Man Of Steel (2013)

When the news first broke that Warner Brothers had engaged the talents of Christopher Nolan to reinvigorate their flagging Superman movie franchise as a consultant I was immediately reminded of an incident in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing comic, an episode late in his acclaimed run where the omnipotent biogod is holding an entire city to ransom through his superpowers of flora and fauna after his girlfriend is arrested for lewd conduct – its erm a long story. Exasperated and embarrassed the city authorities turn to a certain Lex Luthor as a consultant whom is paid the then princely sum of $1 million a minute for a fifteen minute consultation, he pitting his uberintellect to provide a unique solution to their particularly thorny problem, hey it was the 1980′s when a million bucks was actually a lot of money. I wondered if Nolan’s midas touch would also elicit the same fee, given the phenomenal success he has made of the Dark Knight Batman movies and his collaborations with both screenwriter David S. Goyer and composer Hans Zimmer who also both return for this new take on the iconic immigrant myth, with potential kryptonite being administered to superfans with the appointment of widely derided Hollywood Zack Snyder to occupy the directors chair. Nolan’s executive summary bullet points can probably be summarised thusly – ‘Play up the Christ imagery, and source the origin with alien eugenics. Cast an unknown in the lead so there’s no baggage, and surround him with respected character actors to give the tale a densely thunderous gravitas. Populate with plenty of vaginal and phallic imagery to reinforce the quite literal DNA of the film, remove the humor and decimate the planet in the final act’. The film seems to have birthed some conflicting responses, from those who loathed its portentous seriousness and distinct lack of tounge in cheek humor, unaccepting faux seriousness and brooding hero occupying the cape and tights, with internet wags quickly christening the film ‘The Clark Knight’ due to its conflicted and nebuolous take on the Superman origin story. I fall squarely in the other camp as all these alleged inadequacies are exactly what I liked about Man Of Steel and having seen it twice now it genuinely soars, Nolan has achieving something superheroic – he’s made me consider a Zack Snyder film as one of the years best, as to date this is the best blockbuster of the year.

 With an agreeably lengthy opening context setting prologue we’re on the remote planet of Krypton where the first child in centuries has been born without the assistance of their advanced genetic melding technologies, welcome to the world Kal-El son of Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and Lara (Ayelet Zurer). Engulfed by a disintegrating planetary core due to the depletion of their planets natural resources Jor-El senses that their doom is near and he must make one desperate sacrifice if he is to save his people, especially since the chaos is being exploited by General Zod (a snarling Michael Shannon) who stages a desperate coup d’etat as their sterile civilisation crumbles. Defeated and unrepentant Zod and his insurgent allies are sentenced to genetic remodifiction in the chilling phantom zone shortly before the planet implodes, but hope rests in a small ship sent earthward with its biblical cargo, the slim hope of uniting the Earth with another star-crossed species through the example set by one man, his scrupulous purity and steadfast decency a shining example to all. Invested with a conflicted uncertainty by newcomer Henry Cavell the iconic Clark Kent is restlessly searching for his place in the world, imbued with a sense of moral decency from his surrogate parents Jonathan (Kevin Costner) and Martha (Diane Lane) Kent has been conditioned to shield his phenomenal talents as the world is simply not ready to face an answer to the eternal question to whether we are alone in the universe, and as a species we tend to react to the unknown and powerful with fear and mistrust. Nevertheless Clark’s extraterrestrial secret is under threat from dual camps, with the feisty Lois Lane (the usual adorable Amy Adams) on the trail of this mysterious man who conducts impossible feats of heroism and strength, and the discovery of a submerged alien artifact in the frigid North Pole may just invite some unwelcome guests to our modest spherical little collection of oceans and animals.

