So, you’re a fresher. You’ve got some hi-tops and a nice laptop and you can’t wait to learn about all the wonderful stuff being handed to you for a mere nine grand a year. But what happens when you find yourself having to open your mouth and have a conversation about…gulp…culture and films and art and K-Pop? You might be all up on your Michael Haneke and Paul Thomas Anderson, and that’s great, but if Geordie Shore is more your thing (and who could blame you?), Online Editor Jess O’Kane gives a basic guide on how to avoid looking like a yokel.
1. Django Unchained
Where Pulp Fiction was once the Tarantino reference du jour, Django has proved that the renegade director’s still as fresh as ever. If you missed it, all you need to know is that Jamie Foxx plays the titular slave-cum-badass, freed by a maniacal Christoph Waltz to track and kill ruthless plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio, in fine form), and recapture his estranged wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). The soundtrack is, as ever, a time-bending marvel, featuring Richie Havens, Kanye and Rick Ross. Oh yeah, and it’s gorey…I mean, really, really, gorey.
GOOD CHAT:
- What’s with the whole messing up history thing anyway, Quentin? Some might say he’s re-writing the American narrative. Others might just find it annoying (do I even need to mention Inglorious Basterds?)
- Jamie Foxx’s blue outfit. Now legendary. Forever cool.
2. Drive
The breakout film of 2012, on paper Drive really shouldn’t function, but somehow it does – more than that, it soars. Ryan Gosling plays an unnamed stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway chauffeur for some of L.A’s more unsavoury residents. Apparently unable to find other clothes, he performs these bloody tasks wearing a scorpion-embossed jacket and aviators – because who needs anonymity when you’re Ryan Gosling? When a waitress and her young son move in down the hall (beautifully played by the elfin Carey Mulligan), the Driver becomes unwittingly drawn into a dark underbelly of escalating drama and ultimate tragedy.
GOOD CHAT:
- The ultimate Drive trivia nugget: the film looks the way it does (high contrast, practically chiaroscuro in places), because director Nicholas Winding Refn is colour blind.
- The now-famous jacket has been produced commercially and retails for a cool $160 a pop in the States.
- We have to talk about the soundtrack. Synthy, dark, and oozing cool, it’s impossible not to want to hear more. The two signature tracks of the film were produced by little known outfits College and Desire, respectively. Unsurprisingly, they’re now not so little known.
3. Black Books
Black Books was the ultimate Britcom of the early 2000s, and essential viewing for anyone who’s ever had wine for breakfast (holla). The series follows alcoholic bookshop owner Bernard Black, played by Dylan Moran, who also co-wrote the show with Graham Linehan. Bernard is a narcissistic, potty-mouthed degenerate who’s only friends are his neighbour Fran (a wonderful Tamsin Grieg), and his servile man-child Manny (Bill Bailey). Together they form a kind of omnishambles secure unit; a quarantine of regret and perpetual wine. Peter Serafinowicz, Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson (creators of the equally essential Spaced) guest star.
GOOD CHAT:
- This was back when Channel 4 was cool, right? Why can’t they put stuff like this on nowadays?
- Am I the only one that feels a bit sorry for Bernard?
4. Treme
The wildcard choice: you may even have a few hipsters quaking in their reclaimed military boots with this. Pronounced treh-may like the historic district, Treme is David Simon and Eric Overmyer’s first major project since The Wire. Like that most unflinching portrayal of Baltimore, the show charts post-Katrina New Orleans in minute detail, inspired by the real musicians, writers, chefs, bums and hangers-on living in the shadow of its destruction. And yet, at the same time Treme shows a city with a healthy heart: the hurricane is offhandedly referred to as “the storm”; restaurants are full; jazz clubs thump at 4am. It’s a treat for the ears too – the soundtrack is sourced from and performed by local musicians, many of whom inspired the show’s characters.
GOOD CHAT:
- Man, I wish I could play the tuba/horn/sax/piano/drums
- Conspiracy theory o’clock: was the hurricane a man-made disaster as English Professor and season 1 character Creighton Burnette claims?
- I wonder how much flights to New Orleans are?
Jess O’Kane, Online Editor
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