Tracks Of The Year Top Ten

10. R.E.M. – Blue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDY2tUrSMLc

After more than 30 years together, and 15 albums, R.E.M. split in September.  Their final album, Collapse Into Now was generally well received, and Blue is the final track.  It’s a strange, dark song, with a droning guitar sound, stream of consciousness lyrics almost rapped out by Michael Stipe, and a haunting guest appearance from Patti Smith.  It sounds nothing like R.E.M., and perhaps that is what makes it so good.

9. Funeral Party – Finale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBz1qeVtvxE&ob=av2e

If you think the band and track names suggest something downbeat and depressing.  Finale is the sound of irritatingly young people with great hair having a great time.  A fast and furious party anthem, it marks out Funeral Party as a band that could really make it, and become the soundtrack to a thousand parties.

8. Arcade Fire feat. David Byrne – Speaking In Tongues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW3Z1WlZEpA

The Suburbs was one of 2010’s great albums, and a deluxe version was released this year.  Rather than sticking a couple of videos and b-sides on the album, Arcade Fire produced a new edition with a Spike Jonze directed short movie, an 80 page booklet and two new tracks. Speaking In Tongues is the better of the two, and wouldn’t sound of out place in the middle of the album.  David Byrne brings his distinctive vocals to arguably one of Arcade Fire’s best tracks.

7. TV On The Radio – Will Do

TV On The Radio’s fifth album, Nine Types Of Light was undoubtedly one of the albums of the year.  Will Do was the first track to be released from the album, and has a sound that is unique to the band.  It’s accompanied by a beautiful video, and as fans of the band will know, features the best beard in rock, that of Kyp Malone.

6. Coldplay – Charlie Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjIfPODIyuA

Coldplay’s fifth album, Mylo Xyloto, might be their best yet, but Charlie Brown is certainly the best track on the album.  For a band often accused of being depressing, Charlie Brown is a soaring song, bursting with life.  Coldplay will never be everyone’s favourite band, but they are always evolving and changing their sound, and Charlie Brown was one of the highlights of the year.

5. WU LYF – We Bros

WU LYF are without doubt the best new band of the year.  After a year of hype in which they played few live shows and gave no interviews, they unleashed their debut album Go Tell Fire To The Mountain in June and We Bros is the centrepiece of a classic debut.  The lyrics are almost unintelligible, aside for the cries of ‘We bros!’ throughout, and they sound like no-one else due to the massive organ sound dominating the album.

4. Radiohead – Lotus Flower

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8

Radiohead do things on their own terms, so for them to announce a new album then release it four days later seemed almost expected.  And with it being Radiohead, that album was of course brilliant.  Lotus Flower’s video is almost more well known than the song itself, featuring Thom Yorke’s unique dance moves.  Like most of Radiohead’s recent output, it’s a more dance oriented than rock track, and features a brilliant Yorke vocal.  The video has been spoofed and aped more times than you can count, but as always, nobody does it better than Radiohead.

3. Kasabian – Switchblade Smiles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SQNNLe6WPA&ob=av3e

If I was to describe Switchblade Smiles in a word, I’d probably go with mad.  The video is mad, the lyrics are mad, and so is the tune.  But it’s still one of the best things Kasabian have done and it rocks mightily.  Beginning with a pulsing electro sound, it explodes into life with massive guitar riffs and furious drums.  Tom Meighan might be singing nonsense, but it’s a vital, pulsating track that is guaranteed to get the crowd jumping.

2. Noel Gallagher  – AKA…What A Life!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6m03FUYaTM

Noel Gallagher took his time when it came to releasing his debut solo album.  Released well after the turd that was the Beady Eye album, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds was a fine start to his new career.  While most of it could hardly be described as a radical departure from the Oasis sound, AKA….What A Life could do Noel’s first attempt at dance music.  Driven by a classic sounding piano riff, AKA sounds like a lost Hacienda classic.  The video, featuring Russell Brand, is absolutely mental.

1. The Rapture – How Deep Is Your Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZR55VKUjgQ

In May, DFA records announced that The Rapture had re-signed with them.  Then in early June, they posted news of the vinyl pressing of a new song, How Deep Is Your Love.  The accompanying video was merely the record being played, but what a track!  Built around a simple but rhythmic piano riff, the song keeps building and building, and even the saxophone that comes in later sounds good.  It’s The Rapture’s finest moment, and a reminder that DFA Records is still the home to some of the best dance music being produced today, even after LCD Soundsystem have split.  If you only listen to one more song for the rest of the year, make it this one.