I’ll admit it, I had my knives out for this movie when that first teaser trailer hit last year but a generous portion of humble pie has now been digested, as this visually assured and breathlessly entrancing reboot of the Superman myth is a fantastic achievement, and as blockbuster tent pole movie making it’s one of the best achievements of the past few years. I admired the structure which relies on flashbacks peppering the film from Clarks difficult and confusing childhood puncturing the present day investigation of a strange structure nestling by the North Pole, the activation of a millennia dormant scout ship unfortunately heralding the arrival of a squadron of extraterrestrial fascists, The structure was deftly pulled off and was much more interesting and engaging than the usual birth, arrival, childhood and adolescence linear model of origin stories, particularly when it gives a skilled screenwriter the chance to join up their themes and notions into a pulsing, organic whole. There’s just nothing that Snyder and his production team got wrong for me, the design is deliciously fantastic with those aforementioned phallic and vaginal designs underpinning the themes of birth and evolution, the SFX spellbinding, with a particularly rousing score from the consistently stunning Hans Zimmer who must be the most brilliant big movie composer currently drawing breath. John Williams score for the 1970′s are widely renown for their stirring arrangements, I’d argue that Zimmer goes one better with this soaring, epic orchestration clearly the aural signature of one extraordinary man’s realisation of his celestial destiny – fantastic.

Superman of course is a peculiarly American immigrant myth and metaphor, and recently some cultural theorist types have also alighted on the specifically Jewish nature of his experience given the lineage of Clark Kent’s creators Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster, Man Of Steel delves deep into the Christ iconography with Snyder positively ladling on saviour motifs and Christian imagery, the son of a god sent to our mortal realm in order to save us from ourselves. Now being a portentous, pretentious sort with delusions of grandeur of his own I like to see that reflected in my movies, so this solemn, epic and brooding update on the myth is exactly what I wanted to see, that’s the temperature I wanted them to take if they were going to win over someone whom has never been particularly entranced with the character, and recasting him as some sort of saviour with notions of grace birthed from the implosion of a degenerate civilisation which has lost its core fecundity feeds the cultural imagination, as our real world heroes and bearers of such fragile concepts as ‘hope‘ are exposed as the moral frauds we suspected the system always eventually engenders.

The entire enterprise rests on Henry Cavell’s broad shoulders, as the conflicted Clark he has a certain distance from the audience which is entirely plausible, it’s perfect for the role in fact to keep him slightly ‘off’ and isolated from the rest of humanity whilst also looking suitably the part when he finally dons the costume and cape. There is a slight malfunction with the tepid chemistry between Lois and Supeman as Cavell and Adams don’t seem to be a natural on-screen click, but maybe this will be developed in ensuing episodes in the franchise where the romantic banter can receive more attention.As expected Shannon gets his teeth into the juicy role of Zod, averting the usual presentation of a egomaniacal psychopath by simply presenting a man whom by genetic lottery has been assigned s the role as implacable and corrupted defender of his species, and Shannon invests him with a slight psychological edge that you don’t normally get with scenery devastating supervillains. Amy Adams does her best with lines of the quality of ’I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist goddamn it’ which she offers to her editor Perry White (Laurence Fishbourne) presumably as a test to make sure he hasn’t developed early onset Alzheimer’s - presumably as her editor he is quite aware of her journalistic award portfolio – and Costner excels himself as the world-weary yet wise Pa Kent who sets Clark on the path to righteousness.

