scaryblog

Completing my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 07/01/01 : 7 -  S Club 7 And we complete our trip through the year with our third second visit - interestingly all of them have involved one album in January and one in December. My verdict the last time I met this lot was that it was fine enough cheese in small doses, but a whole album was too much. I'll be amazed if things differ here, but at least we've got "Reach" to enjoy. Yeah, it's the opening track so they knew that had something relatively special there - I also didn't mind "Never Had A Dream Come True" and was quite surprised they didn't murder Stevie Wonder's "Lately". Whilst the rest of the album is most definitely cheesy, I enjoyed this more than the previous visit - there feels to be more variety here and the songs seem to suit their voices better. Don't get me wrong, I'm not declaring this a misunderstood work of musical genius, but it's certainly bea...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 06/03/26 : The Mountain - Gorillaz Our fourth visit with Gorillaz (who I still struggle to forgive for what they did when they headlined Glastonbury), which somewhat surprises me - but not as much as the chart position at which we find ourselves. More on this later... Hmmm. Well. Considering each track singly, there's at least something to admire - there are varied interesting "ethnic" elements and rhythms combined with more "modern" styles and instruments, often with a quirky guest artist involved, giving an interesting sound (if not necessarily a particularly loveable one). But, to my uncultured ear at least, whilst there is obvious variety between the tracks, they all follow the same pattern - a dirge-y male voice (usually, but certainly not always Damon) accompanied by something odd like a Tibetan nose-flute, a Honduran ear-trumpet or a Polynesian arse-ocarina. So it all gets very tiresome and that...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2025 #14 :     Bugonia The partnership between filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and star Emma Stone continues to bear bonkers fruit – their remake of Korean satire Save The Green Planet! is as odd a concoction as you’d expect from the team behind The Favourite and Poor Things, laced with dark deadpan humour, bursts of gore, and an aching sadness underneath it all. Stone lopped off all her hair – on camera and all – as kidnapped CEO Michelle Fuller, whose captors (an excellent Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) are convinced she’s <spoiler>. The whole thing vibrates on an unusual frequency, as the power between Michelle and the conspiracy theorists shifts back and forth – all culminating in one of the most hilariously divisive finales of the year. Pure cinematic nectar. I enjoyed Poor Things but it was completely bonkers - I'd be surprised if we're not in for more of the same, whilst also being completely different. Yup - very...

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 14/01/01 : Coast To Coast -  Westlife This is our fifth visit with them Oirish lads - previous visits have ranged from the heights of "surprisingly tolerable" to "I'd rather poke my eyes out than listen to this again". It's our second visit with them this year - I didn't enjoy the last one and I have absolutely no expectations that this is going to be any better. Well, it's still not great but it doesn't feel quite as wet as our previous visit and I think there's more variety here as well. There was also a pleasing lack of fiddle or penny whistle, and whilst they obviously still love a late stage key change, they're less obviously signposted here than I was expecting.  I obviously didn't love any of it, but it could have been a lot worse - I can even tolerate their versions of "Uptown Girl" and "I Have A Dream" but I do have to say it's a particularly bad c...

Continuing my trip up Empire's   top 20 films of 2025 #15 :     The Naked Gun Easily the funniest — and, arguably, the riskiest — film of 2025, Akiva Schaffer's legacy spoof sequel/reboot lives or dies on Liam Neeson's ability to channel his inner Leslie Nielsen and play the straight man while delivering gag after gag at a rate of knots. Fortunately for us, Neeson is a bit of a deadpan comedy don (see also; Life's Too Short, Derry Girls) and, as Detective Frank Drebin Jr., he sets an exceptional standard of po-faced silliness that his co-stars handily match. Schaffer, too, shows he has a never-ending supply of so-dumb-it’s-smart and so-smart-it’s-dumb jokes on tap. At a moment where comedy's place in cinemas is being questioned, The Naked Gun — armed with infinite coffee cups, silly bits, and one mad snowman montage — makes one hell of a case for the communal chuckle's future. I remember enjoying the original but I've got no idea what I'd think about it ...

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 21/01/01 : Music -  Madonna This is our eleventh visit with Grumpy Auntie Madge taking her clear of The Beatles and Kylie into sixth position on her own - one more and she'll catch up with the mighty Rod Stewart! I seem to recall I listened to this a couple of times and it was OK - but the only thing I remember about it now is that it f eatures her not-entirely-dreadful-but-completely-unnecessary cover of "American Pie" -  Yeah, it opens with the title track and it's not too bad, even if you do get the impression she's trying to be Kylie or Britney (which isn't a bad thing in comparison with some of the other stuff she's done over the years). And most of the other tracks are in a pretty similar vein - it's electronica dancey stuff which slows down towards the end of the album, with some lovely clear production on it. And then she tries to do the same thing with "American Pie" and let'...