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Last night we watched through the final episode of “Glee”. We’ve now seen all of the first series. I’m not convinced by it to be honest – there are some aspects of the series which I think are odd, and one which I actually find quite uncomfortable.

Also note that this post will contain a few spoilers, so if you haven’t seen Glee but want to, you may want to leave this post until you have seen it.

First things first though, the positive aspects. I do like the music – although I didn’t know all the songs I felt like the ones that they did do were well done. I was quite impressed with the way they covered some of the pop songs such as Queen’s “Somebody to Love”: most of the time I think covers of iconic songs shouldn’t be done, because they rarely do the original justice. But in this instance they made the cover version different enough from the original to make it good in its own right – rather than just ripping off the genius of Queen.

I also liked their characterisation: I mentioned last time that all the characters were essentially pantomime characters. This wasn’t true for the whole series – all the characters (even Sue Sylvester) were made into more 3D characters, and were well portrayed on screen. I particularly liked the relationship between Will, Terri and Emma – I actually thought it was quite untypical for American TV, a lot of the scenes they had were quite simple, without any background music, just them with nothing else to heighten the drama.

That said… there were some aspects of Glee I didn’t like.

The main one was Sue Sylvester. Although the writers did make her character more sympathetic, she was just too pantomime for me. The show had some really nice moments, some good drama, some good humour – but Sue just was completely over the top for me. It seemed like the show was a little schizophrenic about whether to be a comedy or a drama, and it just didn’t quite work for me.

Part of the problem is, Sue was just such an unlikeable character I didn’t see how she couldn’t still have been working at the school without being fired. If I was Will Schuester, I wouldn’t have given her the time of day. If she’d started talking to me, I would have walked off!

I think part of the problem is, everyone was treating her as a ’serious’ character. I compared Glee to Green Wing in my last post, and there are similarities: it has serious moments but it also has some very random, funny moments. (Yeah, that’s about where the similarities end, but still). Alan Statham and Sue White are two examples of characters in Green Wing who are completely bizarre, and yet somehow it seems quite normal in the world they created. It doesn’t seem out of place. Sue Sylvester, on the other hand, seems out of place. Anyway, I’ve rambled on about that for long enough.

The other thing which didn’t sit right with me is the ‘adultery’ storyline (apologies for slightly dramatic language, but that’s what it is): everyone was behaving pretty badly to each other in the show – what with Terri lying to Will, Quinn and Puck lying to Finn etc, but Will’s behaviour really seemed out of order. If you’re married, falling in love with someone else isn’t something which you should really do. It’s not just when you’ve got the feeling you can’t help but do anything about it! It’s just presenting, to my mind, another flawed version of love to the world.

Still, all in all, it was quite watchable and hopefully they’ll improve things a little next season. Who knows! That’s all from me anyway…

We had a brilliant time at the Keane gig! Although I was wrong about Katzenjammer – if you search for ‘Katzenjammer Norway’ it will come up with the right band. This video will give you an idea of the kind of thing they do (there are a few more on YouTube as well). They were actually really good, very unusual but quite fun!

Frankmusik was next, and that was what I expected. They were very good, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the album when it is released later this year.

Keane, the main event, came onto the stage at about 9:15. They started off with ‘The Lovers are Losing’, which was absolutely cracking live. Actually some of the songs they did sounded much more energetic live than they do on the albums, ‘Black Burning Heart’ and ‘Spiralling’ come to mind, but all of them were played in a pretty upbeat way. It was superb!

Let me try and remember the songs that they played (not in order): Somewhere Only We Know, Bend & Break, Everybody’s Changing, This is the Last Time, Bedshaped, Is it Any Wonder?, Leaving So Soon, A Bad Dream, Crystal Ball, Try Again, Spiralling, The Lovers are Losing, Better Than This, You Haven’t Told Me Anything, Perfect Symmetry, Again & Again, Playing Along, and Black Burning Heart.

So we really got our money’s worth ;) In short, it was a fantastic evening – Keane are amazing live. Worth every penny.