There is something faintly ludicrous about the whole enterprise however and I’m sympathetic to some of the complaints being quite scathing of the moral aversions presented in the film(particularly a very late perversion of a moral code which is a little difficult to accept) but my inner fanboy who is nourished on some of these comic-book & SF hybrids instead has won this internal tussle as I simply loved the energy and excitement of two superhero guys punching each through numerous skyscrapers, creating oceans of disintegrated masonry, fields of crumpled steel foundations, lakes of shattered glass and ash smothered veldts of smouldering ruins, it’s that spectacle of catastrophe which somehow taps into our collective unconscious which repels some and seduces others, as Metropolis seems to be visited by a panoply of 9/11′s with Superman in this iteration seeming to have very little consideration or care for the notion of collateral damage. As for Snyder whatever his faults (which are legion) he is a keen visual stylist, and somehow he’s been kept on the leash to deliver the story in a involving and fulfilling fashion, his usual speed cranking technique has thankfully been left to rot in the directors bag of tricks, he instead making judicious use of the ‘punch zoom’ manoeuvre which Roger Deakins invented for Wall-E and was popularised in the likes of Battlestar Galactica. Another small complaint comes from the SF / Superhero / blockbuster trope of having some alien constructs blasting streams of azure energy into the planet’s core as a deux ex machina which is now simply exhausted, from The Avengers to The Transformers movies can’t we please move on to some other planet threatening, genocide igniting alien architecture?

In terms of Easter Eggs and subdued references to ancient comic lore and even the films own decade spanning production history there is plenty for the fans to delight in, from the obvious references to LEXCORP on vehicles and more intriguingly Waynes Enterprises satellites spied in the films closing battles, to Executive Producer Jon Peters finally getting his Polar Bear at the Fortress of Solitude – context here. In terms of the inevitable sequel I suspect that a certain hirsutely challenged supra genius will be getting some of those lucrative contracts to rebuild Metropolis, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he stumbled across some staggeringly powerful Kryptonite tech amongst the ruins, maybe even some sentient artificial intelligence which he tampers with for his own nefarious ends, which then ends up going ‘manic’ in the ‘brain’ if you catch my drift. Bring it on for 2016, they’ll be hard pressed to beat this superbly entertaining, lofty aspiring blockbuster, ‘welcome to the planet’ indeed;

The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013) Trailer

A new Scorsese movie is always a treat to be savoured, and it’s good to see him back in familiar New York territory rather than indulging in French kid friendly nonsense;

That’s a lot more lighthearted than I was expecting, I think it hits the UK in January so don’t hold your breath….

Wake Up, Time To Die….

Serendipitous timing as always, as we head into my birthday weekend a lovely compendium of rarities of one of the greatest films of all time washes up at the Menagerie shore;

So, things should be a little quiet for a few days as one celebrates one’s irreversible slow creep toward oblivion, we will have a Man Of Steel and a John Carpenter movie review published early next week – everyone seems to be refering to the former as ‘The Clark Knight’ which has been making me chuckle. Now, as it’s my birthday and some of you have been reading my portentous opinions for free over the past few years, may I humbly suggest you contribute just a little to the drive for my Canadian colleagues to appropriately cover the Toronto International Film Festival this year? I’m flying out there under my own steam so its nothing to do with me, but this does help the site purchase film tickets (which creep as high as $50 a pop) to distribute amongst it’s staff, a lifeline which helps the site keep going for another year. So don’t be a fucking cheapskate, just a fiver would help here……

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013) Trailer

As the UK film community gears up for all things Kal-El, a modest man from Norwich also gets his moment in the sun;

Looks pretty good, I’m a big fan of the lord of chat, and it’s good to see that all the familiar faces from all the various seasons have been recruited for the big screen outing.

The Hobbit – The Desolation Of Smaug (2013) Teaser Trailer

I was in a programme board meeting this morning, where a colleague was updating the group on the context of a Neighbourhood Engagement HLF bid, and advising that ‘the group chairmen Bill & Ted would be submitting the final proposals’. I burst out laughing at the mention of Bill & Ted – blank looks from my colleagues. ‘Bill & Ted’ I repeat, my voice rising in expective incredulity – surely they get the reference right? - no, just a steely bombardment of stares from my now alienated colleagues…….(drums fingers on table)………………….so here’s the new Hobbit Trailer;

Holy living fuck  on a bike – that little kiwi fella knows how to cut a trailer together doesn’t he? It goes without saying the internet has exploded from a film nerd perspective, so if you’ll excuse me I’ll be off to get into some electronic arguments. In the meantime this might give you a chuckle, a well observed parody on those very serious and overly pretentious film documentaries such as Room 237 takes a look at an unlikely candidate for deep, analytical deconstruction;

Any similarity to any one of my overwritten and reviews is entirely coincidental I’m sure – Station.

