Michael Bonner

“You’re a good-looking audience,” says Chrissie Hynde, before launching into “Back On The Chain Gang”. “Just what I’d expect. This is for your dad.” It is perhaps interesting to note that a lot of Hynde’s between song banter this evening is predicated around mostly wry, self-deprecating references to her past. She dedicates “Kid”, for instance, to late band members Pete Farndon and Jimmy Honeyman-Scott, finishing with “Put the kettle on, we’re not far behind you.” It is, you might think, particularly apt then that The Pretenders choose to cover Dylan’s “Forever Young”.

As you might expect, Latitude is consistently full of surprises. Since arriving here, I’ve met a key-tarist (that’s a chap who plays a keyboard-guitar hybrid, no less), a guy who runs a karaoke circus, and a very friendly lady from something called the School Of Life, who’ll be offering Bibliotherapy over the weekend in the Literary Salon. Bibliotherapy, it seems, is a service whereby you’re recommended a potentially life-changing book after an interview with one of their therapists. Oh, and there was farmer Miles, too.

I interviewed Michael Mann for the current issue of UNCUT, ahead of the release of Public Enemies. Call it reader service, but I thought those of you who're interested in such things might like a chance to read the full transcript (it's about 3,200 words, of which we only ran 1,000 in the issue). Anyway, here it is. Hope you enjoy.

When these two Hyde Park shows were announced last December, we ran a piece in UNCUT celebrating the return to active service of Blur, where David Cavanagh quite reasonably asked the question: which Blur are coming back? After all, here was a band who had undergone many creative iterations during their recording lifetime; equally, so much had happened since the four of them last played together, in July 2000, it seemed appropriate to wonder what Blur would do with these shows. Could they really reconnect with the moptops who made the buoyant baggy pop of “There’s No Other Way”? Would they really revisit “Parklife”, a song intrinsically linked to an era and movement they’d subsequently gone to considerable lengths to distance themselves from? And what about the more abstract, edgier material from the later albums – what place would that have in Hyde Park?

“It’s hot as a witch's tit in this room,” says Club UNCUT headliner Jesca Hoop. “I’m going to have to retune my guitar real quick… cos it sounds like a witch's tit. So if you’ve ever wondered what a witch's tit sounds like, then this is it.” Today has been the hottest day of the year so far in the capital. Despite the welcoming evening cool outside, temperatures in the newly-refurbished Upstairs At The Garage in north London are unforgivingly high. But in some respects, you couldn’t have wished for a better line-up at Club UNCUT in heat like this.

“Somebody better get me a fucking elevator. I’m fucking 60!” Here’s Bruce Springsteen huffing and panting into his microphone, during “Out In The Street”. He's just pulled himself up from a prone position at the top of a set of steps that lead from the stage to the pit, and the audience beyond. Later, during “Born To Run”, he’ll actually end up on his back at the top of those stairs, calling to Miami Steve Van Zandt to help him up.

It’s actually quite a strange experience watching The September Issue, RJ Cutler’s documentary about Vogue. For one, there’s something fascinating about watching the mechanics of another magazine in operation. It would, of course, be self-indulgent of me to base an entire blog on magazine publishing – or, indeed, looking for parallels between the staff of Vogue and Uncut. But I suppose, to some degree, it’s inevitable. Still, I’ll try not to bore you too much with talk of RF1s or ed:ad ratios and concentrate, instead, on the personalities that make The September Issue absolutely fascinating viewing.

I have to admit, rather pathetically, that my cumulative knowledge of claymation is limited to the exploits of Morph on Tony Hart’s TV shows and, of course, Wallace And Gromit. Profoundly ill-equipped as I am, I nonetheless caught up with Mary And Max this afternoon. I will report now that this is some clear distance away from the cosy world of Aardman. Oh, yep.

As films go, it’s hard to ignore a movie where the top-line talent is Christopher Walken, William H Macy and Morgan Freeman – three actors, it hardly needs saying, who are pretty much UNCUT incarnate. It’s a shame, though, that this fortuitous convergence of talent isn’t given a better vehicle. That’s not say The Maiden Heist is a bad film – it certainly isn’t – but it perhaps lacks the oomph you’d think they’d merit.

It says much, perhaps, about the enduring appeal of James M Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice that it’s been adapted three times already for cinema and, astonishingly, even once as an opera. This year, you can add two more adaptations - Vasilis Douvlis' The Homecoming and Jerichow, from writer-director Christian Petzold.