Author: Alex Doenau

“We’re a part of this together/could never turn around and run”

Roxette are celebrating 20 years with their release of the uninspired A Collection of Roxette Hits: Their 20 Greatest Songs, a title which Something Awful rightly ripped into despite my questioning the rest of their judgements on the content. That is not the big, important thing, though: the important thing is The Roxbox … Roxette 86-06. You get the impression that more work went into this collection simply from the name alone.

The Roxbox is a collection of 78 Roxette songs: some hits, some B-sides, some demos, some … album tracks? Anyway, the lead single in some countries, and number two on the Swedish charts at the time of this writing is “One Wish”:

I’ve been a Roxette supporter since 1995. So yes, I came late to the party. And yes, I let that support lay dormant until I needed them again in 2003, when my Look for Roxette was what sustained me through the HSC. This was, of course, in the days of my rabid obsessiveness. I cannot raise such passion anymore, a source of both relief and distress.

So what to make of “One Wish”? I showed it to my friend William, a casual fan of Roxette (who had rearranged “Listen to Your Heart” as a birthday surprise with another of my friends, but was dashed down during the week), and he said “it’s good that Roxette have retained their sound”.

I’ve listened to a lot of Per Gessle this year, because his two disc album Son of a Plumber had me enthralled for a couple of weeks. When I’m listening to Roxette, though, I’m generally hanging out for Marie Fredriksson to carry me away on the wings of her voice.
“One Wish” is something that we don’t see very often in a Roxette song: call and response! Per sings a verse, and then Marie! It’s not the usual “lead and support” conundrum, and if I were to listen to it again I would be happy that they are working together.

Marie has not, of course, sung on a new Roxette song since 2002’s “Breathe”, since she was diagnosed with a brain tumour shortly after recording. Per is good, don’t get me wrong, but I want the Marie that only Roxette can offer (Marie’s solo efforts … at least those in English [unlike my Per collection, I have no Swedish language Marie] … are uncompelling).

Still, I must let “One Wish” grow on me. On the other hand, I appreciated the constant play from other music videos that Roxette have made over the years, from the camaraderie of “Silver Blue” (also substantially the same as “Dangerous” but I prefer “Silver Blue”):

To the most attractive Marie ever filmed in “June Afternoon” (a music video that features the best and worst of Roxette videos):

Of course, a retrospective video is going to reveal that Roxette may have been popular but they were almost never (I hope) at the height of fashion. For the entire Joyride era into Tourism, Per looked like an over made-up train wreck whose hair might melt off his head at any moment.

Yet I can not help but love him.

The Roxbox is the (not perfect; you should have seen the ruckus at the revelation of the track listing!) antidote to The Roxette Collection. I mean, their fourth “best of” album, when they had only released two new studio albums between their first and second/third compilation, and none since!

The Roxbox is great for a collector like me. Discovering new Roxette is like, I don’t know, finding Life on Mars. While I really want a new studio album (you can do it, Per and Marie! I believe in you and your two solo albums apiece since Room Service!), I will content myself with See Me.

Rock on, Roxette. Prove to the world that Sweden’s got what it takes: pop, metal and one of the world’s most pleasant societies.

At An Inconvenient Truth last night, I was subjected to some more trailers that I wasn’t quite expecting, from movies I had only heard of in passing.

The first was The Holiday (YouTube trailer), which I had thought was a book before it was a movie. Apparently not. Anyway, it’s a romantic comedy about switching Britain for America and vice versa, with Cameron Diaz saying “England is so quaint! Look at its old world appeal!” (carefully ignoring the tackiness of modern English culture) and Kate Winslet saying “America is so … American!” (I don’t know how to characterise America in this film).
Cameron Diaz meets Jude Law, and Kate Winslet meets … Jack Black? Jack Black is my hero, so if I can get the requisite girls in line, I might go and see this movie.
As a general rule, you can tell the calibre of film that Black is in by the state of his facial hair.

The other, more eyecatching, and possibly more noteworthy film, was Marie Antoinette:

Bubblegum pink titles? Contemporary music? People speaking with their “natural accents”? This is what we call “post modernism” or similar. I have an interest in the French Revolution fuelled largely by the anime Rose of Versailles, which is a wildly romantic and fairly balanced account of the times of France from Marie Antoinette’s rise to her fall. It was the sort of thing that I could keep people constantly updated on as I came up with new examples of decadence.