Tracks Of The Year – 20 to 11

20. Wild Beasts – Albatross

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJYqhKZrwA&ob=av2e

The lead single from their third album Smother, Albatross highlights the unique sound that Wild Beasts have created.  I imagine Wild Beasts are a band easy to dislike, with lead singer Hayden Thorpe often adopting a falsetto singing voice and music that is hard to define.  But Albatross is a beautiful song and the album is one of the best of the year.

19. Elbow – Neat Little Rows

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pYjCYNh-Kw&ob=av3e

After the incredible success of fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid, Elbow returned in 2011 as the people’s band.  While Build A Rocket, Boys! may not have reached the heights of their previous album, Neat Little Rows is another anthemic track, with a soaring chorus destined to soundtrack a thousand TV shows.

18. Friendly Fires – Hawaiian Air

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65_cgr4PJFk

Friendly Fires sound like summer, the kind of music you can imagine listening to as you watch the sun set on holiday.  Hawaiian Air is a highlight of their second album Pala, and the video features more of Ed McFarlane’s ‘drunk uncle at a wedding’ dancing, first seen in the Kiss Of Life video.  With a growing reputation for brilliant live shows, Friendly Fires are going from strength to strength.

17. Jane’s Addiction – End To The Lies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrhDs-SJdJQ&ob=av2e

Jane’s Addiction are a band with a reputation.  Having formed in 1985, they’ve split up twice, gone through numerous line-up changes, been addicted to, well, everything, yet somehow managed to release four great albums.  End To The Lies was their first single in eight years, and is driven by mighty riffs from Dave Navarro and has the kind of vitality missing from so many bands half their age.

16. Death In Vegas – Savage Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdqElCW5eBY

Another band returning after a long absence, although Death In Vegas seems to now just be Richard Fearless.  After a seven year gap following 2004’s Satan’s Circus, fifth album Trans-Love Energies was released in September.  Savage Love is the closing track, an epic 7 minute song forever building into a tumultuous climax at the end of a great album.

15. Foo Fighters – White Limo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z3nBokjZyE&ob=av2n

Early in the year, Foo Fighters released a brief clip of Dave Grohl screaming over a heavy wall of sound.  It seemed that the Foo Fighters had gone metal.  While the album, Wasting Light, didn’t live up to those expectations, White Limo definitely rocks hard.  The video is a trademark Foos video, with Lemmy driving the titular vehicle, and the band enjoying a wild ride.

14. The Kills – Future Starts Slow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLjuRG3hoE&ob=av2e

The two members of The Kills, Jamie Hince (Hotel) and Alison Mosshart (VV) are somewhat overshadowed by their other halves.  Hince is the husband of Kate Moss, and Mosshart is a member of Jack White’s The Dead Weather.  But they’ve been making music together for a decade, and Future Starts Slow is the best track on their fourth album, Blood Pressures, featuring trademark duelling vocals.

13. The Duke Spirit – Surrender

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuTS1BaKHDM&ob=av2e

Liela Moss might be better known for her vocals on various U.N.K.L.E. tracks, but as lead singer of The Duke Spirit she fronts a band that really should be much bigger than they are.  Surrender is the first single from their third album, Bruiser, and is driven by a chunky riff and a soaring chorus.

12. Fleet Foxes – Grown Ocean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgv6dKV03dA

Grown Ocean is the final track on Fleet Foxes excellent second album, Helplessness Blues.  Like many Fleet Foxes tracks, it sounds timeless, as if it could have been recorded in America at any time in the last 50 years.  Robin Pecknold’s vocal dominates the track, but it’s a group effort with layer upon layer of sound building a beautiful track.

11. Justice – Civilization

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVq2yMuAMVQ&ob=av2e

Used to soundtrack a series of Adidas adverts early in the year, Civilization was the first track to be released from the French duo’s second album.  One of the year’s weirder videos features bison escaping a crumbling wasteland, and the vocals are provided by Ali Love.  The track has a blend of 70s disco and modern electro and was a quality taster for the album.

