How good is that painting of a mallard you just saw? You don’t know do you? If it were a film, or a song, or a play, you’d be able to find hundreds of reviews. Nowhere on the internet provides reviews of paintings of mallards. Nowhere, that is, until now. (There aren’t actually any reviews of paintings of mallards this week. That was just an illustrative example.)
Every Friday, we take readers’ suggestions of things that deserve reviews but seldom receive the critical treatment. And then we review the utter nonsense out of them. So let’s begin.
Snack metal
A Cornish pasty-themed black metal band: REVIEWED
There are so many things that are awesome about this video that I thought it deserved its own type of review. I’ve tried to squeeze as many as possible into the time it takes to watch it. A live review, if you will, in real time. Ready? 321 GO:
0.03 OWL.
0.13 Really good fast tracking shot zoom thing over the graveyard and into the church.
0.22 A THRONE.
0.26 Two men appear in Smiffys makeup like budget Alice Coopers. But good.
0.36 Ah, here we go. Some lyrics about moistened crusts, spoken by a horse holding a spatula. The cinematography suggests Knightmare by way of Maid Marian And Her Merry Men.
1.12 They appear to be prepping for an anarchic pasty ritual in the woods by eating tiny pies off a guitar case that doubles as an altar table. Will they flambé a virgin or eat pigs’ brains? Oh, no, turns out their quest is to fend off the flying, flaming pastries sent from Satan’s oven himself.
2.01 There’s an axe as a microphone, a scenic view of giraffes through binoculars and some very, very questionable wigs.
2.09 The vocals have turned into something that resembles Gollum hacking up tar and fish bones into a bin, and James Blunt.
2.19 That was an unneccessary lowblow, soz Blunto.
2.26 Everything has started to get a bit Blair Witch – the axe hurtles into a pasty on a tree, which is a more impressive stunt than anything you get on Ninja Warrior.
2.29 Lightsabers!
2.41 The flying black pasties seem a bit too easy to kill tbh. One band member picks up a stick, fires a shot of lightning and that seems to do it.
3.11 And now, the scene that shows what this pastry palaver is really all about: four lads in shit wigs waving swords around and trying to look a bit savage, like they were picked on in school and now, watch out mate, are well ’ard and can probably cast spells or are best mates with hell and stuff.
And there we have it. This video is basically great. As for the review format, I’m not so sure. 8/10.
KH
Fauna topiary
Bushes trimmed into the shapes of animals: REVIEWED
The earliest known cave paintings of animals, etched over 35,000 years ago, were discovered on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. Since these atavistic depictions were first daubed, the painters’ brains struggling to make sense of a blooming of cognitive reasoning and artistic expression, humankind has sought to interpret animals through art. The problem is, over the millennia, a lot of these artistic interpretations have been a right proper load of arse.
That painting of those dogs playing cards, for instance, is stupid, because no dog I’ve ever met can so much as hold a single card, let alone say “hit me” (you should never hit dogs). The statue of Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh is terrible as well – it’s a dog, on a plinth, neither of which are rendered convincingly. And then there’s Sir Edwin Henry Landseer’s Dignity and Impudence, which is – and this is your lot – two dogs sat in a hole. I’ve seen dogs in holes IRL. My dog Gandalf digs them all the time, and sits in them, live, for free. If Sir Edwin Henry Landseer were here now I’d slap him right in the face.
Bad as these are though, the single worst interpretation of an animal it’s possible to forge with the human paw is the Hedge Beast. This is also known as topiary, which is when someone thinks “Hmm. The outside of my house doesn’t adequately convey how much I like not wearing trousers and pants outside”, and they seek to rectify this by sculpting a majestic goose out of a thatch of hornbeam. Let’s be clear: there is no excuse for this. At best, people think you’re eccentric and will cross the road to avoid you, which is not really an “at best” at all.
No beech giraffe hath ever taken the weight of a tyre swing. No bush shaped like a lynx in your garden has ever mauled a prowling thief. In every conceivable sense, animal hedges are an ignominious addition to mankind’s oeuvre. Pointless. Ugly. Difficult to maintain.
Destroy them all, and put a real lynx in your garden. Actual garden lynxs are great. 1/10. (The lynx: 10/10)
LH
The animated arts
Some rubbish anime: REVIEWED
Paraphrasing Wikipedia here because I just simply don’t have time to educate myself on the full context behind this video, but Monogatari is an Anime series about a schoolgirl who survives a vampire attack and then helps other schoolgirls defeat other supernatural beings. So, I’m expecting this YouTube clip to feature some big-eyed adolescent dismembering a Kraken in a hyperviolent fashion. Should be good. Let’s roll the tape…
[INT. Sparsely furnished kitchenette – two girls are deep in conversation]
Senjougahara: “Hanekawa, do you know about salad dressing?”
