Monday 26 March 2012

An Obsessed Angelina Jolie Dreams of Making Kate Middleton Movie



It appears Kate Middleton’s life has been targeted by her number one celebrity fan Angelina Jolie as fertile ground on which to sow the seeds of a new Hollywood movie on.

When you’re richer than the economy of some countries and as glamorous as a big lipped skeleton in designer clothes can be, fame for fame’s sake and sleeping with Brad Pitt may just not be enough to fill the dreaded down time in day after monotonous day spent counting your money and starring at your perfect reflection in antique mirrors. 

So what’s an Angelina Jolie to do? Well, with her woeful string of failed relationships which are longer than a diseased tom cat’s tail, our Angie has blown her chances of ever marrying into royalty.

Yet, the plucky young thespian’s obsession with everything royal, and in particular, Kate Middleton, needs an outlet, and rumour has it that old Ang could be turning her obsession with the Duchess into a Hollywood film.

Buoyed by her success with her directional debut, The Land of Blood and Honey, the Oscar-winning actress is contemplating producing a flick based on the life of Prince William’s wife.

As we all know, after it was repeatedly rammed down our throats during the excessive TV coverage of Will and Kate’s big day, Middleton started life as a commoner and then after meeting the future King of England in college, she married into royalty and became a Princess. Wham, bam, thank-you man! 

Kate’s story is pretty much perfect fodder for a Hollywood script, and Jolie is exactly the sort of delusional and deranged romantic to make it epic in a toe-curling and blood curdling sense. 

Jolie is one of Kate and Will’s biggest fans and the star-struck little donkey even has a picture of the royal couple in the love nest she shares with Brad Pitt and her brood. 

An insider told the Sun newspaper, "Angelina's fascinated by Kate and says she has a wonderful aura. She loves her look and common touch and says she and William radiate kindness and sincerity."

Let’s hope, if the movie is ever made, it is created in true Hollywood style. The commoner Kate could be portrayed as a rough as slate coal miner’s daughter from up North, with a fierce appetite for chips, mushy peas and stout, who likes nothing more than a bit of Greyhound racing and Bingo to add a bit of spark to her Saturday nights.

And then along comes Prince William, a man who sees beyond wealth, class and privilege to a peasant’s true worth. A true gentleman who saves our Kate from her bleak working class existence with the most royal of gestures. 

Fingers crossed hey Angie! 



Thursday 15 March 2012

Singers With a Death Wish


They're dead famous, dead cool and dead tragic, but did certain singers who died young predict it in their lyrics?



Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse all have a few things in common; they're impossibly cool, universally adored and eternally dead. Burnt up and spat out into an early grave at a tragically young age. Victims of the same rock n' roll lifestyle which put them on a pedestal, celebrated their vices, whitewashed their weaknesses, exploited their talents and blindsided them hook, line and sinker, before leaving them to rot. 

Exactly why they died well before their time is debatable, but one thing is for certain, their lifestyles and lyrics all conspired to make their sudden deaths less shocking than if it happened to more mediocre talents and less forceful personalities. 

All of the aforementioned rock n' roll casualties were renowned for having their finger firmly on the self-destruct button in one way or another during their short lives. A factor which is nowhere more evident than in the words of certain songs they sung while the heart was still beating and the rock was rolling. With this in mind, let's play musical sleuth and unearth the lines from certain songs which reveal, if not a blatant death wish on behalf of the singer in question, at least a morbid curiosity in their own demise. 


The Doors - The End 


It's fair to say that the Lizard King Jim Morrison was obsessed with death. He wrote reams of poetry about the Grim Reaper during his short tenure on this mortal coil and a fair few songs too - most memorably the 11 minute oedipal psychedelic epic that is 'The End'. When a serious young man obsessed with LSD and Nietzsche croons "This is the end, my only friend the end," you know he's a car crash waiting to happen. Jimbo's own end came in a Paris bathtub when he died from a suspected heroin overdose. Interestingly, one of the last songs Morrison recorded (Hyacinth House) contains the enigmatic line, "I see the bathroom is near." Go figure. 


Nirvana - All Apologies 


The last song on the last album that Kurt Cobain ever recorded reads like a suicide note to the world. It's not angry and frantic but despairing and resigned as if the Nirvana singer had already made up his mind to stick a shotgun in his mouth and violently blow his brains out. World weary lyrics such as "What else should I be? All apologies," and a philosophically meaningless refrain which solemnly intones "All in all is all we are," reek of a soul ravaged by ennui and sick with experience. Fame and fortune had numbed Cobain to his present and made his future bleak. Consequently the only exit he considered available to him would also be his last. 

Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart 


It was grim up North during the heyday of Joy Division and Ian Curtis's lyrics encapsulated the Manchester misery and dreary despair on an industrial scale. Pretty much any of the strangely beautiful words which fell from Curtis's dour mouth like poisoned poetry were larger than life clues to the inner turmoil and dark forces which compelled him to hang himself. Yet one song stands head and shoulders above the rest. In one sense, 'Love Will Love Tear Us Apart' is nothing more than an ode to a relationship turned sour, but on the other hand, lines like, "And there's a taste in my mouth as desperation takes hold," suggest an existential despair which was always going to get the better of Curtis. 

Jimi Hendrix - I Don't Live Today 


Like a guitar wielding spaceman from another planet with crazy clothes and crazy hair, Jimi Hendrix was an otherworldly talent who performed songs of such majesty it seemed impossible that such a talent could be allowed to live for long. He wasn't, but before he ingested a lethal cocktail of amphetamine, sleeping pills and red wine, which caused him to choke to death on his own vomit, Hendrix had written plenty of songs with dying on their mind, one of them being the aptly titled 'I Don't Live Today'. In this red raw rocker of a track, Jimi describes how he feels like he's sitting at the bottom of a grave, before casually asking the universe, "Will I live tomorrow? Well, I just can't say." Hendrix's apparent indifference to his own mortality would a few short years later quite literally cost him his life. 

Amy Winehouse - Back To Black 


Although in death she has become acclaimed and revered, the simple sad truth is that during her short career Amy's alcoholic and drug-fuelled antics amused us and often overshadowed her true talent - which of course was her voice. A voice which never sounded better than on 'Back To Black', a song about a doomed love which is never going to go the distance. Obviously, when a lover walks out on you it's always going to be an upsetting experience but to cry, "You go back to her and I go back to black," seems to suggest a morbid hypersensitivity and slight fixation with the abyss of no return. Winehouse eventually went back to black for good, when she died all alone in her London flat with nothing but a couple of empty vodka bottles for company.