Behind The Candelabra (2013)

 The idiom that in Hollywood ‘nobody knows anything’ is frequently expressed as the ultimate expression of short-sighted producers, culled from the famous expose of noted Tinseltown scribe William Goldman it’s an apt assertion to consider the strange history of Steven Soderbergh’s supposed final film. Originally discussing the role with Douglas on the set of 2000′s Traffic the notoriously profligate Soderbergh has spent the intervening dozen years battling philistine funders and financiers, all of whom remained tepid on the project due to the perceived marginal audience that the project would attract – it’s a gay film. Judging by the crowd I saw the film with, an 80% – 90% capacity crowd in one of East London’s larger screens on a rare sunny Sunday afternoon I expect this to be a modest hit, easily raking in its modest £23 million production budget, and crucially it has seduced critics across Europe following a successful unveiling at Cannes last month, not a bad achievement for a film which supposedly would only appeal to gay dudes and dudettes. The frustration that Soderbergh experienced in setting up and funding Behind The Candelabra appears to be the proverbial straw which broke the camel’s back, and he has reputedly retreated to small screen endeavours to feed his storytelling appetite  and already he has signed on to direct two HBO TV series if a small piece in this month’s Sight & Sound is to be believed. If so then TV’s gain is cinema’s loss as has consistently been a consummate filmmaker since his incendiary debut Sex, Lies & Videotape back in the deep mists of the late 1980′s, his projects vary in quality but they could always be trusted to deserve a couple of hours of your time, ranging from the big budget antics of the Oceans movies to the experimental alignments of Bubble and Full Frontal in the best tradition of ’one for the studio, one for yourself’ format of directorial bargaining, I much prefer his more populist movies but admire anyone who could simply churn out product rather than test themselves and their own artistic boundaries, both Out Of Sight and his brave remake of Solaris age and deepen with an unexpected grace, and he’s even made Julia Roberts fairly tolerable in a few movies which is no small achievement. In this his last film – although like Ahnoldt I do think that he’ll be back  - Soderbergh has crafted a spirited and oblique love story between two souls who happen to share the same genital designs, but it’s more concerned with the difficulties in preserving a public persona and private perfidy, with ideals of control and infatuation glittering in the background like a Rhinestone inflected tuxedo.

Opening to the throbbing strains of Donna Summers disco dancefloor classic it’s 1977, Southern California, and young animal husband Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) takes a weekend break in Las Vegas with his new boyfriend Bob (a hirsute Scott Bakula). When in Rome as they say they decide to take in a show, and are swiftly entranced by the ivory tinkling and commanding stage prowess of Liberace (Michael Douglas as 2014′s Best Actor Oscar early front-runner), the middle-aged pianist who effortlessly sells out show after show on the chintzy Nevada strip, his elderly fans and audience seemingly unaware of his now with the benefit of hindsight blatant preference for the more ‘fabulous’ side of life. Admitted backstage Scott is coolly besotted with the cabaret crooner, and soon a sexually charged relationship blooms with Scott acting as confessor, chauffeur and lover, moving into Liberace’s gold gilded Hollywood mansion he swiftly finds himself a caged bird in Liberace’s menagerie of glitz, glamour and pearlescent pageantry. Storm clouds begin to gather when Liberace’s obsessions with appearance and aging are deflected to his most recent paramour, with plastic surgery and prescription pills increasingly blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, as other more nubile courtesans begin to materialise on the borders of Liberace’s baroque world….