50/50 Review

‘Hey, let’s go see that cancer comedy!’ is not a sentence you get to use very often.  But 50/50 offers that opportunity.  Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 50/50 is the story of Adam Lerner, a young man stunned by the news that he has a cancerous tumour growing on his spine.  Directed by Jonathan Levine and written by Will Reiser with his friend Seth Rogan, the story is based partly on Reiser’s own battle with cancer.  Rogan co-stars as Adam’s best friend Kyle.

Adam is a radio journalist who leads a straight life.  When first told that he has a tumour, he’s confused, as he doesn’t drink or smoke, and he recycles.  The first thing to say about 50/50 is that it is a very funny movie.  Gordon-Levitt and Rogan have a strong chemistry and their scenes together are entertaining, as Kyle attempts to keep Adam in a positive frame of mind, usually by trying to get him laid.  The rest of the cast is strong too, with Anjelica Houston as Adam’s mother, struggling to cope with her husband’s Alzheimer’s disease, even before discovering her son has cancer, Bryce Dallas Howard as Adam’s girlfriend Rachael, and Anna Kendrick as an inexperienced psychologist called Katie.

Although there is a lot of comedy in the movie, it certainly doesn’t shy away from the realities of dealing with cancer.  Adam’s relationships with his mother and his psychologist are the most complicated, as he struggles to deal with his mother’s worrying and attempts to get more involved in his life, and he finds it hard to take advice from Katie, as she is younger than him and he is her third ever patient.  Kendrick gives an excellent performance as Katie, and continues to be a star on the rise after stealing Up In The Air from George Clooney.  Her attempts to help Adam deal with what is happening to him are clumsy at first, but their relationship grows and becomes a key part of Adam’s life.

There are some flaws with the movie.  The fact that Adam’s father has Alzheimer’s is something that doesn’t have much of a bearing on the plot.  Although it plays a part in complicating Adam’s relationship with his mother, there’s no scene where Adam attempts to tell his father what is happening, and as a result he’s often just left in a scene looking confused without saying anything.  Bryce Dallas Howard also seems underused, with Rachael’s relationship with Adam coming to an abrupt end early in the film.  The viewer is supposed to think of her as a bad person because of how the relationship ends, but little screen time is given over to showing why this is.

But the movie is driven on by another superb performance from Gordon-Levitt.  At 30 years old, he’s well on his way to establishing himself as one of the best actors around, after stand-out performances in movies like Brick and The Lookout, and supporting roles in Inception and next year’s The Dark Knight Rises.  He gives a measured performance as Adam, as he goes through various stages of coping with the cancer, from denial to determination to anger.  Rogan also impresses as his friend, and although Kyle provides a lot of the comedy in the movie, there is more depth to Kyle than most of the characters Rogan has played in movies like Knocked Up or Superbad.

Overall, 50/50 is a very funny, but also touching and realistic film that deals with cancer in a way that is never patronising and never makes fun of the terrible suffering that cancer can bring.  It has a relatively young cast that all give strong performances, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt leading the way as an actor really making a name for himself.  So if you’re unsure of what to see at the cinema in the next few weeks, try saying to a friend ‘Hey, let’s go see that cancer comedy!’

Life’s Too Short – Episode 3

Ricky Gervais has never shied away from controversial topics for his comedy.  Even before The Office, when he worked on The 11 O’Clock Show and his own chat show Meet Ricky Gervais, he was always happy to make jokes about things people could find offensive.

That style of humour was always there in The Office and Extras, but in his new sitcom, Life’s Too Short, it seems to be more offensive now, because the star of the show is a dwarf.  Criticism of the show tends to focus on the idea that Gervais is somehow taking advantage of Warwick Davis, that he is laughing at him and making him do funny things for his own pleasure.  This is to spectacularly miss the point of the show.  In the three episodes so far, Davis’ character has been almost entirely unsympathetic.  He makes crass comments and bad decisions, and then blames other people for his mistakes.  In this week’s episode, he gets work on a Helena Bonham-Carter movie.  He thinks he’s going to have a starring role, but ends up standing in for a child actor, and having to act from inside a bin, because Bonham-Carter can’t act when she’s looking at ‘it’.

While it may sound like the audience should have sympathy for Davis, the reality is that he’s taken the job instead of offering it to his unhappy clients at his talent agency, just hours after they’ve met with him to complain that he takes all the best jobs for himself.  Where David Brent and Andy Millman would make mistakes but learn a lesson from it, the show’s version of Davis is always blaming other people and never realising that he’s done wrong.

