Country of origin and year of release: Japan, 2014
This likeable, beautifully drawn, highly evocative anime has its roots in the novel of the same name by Joan G. Robinson.
The anime transplants the novel from rural Norfolk in the UK to the Kushiro wetlands in Hokkaido, Japan. Anna, a deeply unhappy girl living with foster parents, moves to stay with relatives of her foster carers in Kushiro following an asthma attack. It having been decided that the sea air will be good for her health and that a new setting might be helpful more generally for her, given her unhappiness and inability to interact socially with her peers.
In Kushiro, Anna meets a mysterious blonde girl, Marnie, and they have a series of adventures together which provide Anna with a degree of friendship she doesn't seem to have had previously, given her previous social anxieties and the fact that she is struggling to make friends with the local children in her new home.
It quickly becomes apparent that Marnie is perhaps not who she seems to be though, leading to a series of revelations about her own unhappy childhood as well as her links to Anna.
Childhood trauma and more general unhappiness, in the wrong hands, could make for a very heavy handed tale but its thanks to the original source material and the deft hands of the Studio Ghibli team that this doesn't happen. Similarly, we can tell that Anna is struggling mentally as well as socially but this is conveyed subtly and realistically. The eventual healing of Anna, and her understanding of what has happened and why, is sad but well drawn, and it's told in a way that is sophisticated and deeply affecting.
When Marnie Was There is a very likeable anime, with a very powerful message that has been told with a great deal of love and care.
Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and we are really starting to see the impact of Covid on music. That is, the impact of Covid on individual artists creative output rather than the economic impact of Covid on musicians.
While there have been songs, and albums, recorded and released during the early days of lockdown that directly or indirectly acknowledge the events we are living through (Charli XCX's How I'm Feeling Now album most famously, less famously Kali Uchis 'i want war (BUT I NEED PEACE)') what we're seeing now is something different: More considered works that either directly reference the pandemic lyrically or else have been impacted sonically by its restrictions. Last months Florence + The Machine album is a case in point and Harkin's second album, Honeymoon Suite, is another example of an album whose sonic palette has been defined by the pandemic.
Recorded and self produced during lockdown, Honeymoon Suite (the title refers to the Sheffield flat Katie Harkin and her partner Kate Leah Hewett moved into upon returning to the UK during the early days of Covid) has a more electronic sound than its self titled predecessor. Because it was recorded in a flat over a pub, with Harkin's wife (Hewett and Harkin married in Eyam in September 2020) working call centre shifts from home, the various instruments and vocals were recorded according to noise levels outside and inside the flat. The overall feel of the album is of a very precise, lovingly crafted sonic soundscape fuelled by introspection. The result is sparse but vivid, evocative and moving.
Opening track, and first single, 'Body Clock' is a surging slice of electro pop which makes the most of its shimmering keyboard sound and urgent lyrics ("C'mon, c'mon" and "Closed mouths don't get fed") to create a sense of solitude and introspection where, when everything stops "it's just you and your body clock".
It is followed by second single 'A New Day', a guitar led piece which has the sunny optimism of artists such as Mary Lou Lord or Tancred. There are string flourishes which work well to add shade and texture when set against the drums and guitar as Harkin sings "She tastes like a new day".
The similarly evocative '(Give Me) The Streets Of Leeds' combines a sense of wistfulness for the past with surging piano, beats and melodic guitar. It is a song that clearly means business and it should, by rights, be a future single. Sonically, it builds on the work Harkin has done with Sleater-Kinney and complicates the anthemic indie rock sound of the piece with glitchy effects, giving it a scuffed indie disco feel that is very appealing.
This sense of glitchy experimentation can also be heard on 'To Make Her Smile', which begins slowly with minimalistic drums and a vocal loop that maintains "I feel as though you're in this time" and "I'm seeing through your eyes." The bpm increases significantly very quickly before slowing again and gentle minimalistic piano is introduced. It feels as though she is trying to write a love song but, having got underway, decided to have some fun and experiment.
Electro inspired minimalism is a feature of the album as a whole, with album closer 'Driving down a flight of stairs' being a particular exemplar of this. It's an instrumental synth dominated piece that sounds like a soundtrack to someone peacefully drowning in a lake. 'Matchless Lightning', by comparison, feels like a slower, less hook-y take on Everything But The Girl's 'Hatfield 1980.' It is marked by a gentle throbbing pulse of a beat and sense of disquiet. There's a strong sense of self doubt and introspection, as though Harkin is looking back on life in the Before Times while "building a reality from romance and utility". "Baby we're the skin on the milk? or the fly in the ointment?" she wonders, before concluding "I'm not so sure anymore". It's like her internal monologue has been set to music. The image of "A vending machine of sweet talk" particularly evocative.