Hanekawa: “Of course, I know. You mean the stuff that’s poured on salads occasionally?”
Senjougahara: “What about the three fried egg factions… what do you think of those who use pepper, some kind of sauce or soy sauce?”
Hanekawa: “Oh, I heard rumours of people putting stuff on their fried eggs.”
Hold, up. Stop. Freeze. Cut. Scene. You’ve got the entire blank canvas of animation here. You can draw literally anything you want – Burt Bacharach vomiting out tiny Technicolor manatees into the vast expanse of space or something – and you’ve chosen to animate… a discussion over which condiment is the best? Seriously, I’ve had this conversation at 3am at a house party in Durham. It’s never fun.
So anyway, long story short, it turns out that Hanekawa – Japanese schoolgirl, big eyes, etc etc – doesn’t like any condiments. She doesn’t have soy sauce on her sushi; she doesn’t have sugar in her yogurt (quite sensible that one – who has sugar in their yogurt?); she doesn’t even have “ketchup letters” (no, me neither) on her “hamburger steaks”, the monster! She is – and massive kudos to whoever did the subtitles for this video at this point – “one of those people vehemently opposed to seasoning”.
To sum up, Hanekawa is incredibly boring. Her favourite colour’s probably red (not crimson, or vermillion – just red), she probably has her steak medium done, and if she knew who Michael McIntyre was she’d probably like him. Heck, Hanekawa is even more boring than a two minute and 22 second video about condiment choices, which it turns out is actually pretty sodding boring. You should have your tastebuds forcefully removed from your tongue, Hanekawa. I hate you.
Video: 4/10. Hanekawa: -1000/10.
GM
Sporting tomfoolery
Deflategate as a ‘gate’: REVIEWED
So this whole sport is a gate if you ask me. An activity based primarily around men running into each other headfirst, American Football is a scandal waiting to happen (and evidence suggests that scandal is coming down the slipway). But I’m here to review a specific gate, the gate of Deflategate, which – if you’ll pardon the pun – is a gate that is rather deflating.
The upsum is this: Tom Brady is like the Frank Lampard of American Football, a clean-cut handsome dude with an equal amount of talent and privilege (he interned at merchant bank Merrill Lynch). As quarterback of the New England Patriots his main job is to throw the ball to his teammates, and both throwing and catching a ball is easier when there’s less air in it. So, during a playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers last season, he and his teammates agreed to take some air out of the ball. That’s against the rules. He got found out and was suspended. It was officially a Gate.
But, as is the way of the modern world, the man of privilege went to law and this week his suspension was overturned. Not because Brady didn’t take air out of the ball, you understand, but because of some tedious legal technicality which I can’t even be bothered to explain.
The original gate, of course, was Watergate where the actual bloody president of the United States was caught authorising the illegal surveillance of an electoral rival. The president was forced to resign as a result. In this instance, Brady was caught taking air out of a ball and ultimately nothing happened to him beyond a bit of hyperventilating press. We get the gates we deserve. 2/10.
PM
Unconvincing aloofness
Bloc Party’s new look: REVIEWED
When establishing a band’s image, the job is twofold. First, you must ensure that each member is distinct from one another, and then you must unite the group in some way. A good example is the Spice Girls, who were each generously allocated one individual character trait by their record company, but yet were seamlessly brought together as a comprehensive unit, and each allocated a pair of five-inch platforms by their record company.
For Bloc Party, who have recently returned from a hiatus – replacing their bassist and drummer with ordinary members of the public in the process – carving out a visual identity is particularly crucial at this time. And, when it comes to formulating distinct personas, the new Bloc Party seem to have pulled it off, albeit without much aplomb. Spice Girl-style left to right, each member’s facial expressions and therefore entire character can be neatly summed up as: stupid-yet-sceptical; annoyed; saddened-by-the-world-but-also-disgusted-by-it; in a band, while you are not in a band.
Where the band let themselves down however is in the lack of cohesiveness. Two are in vests, while two are sporting T-shirts. Two are wearing silver pendants, while two are not wearing silver pendants. I could go on. Maybe, though, I’m judging too harshly. Perhaps their correspondent pairs of five-inch platforms are just out of shot. We’ll have to wait for the live shows. 5/10.
RA
