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The Prodigy
Bournemouth BIC
January 27, 2010

I know The Prodigy have been around for a fair few years but I really didn’t expect their gig to make it so damn noticeable.

When support band Foreign Beggars enquire how many members of the audience were born in the 90s there’s a seriously muted response. And it doesn’t get much louder when they ask who was born in the80s . The 70s get a much bigger reception and if they had asked about the 60s, I suspect they would have raised the roof.

But they don’t. They get back to the matter in hand, which unfortunately involves mistimed, misfiring rap, with the vocals seemingly utterly disconnected to the backing track. There’s a pretty good beatboxer with them but his talents are more or less lost in the mess.

DJs South Central provide a way better second support slot. They get the crowd feeling lively and ramp up the atmosphere, leaving everyone feeling more than ready for the headliners. Shame then that there was a seriously long wait after that, with any atmosphere that had been built up slowly deflating.

So it’s a relief when The Prodigy finally show. And when they do, it’s to give an energetic, pulsating display. There are a few tracks from latest album Invaders Must Die but the setlist mainly relies on the old classics, which still sound as fresh and exciting as ever. The pace is relentless and most of the crowd dance in a frenzy but all too quickly, it’s over.

And it’s not purely because we’re having such a good time that’s it’s positively flown by. It’s because the band have finished their set a scant hour and a quarter since they came on. I know they’re getting older and I know they put loads of energy into their performances but seriously…?

Is an hour and 15 minutes really enough to justify a ticket that costs nearly £40 if you include booking fees and postage charges for those not fortunate enough to get to the box office on the day the tickets go on sale?

Not really, especially when you consider that Leonard Cohen plays for two and a half hours at nearly twice the age of anyone in The Prodigy. It’s really disappointing to leave a such a good show with a niggling sense of being short-changed.

Mind you, would any of the punters I heard leaving the gig and complaining about their aching limbs have been able to dance for much longer than that?

There have been many end-of-the-world films from the sublime (Miracle Mile, The Quiet Earth) to the ridiculous (2012, Armageddon).

So when I learnt that Cormac McCarthy’s dark and depressing book The Road was being turned into a film I was not immediately happy.

Continue reading “CINEMA: The Road, part 2” »

Overlooked on its cinema release last year when it came out in the same month as the astounding (500) Days of Summer, this film had a hard time proving that it was something different and had something unique to say.

At home on DVD however, this film is well worth checking out.

The story is fairly sweet and simple and follows the life of a lonely and single hotel night manager Mike Cranshaw (Steve Zahn). One night art saleswoman Sue Claussen (Jennifer Aniston) comes to stay and Mike falls for her at once. He brings her a complimentary bottle of wine that night and that begins a cross-country twisted romance of one dreamer trying to find his perfect female partner and hitting all kinds of road blocks – emotional or otherwise – along the way. Continue reading “DVD: Management” »

James Brown will long be remembered for powerful live performances and now arriving on DVD comes a forgotten concert held in 1974 in Africa.

All eyes were on South Africa and Muhammad Ali fighting George Foreman in the much anticipated Rumble in the Jungle and the organisers of the concert, musician Hugh Masekela and producer Stewart Levine, thought that they had a chance to promote integration and freedom alongside the boxing match. This new documentary from filmmaker Jeffrey Levy-Hinte tells the story of the concert from inception to performance.

The footage has been put together from hundreds of hours of outtakes from the award-winning film When We Were Kings, which features the concert in passing only. Director Levy-Hinte edited part of the Kings documentary and was amazed at how much footage of the concert was being sent back to the vaults and decided to put it all together to release as a film.

Continue reading “DVD: Soul Power” »

The central idea of what can turn a good man to evil and how easy is it to turn the wrong way down a path in life that you never imagined taking is the premise of this excellent film based on an acclaimed play by CP Taylor.

It looks at the life of John Halder (Viggo Mortensen), a German literature professor who in the 1930s writes a book that deals with the subject of compassionate euthanasia. His book, although not widely read, is noticed and championed by powerful political figures and used to support government propaganda in the Nazi party. Halder then finds that his career and status is improving in a rise of nationalism that is sweeping Germany. But his book and what it means, along with his life decisions, begins to damage his friends and family with devastating effects.

Viggo Mortensen is one of the best actors on the planet and for years has been carving out a career of stunning performances along with appearing as some old ranger in a few films about Hobbits.

Continue reading “DVD: Good” »