The movie career of Steve Coogan has so far proved to be a fascinatingly erratic subject. Sure, it’s not unusual to find a successful British TV comedian struggle to establish himself in movies, particularly in Hollywood. For every Dudley Moore, who became a huge movie star in the States with Arthur and 10, you only have to look at Peter Cook - the true genius in that partnership - whose transatlantic film career barely made it beyond Supergirl. Coogan has so far proven himself a lot better in smaller American movies: he’s brilliant as pompous English actor called Steve Coogan in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee & Cigarettes (2003), and light but good in a rare dramatic role, as Count Mercy d’Anjou in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006). Put him in something like Around The World In 80 Days (2004) or Night At The Museum (2006), and he just flounders. You could argue, perhaps, that the famously forensic attention to detail he puts into building his TV characters gets lost in the noise and spectacle of a Hollywood production. But then, having seen Tropic Thunder, where Coogan plays a pompous English director, it’s possible for him hit the mark in a big budget movie. Maybe, too, there’s an argument that Coogan works better in British movies because his particular talents are instinctively familiar to a UK creative team. So far, the two best pieces of cinema on his CV are conspicuously homegrown: 24 Hour Party People (2002) and A Cock And Bull Story (2005), both directed by Michael Winterbottom. I think why Coogan shines in Coffee & Cigarettes, 24 Hour Party People, A Cock And Bull Story and Tropic Thunder is because his characters are insufferable egomaniacs, and he's very good at those. Which is also true of Dana Marschz, Coogan’s character in Hamlet 2. Marschz is a failed actor who now teaches drama at a high school in Tucson, Arizona. His pomposity masks a deep-rooted self-loathing and there’s issues with his father buried not-so-deeply too. He’s a failure who thinks he’s a misunderstood genius. There is certainly the makings of a classic Coogan creation, but Hamlet 2 is too broad and too lazy to make best use of its star’s talents. As an actor, Marschz’s credits included a string of late-night commercials for herpes medication (which, like Tropic Thunder’s fake commercials we see at the film’s opening), an extra in an Al Jazeera TV movie and a weeks’ work as a stand-in for Robin Williams on Patch Adams. The supposed highlights of the school drama calendar are Marschz bi-yearly adaptations of Hollywood movies. We get to see his Erin Brockovich, and we learn he mounted a production of Mississippi Burning the previous year. But they’re awful, playing to a handful of bored looking parents, and routinely savaged by the pimply drama critic on the school paper. When the principal decides to axe drama, Marschz is spurred into action, writing, directing and starring in a rock’n’roll musical sequel to Hamlet in order to try and save his department. Hamlet 2 involves time travel, Jesus, Star Wars and much public exorcising of Marschz’s own Oedipal issues. It is, needless to say, mind-numbingly bad. But not for the right reasons. One of the subjects Hamlet 2 swipes at is inspiration teacher movies like Dead Poet’s Society, Mr Holland’s Opus and Dangerous Minds. But the idea that someone as punchable and probably deranged as Marschz could somehow bring out the best in his class of Hispanic gangbangers is a major flaw. As is the production of Hamlet 2 itself, which looks like it has the budget of the entire school behind it. Thinking of Christopher Guest’s Waiting For Guffman, another movie that similarly sent up the awfulness of talentless amateur dramatics, I’m struck by how little genuine wit there is in Hamlet 2. Coogan himself mugs and leers and crows, and certainly Marschz’s towering self-belief is occasionally reminiscent of Alan Partridge. “I just wondered why in Hamlet everyone had to die,” he says, by way of explaining why he wanted to write his sequel, which he later grandly describes as “a controversial piece of socialist agit-prop theatre.” But beyond these admittedly fantastic glimpses into Marschz’s delusional mind, everything else feels a little flat. Even Catherine Keener, as Marschz’s scathing wife, doesn’t quite elevate the material. Still, at least there’s Tropic Thunder... Hamlet 2 opens in the UK in November; you can see the trailer here