The tender electro ballad 'Mt. Merino' is enhanced by clever use of reverb and distortion which form a nice contrast to the gorgeous piano lines further on into the track. "Do we really have to leave here?" Harkin wonders from the car on the way to the airport "On the sunniest day of the year?" while noting that "The ancient part of my mind says everything's fine."
'Listening Out' has a darker sound driven by strong synths. There are delicate piano runs and breathed backing vocals that add an eerie beauty to layers of sonic sound and she sings of having to "Reassemble my love" in a way that suggests a practical mood, rather than a purely sorrowful one.
'Talk Of The Town' is a sterner sounding piece, one that feels like a takedown. It is fast paced and intense. The scuffed beats contrast well with the lilting guitars and orchestral flourishes and there's a great synth dip in the middle of the track as well.
Third single 'Here Again' makes interesting use of brass and glockenspiel while creating an understated indie anthem that makes good use of hypnotic layered vocals and crisp guitar.
Harkin has shown considerable grit and determination in making this mesmerising album, and it's really paid off for her because while it showcases her skills as a songwriter it also showcases (perhaps accidentally) her skills as a producer. There are no notes out of place here, what we have instead is a crisp indie synth pop album which experiments with sound in a fun and pleasing way. It should both noted and enjoyed.
Honeymoon Suite is released on Friday 17th June on Hand Mirror
An interesting take on stereotypes and expectations around sexual identities, Chasing Amy is the third in Kevin Smith's 'New Jersey Trilogy', following on from Clerks and Mallrats. Thismeans that there are a number of scenes and bits of dialogue that acknowledge the events of the earlier films (for example, the line 'My best friend fucked a dead guy in the bathroom!' makes no sense without the viewer having first seen Clerks...) and Jay and Silent Bob feature in the films cast of characters, albeit to a much lesser extent than in the previous two films.
Set in the world of indie comix creation and conventions, our central protagonist is Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), co-creater of the comic Bluntman and Chronic alongside his childhood friend Banky Edwards (Jason Lee). At a convention, they meet Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams), creator of Idiosyncratic Routine, who happens to be sharing a panel with their friend Hooper (Dwight Ewell), a black comic creator whose work taps into the legacy of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. Holden is quickly attracted to Alyssa, and is excited to have the opportunity to meet up with her again (alongside Banky and Hooper) a few days later at a club. Where he finds out that she is a lesbian.
The central conceit of a straight man falling in love with a lesbian is reputed to have come from Guinevere Turner and Rose Troche's film Go Fish, in which one of the lesbian characters sleeps with a man and is then tortured by thoughts of how her community will judge her if they find out. Turner has a cameo in Chasing Amy in the nightclub scene, where she plays Alyssa's former bandmate, who persuades her to take to the stage and perform a song with the band.
While filled with Smith's usual directorial motifs, Chasing Amy is markedly different from its two predecessors, mainly because of the subject matter. If Holden and Alyssa's identities were the only ones being put under the microscope, the film wouldn't work. It is Hooper and Alyssa, the two non heterosexual characters, who seen to have the greatest self awareness and understanding of themselves and the identities they have constructed around themselves. As a highly politicised black male comic writer, Hooper is fully aware of the extent to which he suppresses his gay identity for the sake of his brand. Similarly, Alyssa knows exactly who she is, and what she wants. Holden and (especially) Banky seem rather more conflicted about their own professional and personal identities and the ways in which their relationship changes following Holden's attraction to Alyssa is at least as much of a theme of the film as Holden's relationship with Alyssa is.
This isn't just a film about sexual identities, or even rejection from communities, it's also very much a film about male fragility. Because the film was made at the tail end of the short lived cultural trend 'lesbian chic', there's also a sly flipping of the male gaze at one point. What might surprise Smith's fans is how brutal the second half of the film is, especially the ending, and this might explain why it's the least well known of the three Jersey films. It's certainly a far cry from the slapstick of Mallrats, though it does give the first indication that Smith was about to develop new themes and trends as a film maker, with his fourth film Dogma showing that he was still prepared to find humour in heavy topics.
