'This Must Be The Place': Cannes 2011

Thankful news emanates from Cannes HQ that Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be The Place has been afforded a competition berth at this year’s edition of the great festival. Sean Penn, as so often, will be competing against himself, as Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life also graces the line-up. I await both movies keenly, and look forward to discussing them with their leading man, for the benefit of the revised Sean Penn: His Life and Times which is due later this year or else early 2012.

'Oh let the sun beat down upon my face...'

Since I now have multiple blogs going on, and since there is nothing happening in politics at present that I’m feeling especially strident about (other than a plan to resist AV on May 5) – well, in that light there is a certain temptation to convert this blog wholesale into a Led Zeppelin worship site. I won’t, you understand, but there’s a temptation...
It was only six months ago in Dublin that I learned (through a conversation with someone who worked on it) of the existence of the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud, a recorded symposium and jam-session between Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White, three generations of ‘guitar hero’ if you like. I thought then that I ought to see it immediately: in fact I still haven’t, but the existence of this clip – in which Page instructs the other two in the genesis of the riff for Kashmir – reminds me that I’ve got something to look forward to.