Considering the zero interest I have in Liberace I went to see this purely on the strength of Soderbergh alone, it’s almost a functional duty for we film critics to support the guy in his final effort considering some of the great movies he’s given us over the past couple of decades, and I have to say I throughly enjoyed the film, it’s a saccharine sweet and tender love story with some terrific performances, which on occasion can be also be staggeringly funny. As usual Soderbergh has mustered an impressive cast, both Damon and Douglas excel as the star twinned lovers lost on the rocky road of lust, with scene stealing support from Vegas royalty in the case of Debbie Reynolds (Liberace’s mother), an unusually good Dan Aykroyd as an exasperated agent but affection has quite rightly been lauded on Rob Lowe’s paralysed plastic surgeon whose clingfilm face positively embezzles every scene he’s in, heck it even has Burke from Aliens in it as a sneery lawyer which makes you wonder which cryosleep capsule Soderbergh defrosted him from. I’m not sure of the Academy rules given that this was shot for and aired on TV in the states – but believe me this has been crafted as a movie through and through with Soderbergh’s fulminous direction, photography and production design – so maybe Douglas won’t be eligible for nomination due to the mystical rules of the secretive Academy. Similarly Damon could even be in for a gong and fair play to him for taking on a faintly controversial role, there is plenty of shall we say ‘affection’ in the film which no doubt will raise concerned eyebrows in the more prejudiced corners of society, even in the 21st century where one hopes that such ridiculous sentiments would be consigned to the same dustbins of history as female inferiority and racial segregation.

I love how Soderbergh subtly deploys his coverage of a sequence, he starts on unusual positions and components (props, the rear of a characters head)before curving around a scene rather than resorting to the usual shot / reverse shot idiom, the technique gives the film a real sense of movement and energy which can closely be attributed as a gay Boogie Nights  in both taste and tone, an extravagant journey which deliciously manoeuvres through Scott and Lee’s disordered entanglements. He revels in the gaudy and ostentatious fairy tale design of Liberace’s domicile, decor and flagrantly flamboyant dress, with Douglas taking to the stage as some elusive shimmering creature from planet kitsch, yes it can (and did) elicit occasional titters in the audience but the film plays the relationship angle relatively straight (if you’ll excuse the pun), anchoring the film on Scott’s and Liberace’s turbulent amour, and the inevitable slow disintegration of their initial infatuation. It’s clearly Damon’s movie as he is the central advocate and we see everything through his increasingly jaded eyes, rather than focusing on Liberace’s life as the traditional bio-pic template would follow, with a real warmth and affection for the characters twinned with a prescribed melancholia, all ably expressed through Soderbergh’s sharp use of lenses and lambent colour palette – he even gets to experiment a little with portraying the effects of a narcotic afflicted, drug addled perception toward the films close. If you’re crafting a swan song you always want to go out on a high, and one can’t help but see the final stage sequence as an apt conclusion to Soderbergh’s own idiosyncratic and glittering career, as the king of kitsch ascends to the heavens we can all raise to our feet for a thundering round of applause, to pay respect for a big screen career which is hopefully just suspended and not spent;

A Carpenters Craft…

Jeez, I think we can class this week under the ‘turbulent’ heading. I won’t bore you with the final details yet but suffice to say a few twists and turns on the day assignment and my critical hobby have aligned to present an opportunity which may lead to my film festival coverage finally broaching international borders – watch this space. In a further moment of serendipity I was musing over what to post in advance of a very special screening tomorrow evening, and then this cropped up on my feed which will give you a flavour of the menacing itinerary;

EDIT – And we’ve just secured a ticket for the UK premiere of this in a months time – this year is looking distinctly horrific….