We went to see the new Bond film “Quantum of Solace” last night with Matthew and Anne-Marie. I didn’t really know what to expect, I’d seen a trailer for it but apart from that hadn’t heard much about it.

As Bond films go I thought it was pretty good: it had plenty of action, and the plot was pretty clever. There were a few ’serious’ moments and a classic one-liner from Daniel Craig (if you haven’t seen the film I won’t spoil it by quoting though!)

There were a few downsides to the film, though. I was quite confused for most of the film…. this isn’t unusual for me (I watched LA Confidential and had very little idea what was going on for most of the time – I’m not good at names!). But apparently I wasn’t the only one who was confused, if our discussion after the fiml is anything to go by! I also felt like it didn’t quite live up to the standards of “Casino Royale” – that had some genuine tension, particularly during the poker game.

“Quantun of Solace”, on the other hand, just didn’t engage me in the same way – it felt a bit like it was desparately trying to, but not quite getting there. Perhaps it was trying too hard? Anyway.

It’s a decent film and worth seeing at the cinema, if you generally enjoy Bond films you won’t be disappointed. But don’t go if you’re expecting another ‘Casino Royale’ – i.e. lots of tension with not much action.

(Oh, I should also mention the theme tune by Jack White and Alicia Keys. In a word: disappointing. Muse would have done a much better Bond theme. They’ve already written songs which have titles like Bond films – ‘Ruled by Secrecy’ sounds like a Bond film to me!)

Last night I went to see “The Dark Knight” at the cinema with Anne-Marie, Matthew and Ellie. (Hence the ‘Stormy’ – I got a good soaking on the way back home!). I saw the first ‘nu-Batman’ film “Batman Begins” at the cinema a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it – I was expecting good things from this film as well! The reviews have been a bit mixed (aren’t they always?) but most of the people I know who’ve seen the film have said they really enjoyed it.

Note: this review may contain a few major spoilers!

One of the things I really liked about the film was the question of morality. Is what Batman does moral? What about the joker — how are they different? The joker was a very interesting character – excellently played by Heath Ledger – who seems to be quite concerned with how morality looks from different perspectives, what “good” people are capable of. In fact the whole thing had somewhat Christian overtones with Batman taking the blame at the end so that Harvey Dent could live on as a hero in the public imagination. (Well, OK, not really Christian, but there were a few parallels).

The story was also much darker than “Batman Begins”. I think it’s possibly to do with seeing people who should be incorruptible become corrupted. Not exactly light material! – the film did take itself very seriously throughout its two and a half hour running time.

And this is one of my main complaints about the film: “Batman Begins” stretched the bounds of plausibility a lot. However, it was kind of fun, a little bit tongue-in-cheek, while still being good drama. I was able to accept a few plot holes much more easily: when you know something is a little-bit light hearted, it’s as if you’re laughing along with the director: “Yes, it’s a little bit light hearted – but isn’t it FUN!”

“The Dark Knight” suffered from what I shall dub Torchwood Syndrome. That is, by taking itself too seriously, the plot holes it did have were magnified. You might say that whereas “Batman Begins” stretched the bounds of plausibility, “The Dark Knight” takes plausibility, stabs it in the back with a knife, throws it on the floor and stomps around on it with size 16 doc martens while the Joker laughs manically.

The main thing was – The Joker. He consistently annoyed me. Not because of the performance (which as I have already mentioned was excellent), but the script: how the hell could the Joker do all of the things he was supposed to do, without someone noticing / stopping him? For example, the last thing he does is plant bombs on a couple of ships. They only discover them once they’re well underway. Now, I just don’t understand: (a) how did no-one discover these things before they left the port? They weren’t exactly concealed! (b) why did no-one try to disarm the bomb? There were a few soldiers on board, they should have at least tried.

These are just a couple of isolated incidents, there are plenty more – i.e. the Joker managing to blow up a hospital without anyone happening to notice him planting bombs (or being able to stop him).

