Storage Stories: Darkmatters book review

Storage Stories
by Jim Bob

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

“Now Carter USM started out in business as some granny farmers, they were infamous for fifteen minutes and he appeared on Top of the Pops. Then they somehow got themselves on board The Starship Enterprise Allowance Scheme, with a Prince of Wales award for pushing catchy songs and endorphins…”

But fame is a fickle friend and despite being (in my opinion) the best and most altogether wonderful indie pop punk rock band ever – alas they are no more. So what happens to pop stars when they are no longer ‘stars’ - Jim Bob blows the bloody doors off the après pop existence in this heart breaking, gorgeous and rather excellent novel that feels deeply autobiographical even though it is plainly a compendium of top notch fictional and maybe not so fictional anecdotes.

Jim Bob’s first novel sees the hero – an ex pop star - having to work for a living in a self-storage company called ‘2001 A Storage Space Odyssey’ LOL. It’s life Jim, but not as we know it as each storage renting customer has their own amusing. tragic or oddball tale behind their space requirements.

There’s a great cast of misfits and memorable characters including love interest Janie who looks like Juliette Binoche, best mate Carl who has a taste for DIY surgery and Gary the Bubblewrap boy… Prepare to laugh out loud at hypotheses such as where boy bands are taken when they outstay their usefulness or a million savvy pop culture references that add sheer joy to readers who have enough brain cells to pick up on these sort of things. My pick of the bunch is a murder confession from a homicidal computer named HAL (yep – like in the film).

Storage Stories has a great wistful beating heart – spiced with darkly comic bursts of cutting observation. It’s a gas, man!? Highly recommended.


Out of a possible 5 you have to go with a Darkmatters:


öööö

(4 - Storage Stories, space for ideas and joy)...

Official Storage Stories site

More Darkmatters posts about CARTER USM

Me wearing my Carter USM shirt in The Guardian

Darkmatters Review: Somewhere

Somewhere (15)


Dir. Sofia Coppola

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

This week marks 10 years of weekly film reviews for the group of newspapers that I write for…

That’s 520 films seen, mused over and written up, many of which you’ll find on this blog (alas Darkmatters only dates back to 2004).

So it is a rare luxury when I get the time to review a film not for the papers but rather just because it was such a joy to watch – and Somewhere is a film that deserves reviewing.

Sofia Coppola is a fascinating director from The Virgin Suicides through Lost In Translation and Marie Antoinette she has a unique style and repeatedly visits certain themes. People often love or hate her films, there are very few ‘meh’ responses as Coppola treads a cinematic path all her own – at once fantastical, whimsy, soul-wired and life-affirming.

Somewhere is the tale of Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), who is film star, womaniser, hard living ‘guy’ first and sometime father to his smart, lovely daughter Cleo (Elle ‘going to be a bigger star than her sister Dakota’ Fanning). The film eschews having a traditional story and rather works through three ‘acts’, each of which sees Dorff in a different light.

Somewhere is a very visual film, it may have little dialogue but it still has a brilliant ‘feel’ which viewers will either connect with and love or reject and hate. The father / daughter bonding is the engine that drives the plot – basically we get to tag along as Cleo visits her dad and gets to experience his movie star lifestyle.

"Elle Fanning - the perfect daughter?"

Before his daughter’s arrival, women are just objects to Marco – expressed in a great double bill of scenes where hot blonde twins pole dance for him in his Chateau Marmont hotel room – and despite their eager efforts he can barely keep himself awake. When Cleo impacts his life he has to do dad duties such as watching her ice-skate and the remarkable juxtaposition of his seeing her as a girl developing into a woman makes him re-assess his whole world view.

Somewhere is a wonderful film – it made my top 10 films of 2010 and I highly recommend seeking it out!

New Darkmatters Film Scoring for 2011 (well I say ‘new’ but since 2008 we have tried to hold the line of giving scores out of ‘10’ – before that it was the good old ‘out of 5’ but due to popular demand – i.e. the emails from PR people etc - we will return to the industry standard out ‘5’:

So out of 5 you have to go with a Darkmatters:

ööööö

(5 love it, wish you had a daughter, think about your life, see it again)...


Awesomeness öööö – Cool Ferrari, fine women, rockstar lifestyle

Laughs öö – Amusing in places

Horror ö – add more stars if you hate sexism

Babes öööö – Actors get the cute ones!

Spiritual Enlightenment ööö – maybe there’s more to life?

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Second opinion - try the excellent BINA007

"Elle Fanning - she's going to be a star!"