Guardian arts updates

Today's Guardian has some interesting articles:

Andy Warhol: 'the pertinence of the Velvet Underground to understanding Warhol is more than decorative. If you believe the cliches about this famous yet elusive man – that he was a heartless “business artist”, a vacuous worshipper of celebrity – I recommend a course of listening to Reed and Cale. Few who have done so dispute that the band Warhol discovered was one of the most serious, original and aesthetically rich in the history of rock. So how come the “superficial” Warhol instantly got them?

Clearly, because he was not so superficial after all. Warhol did not create some jokey, Monkees-like, money-spinning pop group, but instead promoted a disturbing avant-garde outfit who sang about drug addiction and sadomasochism. For he was never a cheerleader for the mainstream. He was and is the quintessential painter of modern life – a reporter, a documentarist, a louche teller of awkward truths.'

Leviathan: 'it is perhaps the church that comes in for Leviathan’s most sledgehammer satire. “We are reawakening the soul of the Russian people,” intones the film’s imperious bishop, voice shaking with righteous anger as he reels off a list of enemies who would undermine Russia. It is a voice that could come from the daily evening news bulletins on state-controlled television. This bishop, with his gold and mahogany office, contrasts with a local bedraggled priest who gives the distraught Nikolai an impromptu sermon on the tests that God might have in store. Zvyagintsev describes himself as secular, but a believer.'

'The great trial of Job is reborn in this magnificent Russian movie, first seen at Cannes this year. Leviathan is a tragic drama, compelling in its moral seriousness, with a severity and force that escalate into a terrible, annihilating sort of grandeur. Zvyagintsev combines an Old Testament fable with something like Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice; it also has something of Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront or Robert Rossen’s municipal graft classic All the King’s Men.'

Fuse ODG: 'You get the impression that, whatever the situation, Fuse, an avowed Christian, would fix it ... The songs on his album – Keep On Shining, Beautiful Sunray, Bucket Full of Sunshine – are almost indecently bubbly. It’s as though he’s willing us to join him in his jubilant state ... I knew I had to go through what I did so that I could share my story. So that I could have a platform where I could speak out, be influential and change lives. Whether it’s working with ex-offenders or now making afrobeats and pushing the new Africa that inspired me – most of the things I do in my life are to help other people,” he says, matter-of-factly.'

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Velvet Underground - That's The Story Of My Life.