Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Heavy with meaning

    Heavy with meaning

    You don’t have to like the protagonist of a story to identify with them, or to buy into their charisma. You don’t have to think they make good choices, and they don’t have to win. Consider Josh Brolin’s character in the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men, stumbling from crisis to crisis and dying Read more

  • A***holes looking pretty

    A***holes looking pretty

    It’s an interesting proposition, a romantic comedy starring Hollywood ‘A’-listers, written and directed by the Coen Brothers. What would these masters of generic subversion do with such a broad palette of obligatory tropes? Something intensely stylish, and fiendishly clever, no doubt. However, their previous mainstream comedy, also starring Coens fan George Clooney, might serve as Read more

  • A body speaks its truth

    A body speaks its truth

    Having trained as an instrumentalist, and associated with other instrumentalists over many years, I’ve often found myself having to argue against the assumption that the only way to achieve musicianship is to study a traditional musical instrument. The music of the later twentieth century was immeasurably enriched by recording artists and performers who came to Read more

  • Perfectly lonely

    Perfectly lonely

    This spectacular and lavish volume from Chris Ware is the second of his beautiful large books that I’ve read. Rusty Brown is apparently an ongoing character that he’s been drawing for some time, a rather selfish and manipulative man-child nerd who takes advantage of his nerd friend Chalky White’s good nature. Rusty Brown the book, Read more

  • Surprisingly coherent contempt

    Surprisingly coherent contempt

    Public Image Limited was the band that John Lydon actually wanted to be in. I have no idea whether he would have ended up being involved in music professionally, if Malcolm McLaren hadn’t thought he looked right for The Sex Pistols, but as soon as he was in a band he clearly had his own Read more

  • Homeric depths

    Homeric depths

    ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’. ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine’. ‘Round up the usual suspects’. ‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship’. ‘Play it, Sam’. Few if any films in the history of cinema have contributed as much to spoken Read more