Elsewhere in this week’s episode, Warwick starts his own website, and has a meeting with The Society Of People With Short Stature, of which he is vice-chairman.  Warwick wants to be chairman, and manages to get himself involved in an interview with the BBC, originally intended to be with the chairman alone.  Here he compares dwarves struggles for equality to the civil rights movement in America, with himself as a Martin Luther King figure.  When the interview is aired, he discovers that he has been cut from the interview entirely.

But perhaps the show’s most controversial scene comes as Warwick travels to a school to ‘destroy’ a pupil who has been sending him abusive messages on his website.  The pupils in the class at first laugh at Warwick, but he turns it around and has them laughing with him as the wonders if the pupil in question has a ‘gay dwarf fetish’.  What Warwick doesn’t realise until it’s too late is that the pupil is wheelchair bound.  It seems to me that it was a joke too far.  It’s there for shock value, and to again stress that Warwick creates his own messes for himself (afterwards he plays down what has happened).  But it feels unnecessary, as the pupil then starts to get bullied himself.  It’s a joke that will almost certainly get a lot of (mostly bad) publicity for the show.

Life’s Too Short is a funny show, but it seems certain that it will offend more people than anything Gervais has done before, something which may ultimately hurt its chances of returning for a second series in the future.

How The Reality Of Modern Warfare Becomes A Fantasy For Keith Vaz

Keith Vaz MP has a history of (anti)violence.  In 2004, Vaz asked for an investigation into the link between violence and video games, after claiming the parents of a murdered boy believed that the killer had been influenced by the game Manhunt.  Police dismissed the claim, but Vaz objected again when a sequel, Manhunt 2 was set for release in 2007.  The game would become the first to be banned by the BBFC in over a decade.  He has objected to other games over the years, but recently criticised Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.  He has raised a motion citing that the game features “gratuitous acts of violence against members of the public” and “the harrowing scenes in which a London Underground train is bombed by terrorists, bearing a remarkable resemblance to the tragic events of 7 July 2005”.

While it is true that part of the game takes place in London, the clue is in the title when it comes to who the violence is against.  While it may be the case in a game such as Grand Theft Auto IV that you can be violent towards members of the public, the Modern Warfare series is exactly what it says, war.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that The Daily Mail had objected to London featuring in an early trailer for the game, claiming to have been contacted by victims of the 7/7 attacks and their families who were ‘distressed’ by the images.

But the biggest leap comes later in Early Day Motion 2427, when it claims that “there is increasing evidence of a link between perpetrators of violent crime and violent video games users”.  Of course, a respected MP like Keith Vaz would of course have evidence of this….well, he would have if it was true.  That it’s not true should be clear to anyone.  The idea that playing violent video games leads to violent crime is as absurd as the idea that Columbine happened because those involved listened to Marilyn Manson, or that violent movies turn ordinary citizens into Rambo-esque vigilantes.

Aside from Vaz just making things up to suit his argument, it’s important to remember that video games do actually have a rating system, just like movies or DVDs, and Modern Warfare 3 is an 18 certificate.  What’s ironic is that many war movies, including the likes of Saving Private Ryan, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now have 15 certificates, so it’s actually easier for teenagers to watch violent movies than it is to play violent games.

Video games have always been treated differently to television and film as art forms, mainly because people seem to think they are designed solely for children.  But the majority of the best games released are adult in nature, and as the games become more advanced, so do the plots and characters, making them more and more realistic.  Although Modern Warfare is a thrilling game to play, you don’t finish it and think ‘I’d bloody love to be in a war’, any more than you would having watched Saving Private Ryan.

Thankfully there has been some sense from MPs, as Labour’s Tom Watson suggested this amendment to Vaz’ motion: “This House notes that the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) gave the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 an 18 classification, noting that `the game neither draws upon nor resembles real terrorist attacks on the underground’; further believes that the game has an excellent user interface and challenges the gamers’ dexterity as well as collaborative skills in an outline setting; and encourages the BBFC to uphold the opinion of the public that whilst the content of video games may be unsettling or upsetting to some, adults should be free to choose their own entertainment in the absence of legal issues or material which raises a risk or harm.”

Vaz has tabled a motion decrying Modern Warfare 3 for mimicking real-life events, yet there have been any number of movies made in the last decade about the military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and movies made about 9/11.  These are never challenged by MPs, never criticised for violent content or how they might possibly upset people who have lost family members in these conflicts.

