Went to see the Pet Shop Boys playing along to the Battleship Potemkin in Trafalgar Square last night. Very good. They've always liked big romantic sweeps and Soviet key changes and that perfectly suits the film; no point being subtle with this stuff, especially when it's played outside to a group of drunken tourists. The crowd were, of course, the most annoying bit, especially the woman who came and danced and whooed along to the pram rolling down the Odessa staircase.
And there was also some horribly 80s student socialism agitprop intro which didn't help. (Though it did illustrate just how good Eisenstein was, by contrast.) The ICA is disappointing sometimes; so much of the stuff they do could also have been done at Cambridge Poly in 1983. Had to leave a bit early because the dancing whooing woman was so irritating.
My favourite bit was just how the square looked before the whole thing started. The arc lights shining through the fountains.
Blimey, shows how old I'm getting, been doing this blog for ages and this is my first review of anything vaguely like a gig.
Oooo, look at all those umbrellas - bet the PSB were worried about that, considering a week or two earlier another Square event (an opera?) was cancelled due to weather. So what exactly was the film about? Planethalder.
Posted by: Planethalder | September 16, 2004 at 09:45 AM