Category Archives: review

The Anti-Christ Has All The Best Tunes

The P2P revolution is like Gutenberg plus Protestantism plus Punk all rolled into one highly compressed file, by Mark Simpson  (Independent on Sunday, August 2001) Perhaps the best thing about digital music is that it doesn’t only make listening to music more convenient and less irksome: it actually does part of the tiresome job of …

February 24, 2013 – 1:20 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in journalism, music, review | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)

How to Spot a Sodomite

Mark Simpson reviews some famous Victorian bum holes in Neil McKenna’s Fanny & Stella (the Independent) “I had never seen anything like it before… I do not in my practise ever remember to have seen such an appearance of the anus, as those of the prisoners presented.” So testified Dr Paul in shocked tones at the trial of …

February 9, 2013 – 10:13 am | By Mark Simpson | Posted in gay, review | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

The Few, The Proud

The mythology, the rituals, the dogma, the cult of masculinity and most of all the haircut, set US Marines apart. Mark Simpson takes a look at a memoir of the First Gulf War. (Independent on Sunday 23/03/2003) It may seem odd that the United States Marine Corps, the elite fourth branch of the US Armed …

April 21, 2012 – 12:58 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in commentary, journalism, masculinity, review | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4)

Mad Men and Medusas

Coming across this old review of Juliet Mitchell’s ‘Mad Men and Medusas’ (Independent on Sunday, 2001) reminded me that pretty much all the main characters in the TV series of the same name launched in the late Noughties are hysterics, but most especially Madison Avenue’s Don Juan, aka Donald Draper. I hope Mitchell is getting …

April 18, 2012 – 9:19 am | By Mark Simpson | Posted in journalism, review | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Apollo’s Acolytes

We worship the body, watch ancient battles at the multiplex, and bow down before the gods of celebrity. Mark Simpson marvels at how much our culture owes to those skirt-wearing olive-munchers, the Greeks (Independent on Sunday 30 May 2004) Philhellenes are everywhere, and everywhere they look they see the glory that was Greece. “Today we are again …

April 4, 2012 – 11:51 am | By Mark Simpson | Posted in history, journalism, review | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

What Happens When a Giant Brain Meets Kylie?

Genius, pop Svengali, theoretician of cool: Mark Simpson gets to grips with the man who really listens to ‘La la la, la la la-la la…’ (Originally appeared in Independent on Sunday 03/08/2003) What do you hear when you listen to ‘Can’t get you out of my head’? This is a bit of a trick question as you …

April 1, 2012 – 9:28 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in journalism, music, review | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Jungian Complexes at the Multiplex

This week David Cronenberg’s feature-length shrink costume drama, A Dangerous Method, about the most famous — and doomed — love-affair in psychoanalysis, premières in the UK. I’m talking of course about the passionate, twisted and teasingly unconsummated romance between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Despite very mixed reviews I’ll be going to see it when it’s put on general …

October 26, 2011 – 4:49 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in commentary, journalism, review | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (5)

German-American Pride and Prejudice

Review of Bryan Malessa’s new novel The War Room, by Mark Simpson in The Financial Times.

February 24, 2011 – 12:25 am | By Mark Simpson | Posted in commentary, journalism, review | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

Does My Brain Look Big in This? Susan Sontag’s ‘Where The Stress Falls’

This week is Susan Sontag’s birthday. The famous, and possibly last American intellectual, died in 2004. Below is my somewhat irreverent review of her last book (Independent on Sunday, 2002) The first sentence in Susan Sontag’s latest collection of essays is eight lines long, mentions Camus and Pasternak and ends with the word “impinging”. But …

January 18, 2011 – 3:45 am | By Mark Simpson | Posted in journalism, review | Tagged , , | Comments (6)

20 ‘Stella’ Years of Dolce & Gabbana For Men

by Mark Simpson, Arena Hommes Plus (Winter-Spring, 2010) America’s hottest new Hollywood stars – who naturally enough in this post-Hollywood era, don’t actually work in Hollywood but reality TV – were recently honoured with a profile in Interview magazine. The Italian-American ‘Guidos’ from MTV mega-hit ‘Jersey Shore’, who have conquered America with their brazenness and …

November 14, 2010 – 2:50 am | By Mark Simpson | Posted in commentary, fashion, journalism, metrosexual, review | Tagged , , , | Comments (11)