The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Jupiter Ascending

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Year: 2015 Director: The Wachowskis

On a rainy day at the end of half-term I accompanied two 12-year olds to the Wachowskis first original sci-fi script since The Matrix. The 12 certificate is probably an indicator that there would be less cod philosophy and more pecs. The set up sees Mila Kunis as Jupiter, eking out a life as a frankly unconvincing house cleaner whose life is changed etc when she discovers she’s a member of an aristocratic family who rule the galaxy. But of course as many people want her dead as want to help her, and only Metallica-roadie look alike Tatum Channing and – oh my it’s Sean Bean as a roguish world-weary ex-cop – are really on her side. It looks great – at times a bonkers mix of cyberpunk, medieval gothic and Boris Vallejo fantasy. Mila gets hitched in a spaceship that appears to have been cut and shunted with Salisbury Cathedral. Bean and Eddie Redmayne chew the scenery most satifactorily as the Brits Who Can Act. Mila Kunis does not have much to do except look scared, control the world’s bee population, and run away again in the company of some male saviour. Until the » Continue Reading.

Toppie Klaxon – with added AC/DC

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Well let’s put all the fixtures and fittings back, which must surely include the semiweeklyish survey of the nation’s former chart show. This week’s, available to our UK residents on the iplayer includes a real highlight – Steve Wright endorsing ‘a really great live band – because I’ve seen them’ which is none other than AC/DC miming in the studio to what sounds a badly rerecorded version of Touch Too Much. Several bits of the track appear to be entirely missing – but it is a mighty, mighty appearance nonetheless. Playing support are The Tourists – Annie Lennox channeling Amelia Earhart , a dull video from Cliff, Bob Geldof in full paranoiac messiah mode leading the Rats through Someone Looking At You, there’s eurodisco from the Nolans, blink and you’ll miss em Jam copyists the Chords (given the dreaded ‘I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more from them in the future’ from Steve – the Toppie equivalent of the chairman’s vote of confidence), the deeply spooky and somewhat brilliant 17 fromThe Regents, and two two tones – The Selecter doing 3 Minute Hero, and a live video from The Specials who are still number one. Brief clip of Queen on » Continue Reading.

The Last of Last FM? Whither us scrobblers?

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Recently the Last FM community has been gnashing its teeth over the latest itunes update, which moves it to 64-bit and renders it impossible to scrobble to last fm from via its itunes plugin.

What you say? Last FM is a music database website with desktop clients and plug-ins that enables you to consolidate your playcounts from itunes, windows media player, Spotify etc into one place. It’s clearly been struggling recently to sustain itself and the itunes issues shows no signs of being fixed anytime soon though there are unofficial work-arounds in the forums.

I love last fm, wish it well, but can’t help feel it’s time may be drawing to a close. So, should I start to think about somewhere else to scrobble to – their word for recording playcounts. And, crucially, who offers a migration function for the 20,000 odd scrobbles on my last fm profile?