Video games are multi-million pound industry, with Modern Warfare 2 making more money than Avatar, but it seems like they will always be a target for self-appointed moral guardians, people who will happily bend the truth to suit their agenda.  Perhaps Keith Vaz should actually try playing Modern Warfare 3, although I dare say he might not enjoy being called a noob every 30 seconds.

Life’s Too Short – Episode 1

Life’s Too Short is Ricky Gervais’ third sitcom.  Following the incredible success of The Office and Extras, Gervais has expanded his horizons, writing, directing and starring in movies, as well as working on An Idiot Abroad, with his friend Karl Pilkington as the titular traveller.

But the difference between Life’s Too Short and the shows that came before it is that this time Gervais is taking a backseat.  As David Brent and Andy Millman, Gervais was the lead character in his first two sitcoms, but this time the star is Warwick Davis.  Davis suffers from a form of dwarfism, meaning he is just 3ft 6in.  Davis is a successful actor, having worked on various Star Wars movies, and most recently having a recurring role in the Harry Potter series.  In Life’s Too Short, he plays an unsuccessful version of himself, a documentary team in tow as he struggles to run a dwarf talent agency, while his wife divorces him and movie work has dried up.  He annoys Gervais and Stephen Merchant, playing themselves, by constantly turning up at their offices looking for work, having previously worked with them on Extras.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are several recognisable aspects to Life’s Too Short.  Like The Office, Life’s Too Short is presented to the viewer as a documentary, and Warwick’s accountant (played by Steve Brody, who has appeared in I’m Alan Partridge and The Armando Iannucci Shows) is as hapless as Darren Lamb, Andy’s agent in Extras.  Another Extras similarity is celebrity cameos.  The likes of Cat Deeley, Johnny Depp and Steve Carell will appear in future episodes, but Liam Neeson turns up for episode one.

Watching the show, it’s also easy to see similarities between Davis’ character and David Brent.  There are the looks to camera, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and presenting themselves as more successful than they really are.

The best scenes from episode one include Davis asking a passer-by to ring the buzzer to Gervais’ office for him (Gervais and Merchant thought they’d made it too high for him), a bad version of Ebony & Ivory, and Warwick’s attempt to get into his house after his wife has changed the locks.  But the highlight is undoubtedly Neeson’s cameo.  Explaining to Gervais and Merchant that he wants to move into stand-up comedy, he tries improv with Gervais.  His determination to work ‘full-blown AIDS’ into the sketch is hilarious and when Merchant suggests that he doesn’t talk about AIDS, he wonders why Gervais gets away with it, with Merchant admitting that ‘no-one knows’.

Overall I enjoyed the first episode, but there is a sense of been there, done that about it.  The celebrity cameos in Extras felt natural because of the setting, but in Life’s Too Short there’s a danger of them just being shoe-horned into the show to give it a few extra laughs.  The success of the new show will be based on how funny Warwick’s character can be, and if Gervais and Merchant, alongside whichever celebrity, are stealing laughs, then it is unlikely to be as well received as the two shows that came before it.

David Dougan

Life’s Too Short – Episode 2

Episode 2 of Life’s Too Short begins at a convention, with Warwick arguing with a mother when she wants a free signed photograph for her son, who has a tumour.  His day gets worse when he’s interviewed by a particularly inept local news reporter.

Unlike episode 1, this week’s episode was more focused on Warwick and his (mis)adventures.  An invitation to a wedding with a Star Wars theme (which will end badly) was followed by a job offer, giving him the chance to work with Johnny Depp.  Depp’s extended appearance felt more natural than Liam Neeson’s, even though he wants to meet Warwick because he will be playing a dwarf in a new Tim Burton movie.  Depp clearly enjoys sending himself up, explaining that because he’s a method actor; he wants to see how a dwarf lives and what he does.  This leads to Warwick standing in a toilet, with Depp wanting to know what it feels like.

The good news for Life’s Too Short is that Davis can hold his own when it comes to comedy.  The majority of the episode revolves around what he’s doing with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant appearing less than in episode 1.  But the scene in Ricky’s office, when Depp gets revenge for Gervais’ Golden Globes jokes is a highlight of the episode.  After Depp warns that ‘no-one makes fun of Tim Allen on my watch’, he runs through a series of anti-Gervais jokes including ‘Why do people take an instant dislike to Ricky Gervais? It saves time’.

