I went into the Crane Lane to see Jeffrey Lewis last night, and now I’m here to tell you that he is a genius and you should visit his myspace page and listen to his music and then buy some of his stuff on iTunes because you can.

There were three people on stage as I stood by the door trying to hear the music, but the sound was terrible. I couldn’t make out what kind of music it was but it sounded something like Beck’s album ‘One Foot In The Grave’ crossed with some other band who I couldn’t put my finger on.

I crossed the back of the Crane Lane and tried to hear the band over the noise of the bar and the chatter of people ordering. It wasn’t really possible, so I went and talked to a friend who was sitting on the nice comfy chairs. He asked me if the music was any good and we both commented on how we couldn’t really tell because the sound was so awful.

Later, standing on the edges of the crowd and straining to hear, Jeffrey Lewis played one of his ‘movies’ - a slide show of comic panels to go along with the song he is singing which was called ‘The History of The Fall’. It was pure genius.

you won’t be able to appreciate the genius from this inferior version, but it’ll give you an idea:

This made me realise I was missing out by not being able to hear properly and I pushed my into a more central and forward position where I could actually hear the act. From this moment on I was able to truly appreciate the amazingness of Jeffrey Lewis, and wonder why I hadn’t come across him before.

There were obviously plenty of people who knew his work quite well judging by the jumping up and down and even some level of singing along with the songs that had recognisable choruses.

Due to the bad sound I had undoubtably missed some gems of stories that Jeffrey had been telling in between songs, but I did manage to make out what he said in the middle of one song - as the crowd began to clap along he stopped the song to apologise. He explained that when people begin to clap along to his songs they find it hard to do it in time and begin to think they have no rhythm, when in fact it is he who has no rhythm, so he informed the crowd that they did not have to clap along if they didn’t want to feel that way, and besides it’s quite a long song and so in the middle you might get tired of clapping and then wonder if it’s rude to stop, but at the same time he didn’t want to be one of those artists who tells the audience what to do, so they could clap if they want to but it doesn’t really bother him if they don’t.

And then he continued the song, accompanied by his keyboard player (who was also co-vocallist) and his drummmer. The keyboard may have been a toy, I’m not sure.

We got treated to another Jeff lewis ‘film’ called ‘Creeping Brain’. Here he is performing a lo-fi version of the song in Glasgow:

For his encore he played about three more songs, and for most of the encore he was joined by some Cork fan who did some actions for the songs while standing beside him. This did not freak out Jeffrey Lewis at all, although it freaked out and amused the audience in equal measures. Jeffrey Lewis invited the fan to remain on stage for ‘If You Shoot the Head you Kill the Ghoul’ to which the said fan Danced like a maniac.

If you’ve read this far then you probably know Jeffrey Lewis already, or liked the YouTube videos enough to keep reading, and so you might think that I’m a bit cool for digging out alternative music gigs in Cork, so in the interests of transparency I should admit that I was there because Sir Brian Barry told me to be there. But at least I have cooler shoes than Val.

Other highlights from the gig included the song ‘Anxiety Attack’ - check it out on YouTube (not a great video, but a great song).

When the gig was over I bought a comic and a CD - the cd included this song:

Thnk you Jeffrey lewis for an unexpected great gig, thank you Brian Barry for telling me to be there.

This review gets four stars because it’s a review of the gig and the sound in the Crane Lane was pretty bad if you weren’t right in the middle in front of the stage, but Jeffrey Lewis himself gets as many stars as I can give him.

Dublin people, be advised - he plays tonight (5th August 2008) in Dublin at Crawdaddy ( Old Harcourt Station, Harcourt Street, Dublin 2).

What a Summer for us Superhero fans - Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and now The Dark Knight . Iron Man was fun, The Incredible Hulk was great until the CGI kicked in, but overall it has to be said Batman wins.

