Reviews of films, books and CDs that deserve a second look

Music

LIFE
The Cardigans
Minty Fresh Records, 1995

Though a smash in Japan and popular in Europe, Malm�'s Cardigans' first international release, Life, somehow escaped Canada's attention. The album is a collection of 14 concise and catchy songs (this 14-song formula was refined by the Beatles, who used it successfully for six

of their first seven LPs). Subsequent Cardigans discs like The First Band on the Moon and Grand Turisimo were Canadian hits, but it's on Life that the Swedish popsters perfected their trademark balance of the saccharine and the strange.

While the star of the band is clearly singer Nina Perrson, guitarist and unreformed Kiss fan Peter Svensson is the bandleader and main songwriter. His songs tend to have a sing-along quality that belies their complexity.

The influences here are impeccable, unexpected and eccentric. For instance, the band grew up on a steady diet of 60s Swedish children's TV themes composed by slumming it arty jazzers. TV, influences that appear on "Sick and Tired." The band also has solid heavy metal credentials and the album's only cover is a radical reworking of Back Sabbath's "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath." Their interpretation shows how they outgrew metal's excesses and saw fit to juxtapose morbid imagery with a cheerful arrangement.

On this album the Cardigans threaten to invent new genres with each cut � anyone for a Viking Motown? Try "Tomorrow" on for size. How about loungy dream pop with attitude? "Hey! Get out of my way!" has got you covered. While the album yielded only three singles ("Carnival," "Rise and Shine" and "Sick and Tired") filler songs are conspicuous in its absence.

Released around the same time Radiohead were polluting the airwaves with The Bends, an album that very nearly eradicated both humour and insomnia from the land of pop � Life's sense of fun made it a little too easy for some dismiss it as a lightweight. Sadly the band listened to those voices, and fearing that the Life sound would doom them to being eternally just "big in Japan," they toned town their eccentricities. By 2003's Long Gone Before Daylight the sparkle was gone and the Cardigans became card carrying members of the Nytol generation.
-Abe Konigsberg

FILM

PULP FICTION
Dir: Quentin Tarantino
Miramax, 1994

Very few people will dispute the influence that Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction had on the North American psyche. For all the gratuitous violence, profanity (the 'F' word was used 271 times throughout the film) and irreverent conversation, Pulp Fiction made an imprint on filmmaking in the 90s. Incidentally, before the film no one was quite sure what a Quarter Pounder with cheese was called in France � it's indeed a Royale with Cheese. Mr Tarantino was on to something with his fragmented plot and fateful coincidences. Although the film's formula followed in the footsteps of Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction took things a step further introducing more detail and plot development � viewers could still pick-up subtleties in the story-line after a third or forth viewing. Pulp Fiction also miraculously resurrected the failing career of John Travolta, catapulting him out of the land of family films (can anyone say Look Who's Talking). Now that Mr Tarantino's most recent film, Kill Bill Vol 2, is hot at the box office it might be worth the visit to the local video store to check out the master in his true form � if only to check out Ms Thurman and Mr Travolta twist the night away at Jack Rabbit Slim's. In the words of Mrs Mia Wallace, "I said God Damn... God Damn." � Carla Sparks

BOOK

DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS
PD James
Random House, 2001

Everybody enjoys a good mystery. Whodunit authors are masters of drawing readers in, sending us off on wild goose chases, and then finally allowing the hero to clear up the conundrum. Many of us have our favourite writers who know just how to spellbind us, so that we won't skip even one page.

PD James fits that category for me, using her long-time Jaguar-driving detective protagonist, Adam Dalgliesh, to excellent advantage. Though she's written over a dozen such novels over a span of forty years, her skills aren't diminished in the slightest.

In Death in Holy Orders, Commander Dalgliesh (notice the promotion?) is called upon to go back to his old school � Anglican theological college St Anselm's � to help solve the mysterious death of one of its students. Did the boy accidentally fall from the cliff or was he despondent enough to commit suicide or worse, was he pushed to his death?

Commander Dalgliesh plods along, gathering clues, and falling for Emma, a beautiful teacher, but he's too shy to even broach the feelings of his poetic heart. Naturally, one murder wouldn't do, so one of the housekeepers is topped � but not before she writes an enigmatic last entry in her diary about a "secret."

How Baroness James puts it all together and tidies it up is what makes this book so readable. It's not simply a run-of-the-mill whodunit with a wicked ogre to blame. No, life is always more complicated, with all its inherent twists and turns. But I'm not going to say any more. To find out what truly happened at St Anselm's in East Anglia, you will just have to read the book � all 397 pages.
� Dr Markus Martin