Frankenstein & The Monster From Hell (1973) Restoration Premiere

I’m having a bit of a fractious time with the BFI these days. Whilst it’s been plain sailing getting tickets to the likes of Superman II and tonight’s entertainment I have lost out on a few other events, namely an imminent Q&A with current box office maestro Joss Whedon, Edgar Wright recently introducing a screening of An American Werewolf In London and there’s also an upcoming screening of Psycho and Q&A with James Franco whom has selected it as one of his favourite movies. Now I’m not  frustrated at the lack of tickets from any sort of fanboy perspective you understand, it would just be nice to cover these events for the sake of the blog, but it appears that these events sell-out during the roughly 5 minutes between the time the email / twitter notification is circulated into the screaming void and the time it takes to make a call into the South Bank Box-Office – welcome to the world of social media I guess. Still we do have quite a programme ahead of us over the next couple of months as I get my teeth into the Werner Herzog season, alas there doesn’t seem to be an appearance scheduled from the great man himself which seems like an oversight unless he’s shooting of course, in any case to whet your appetite here’s a pretty good write up of the Teutonic tyrants life and work to date. On a much more of a genre themed front I attended a special screening at the BFI last week, as Hammer films unleashed a fully restored and renewed digital print of 1974′s Frankenstein & The Monster from Hell, a world premiere which was commissioned as part of the centenary celebrations of the titanic Peter Cushing’s birth. Never let us forget that he is one of the unknown all time badasses of cinema given that he single-handedly dispatched Dracula numerous times as well as being the only creature to bitchslap the nebulous Darth Vader and live to tell the tale, but enough of that overexposed franchise, as a ridiculously attired MC once said it’s Hammer time;

 

The plot is thinner that the beasts clearly cardboard manacles, as in the dying dregs of the 19th century an arrogant and elitist Dr. Simon Helder (Shane Briant) is sentenced to a spell in the local insane asylum after he is discovered experimenting upon the dead. Ensconced amongst the sanity deprived Helder stumbles across the suspicious Dr. Carl Victor (Peter Cushing, magnetic), a certain Dr. Frankenstein whom is hiding behind this alias in order to continue his perversions of science unmolested, Victor soon takes the promising student under his wing and soon the pair are gleefully carving through cadavers of the institutes unfortunate wretches quicker than you can say god complex’. When one of the inmates with a genius level intellect is found hanged in his cell under suspicious circumstances Frankenstein embarks on his most ambitious affront to decency, to transplant the still warm brain into the jigsawed husk of numerous other victims, in an effort to see if a marriage of intellect and  mortal flesh may yield his scientific immortality. As the wardens mute daughter Angel (Madeline Smith) looks on in silent despair the foul experiment is afoot, but will the monster react to his new life with a acquiescent piety or pummeling brutality?

Released in the dying twilight of the Hammer cycle I have to say that the film really isn’t that good, it is  deeply hamstrung by stodgy plotting and a distinct lack of production values. The special effects are especially waning, at the very least you can usually enjoy Hammer films for their bloody British carnivorous charm, but even this is sorely lacking in Monster From Hell   with an especially egregious sighting of exterior shots of the asylum which look like they’ve escaped from a Blue Peter toilet roll and sticky back plastic Halloween Special. The digital scrub however is a treat as the aging and distress have been incrementally washed away, with extra gory footage inserted for completests to devour in all their rabid fury, as they are really the key audience for this ripening resurrection. It’s a shame that house director Terence Fisher couldn’t have exited his career and left the iconic studio with a legacy on more of a high, he was after all the man responsible for the original 1958 Dracula which effectively established the studio and its subsequent beloved twenty year cycle of chills and carnage, critics look at the film, as a kind of final statement on the studio and the final position of its cycle of films – tired, overexposed, budgetary lamentable and needing to put out of its misery. Nevertheless Fisher is unquestionably one of the great UK horror figures along with Hitchcock and arguably Val Guest, I’m particularly fond of his mist-drenched, gothic take on The Hound Of The Baskervilles from 1959 which alongside The Devil Rides Out, Countess Dracula (Ingrid Pitt had quite the pulsing effect on a prepubescent Mint) the 1958 Dracula and To The Devil A Daughter are probably my favourite Hammer atrocities.

