Weekly Review: 8th - 14th November

MUSIC

This week I have been listening almost exclusively to an Irish band that a friend introduced me to called Villagers. This is one of the friends who I am going to visit in Belfast just before Christmas, and she was looking for things for us to do and found that Villagers are doing a gig there on one of the nights that I am staying. She thought I might like them, so she sent me a video and asked if I wanted to go to the gig.

The saying goes that great minds think alike, and both myself and Emma have great minds, so it was fairly obvious that I was going to like them. Little did I realise that I would adore them right from the very first song I heard. Conor O'Brien's voice is beautiful in a way that singer's voices rarely are these days. They are a bit like Mumford & Sons - this is as close a comparison as I can think of - but I have watched videos of them live this week and they are (unlike Mumford) so much heavier and raw live; I cannot wait to see them. I ordered the album off Amazon and it's been on ever since I got it. Every single song is a little pocket of musical magic, so they are my recommendation of the week.

FILM

Years behind, as always, the only 'new' film that I have seen this week is In Bruges, which was released in 2008. I don't know why it takes me so long to see films that I really want to see; I'm a Colin Farrell fan, so this has been on my priority list for, well, two years.

I thought it was great: very funny, lots of Irish accents, Colin Farrell wearing glasses (for sadly only two brief scenes), lots of running around and shoot-outs, and the adorable Clemence Poesy - everything I require in a film, really.

Fun fact that I learnt about this film from IMDB triva: the word 'fuck' and its derivatives are said 126 times in this 107-minute film, an average of 1.18 'fucks' per minute.

BOOKS

Aside from A Prayer For Owen Meany, I also finally read Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk this week. It is a travesty really that I have only just read this, because the film is one of my all time favourites; even though it does feature Helena Bonham Carter, who I cannot stand, it is also Edward Norton's best (I far prefer him to Brad Pitt).
The novel is spectacular, absolutely spectacular. I love Palahniuk's writing style, and his ideas and 'philosophies' are mind blowing. Reading the book, you can understand the film so much better, and you can see how good an adaptation the film is (ven though the end is quite different). If you haven't read this yet, you definitely should. It's a fairly perfect book. I really want to go and quit my job now.