Upside Down is a documentary about the rise and fall of independent record label Creation, and its co-founder and Big Cheese Alan McGee.
It's the kind of documentary that treats all its archive footage to make it look like it was shot on Krypton and does things like shoving in stock footage of a hospital when McGee recounts how he once went to hospital, or shows us somebody making a phone call when he talks about how he once made a phone call, just in case you're not sure what a hospital or a phone call is.
It's also often incapable of sitting on a medium close up of a contributor without cutting away to a shot of the same person taken from a slightly different angle but made to look grainy for no reason. Have these people never seen The Adam & Joe Show?
All of which wouldn't be so bad if the subject matter was a bit more exciting, but a hundred minutes of haggard, coke-addled zillionaires banging on about how mental they were back in the day soon loses its appeal, especially when the label itself
only produced one and a half bands of any interest.
Don't bother.
If you do want to bother, Upside Down is showing at 6.15pm on Saturday 23rd October and 12.45pm on Sunday 24th October at Vue Leicester Square.
You know, that's the kind of controversy that's going to get you a boycott, pal. Ride, The Boo Radleys, MBV, Teenage Fanclub, Primal Scream and the mighty, mighty Super Furry Animals (aka the greatest band ever).
ReplyDeleteOh, and Oasis, but don't hold that against them.
Shame the film's not much cop, tho. I was looking forward to revisiting my own teenage fanclub.
Alan McGee's a fool! He turned down the mighty John Aldington, who fortunately for the world signed to the fanatically independant Sitting Target instead. I look forward with interest to 2035, when the movie of the rise of this great label is documented: Good luck getting an interview with shadowy label boss Chester Norman, who no-one on the label has ever met, and who is rumoured to be two members of a mega huge seventies band working incognito from an office under a pub somewhere on Canvey Island.
ReplyDeleteMr Suit may be suggesting that the Super Furry Animals are the 1 band from the 1 and a half good bands...maybe??? He'd better be!
ReplyDeleteIt might be best if I don't comment any further on this matter. Hell hath no fury like a shoegazer scorned.
ReplyDelete