Cushing in his sixth incarnation as the mad scientist as usual gets all the good lines, and to the films credit they try to lurch out from the Universal iconography of the monster to try something different in terms of creature design and temperament, even if the end result looks like a particularly mangy George from Rainbow rather than an accursed behemoth from beyond the borders of sanity. Prowse tries to invest the monster with a sense of pathetic pathos and for the most part he succeeds, and the film has a smattering of a theme with an intellect versus bestiality dichotomy occasionally gnawing on the narrative , but it hardly electrifies the screen as Frankenstein roars his cackling intonations, so this is one for horror hacks and abominable aficionados only – the skull sawing and brain splattering scene was quite funny though.

Still it was fun to see a rather frail Dave Prowse take to the stage, that’s another Kubrick survivor down in terms of my own obsessions with the departed, I must get cracking on those Stephen Berkoff and Adrienne Corri sightings as they’re both still knocking around London, in fact I think Berkof lives in Limehouse which is our mutual manor. The brief Q&A highlighted the now blatantly obvious fact that this was Cushing’s and Prowse’s first appearance together, and they would both eventually go on to star together in a rather successful SF movie that was also shot in London a mere four years later which you may have heard of which I think they’re remaking or something. It was also great to see Madeline Smith on stage which some of you Hammerhounds will recognise from The Vampire Lovers and Taste The Blood Of Dracula, not to mention a small part in Moore’s debut Bond Live & Let Die, they were all very respectful and in awe of just how caring and wonderful Peter Cushing was, as is always the way these murderous and lunatic screen presences seem to be genuinely gentle and sensitive souls off-screen. Cushing was renowned for investing great stock in getting his costumes and accents historically accurate, which seems a little pointless considering the alleged quality and source matter of th lowly insignificant horror movies, however you cut it he is one of the iconic faces of the horror genre alongside Lee and Lugosi, Karloff  and Chaney;

Look To The Future….

OK, OK I’ve been slacking recently I admit it, having not posted anything for a whole four days I’m afraid it’s time for some more trailer trash filler. In my defence work is pretty darn hectic at the moment, after two programme launches out of the way you’d think things would get easier but instead things seem to be getting worse – c’est la vie. So I’ve spent all weekend de-stressing by blasting apart, knifing and immolating digital avatars courtesy of this which is exceedingly addictive, I had planned on going to see Byzantium  but when push came to shove I just couldn’t quite muster up the enthusiasm given the tepid reviews, nor could I find my muse to construct a report on last weeks BFI visit – I shall probably got into that this evening. In the meantime lets take a look at some imminent and upcoming movies which seem to be getting some attention, firstly the small matter of Robert Rodriguez’s new atrocity;

So let’s see, Sofía Vergara, Demián Bichir, Amber Heard, Antonio Banderas, Zoe Saldana, Edward James Olmos, Vanessa Hudgens, Cuba Gooding Jr., Alexa Vega, William Sadler, Lady Gaga, Marko Zaror, Tom Savini, Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson – that’s what I call a cast. I’ve already heard accusations of ‘stunt-casting’ which I suppose can’t really be rejected, I just hope it’s more fun and inventive than the original Machete which was a major disappointment, but Rodriguiz is actually directing this one instead of palming it off to his second unit guy so we shall see. The film is due in August in the States, with Sin City 2 (featuring Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Jaime King, Powers Boothe, Mickey Rourke, and Bruce Willis, Eva (hubbah) Green, Josh Brolin, Jamie Chung, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dennis Haysbert, Julia Garner, Juno Temple, Ray Liotta, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven, and Crystal McCahill) following in early October – a banner year for Rodriguez fanboys. Shifting genre gears then what’s this;

This is generating some mild controversy due to author Orson Scott Card’s rather repellent views, there’s quite a strange strain of bigoted stupidity among some American SF authors of the Space Opera variety, as the likes of Robert Heinlein and Harlan Elison have also spewed some craven misogynist, sexist, homophobic and racist nonsense in their time. I haven’t read the widely beloved book and I think this looks throughly mediocre,  the presence of numerous US brats running about being moody n’stuff fills me with an intergalactic sense of dread, not to mention shades of The Phantom Menace (shudders)….

