great insults of the 21st century

after coming back from atp on monday i had a much needed lazy morning and in the evening we went to see IN THE LOOP the new film by armando iannucci. as i don't watch much tv i'd missed IN THE THICK OF IT and a lot of the characters have been repeated in the movie but i don't think this distracts at all. it was great being in a movie theatre so full of laughter. maybe its my choice of movies but rarely have i been surrounded by people doing so much belly laughing. some of the unrepeatable insults spewed out by peter capaldi's character malcolm tucker were jaw dropping in their filth and ferociousity. it was a good little lesson in how things truly work in government, how the disasterous "sexed up" dossier got to prominance in thte iraq war and how to cuss someone out. brilliant.

on wednesday i was the usher for CADILLAC RECORDS, a film based on the trials and tribulations of chess records in chicago. before motown and stax there was chess, a label that specialised in brutal blues from muddy walters and little walter and later rock n roll with chuck berry. it was nicknamed cadillac records due to the boss dishing out cadillacs as a thank you for its biggest stars. now i have to declare an interest here, i grew up with these records, this was a subject very dear to me and i really didn't want them to fuck it up. when i was 11 something bad happened to radio and i wanted to stop watching top of the pops cos i hated pop so much. i spent a summer listening to nothing but my mum's old soul and blues records and found it difficult to go back with an uncritical eye again and the mid 1950s became my favourite era of music, i'll listen to pretty much anything from early rock and roll and enjoy it. i missed DREAMGIRLS, the motown biopic but caught RAY and WALK THE LINE and was a bit done in by all the early rock and roll movies so was worried this would be a bit music-biopic-by-numbers. happily it was really engaging and recreated that era well, i think this was mainly due to the strength of the music and the marvellous performances. muddy is appropriately serious and wise, howlin wolf is intimidating and etta james is a feisty sexy lady. i was interested to see what beyonce would do with the role, since etta is on my postcard of supposed dykes, how the vaguely prissy ms b would shape up, but she does crude surprisingly well and shows hidden acting chops. all the actors did their own songs, which astonished me. there was a moment over the credits that made me stop for a moment, all the way through beyonce made the audience cry (quite literally, people told me they were crying during "at last" and i was too) but the end song just seemed very bland and therein demonstrated everything you neeeded to know about chess records: the production was perfect. there is so much over egging of the pudding in records these days, sometimes to great effect (gotta love them neptunes) but generally to drown out the voice and dress it up so its too sweet, too pure. i really enjoyed this film and was happy that they'd done justice to the story.

on thursday it was the eagerly awaited HEAVENLY LOVE PROJECT, devised by anushiye yarnell. anushiye has been working for some time on this idea of what love is, what it does to us and how we can fall in love with anyone and anything and discover things about ourselves that we were not previously aware of and i'm a big fan of her investigations. previous attempts to answer the question have resulted in the achingly beautiful ANIMAL LOVE PROJECT that put the idea that the human and the bear fell in love, changing both of them and making them more than a sum of their parts. for heavenly love anushiye brought over the japanese performer shirotama hitsujiya and also worked with davida hewlett. in this episode of the love drama, anushiye and a shopping trolley fell in love. i saw an early version of this work last year as a concequence of anushiye working with the a japanese company from ga mitai dance. its a really ambitious beautiful piece. she always makes these alternative realities very true, by the end of the piece we'd been through the trauma of first love, argumentst, reconcilliation and defeat. the piece MASSIVE WATER by shirotama hitsujiya was in contrast loud, amusing and ungraceful. she came onstage dressed as a zombie bunny chopping up salad on the shopping trolley with a "RIP bunny" headstone. interspersed with scream sound effects and j-pop was bunny reeling at the end of her life and searching for love in heaven. after the interval came davida hewlett's lecture piece BUBBLE WRITING, an investigation about heavenly love and how events surrounding her investigations such as the birth of her daughter alba and the diagnosis of her partner sam's mother with cancer informed her search. the lecture was a bit chaotic and could have done with some organisation and editing but i found it utterlly engrossing and charming, i think if it had been more formal it would have lacked charm. it was broken up by a delightful video of her and her daughter copying the kate bush video "running up that hill" about making a "deal with god", which made me just giggle and put a massive grin on my face and then at the end, footage of sam's mother's 61st birthday, looking frail made everyone cry. some people left, daunted by the length of the piece but i could have stayed another hour!

the rest of the week was very lazy, i think still recovering from atp. saturday night i threw caution to the wind and went to a party. i have been a right old hag in the past year due to working such crazy early hours and bloody bodyclock won't let me stay up late these days. it was my friend caroline's birthday and i thought a bbq at her house sounded just the ticket, since everyone there would probably be lovely and i'd have good chats and it had the double extra special bonus of giving me the chance to meet caroline's cat elsie. it was a beautiful balmy evening. i'd stupidly agreed to do a favour for my boss and go in to cash up in chapter bar at midnight so couldn't drink for a bit. i was feeling a bit harrassed and annoyed with myself but as soon as i had my first sip of gorgeous red wine (p0ured by the drunken hand of lovely grace) the stresses of the day slipped away. that sounds like i have some sort of substance abuse problem, but it was so nice just to sit around with friends and listen to music and talk nonsense, i don't do it enough. the lloyd grossman in me was dying to see what caroline had done with her house, that she has mostly diy-ed herself and i was happy to see that it she'd done an enviously good job. we didn't get home till 2am and although i suffered for it the next day, having to get up at 6.3oam for work again the next day, i was really grateful to caroline for inviting me.