I’m very glad Christopher Nolan took over the Batman movies. When Tim Burton did Batman he did a great job, but it wasn’t the Batman I really wanted to see. Burton managed to roll a bit of everything up into one package, but perhaps just a little too much of the 60’s tv series got in the mix - as if the top fell off the shaker by accident when he was cooking it up…

The Batman I wanted to see was primarily Frank Miller’s Batman. Year One and The Dark Knight Returns. Batman Begins, Nolan’s first Batman film, certainly borrowed from Year One - and as a result I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the film where the slow unfurling of the character echoed Miller’s world stylistically, but I soon lost interest in the latter half of explosions and bombs and screaming and panic and general Hollywood finale.

Batman Begins was like a tease - look what we could give you, a gritty realistic Batman who exists in a world so like yours… but in the end you’ll still get an overblown, overdone explosion of Hollywood blockbuster muck.

It made me wonder though, if perhaps the next installment would have more confidence to stay the course and veer away from the Hollywood standard fare.

The Dark Knight certainly does several degrees better than it’s predecessor in this regard. The Dark Knight’s opening scene has been widely hailed as masterful, and rightly so. It’s perfect. It’s beautiful. It’s how it should be.

It’s a pity that the film doesn’t quite entirely hold onto the total and quite scary realism of the opening scenes but at least it never quite lets them go entirely either.

There are a couple of plot devices that were unnecessary, a couple of misplaced ‘humourous’ lines, and some completely unnecessarilly unbelievable technology which took from the overall brilliance of the film.

The film also suffers from a malady that almost all Summer blockbusters are infected with - a fear of letting the drama in the film breathe, lest the audience attention wander elsewhere. As a result some of the psychological or moral conundrums are either somewhat glossed over and upstaged by an action setpiece, or need to be over signposted to avoid same.

However, where Batman Begins borrowed from Year One, the moral and psychological issues in The Dark Knight are nicely lifted from The Dark Knight Returns, and it can’t be denied that this film is probably as close to Frank Miller’s Batman as Hollywood will allow any Summer Blockbuster to be - and so perhaps I shouldn’t complain.

And of course you have Heath Ledger’s Joker. I was sceptical. I expected a slightly darker immitation of Jack Nicholson’s Joker, I expected not to be impressed. I was wrong.

Nicholson did a perfect job for the Burton film, but Burton’s was not the Batman universe I was interested in. For me, Heath Ledger embodied the Joker flawlessly. This is how the Joker always was in my mind.

The Dark Knight borrows from The Dark Knight Returns, and Ledger borrows from The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum to create a truly believable psychopathic supervillain.

Ledger is certainly the shining star of the film, and it would be so even if he had not tragically passed away before the film was released, but the film is full of strong performances. Aaron Eckhart is perfect as Harvey Dent, and I only wish Caine and Oldham had a few more strong scenes.

Christian Bale continues to do a great brooding Batman/Bruce Wayne, but as John McCarthy said to me today, Nolan’s genius is in making this feel like a film about Gotham rather than a film about Batman.

Go see it on the big screen. Twice.

Before the Devil Knows your Dead is directed by Sydney Lumet and has an enviable cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei and Albert Finney - all very fine actors.

Sydney Lumet also directed Serpico, one of my favourite films of all time. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, here’s what could go wrong: Take one really crap, standard fare, predictable Hollywood movie script, throw all the talent you can find at it, and it’s STILL GOING TO BE A CRAP SCRIPT.

What were they thinking, getting involved in this. The only thing I can think is that they all signed up because Lumet was directing, and he forgot to read the script.

The film tells the story of two brothers who get decide to stick up a jewellery shop, with the best of non-violent-robbery intentions, but (hey, don’t tell me you guessed it) it all goes horribly wrong.

Some of the film is shot very well, but extemely horrible editing ruins a large portion of it. I think Lumet was trying to get all arty with us and show the distance between Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character and his wife by rarely showing them in the same shot, but for some conversations they have this results in some unbelievably choppy watching.

The film also utilises that oh so jaded technique of messing with the timeline, for absolutely no good reason. This was a straightforward tale that gained nothing by hopping about in that way. Stop it people, you are just devaluing films like Pulp Fiction, Memento and 21 Grams.

To be fair there is also some great acting. Philip Seymour Hoffman in particular gives a masterclass in how to come out of a stinker of a script smelling of roses.

This film is watchable, but not good.

Oh, Marisa Tomei looks amazing in it. She doesn’t have much of a role though.