D Wednesday, January 20, 2010 metrolife 13 In the firing lineBook Of The Week Rupture by Simon Lelic Picador, 15 DVD (500) Days Of Summer Twentieth Century Fox, 12, 23 Offering a fresh twist on the cutesy boy- meets-girl formula, this cool and funny account of young love and heartbreak is hard to resist. It begins with hopeless romantic Tom (a brilliant Joseph Gordon- Levitt) falling to pieces after being dumped by girlfriend Summer (Zooey Deschanel), before revealing the doomed romance in flashbacks as Tom reflects on their 500 days together, trying to pinpoint where it all went wrong. Stylishly directed by Marc Webb, the film charms the pants off you with its snappy dialogue, hilarious fantasy sequences (the I got laid song-and-dance number is a highlight), amusing voice-overs and bang-on observations that most of us have made about a significant other. And despite the fact a happy-ever-after seems highly unlikely, the time-skipping narrative keeps you guessing (or hoping) until the final, touching farewell. A catchy, eclectic soundtrack featuring the likes of The Temper Trap, The Smiths and Carla Bruni completes the package. Extras: deleted and extended scenes. Damian Tully-Pointon Music These New Puritans: Hidden Angular Recordings Much beloved by the fashion pack, These New Puritans, who like to deck themselves out all in black, are much more than just style over content. Theyve got substance, all right, and its made up of abrasive drumming, menacing vocals and in a departure from debut Beat Pyramid horn-fuelled flourishes. Their blast of industrial post-punk is rooted in the juddering acoustics of pagan rhythms and a darkly Gothic aural palette jazzed up by woodwind and brass arrangements. Single We Want War is a tribalistic call to arms punctured by the metallic crash of drums, while Attack Music deploys the grand old tradition of adding a childrens choir to make a song as scary as hell. Singer Jack Barnett snarls and spits with aggression its brutal, severe and unrelenting. On Fire-Power, he yells: This is a mind attack, this is a world attack! Aint that the truth. Ann Lee TV Pick Glee TV3, 8pm TV3 has struck the right note with new hit US series Glee. Its set in a high school whose show choir, the Glee Club, used to be top of the league, but is now a haven for misfits and social outcasts. Will Schueste, a young optimistic teacher played by Matthew Morrison, has offered to take on the Herculean task of restoring the club to its former glory with tantalising results. A sort of High School Musical meets Greys Anatomy, the show is a clever p***take on the TV genres it attempts to lampoon. Clever clogs indeed! Stephen Mulkearn Feb 1978: Welsh wonder boy Gethin Jones is born. 2002: Gets his big break on Welsh childrens programme Uned 5. 2005: Joins Blue Peter where he performs feats of derring-do for three years. He goes on a trek with the Royal Marines, climbs up the highest mountains in Britain and flies with the Red Arrows. Butch! 2007: Participates in Strictly Come Dancing, finishing third behind Matt Di Angelo (who?) and winner Alesha Dixon. April 2008: Presumably buoyed up by his new-found reality show popularity, he leaves Blue Peter. A fatal mistake! Still, hes got his romance with wailing Welsh woman Katherine Jenkins to keep his mind off things. Spends the rest of the year doing stuff like BBC Young Musician of the Year. Zzz. 2009: Full steam ahead for Gethins post-Blue Peter career! He goes back to Welsh TV to present a rugby programme. By autumn he spends a week filling in for Adrian Chiles on The One Show then rounds the year off doing a daytime quiz show for Sky and a stint in panto. Sob! Poor old Gethins been prodded by fames fickle finger good and proper. 2010: New year, new opportunities for our twinkly eyed rugby-loving hero. And by opportunities we mean a cringe- inducing advert for Holland & Barrett in which plucky Geth sashays around a gymnasium, perused-over by pals who make admiring comments about his manly physique. Its a slippery slope into moral turpitude from here, Gethin, keep your pecker up. Scott Tenorman DOWN THE DUMPER This weeks fickle finger of fame pokes... Gethin Jones DANCE REVIEW As You Are / Faun Award-winning contemporary dance company CoisCim celebrate their 15th year with a startling double bill: Muirne Bloomers As You Are and David Bolgers Faun. But while style and source material differ wildly, both pieces are thematically linked by a quest for identity. Using Leonardo Da Vincis Vitruvian Man as a starting point, As You Are begins with performer Robert Jackson standing naked behind a transparent screen upon which a circle is projected. He then flexes and contracts while the circle becomes a military radar and bullseye. If this image represents human perfection, its soon shattered when James Hosty arrives to study his subjects, and a dictatorship threatens their liberty. The work has a pleasing 1950s sci-fi aesthetic, while movement resembles martial arts. Faun, based on Vaslav Nijinskys controversial ballet LAprs Midi DUn Faun about a satyr who masturbates with a nymphs scarf, was, understandably, quite the scandal back in 1912. However, Bolgers tableau, set to a score that includes the Debussy original and Queens I Want To Break Free, is nothing less than tasteful, the same cast showcasing their impressive range via fluid, balletic choreography often in profile reminiscent of a Greek bas-relief. This Faun is sensual, art deco-like, erotic and quite possibly the most beautiful contemporary dance youll see all year. Lucy White Until Sat, Project, 39 East Essex Street D2, 8pm, 16 to 20. Tel: (01) 881 9613. www.cosiceim.com Simon Lelics interesting debut takes place in the aftermath of a north London school shooting. The perpetrator is new history teacher Samuel Szajkowski, the victims three pupils and another teacher, plus Szajkowski himself. Pretty quickly the head of the investigation decides its an open-and-shut case: Szajkowski was a loner and therefore a nutcase; some of the students had been giving him grief in class; one day he simply snapped. But DI Lucia May is convinced a few shadows lurk deep within the formidable headmaster Traviss establishment the nasty bullying of 11-year-old Elliot Samson the previous week that put him in hospital; Traviss oddly disinterested attitude and develops her own empathetic fascination with Szajkowski, not least since shes at the receiving end of some serious sexual harassment at work herself. Lelic (pictured) gambles on a series of internal monologues and savagely pared-down dialogue with barely any authorial description at all. It largely pays off: Rupture surfs a tense, bleak, shape-shifting atmosphere in which violence is often obliquely referred to and facts are tricky to pin down. Lelic deals with his storys worst events offstage, which feeds into the novels unsettling ambiguity; is excellent at depicting the invidious way bullying works within institutions; and, through cleverly executed voices, exposes the extent to which such institutions often betray those in their care. He is also impressive at omitting detail. Probe too deeply and this admittedly starts to expose threads of implausibility would a man as ghastly as the PE teacher TJ really still be in a job? Still, modest and plot-driven as it is, its also admirably ugly. Claire Allfree Date movie: Observations weve all made about a significant other are the basis for this cutesy caper index.html2.html3.html4.html5.html6.html7.html8.html9.html10.html11.html12.html13.html14.html15.html16.html17.html18.html19.html20.html21.html22.html23.html