Erratic behaviour

Wednesday, 17th June 2009

Telstar
15, Key Cities

Telstar is a biopic about the ‘ground breaking’ 1960s song writer and independent record producer Joe Meek, but unless you know a lot about Joe already — and, I confess, I didn’t — you’re never that clear about what ground he broke exactly. If you fancy seeing this film, I would even recommend you look up Mr Meek on Wikipedia before you go. Some people distrust the site but I don’t. As it is, it currently has me down as a journalist and a part-time lingerie model, and you know what? I am a part-time lingerie model. Generally, I don’t like to talk about it, as it always seems like boasting, but I do have a great figure.

Anyway, written and directed by Nick Moran with Con O’Neill reprising his role as Meek, the film opens rather as it means to go on: that is, chaotically. It’s 1961, when Joe is in his early thirties and is working and living in a makeshift recording studio above a leather-goods shop on the Holloway Road. There’s a question of tone from the off with Pam Ferris playing his blowsy landlady rather as if she might be out of a traditional TV sitcom, while Kevin Spacey...actually, I don’t know what Kevin Spacey is up to. He plays Meek’s financial backer, Major Banks, who, if this performance is anything to go by, wore a vivid ginger wig and only spoke toff, as in, ‘What, ho!’ It may, actually, be the most distractingly inappropriate cameo of all time. Honestly, I sometimes despair at today’s films, but no matter. If it all goes belly-up, at least I have my lingerie work to fall back on. (Bras, mainly; I don’t often say this but I do have amazing breasts.)

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