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Some online shopping arrived today including a couple of DVDs: Douglas Gordon's Zidane and Toto Le Heros. Both are unavailable in North America, and both were cheap on Amazon. Somehow I missed Gordon's close-up soccer epic every time it screened in Toronto, and, although I have it on VHS, I've never even seen a copy of Toto The Hero on disk. I remember it as nice companion to my favorite film ever, Jean-Claude Lauzon's Leolo. It's nowhere near as rich or dark, but has some very nice moments. I look forward to watching it here on some rainy afternoon (meaning any afternoon that I am free - it's Scotland, after all).

The parcel also included Paul Morley's Music and Words, a history of Pop Music by the journalist best known for writing about Joy Division (and, ah, those Frankie Says shirts). Morley is kind of a lesser-known Tony WIlson character. Their lives intersected at key moments and it may be fair call Wilson Morley's mentor. Both ran record companies (Factory and ZTT, respectively), both were journalists and television presenters for the BBC and both tend(ed) to view music in the larger cultural context. But both could also often be pretentious windbags, so the book is a bit of a gamble. I'm just grateful Amazon didn't screw my order up and send me the novelization of the Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore romantic comedy of the same name.