Very Bad Things

Werner Herzog interprets the word ‘remake’ rather loosely in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. It’s based on the controversial 1992 Abel Ferrera movie, which saw Harvey Keitel abusing his authority, rampaging around LA in order to find good drugs, bad sex and worse.

In Herzog’s remake, Nicholas Cage is the bad lieutenant. Cage’s ... resorts to self-medication after an accident involving a permanent disfiguration to his spine; his doctor’s prescription of vicodin clearly proving insufficient. One year - and one bravery medal - after the accident, things have changed. He has a prostitute girlfriend, snorts cocaine and smokes crack. He’s also investigating a gangland massacre, in which five people were shot dead in an apartment.

Essentially, Herzog is donning his Hollywood hat once more, after his first brush with the industry with 2007’s Rescue Dawn. Like that movie – and, in fact, like most of his movies – it’s another story of a man who is part maverick, part maniac. And again like that movie, it’s almost mainstream.

Do note the word ‘almost’ in that sentence. There is a lot of darkness in The Bad Lieutenant. Terrence violently uses an old woman as bait to get her carer to talk. Cage abuses both his weapon and his gun so a stoned woman can avoid prosecution.

And like Terrence, the movie is also off its rocker. The amount of depicted drug taking alone earned The Bad Lieutenant an eighteen certificate. Cage’s character ingests so many substances, he sees lizards on coffee tables and the souls of dead old white men dancing. The casting is also a little left-field. Jennifer Coolidge turns up as an old lush, Val Kilmer is a dour cop and 90s survivor Fariuza Balk is a bent cop with a great body.

It’s exactly what you expect from Herzog. It is inherently bizarre. Which, depending on how you look at it, is either brilliant or rather boring.

Lost and found

Modern Art Oxford is known for bringing the art of established and rising national - and international - stars to the city. In the past we've had works by Tracey Emin, Miroslaw Balka and Robert Mapplethorpe. So it's rare then to find an exhibition with such a parochial focus.

Maria Pask's Deja Vu centres around the deprived local area Rose Hill. The place exists maybe five or so miles outside of the city centre. Sadly, it has a reputation; it's often dismissed as a crime-ridden flea pit, populated by undesirables. Flea pit or not, it's somewhere to go if you're looking to save rent money (and still be fairly central; it's all of a fifteen minute bus ride to the dreaming spires). I almost moved there, in fact.

Pask has worked with local people (and a few professionals) to produce a series of sometimes interlinked short films exploring the idea of community in Rose Hill. All pieces revisit the fifties and sixties, in which one local resident tirelessly wrote and self published a newsletter entitled The Roundabout; copies of the newsletter are displayed alongside the films. The films show scenes inspired by the publication: fashion shows, local theatre productions and scenes down the pub.

It's a melancholy nostalgia. Although what we see is not entirely positive (there's some nastiness in the pub sequences, for instance), there's a yearning, here. It's the idea these very different people (of varying ages and social backgrounds) can come together to create something incredibly powerful. As the films show, it is something they are more than capable of doing again.

It's not all clear cut though. Interestingly, a number of the scenarios are replayed with different actors playing each part. They swap roles regardless of age or gender. It's playful and funny. But there is a sense of mobility here. It's about transcending convention and approaching a subject in a different way. It's a metaphor for what is needed to regain community.

Bird (and a wire)

No summer day is complete without a soundtrack of screaming children, the opening of tupperware boxes and birdsong. The Barbican clearly have similar views, and the latest installation in their 'Curve' space heralds in the upcoming season with a flock of zebra finches in a walkthrough aviary. However this is a aviary with a difference; it comes complete with Gibson guitars and cymbals (all liberally sprinkled with seed, pools of water and bird shit).

For this is birdsong with a difference. Presented in the bright, airy Curve, the birds flutter onto the symbols and strings of the guitars and create stabs of noise. It's all complimented by excitable orni-chatter and befuddled looks from the limited capacity crowd trickling through the curtained entrance.

Some critics have compared this bird-music to the last Sonic Youth album. It's a glib statement; clearly the sounds these birds make with the instruments is a lot more worthwhile. What we have is an adventurous, thought provoking and amusing installation. It'll be curious to see what the artist - Celeste Boursier-Mougenot - will do next; this unique spectacle is pretty memorable and difficult to out-weird. I advise you check it out in person; the much-viewed YouTube video doesn't do it justice.

Sad With What I Have

Some people shoot out the womb to a fanfare of YMCA, played by pink thonged muscle men. Rufus Wainwright is one of these lucky souls. He used to express this intrinsic camp with highly orchestral, over-produced classical pop. But now he's getting the orchestra to talk to the hand with Songs for Lulu. It's a naked record. It comprises of songs performed on a single piano and voice. And it's not just musically stark.

The record is being released in the wake of his mother's death. She had been ill for a while, and Rufus clearly believes in working his way through grief through music. It's most explicit, and devastating, in 'Martha', when Rufus sings 'Martha, it's your brother calling, it's time to go up north to see mother, things are harder for her now' and Zebulon ('My mother's in the hospital... there's so much to tell you').

But, being Rufus, things are more complex than the surface may betray. Martha is also about sibling solidarity in the times of troubles. Zebulon is about putting aside your own issues and reaching out to others. Both are a million miles away from 'Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk'; a song recorded less than ten years ago where he sings about his legal - and illegal - cravings. This new Rufus is more complicated, mature and, in these moments, world class in his songwriting.

