Michael Bonner ...

Michael Bonner

The return of Arcade Fire

For me, the strangest moment during last night’s flurry of Arcade Fire activity – Bowie! two videos! world tour! – was the footage of the band stepping out of a limousine in Montreal wearing giant papier mâché heads.

The Beatles, The National, the Coens and Jim Jarmusch for this year’s BFI London Film Festival

The line-up has just been announced for this year’s London Film Festival, and it looks like pretty good – with new films from the Coens (yes, it’s that one), Jim Jarmusch, Alexander Payne, Steve McQueen, Jonathan Glazer and Richard Ayoade at the top of our must see list.

The Clash, Fleetwood Mac, Bill Callahan, Mazzy Star, Arctic Monkeys in the new Uncut; plus the music and film of the 2000s

I hope you had a good Bank Holiday break. I spent a very enjoyable chunk of it reading the new Carl Hiaasen novel – excuse the shameless self-promotion, but you can read an interview I did with Hiaasen over on my blog. But now we’re back in the office, and it’s my pleasure to introduce you all to the new issue of Uncut, which goes on sale tomorrow.

An interview with Carl Hiaasen: “I want to be able to turn over rocks and shine a spotlight on these cockroaches”

I spent a chunk of the weekend reading Bad Monkey, the new novel by Carl Hiaasen - one America's great crime writers. After a rather fallow period recently, the book feels very much like Hiaasen is back to full strength.

New trailer unveiled for Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis

The Coen Brothers have released a third trailer for their upcoming film, Inside Llewyn Davis. As I'm sure you know from previous reports, this is their inimitable take on the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s.

Elmore Leonard remembered

We only interviewed Elmore Leonard once in Uncut. This was around the release of Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino’s adaptation of Leonard’s novel Rum Punch; coincidentally, Leonard also had a new novel out at the same time, Cuba Libre.

My Bloody Valentine, Pavement, Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, Portishead, Goodfellas and the music and films of the 1990s

I don’t know about you, but I’m still reeling from final episodes of Top Of The Lake and Southcliffe on television over the weekend. Both, I suppose, had a loose thematic link - they were studies of tragedy in small communities - and I think in the end I preferred Southcliffe’s open-endedness to Top Of The Lake’s flurry of final act revelations; but that said, they were both brilliant TV, easily among the best things I've seen this year.

First Look – Morrissey 25: Live

As anniversaries go, you might presume that Morrissey hasn't much wanted to throw a party to celebrate his quarter century as a solo artist. After all, his year has been blighted by ongoing health problems - bleeding ulcer, Barrett's esophagus and double pneumonia, food poisoning - and a number of crippling tour cancellations, the most recent due to lack of funding, all of which has led him to note glumly, “the future is suddenly absent.”
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