The World's Maddest Dreams

• Kate Feld
• 25 Apr 07, 04:08 PM

Mancunian bloggers this week seem to be enjoying one last round of indoor entertainment, before the festival season really gets into swing.

Tim Hall over at Where Worlds Collide (tagline: “RPGs. Trains, and bands that write 12 minute songs about Hobbits”) has been going to lots of gigs lately, including the Deep Purple/Styx show over at MEN Arena:

“At about 9:30, Deep Purple hit the stage, and launched into ‘Pictures of Home’. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been seeing all these bands fronted by 22 year olds, but Purple look old; all grey hair (those that have hair, that is). But they still rock, even now. The setlist included most of the standards people expect to hear like ‘Smoke’ and ‘Highway Star’, and enough surprises to keep those of us who have heard ‘Smoke’ 101 times before interested.”

Several Manc cinephiles have raved online about The Lives of Others (and I’ll add my own rave to theirs, it's an incredible movie.)

Norman Geras writes:

“I don't expect to see many better movies this year. It's at once a gripping political thriller, a portrait of life in the former German Democratic Republic under the omnipresent Stasi, and an essay in political evil and individual redemption. In its moral seriousness, it reminded me – negatively - of the number of would-be thrillers I've seen in recent years with contrived and convoluted plot outcomes that were ultimately empty of any purpose other than their own cleverness. This film conveys the nightmarish atmosphere of a society under constant surveillance, the fear, the pressures to compromise, the temptations of betrayal. It also has a marvellous ending that I won't give away, though I will say that film-makers and movie-goers of a postmodern cast of mind might not find it sufficiently obscure or ambivalent for their taste.”

And Stephen Newton says:

“Inspired by Lenin’s complaint that he’d not finish the revolution if he listened to Beethoven (it softened him), The Lives of Others is a mighty movie in which the spy is saved by the art of his subject. But don’t let that fool you into expecting any other than a hard nosed film of grim reality.
A film of the year contending 10 out of 10.”

Keris Stainton doesn’t need to go to the movies. Her dreams provide enough amusement, as evidenced by her recent posting about having The World’s Maddest Dreams:
“I had befriended a load of animals who seemed to be living in a giant cage in my in-laws garden. I would go outside to chat to a tiny black (talking) pig and a (talking) chicken who would sit on my head and dangle upside down to look me in the face.
What the hell did I eat last night?”

Hmm… whatever it was, send us some!