Away from Ricky’s office, we find out more about Warwick’s day-to-day life.  His relationship with his new secretary, the gormless Cheryl (played by Rosamund Hanson, previously seen in This Is England and This Is England 86), looks like being one of the highlights of the series, and this week she suggests that Warwick could find work as a chimney sweep, or even try to help catch paedophiles by dressing as a little girl.

Overall, episode 2 is a big improvement over episode 1, and Warwick Davis is showing that he can handle being a leading man in a sitcom.  Time will tell if Life’s Too Short will be acclaimed in the way The Office and Extras were, but if it continues to be as funny as episode 2, it will certainly be regarded as a success.

David Dougan

The Rum Diary Review

In 1960, Hunter S. Thompson moved to Puerto Rico to work for El Sportivo, a local sports magazine.  Although the magazine folded shortly after his arrival, his time in Puerto Rico inspired him to write what would become The Rum Diary, to date his only published novel.  At the time it was written, Thompson was yet to become the infamous Gonzo journalist that he is remembered as being, and after many rejections, he abandoned it.  It was finally published in 1998, soon after the movie adaptation of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas had been released.

Terry Gilliam’s crazed movie starred Johnny Depp as ‘Raoul Duke’, but Duke was in fact Thompson himself, a pseudonym Thompson would use to insert himself into his stories without getting himself into trouble.  Before the movie went into production, Depp met Thompson and spent a great deal of time preparing himself for the role at Thompson’s Owl Farm home in Colorado.  This resulted in Depp doing a pitch perfect impersonation of Thompson in the movie, so it is no surprise that Depp wound up playing another Hunter S. Thompson surrogate, this time Paul Kemp, in the movie adaptation of The Rum Diary.

Just like the book, The Rum Diary has had a long-winded production period.  The first talks about a movie version began in 2000, and Depp signed on to play Kemp.  But it took until 2007, and two false starts before work really began on the movie.  Amber Heard and Aaron Eckhart joined the cast, and production began in early 2009.  Bruce Robinson, the man best known for writing and directing was charged with doing the same to the novel.

The movie begins shortly after Kemp’s arrival in Puerto Rico, as he wakes up with a hangover before travelling to the San Juan Star offices to meet his new boss, Edward J. Lotterman (Richard Jenkins).  There he is introduced to Bob Sala (Michael Rispoli), a fellow journalist who he will spend most of his time in Puerto Rico with.  What follows is, unfortunately, a bit of mess, both in terms of what happens in the movie, and how good (or not) it actually is as a movie.

The Rum Diary is a movie with many problems.  As a young man in his early 20s, Hunter S. Thompson arrived in Puerto Rico as a journalist yet to find his voice, and this is similar to how it feels while watching the movie.  If you’ve seen the trailer, it portrays the movie as a wild ride, with Kemp losing himself in a new country, but the plot is actually rather more slow and methodical, and Kemp is really trying to find himself.  The movie has a good cast, but most of the characters are too one-dimensional in the script, getting little time to establish what they are really like, with most of the movie focusing on Kemp and Sala getting in and out of trouble.

The basic plot involves Kemp getting involved with businessman Sanderson (Eckhart), who is looking for a journalist to report favourably on his plans to turn an un-named island paradise into a hot new tourist destination.  Although Kemp originally has reservations about it, he signs up, but things are complicated by his out of control relationship with Sala, and Sanderson’s distractingly sexy girlfriend, Chenault (Heard).  An example of the lack of character development is the attempt to portray Sanderson as a more vicious character than he appears.  He has a brief moment threatening locals who are standing nearby his private beach, as well as lecturing Kemp when he brings Sala along uninvited to visit the island.

The movie portrays Kemp as a man who finds a purpose during his time in Puerto Rico, but it is ultimately a poor adaptation of what is a very good novel.  Johnny Depp became a very close friend of Thompson’s and it’s clear that Depp wanted to do this movie as a tribute to Thompson, who died in 2006.  But it ends up being a messy and confused movie, unsure of what it really wants to be.  In some ways it’s a kind of prequel to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, a portrait of Thompson before he knew who he was.  Thompson would become one of the most respected and influential writers of the second half of the twentieth century, but portrayed in The Rum Diary as Paul Kemp, he fails to spark the imagination.

David Dougan