Hmm, my comic book patience is wearing increasingly thin and the first Wolverine movie was bloody terrible, but I guess you never know and this might have a few refreshing set-piece scraps if nothing else. I like Jackman in the titular role, he inhabits the comic creation very effectively, and I do admire how that trailer doesn’t give away whomever the main villain(s) might be, unless I’m spectacularly failing to spot blatantly obvious cues and characters from the comic book continuum which is entirely feasible. It can’t possibly be any worse than this;

I’ve been reading some quite amusing threads recently about Mr. Night, a man with the name a 15-year-old Goth kid might think is cool to change by deed poll, but a fully functioning adult really should know better. After his increasingly waning career which has plummeted to the vortex inducing depths of The Happening, Lady In The Water and The Last Airbender I cackled with delight when reading that Will Smith’s character in this alleged Scientology manifesto movie is called (drum-roll) Cypher Raige - you have got to be fucking kidding, right? I’ve been skim reading reviews after opening weekend and the film has pretty much been crucified,  this kinda sums it all up, so I think I’ll give this one a miss as after this news and this revelation I have a LA bound plane to catch and some weapons to deploy….

Depeche Mode 02 London – Delta Machine World Tour

My first and probably only music gig of the year this week, the almighty Depeche Mode at my local Greenwich squatting venue. The Basildon bred boys are on the road to promote their latest album Delta Machine, the closest they’ve come to my mind in equalling their two most prosperous albums Violator and Songs Of Faith & Devotion a mere twenty years and change ago, to be charitable their output has been somewhat erratic ever since musical bulwark Alan Wilder fled the scene after the obliterating Devotional tour which left one of them in a loony bin, and the other two of them in rehab – you can take the boys out of Essex etc. So as I’m sure I’ve previously mentioned I’ve seen them on tour every time since 1990 (apart from the greatest hits tour which doesn’t count – I was on holiday OK?) and this was one of their strongest performances in line with one of their strongest albums of the past two decades, so here’s a few selected highlights of the night;

One of my favourite post 1990 tracks there, and the first time they’ve played in live in quite a while. Similarly for the first time in a very long time I actually quite enjoyed the new album tracks, the openjng chords of ’new stuff’ usually signal a run for the bar to replenish dwindling alcohol stocks, but they worked this time around and actually filled the space, with this little bruiser being quite effective in getting the crowd going after the mid-set ‘slow’ track Martin Gore section – although he did serenade us with a terrific stripped down version of Higher Love.

I’m guessing most people don’t pick up on these things and pay attention to parochial things such as the music and performance (I’m joking) but as always the visual design of the tour is fantastic, something that the band is renowned for pioneering with their groundbreaking early world tours, with a through line in triangular graphic design which runs through the lighting patterns, screen projections, set design and marketing compositions of sleeve design, posters, t-shirts and other merchandise  – although what really got the crowd roaring was of course the music, specifically some of the older stuff; 

I do like the O2 as a venue, all too often with stadium gigs the tension of the music can get lost in the cavernous space (Earls Court anyone?), Dave Gahan’s tumultous vocals were clear and powerful, and they were smart enough close the main set with arguably their two best known singles Personal Jesus and Enjoy The Silence, possibly the best version  of the latter I’ve ever seen them perform;

OK, I’m starting some (forgive me) ‘Blasphemnous rumors’ here as they actually finished the main set with this which is a new one and it was alright, I’d have preferred something a little more upbeat but here we are. Overall the set list was solid, although I’d have preferred some substitutions you can’t have everything, and even the presence of one of their very early bubble gum pop didn’t quite elicit the groans it normally does – although I do wish they’d look into reviving more of their 1984 – 1986 material for future shows. Good interview here, gig review here, but let’s finish predictably with one of the all time greatest audience participation tracks – yup you guessed it they finished on the obvious;