Marie Antoinette is, by many (positive) accounts, more of a trifle; A fluffy confection of a film that revises Marie Antoinette’s image. I like the idea that she felt the whole of Versailles was silly, because it was, but the problem in my mind is that in time she came to believe in the silliness and drove France into a ditch of famine, poverty, and, eventually, cycles of bloodshed.

I won’t mind seeing a sympathetic Marie Antoinette, as the Antoinette of Rose of Versailles travelled between extremes of shrewishness and tears. I suppose it may be just like Doctor Who or James Bond: the actor you saw first is the character. Which incarnation of Antoinette will be the one that sticks?
Considering the different tones taken by these films, I may be able to accept both accounts on their own merits. Whatever the case, I’m intrigued: the trailer has done its work.

Post script, ironically written before I finished writing the rest:
Damnit, I just read what Roger Ebert had to say about the film’s reception about Cannes and now I know how it ends. Sure, I know this history reasonably well, but you can never know when a historical recount ends until it stops being told. That article is interesting until the last paragraph, so don’t feel bad about reading it.
It’s also notable that Ebert got the same impression based on a hypothetical that I did from the ending of Rose of Versailles.

This is about my fourth attempt at writing something about Dead Rising. You would have been better served if I chronicled my experience in instalments, because my attitudes changed dramatically over the days … but I was too busy playing it.

Overcoming addiction is a good thing. For the last 7 days, I was consumed by Dead Rising. Now it’s out of my system and I can go on living, and writing. I can breathe a little easier knowing that the zombie threat is quashed.

The title “Little Miss Sunshine” appearing across the face of the suicidally depressed Steve Carell is proof that irony lives.
Another installment in the great tradition of American road movies, Little Miss Sunshine is one of those “melanchomedies”* that uplifts as it saddens.

Popcorn Taxi is an organisation in Australia that presents advance screenings of films, frequently with the films’ directors on hand afterwards to answer questions and give interviews.

Popcorn Taxi programmes that I have attended include Mysterious Skin (painful but phenomenal), Thank You For Smoking (hilarious and, coupled with Jason Reitman’s short films, an all around excellent evening) and Monster House (the interview providing genuine insight into the film that had me appreciating it ever more).

Generally, you get the impression that the people present have enjoyed the film they’ve seen. Fast Food Nation did not supply me with that feeling. I got the impression that quite a few people were disgruntled.

I didn’t think it was that hot, either.

This post marks the launch of “ideas”, which covers great creations that may never come to fruition.

My initial notes began:

Best idea ever for a horror movie or video game: something involving crabs. Possibly in a science lab: research ship.

I’ve since upgraded the idea to “action/thriller”, generally because I don’t like horror. I then came up with the following fragments of plot:

A scientist is drinking coffee at his computer and gets up to check a print out. He hears a scuttling sound behind him, but signs it off as his imagination. He returns to his desk and hears the sound again. He turns around, worried now. The sound continues, again behind him. The scientist turns back to his desk, but we see only his face. He screams as a shadow advances on him, and the screen fades to black as we hear the sound of frenzied snipping …

I liked the sound of crabs scuttling against a metal corridor/air duct, and therefore based a movie around it.

Our hero, we’ll call him Rob, at one point runs outside and looks over the railing, into the ocean: the ship is surrounded by crabs, using their claws to climb up the side, and a line of crabs making their way up the ship’s stairs …

Yes, just like zombies converging on a car or something.

…a confrontation scene in a giant, empty stock area of the ship, Rob and the captain standing against a wall, facing the crabs, Rob with a gun in his hands.
Captain says “Damnit, Rob! Shoot their weak point!”
“I’m trying,” says Rob, “but the bastards keep strafing!”

Strafing was my other idea.

…Deus ex Machina in the form of a previously thought dead heroine, Clare, emerging with a mighty crab hammer.

At this point I imagined that the film would descend into a series of Deus ex Machinas. I’d go see it, and I’m a member of the pro-crab lobby! I’m going to hope the crustaceans have just suffered a horrible misunderstanding.

Which gives me an idea for the true ending:

Spoilers for my non-existent movie’s ending ahead! You’ve been warned!

I was surprised that Snakes on a Plane fever continued up to a week after its release. Really, I was. Then it died away, as if the major excitement that had built up had never existed.

In my continued quest for topicality and relevance, I present to you my view of Snakes on a Plane.

Article contains 1 (one) expletive