definitely has some way to go. One thumb up.

Gotcharocka - "Crisis"

Gotcharocka is the new band of Jui, erstwhile frontman of the sorely lamented Vidoll - one of the best VK bands of the last decade, if not of all time. After a quickly tossed-off contractual-obligation solo album, he's back on an indie (God Child Records, the label run by Asagi of D) and has teamed up with guitarist Jun, formerly of Spiv States, for an album of catchy light rock with both funky and heavy moments. Jui, ever the Casanova, is in full swing here with his usual slightly dirty, pervy lyrics (see "Qtie" and "Virginity"). Thanks in part to his unique voice, and to some similarity in the musical style, this does sound quite a lot like Vidoll, but it's rather more self-consciously classicist; Jun has obviously got a bit of a guitar god thing going on, and there's a distinct classical influence in some of the lead guitar work, with recycled baroque melodies. On the whole it's a really good album with some great riffs and loads of singalongable choruses. Two thumbs up.

Passion

Watched Passion the other night, Brian De Palma's lurid new straight-to-video shocker starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace as advertising executives whose bitchy rivalry escalates into murder. Based on the recent French film Crime d'Amour, it's absolutely vintage De Palma as he uses every cinematic trick in the book from his 70s and 80s heyday - dream sequences, weird camera angles, funky lighting, even split screen! - to confuse and confound the audience as to what is really going on. The dialogue is terrible, the acting hammy, the plot ludicrous, the ending a confused and muddled mess, and you can see the twist coming from a mile off - I loved it. The two leads are both terrific fun, and Pino Donaggio's haunting, beautiful score is simply the icing on the cake. It doesn't stand up with the best of this great director's work, but should certainly please his fans. One and a half thumbs up.

Only God Forgives

Went to see Only God Forgives this evening - my goodness, what a film. It's sure not going to be for everyone - the Gosling fangirls in the row in front were baffled - but if you're a lover of the art of film, you will love this, because it's basically an exercise in pure cinema. I can put it no better than The Guardian's film critic, who, giving the film one of its few positive reviews, said "each scene is executed with pure formal brilliance". You could write the plot on the back of a postage stamp, but this is not about the plot. Dark, mysterious, extremely minimalist, incredibly stylized and exceedingly violent, it has the fingerprints of David Lynch all over it. It also reminded me of Blade Runner, for some weird reason. At times, it even feels a bit like a spaghetti western mysteriously transposed to Bangkok. It's almost worth seeing for Kristin Scott Thomas's searing performance alone, as Gosling's monstrous, domineering mother. Vithaya Pansringarm, previously unknown in the West, is also superb as the chillingly impassive antagonist. Naturally, the lighting, design, and cinematography (by Larry Smith, who shot Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut) are all impeccable. Cliff Martinez's roiling electronic score provides the film with a lot of its atmosphere and is also highly to be commended. All in all, love it or hate it, this is not a film you will forget in a hurry. Two bloody thumbs up.

Superhero Fing

Mark arrives in New York, naive and full of enthusiasm, to study drama, and falls for Stephanie, a gorgeous waitress wiser than her years, who seems to hide an enigmatic secret. After a shocking incident at the theatre, Mark encounters Stephanie once again and is drawn into a strange and dangerous world of costumed vigilantes with mysterious powers, that will change his life irrevocably. As dread forces converge on the city, will his romance with Stephanie survive - and will he?

(c) John D. Buchanan 2013

Implant

In a future where cybernetic technologies are strictly regulated by the state, The Church of Might is a powerful lobbying group, able to use its privileged status as a religious organization to provide nanotech implants to its congregation. With two of the church's most powerful leaders standing for re-election, a trio of its  senior figures - a beautiful heiress, an artistic loner and a reformed career criminal - agree to put aside their enmities, forming an uneasy alliance with the aim of unseating the pair. As a high-stakes, cut-throat game of political power plays, manipulation and double-dealing ensues where nothing - not even murder - is off the cards, the lines are blurred, all bets are off and it's anyone's guess just how far the three will go to achieve their aims - and whether, ultimately, they can even trust one another.

(c) John D. Buchanan 2013

Imagination working overtime

Dreamt up a couple more mad blockbusters while on holiday so I'm going to post the synopses here today. Look out for others coming in the near future. If you fancy making a movie based on any of these, get in touch!

Marcel Fengler - "Fokus"

Marcel Fengler is a resident DJ at Berghain, the Berlin club that has come to embody 21st-century techno, and this is his debut album for the club's in-house label Ostgut Ton. Those expecting a monolithic platter of the label's usual nosebleed techno will be disappointed, however. That said, this is a really good album that incorporates all sorts of electronic music styles. Yes, there is techno, but the influence of minimal, house, ambient, dub and even acid are all apparent. It's a much lighter, warmer, more inviting album than we usually get from the label, which in this case is a really good thing. Two thumbs up.