Blow Up Hollywood reviewed
Blow Up Hollywood
The Diaries Of Henry Hill
(MJ12)
Similarly themed to Sleep Station’s After The War, Diaries Of Henry Hill is based on the private writings of a KIA Iraqi War veteran (not a Goodfellas reference).
Perhaps somber to a fault, Blow Up Hollywood’s multi-media interpretation casts a heavy hand over the business of war. While no one can be sure what Hill was feeling as he scripted his (unbeknownst to him) final act, Diaries casts him as a gloomy anti-hero being destroyed by the forces of maturation, survival, and the machinations of military order while swimming in a post-apocalyptic Radiohead/Grandaddy cyborg rock. “I’m a boxer in a ring/I’m a beat up car in a souped-up life,” Steve Messina croaks in a bottomless baritone, adding impossibly more heft to a grave understanding. But, as is the case with almost all war debate, there are far too few brushes being used to paint an endlessly complex situation.
— Kevin Keegan