Elsewhere success is more mixed. His trio of Shakesperian sonnets set to music are a little hard going, if admirable. 'Give Me What I Want...' is ambitious in its attempt to capture a stress-induced tantrum in two minutes, but ultimately as trying as the thing it portrays. Thankfully for every one of these there are two more tracks like 'The Dream', which come to the rescue by injecting some heart.

So while not as complete or as consistent as other albums such as the glorious 'Want One', 'Songs for Lulu' is an important album for Rufus. It shows the maturing of an artist whose glory days are clearly still to come. And I can't wait to see him perform it live.

Fatal Attraction: The Magnetic Fields live at the Barbican, 22nd March 2010

If The Magnetic Fields released a ‘Best of’ album, it would almost certainly be called ‘Fatal Attraction’. For in the songs of their main creative force Stephen Merritt, love is never easy. After all, at their Barbican show on Monday night, he introduces the head-swimmingly romantic ‘I Don’t Want to Get Over You’ with a short epithet. ‘It’s a total lie’, he deadpans.

And so it goes. The band’s new album Realism is the final instalment of their ‘no synths trilogy’, a response to the band previously being known for their knob-twiddling, and the Barbican is an ideal venue for the record’s mostly acoustic songs. Sonically, every one of their five pieces (authoharp, an acoustic guitar, a cello and a ukulele and keyboard), are pin sharp. But, together, an overriding impression is harder to pin down; the sound devastates and uplifts in equal measure. It’s beautiful, though.

And, according to the audience’s reaction, the album has already spawned its first classics. ‘Always Already Gone’ is one, leaking melancholy until its punch of an ending. ‘You Must Be Out of Your Mind’, is filled with the withering put-downs of a scorned lover, proclaiming –savagely- ‘I no longer drink enough, to think you’re witty’.

The set covers substantial distance and length. Material by other Merritt projects (The 6ths and The Archies) is featured, as is some plentiful back catalogue 'Fields material. It's sewn together by banter from Merritt and Claudia Gonson, which is, like the band, cute, playful and a little awkward. The show has it all; even an interval in the middle. It's a welcome palette cleanser, and you wonder how you manage to get through other gigs without one.

I admit I'm sad when the show ends. It feels like I've left a friend behind. But you've got to be pragmatic about these things. So, I get my iPod out and listen to Realism on the train home. Two days later, the songs are still in my head.

Micmacs

The accusation of style over substance does funny things to directors. In the case of Jean-Pierre Jeunet- helmer of visual chocolate boxes Amelie and Delicatessen - the response was obvious. He’s made a film about the heaviest of subjects: the arms trade.

We follow Bazil (a dour Dany Boon), in what can only be described as a French vigilante movie. Bazil's rally is against the weapons manufacturers that produced the bullet that put him in hospital and the landmine that killed his father,

But being Jeunet, it's a vigilante movie with a twist (and not least because it features a contortionist). Bazil enlists the help of an odd-bod posse featuring a mathematical genius and a human cannonball. The group’s den is an underground junk heap overseen by a rolling pin wielding matriarch and a wizened artist. It’s almost self-parodically Jeunet.

And this is the fundamental problem. MicMacs is what happens when a good director gets lazy. It's a film full of fun visual invention, but a lack of freshness or surprise. Not even the many crinkles of supporting actor Dominique Pinion's face can give proceedings a much-needed third dimension.

Micmacs is to the arms industry as Amelie was to photo booths. Bear with me. Both do prove important narrative elements to their respective films. But, ultimately, have little to do with what you feel when you leave the cinema. Another difference between the two is that Micmacs is just not very good. And, crucially, it's something we've seen before.

Oh, Julianne

Julianne Moore most recently adorned the screen in Tom Ford's A Single Man. She played a bitter alcoholic, raging at the loss of her husband and also at Colin Firth's single man, the one she believed had got away. She was great in it. She was only in a couple of scenes, but, as is her want, she owned them. 'Adorned' is the correct word; she was like this fabulous bauble. She glitters enough that her periphery position almost decentres the film.

Due to the strength of that performance, I decided to revisit some of her past work. And I came across 'Safe', a 1995 indie in which she plays an LA housewife who develops an allergy to modern life. It's directed by Todd Haynes, who she has since worked with in the widely-appreciated Far From Heaven.

Like much of Haynes' work, the film appears to be a head-slappingly broad approach to its material, and yet with his skill, is actually strangely oblique. The subjects: the sterile environment of a rich LA home, the rejection of certain Western twentieth century symbols of affluence (the home, the car, the air conditioning system and even the pest control) could be a little obvious, done to death and sterile themselves.

Yet, Hayes visual precision (it's the visual equivalent of Radiohead's disarming song 'Everything in its Right Place; a beautifully constructed, seemingly perfect veneer which hides an incredibly disturbing undertone) and the absolute stillness he creates, are completely disarming. This calm and controlled atmosphere is scary, and suggestive, stuff.

And Julianne Moore is no adornment here; the film drapes itself around her. And she looks stunning in it. It's an unusual role for her; she's not the strong, empowered woman of Magnolia or Hannibal, the intelligent but oppressed woman of Far From Heaven or The End of the Affair. Her character is completely unremarkable. Some may say she's a little slow. She's perhaps even, on a bad day, an empty vessel.

Yet there's no sneering or broad strokes from Julianne. She plays the role with conviction and compassionate. She let's the film do the talking, yet she is the film; she appears in nearly every scene.

All hail Julianne; her effortless grace triumphs again. In retrospect, calling her a bauble was a little unfair. She'll be the angel on top of my Christmas tree.