Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

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Matt Bochenski rounds up the top films, music releases and books heading your way this month

Images Columbia Pictures Industries Inc., Rex Features

Drag Me to Hell

Director Sam Raimi
Starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long

After a questionable diversion into the mega-blockbuster realm of Spider-Man (good for his wallet, bad for everything else), Sam Raimi is back making (relatively) low-budget schlock horror, and doing it very, very well.

Alison Lohman is Christine Brown, a loans officer on the make who proves her toughness to her overbearing boss by turning down the loan application of toothy old crone Mrs Ganush. Big mistake: after a hilarious bust-up in an underground garage, Mrs Ganush curses Christine who, from this point on, will find herself in a race against time before a nightmarish spirit drags her soul to hell.

With its menacing kitchen knives, haunted hankies, possessed cake and flying beasties, Drag Me to Hell has as much in common with Jim Carrey’s cartoon classic The Mask as Raimi’s celebrated Evil Dead output. But don’t think that this means he holds back on the horror – torrents of bodily fluids slosh across the screen, nightmares come to life and not even cute little kittens are safe from the carnage.

But it’s so much fun, the physical horror never morphs into psychological terror. Instead, this is a rip-roaring ride from a director who has rediscovered his mojo.

The Taking of Pelham 123

Director Tony Scott
Starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta

Former adman Tony Scott brings his usual over-the-top directorial style to this remake of a 1974 film about a gang of armed men who hijack a subway car in New York and demand a ransom of $10m for the passengers.

Starring heavyweight actors John Travolta and Denzel Washington (literally – they’re both looking a bit on the porky side these days) as the bad guy and good guy respectively, the action sizzles as Washington’s transport worker tries to find a way to rescue the hostages before Travolta’s wild-eyed gunman loses his cool.

Screenwriter Brian Helgeland has updated the original by throwing in some references to terrorism and greedy Wall Street shenanigans, but at heart this is an old-fashioned and simple-minded thrill ride that’s more interested in blood, bullets and blurry camerawork than namby pamby stuff such as dialogue and character. It’s probably one for the boys only.

Jonas Brothers

Lines, Vines and Trying Times

If you’ve never heard of the Jonas Brothers, you clearly don’t have a teenage daughter. Nick, Kevin and Joe shot to fame last year off the back of the film Camp Rock (and never was a music film more appropriately named), the Disney Channel’s latest effort to find the next High School Musical.

The brothers were an obvious horse to back – they’ve famously promised to remain ‘pure’ until married, while their wholesome brand of pop has connected with girls and their grannies across America. And whatever you think of their background, you have to admire the band’s work ethic. Lines, Vines and Trying Times is their fourth album in four years and they’ve just set off on a mammoth world tour.

But despite the intriguing title and song names such as ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Poison Ivy’, anyone looking for a new, grown-up sound will be disappointed. As ever, the trio presents a ruthlessly targeted brand of bubblegum pop that’s just as hard to swallow. It’s all twee harmonies and bland expressions of love/loss/self-belief (delete as applicable) with one eye on the next 3D concert film. With HSM, Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers, Disney is gaining a stranglehold on tween pop. Be very afraid.

Moby

Wait for Me

It can’t be easy for Moby.

The demands placed on international rock stars are no laughing matter, and when you’re a tiny New York vegan it must be hard keeping up. So Moby’s latest album, Wait for Me, has been composed and recorded entirely in his own house, at his own pace and presumably with frequent breaks to top up on tofu.

The result is a hugely personal, even esoteric, album – a bold synthesis of modern instrumentals and old-fashioned production values that demands to be consumed as a whole.

Inspired by the creativity of David Lynch, the Blue Velvet director has returned the compliment by animating the video for the album’s first single, ‘Shot in the Back of the Head’ – a melodious three-minute affair with no vocals that nevertheless speaks volumes for Moby’s intentions.

Wait for Me isn’t an album built on market research – it’s a passion project that sees this singular artist making something peculiarly modern out of an antiquated, analogue past.

Book club

This month’s must-reads

Consorts of Heaven
Jaine Fenn

There isn’t exactly a dearth of new sci-fi writers, but a genuinely fresh new voice (and female to boot) is always a welcome find.

Consorts of Heaven is Fenn’s second book, following her debut, Principles of Angels. In a way, the less you know about Consorts… the better, because one of the novel’s great pleasures is in slowly uncovering the way it links to the earlier book. You’d be well advised not to read the back-page blurb, but just so you know, this is the story of Sais, an amnesiac who wakes in a world governed by religious dogma. His journey to the faraway capital becomes a trip into his own memory and descent into a viper’s nest of treachery.

With frank depictions of sexuality and large-scale drama, Fenn recalls something of the cosmic wonder of Iain M Banks’ Culture novels. She hasn’t quite developed their scale and majesty, but she’s heading in the right direction.

Twenties Girl
Sophie Kinsella

In the past few years, Kinsella has become a fixture on many girls’ ‘guilty pleasures’ list. The author of the Shopaholic series isn’t most people’s idea of a great writer, but her ability to capture the zeitgeist of the 21st-century woman with spiky prose and wit has seen her elevated to the literary A-list.

Twenties Girl is a (slight) departure from her previous novels, containing as it does a period flavour in the form of flapper girl ghost, Sadie, who can’t rest until reunited with her favourite necklace. The only person who can help is her great-niece Lara, a thoroughly modern minx…

Despite catching the heady era of the young and the damned, Twenties Girl is still a 21st-century novel. Kinsella has some interesting things to say about how the role of women has changed (or not) since the 20s, but the emphasis is very much on the usual wry observations and scatter-brain adventures of her heroine.

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