It occurred to me, some time after filing the AC/DC blog on Friday, that I’ve been a bit slack at covering underground stuff (“Interstellar Overdrive” notwithstanding) for the past week or two. Checking through the psych/free-folk things around my desk to try and fix that, I’m tempted by a new Jackie O Motherfucker jam (more fractious than the last couple of theirs that have crossed my path), Josephine Foster’s “This Coming Gladness” and, especially, by Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh’s duo album, which is a lovely investigation of affinities between various folk traditions (especially Swedish and Japanese) by Espers’ cellist and the mainstay of Ghost. The one record from this sector that I’ve been playing most of late, though, is the self-titled album by Hush Arbors. God knows how many albums Keith Wood – aka Hush Arbors, generally – has made thus far; if I remember rightly, I don’t actually have any of them, in spite of having seen him play a good few gigs – sometimes in the company of Sunburned Hand Of The Man, a band which he occasionally figures in. Wood also seems to be a player these days in Current 93, a band whose revolving cast of characters are almost invariably up my street, but whose own actual music never really works for me, chiefly I suppose because I can never quite get on with David Tibet’s voice and the faintly gothic/industrial tradition from which he comes (I’ve always struggled with Tibet’s kindred spirits, most notably Coil, for much the same reasons). Anyway, Ben Chasny – Six Organs Of Admittance, of course – also figures in Current 93, and it emerges that Chasny is Wood’s champion, collaborator and most obvious musical reference point. The customarily erudite and appetising biog from Ecstatic Peace that comes with “Hush Arbors”, drops plenty of tantalising comparisons; to John Phillips, Neil Young, The Byrds, Bert Jansch, Mazzy Star and, regarding “Water II”, to “A Wire subscriber’s ‘Siamese Dream’, ‘Isn’t Anything’ as raised on a diet of wolves and Whitman.” All valid, more or less (though that last one is a bit obtuse), but the combination of eldritch, circling acid-folk and some rockier, if still nimble, adventures, topped off with the thin incantations of Wood, are inescapably reminiscent of Six Organs – in a very fine way, I should hastily add. There’s a notable moment when the jangly folk-rock of “Follow Closely” gets knocked sideways by a fiercely snaking solo. That’s Chasny. Then a couple of songs later, in “Gone”, there’s a real freak-out that matches it blow for blow. This time, it’s Wood himself. “Gone”, as it happens, shows that Hush Arbors, for all their dimly-lit subterranean rep, are actually a rather accessible proposition. “Light”, for instance, is excitingly straightforwardish fuzzpop, while “Sand” is as uncomplicatedly pretty as this sort of psych-folk gets, right up there with my own personal favourite, PG Six (there’s a big echo of Pat Gubler’s style on “Rue Hollow”, incidentally). One more comparison: Alexander Tucker, especially the mix of voice and looping riffs on “Bless You”. All good.

A quick one today, as Brian Johnson might say. I was subbing some copy for the next issue this morning, where a rock star who shall remain nameless for another four weeks revealed that he’d choose the Benny Hill theme as seduction music. AC/DC always seem like the rock equivalent of that, in many ways – so squalid, so repetitive. And yet, as I may have mentioned before, I can’t think of many bands I’ve seen live and enjoyed so much. I’m a sucker for the records, too, so the arrival of “Rock’n’Roll Train” is an enormous pleasure. The practicalities of trying to review this fine song are not new ones: what else is there to say about an AC/DC song other than it sounds like all their other ones, and it’s great? Perusing the tracklisting for the parent album, “Black Ice” (which I should be hearing next week, incidentally), I could have sworn that they’ve used some of these titles before, too. I was going to quote one or two to prove this, but it strikes me that every track on the album is like that – "Rock’n’Roll Train” "Skies On Fire" "Big Jack" "Anything Goes" "War Machine" "Smash 'n' Grab" "Spoilin' For a Fight" "Wheels" "Decibel" "Stormy May Day" "She Likes Rock 'n' Roll" "Money Made" "Rock 'n' Roll Dream" "Rocking All the Way" "Black Ice" Only three with “rock’n’roll” in the title, parsimoniously. Someone in the office mentioned how far they’ve gone with three chords. Their vocabulary hasn’t needed to be much bigger, either. Anyway, some salient facts. “Rock’n’Roll Train” is produced by Brendan O’Brien, and unlike some of his work with Springsteen and Neil Young, it’s suitably clean, crisp and massive. I’ve regularly argued about how, while Angus Young always gets the attention for his shredding, it’s Malcolm Young’s steady, mathematical riffing that is AC/DC’s greatest strength. Unlike most of “Stiff Upper Lip”, this one finds the band doing their patented Herculean plod rather than priapic boogie. As a guide, I’d pitch it somewhere between “You Shook Me All Night Long” and “For Those About To Rock”. We can marvel endlessly about how this took them eight years to come up with, but maybe AC/DC begin with complication and then slowly and ruthlessly pare everything down until there’s nothing left but a riff, a chant, a crude sexual metaphor. Or perhaps they just knock this stuff out in a brief hiatus between three-year holidays. Whatever: fabulous. And it’s here for you to sample. Sceptics, of course, should stay well away. UPDATE: I've now filed a preview of the whole album here.