Chasing Amy is definitely not one of Smith's most well known, or lauded, films but it's a film that has endured to a greater degree than you would expect and there are moments that are as shocking today as they were in 1997. It's a film that bears re-watching too.
A deeply flawed film that happens to include some interesting central performances, Streets Of Fire is the DVD you put on when you just want to watch something fast paced that you don't have to think about too much.
Starring Michael Paré as the brooding anti-hero/gun for hire Tom Cody (Clark Gable in cuban heels, as he's also been described...) and Diane Lane as his rock star ex-girlfriend Ellen Aim, Streets Of Fire has a somewhat ludicrous plot that unfolds much better on screen than it does in summary. As such, let's keep it brief: Ellen Aim is performing a sold out show in her home town. During the course of the show, a biker gang storm the venue, cause mayhem, and kidnap her. It's never really explained why, so we're left to assume that it's merely because gang leader Raven Shaddock (a magnificently creepy Willam Defoe) fancies her.
Reeva, a young woman who has attended the ruined show, goes home and writes a letter to her brother, Tom Cody, who - it turns out - took off to join the army many years ago but, prior to that, had been dating Ellen Aim.
Tom, having not long got out of the army, returns home, breaks up a fight at Reeva's diner, annoys the local police, and chews the fat at a local dive bar with one of his old pals... Where he meets McCoy.
I don't think the writer and director of Streets Of Fire intended McCoy (Amy Madigan) to be as much of the star of the show as she appears, but they must have had something of an inkling given that they very generously gave her all the best lines. Originally the character of McCoy (effectively Tom Cody's sidekick) was going to be a black man. This changed because Madigan basically talked them into hiring her instead. It would be fair to say that the character could easily have been played by a man or a woman, and indeed by anyone from any racial background, but that the casting of a woman in the part gives the Cody/McCoy relationship dimensions that it wouldn't have had if she'd been a man. There is no sexual attraction between the pair (which is refreshing) and this is established very early on, meaning both Cody and McCoy can concentrate on what they're in town to do: Rescue Ellen Aim from Raven's clutches.
The other central character in all of this is Ellen's manager, Billy Fish, who is played as a weaselly, money grabbing figure of fun by Rick Moranis. He's basically there to be the butt of McCoy's one liners, to annoy Cody, and be there for Ellen to come back to.
Thanks to the hard boiled characterisation, snappy dialogue, mean streets, rain, trench coats and crime element, Streets Of Fire is often talked of as being a neo noir film. This has come with hindsight, however, and back when it was released in 1984 it was tagged in the opening credits as being 'A Rock'N'Roll Fable'. Neither genre would be entirely accurate (what is a rock'n'roll fable anyway?) but it's easy to see how it would come to be seen as a neo noir, with Cody standing in for the private dick, Ellen Aim firmly in the femme fatale mode of heroine, and enough dives, grimy streets and disempowered cops to to point to as evidence. Admittedly no one had a fight with a pair of pickaxes (soundtracked magnificently by Link Ray's 'Rumble') in 1940s noir, but that's the 1980s for you.
What's perhaps more telling though is that this film was released in 1984; Two years after Blade Runner (which also has strong noirish characteristics) and the same year as Flashdance (which, um, doesn't). It shares the same post industrial bleakness of location as Blade Runner and the sexual exploitation and violence as Flashdance while existing in its own little 80s bubble. That the soundtrack is largely by Jim Steinman also ties it firmly to the 80s but, if anything, Steinman's soundtrack adds to the heightened sense of the thing, rather than detracting from it.
It's fun to watch this film for the Cody/McCoy relationship rather than the Cody/Aim relationship, mainly because the former seems more developed and rewarding than the latter. Diane Lane's performance as Ellen Aim has been criticised as wooden but her actual onstage performances are fine, it's when she's offstage that she seems miscast. This is strange given that it wasn't her first time playing a rock star: She'd played the fiery Corinne Burns in Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains! two years earlier, a role that seems to have had a lot more to it than her role here as Ellen.
Streets Of Fire is not a film that you watch expecting perfection; it's an implausibly plotted, rollicking ride with a surprisingly good soundtrack, great one liners, lots of high octane, highly choreographed fight scenes and an oddly satisfying conclusion. But it doesn't hold up well to forensic analysis in any sense.
