…various film soundtracks. I can’t think of a film I really love in which the music doesn’t play a pivotal part of the appreciation. Anyway, here are a few of my favourites (plus Spotify links):

Jackie Brown

[Spotify]

The Brothers Johnson. The Delfonics. Johnny Cash. Bobby Womack. I could listen to this all day. In fact, what I am I saying? I just did.

Virgin Suicides

[Spotify]

An OST in the proper sense: an original score, written for the movie by Air. Love a bit of Air, and this trippy, melancholic music is so perfectly matched to the visuals of the film.

Romeo + Juliet

[Spotify]

Fucking loved this film, but then who didn’t? Some really beautiful love songs on the OST by that angelic little Quindon Tarver and Des’ree of ‘I’d rather have a piece of toast and watch the evening news’ fame (that song didn’t make the soundtrack, thankfully.)

Pulp Fiction

Another Tarantino OST. I’m so fucking bait, aren’t I? But his soundtracks are undeniably great, so whatever. The bit where Vincent and Mia do the twist to Chuck Berry’s ‘You Never Can Tell’ is still so amazing. No Spotify link for this one, unfortunately but you can see the tracklisting here.

Purple Rain

[Spotify]

Obvs.

What soundtracks are you feeling? Let me know in the comments if you can be bothered. Genuinely interested!

Un prophète/A Prophet

The words ‘gritty’, ’shocking’ and ‘thought-provoking’ spring to mind, alongside all those other generic adjectives often used to describe foreign films about ethnic minorities. As you’ve probably heard, if not seen with your own eyes, ‘A Prophet’ is a pretty fucking amazing film about a young Arab man who is sentenced to six years in a French prison, where he quickly falls in with a bunch of horrendously violent Corsican gangsters. Obviously it’s also about a lot more than that but if I broke down the plot you might not go and see it. And you should. So I won’t.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

I know basically fuck all about art, and I went into a screening of this Banksy documentary (out next week) more or less completely ignorant of its subject matter. I had a vague idea that it would be about, um, Banksy but actually it’s not really about Banksy at all. It’s about a mad French dude living in Los Angeles who tried to make a documentary about Banksy, until Banksy took his footage and decided to make a documentary about him instead. Sound a bit mental? Yeah, it is. It’s also really funny, like L-O-L funny, and sharply edited. Plus it gets you thinking about street art and the way it’s been affected and perhaps devalued by its own commercialisation, and films that get you thinking are always worth seeing really, aren’t they?

I spent the large part of the weekend sitting round my kitchen table in the company of various friends, and one of our main topics of conversation was (bizarrely enough, for a group of young Londoners) the state of New Jersey. My friend Luke has just returned from a trip to NJ/NY where, by all accounts, MTV’s reality TV show Jersey Shore has got our American counterparts glued to their screens  – in a deeply “ironic” way, of course. I haven’t seen the show yet but I’ve seen clips and read a lot about it on US media sites and from what I can gather, it follows a group of young ‘guidos’ and ‘guidettes’- a slightly derogatory slang term for Italian-Americans who, amongst other qualifiers, follow a strict common code of personal grooming so they all end up look something like this. Amazing, right?

Anyway, given all this talk of the Garden State and its various enthralling subcultures, I was delighted to discover a YouTube clip on the Married to The Mob blog, which features highlights from a 1994 documentary called ‘Wildwood, NJ’. The doc follows various delightfully bizarre visitors to the Jersey seaside resort of the same name and makes for absolutely fascinating viewing. Because I am aesthetically anal about this website I don’t want to sully its appearance by posting YouTube clips on the main page, but I’ve included the Wildwood vid after the jump. Trust me when I tell you its worth clicking the link for. See the screengrabs above? Homegirl is the blue shirt is absolutely INSANE!

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One of those painfully stylish films that makes you want to throw away every last pair of jeans, kicks and leggings in your wardrobe and slink around in only berets and pencil skirts (and when I say ‘you’, obviously I mean ‘me’). Faye Dunaway is ridiculously beautiful in this 1962 crime classic. Seek it out if you haven’t seen it already.

In related trivia – Warren Beatty supposedly slept with almost 13,000 women before he married his current wife, Annette Bening. Aside from all other considerations – where the hell did he find the time?!

Grace Ladoja is an immensely talented young filmmaker and a thoroughly nice lady to boot. Check out this trailer for her visually stunning documentary ‘London to Paris’, which tracks ten cyclists from around the world as they make a cross-Channel pilgrimage to meet Lance Armstrong at the end of the Tour de France.

Like what you see? London-based? Come down to the premiere of the film next Tuesday 1st December. Definitely worth braving the cold for. (Especially ’cause there’s free food, free drink, and a chance to win a free bike.)

Flyer with full info after the jump.

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Andrea Levy’s ‘Small Island’ is one of those books which causes you to form some deep emotional attachment to the characters, so that you go into a period of quasi-mourning when you reach the last page and realise you’ll never hear from them again. Or maybe that was just me. Either way it’s a proper warm-the-cockles-of-your-heart-but-not-in-a-cheesy-way type of novel which deals with the Windrush era of Caribbean immigration into the UK. Really interesting if you’re a history geek like myself, and actually really interesting even if you’re not. Swear down.

Anyway, that’s a very convoluted way of getting to my point (there is one, promise!): Today I found out the BBC have made a soon-to-be-aired adaptation of Small Island, and I am really fucking excited and I think you should be, too.

What’s that you say? BBC adaptations are for middle-aged couples who live in sleepy villages in Sussex and do their shopping at Ocado.com? Oh, piss off.