While I was watching the film it just really grated on me, so much so that it detracted from the overall effect. When a film takes itself that seriously it had better have a rock solid plot, otherwise it’s going to get in my bad books!

The other thing which grated on me was Harvey Dent turning to the dark side. And yes, I use that phrase intentionally: it was quite similar to the scene in “Revenge of the Sith”, where Anakin is convinced to turn to the dark side by Palpatine. In other words, I just couldn’t see it happening: “my fiance has just been murdered by the Joker, therefore the best thing for me to do is kill Batman.” Or something like that. I’m sure I missed something in that scene, but it didn’t work for me that time!

All in all, the film was a good one, but it’s not one I’ll be buying on DVD. Christian Bale and Heath Ledger were both great, as was Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent), but for me it didn’t live up to the heights of the first movie.

I bought “Soundsystem 01″ by Hybrid last week. It’s not an artist album, it’s more of a mix album. There are two CDs: the first is an ambient, film-soundtrack kind of CD. The second one is more of a DJ set, reflecting the kind of tunes which are in their record box at the moment when they do sets.

As usual for Hybrid, it didn’t grab me all that much on my first listen – but it’s grown on me on subsequent listenings! The first CD is just the kind of thing you need if you’re trying to chill out. We put it on last Sunday afternoon, and it was just the ticket! Really mellow but plenty in there to actually keep you interested. (Hybrid actually did the percussion programming for the Prince Caspian music, I think there’s one track on there from Prince Caspian, and they have also done a fair bit of other soundtrack work so they’re quite experienced with it – and it shows).

The second CD is very tech-housey, apparently because of the lack of decent breaks around at the moment. Anyway, I’ve got into the CD more over repeat listenings, but I still don’t think it’s quite as good as some of their lives mixes that I’ve heard.

All in all, it’s a pretty solid CD which I can recommend :-)

I watched “Lab Rats” last night. It’s a new comedy show on the BBC, set in a research lab in a university. I thought it was quite a good idea for a comedy show, I don’t think the lab has been done before in a sitcom (well, I can’t think of anything other than the Fast Show), so the concept is quite original.

The show was written by Chris Addison and Carl Cooper, if you have good memories you will recall that they also wrote “The Ape That Got Lucky” which I was raving about a while ago. It also stars pretty much everyone who was in “The Ape That Got Lucky” – as well as Chris Addison, you also have Jo Enright, Dan Tetsell, and Geoffrey McGivern.

Anyway, as for the actual episode – I thought it was pretty good. It wasn’t the best comedy which I have ever seen, it was very silly, but it had plenty of laughs. I think this episode was a bit “first episode” ish, i.e. it will get better once they settle down.

Oh, and before I finish this, I need to link to Chris Addison’s biography on his website. Some bits are just… well, bizarre. But funny. I’ll use probably my favourite one as an example:

Once back in England, Addison became the victim of a booking mix-up (the third since his four nights at the Moulin Rouge in 1997) when he was awarded the tender for the restoration of the west front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. He was relieved of the project after coming to blows with two of the residentiary canons over plans for the installation of a waterslide and a wave machine.

My copy of Coldplay’s new album “Viva La Vida” arrived yesterday. I’ve listened to it a couple of times now, and it’s fantastic!

I would say this is probably their best album yet. They’ve been a bit more experimental in this one with the way they’ve arranged the music – it feels like a more mature album than “X&Y”.

I was talking with Phil last night about the difference between a band like Coldplay and (to pick a relatively new artist from the Virgin Radio Playlist) Scouting for Girls: I don’t know if you’ve listened to any of Scouting For Girls’ songs, but they all sound the same. I quite like listening to them, but they’re quite repetitive and one sounds similar to another.

Not so with Coldplay. Their music has changed, adapted, and matured. This album is the product of three albums refining, changing, obsessing over details… it shows. I really like it.

DISCLAIMER: Opinion subject to change on repeat listenings (I should start putting something like this on all reviews that I write!)