Culture Vultures

• Kate Feld
• 23 Mar 07, 02:24 PM

In this week's look at the Mancunian blogosphere, it's all about culture - people who are blogging in order to tell us about the best things in arts, entertainment and the like.

Music Blogger A Cool Noise has been pleasantly surprised by Nick Cave’s new project Grinderman, which he calls “a simple reminder of the primal power of Rock and Roll.”
The album “begins with Get It On (no, not the famous one) and Nick’s voice shouting down the cellar: ‘kick those black dogs and baboons out’. And then it starts - a noise so distorted it could be either a guitar or organ but it is low down and dirty and that is all that matters… These are not songs written by a man in his artistic solitude but instead music forged in the claustrophobia of a small studio when given some electric instruments and a few ideas to try out. This is a great album and the best thing Mr Nick Cave has done for many years. It has an immediacy and earthiness his other (often magnificent) work doesn’t have.”

Cinemafool has been watching documentaries this week, including This Film is Not Yet Rated, which she says is…

”A doc from 2006 about the weird ratings systems in the US. As well as showing lots of rude sex scenes that were rated a seemingly dreaded NC17 (that’s 18 to UK folk) and scenes that were ultimately cut, this documentary also digs its way in to issues like ‘who has the right to decide the morals of others’, ‘why is female pleasure so offensive to watch’, ‘how come sex is much worse than violence’, and ‘what’s with all the prejudice against gay sex, when stuff like violence to women is ok?’

Though a little one-sided, this doc is amusing, enlightening and brings up plenty for debate. It’s rated 18 in the UK.”

Moving from the big screen to the small, No Flipping! is a new blog that covers telly, written by James of Yer Mam! He provides his own slightly schizophrenic preview of the week's programmes. For tomorrow, he recommends watching football. But if you’re not a sports fan…

"Well there's TV Burp (6.10pm, ITV1), which is still the most consistently funny show on TV. David Quantick really earns his money on that one. Also, The Arcade Fire, Rowan Atkinson and violinist, Maxim Venegrov are all on The Culture Show (7.10pm, BBC2), though not all at the same time, I hope, Channel 4 are showing The Shawshank Redemption (9.25pm) for what seems like the millionth time (maybe this time we find out just how Tim Robbins managed to put that poster back up from inside the tunnel) and Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy For The Devil - a mesmerising yet didactic audio-visual collage of those turbulent late-60s, intercut with The Rolling Stones recording the title track in the studio - is on Sky Arts (10.25pm, Sky Channel 267), for those with their minds on higher things.

Finally on to the world of books…colouring books, of course. Author Claire Dudman writes on her blog Keeper of the Snails of her latest obsession:

"The Human Brain Colouring Book - which is exactly as described. Every day I colour in a page and in the process learn how the brain works. The most surprising thing I've learnt so far is that along the neurons there are bud-like things called 'dendritic spines' and these buds are 'plastic' in that they can grow, change shape and size and probably (one thing I like about this science is there is so much that is not known for certain) disappear altogether. The spines allow communication between neurons and so this is the way we make connections and think."

A human brain colouring book... what will they think of next?