Dennis Farina RIP
Ah, this is a shame. Like many I have a fond spot for Midnight Run which is great fun;
…..but I’ll always show due respect to Dennis Farina for his position as one of the revolving and frequently deployed character actors in the epic urban malaise of Michael Mann;
I love that fucking scene, it’s fucking impeccably fucking executed. It’s a shame that Luck was cancelled as that was shaping up to be a pretty good series, like many of Mann’s casting choices the collaborations had a genuine authenticity as Farina was a bona-fide Chicago cop before moving into acting. I hope he’s enjoying a fine cup of joe and a vintage cuban in interrogation rooms anew….
The World’s End (2013)
Is this the end, beautiful friend? The apocalypse continues on the silver screen as after the disappointing financial returns of Edgar Wright’s comic book adaption Scott Pilgrim Versus The World the energetic young whippersnapper has retreated to pastures well trod in his earlier geek friendly films Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz, the first two movies in the now oftly cited ‘Cornetto’ trilogy. With The Worlds End* the chillingly refreshing circle is now complete, as teaming up with his star co-writers Simon Pegg and Nick Frost they have almost obliterated the rotting memories of the execrable Paul, and delivered a frequently hilarious, throughly enjoyable SF inflected romp through sleepy middle-class Britain. It may be slightly uneven, it’s certainly self-indulgent, but it has a sense of invention and bravado rarely seen in UK productions these days, even if you get the sense that they started with a finale and worked their way backward with this one. Like This Is The End the theme pivots on a boozy affair of blokes approaching middle-age and ruminating on their successes and failures, with a sense of perpetual adolescence that runs through the trilogy like a shard of devilish dark chocolate, with a surprisingly emotional rumination of the gulf between youthful exuberance and a sense of carpe diem being disemboweled by the sobering realities of adult life. As someone of exactly the same generation who shares an identical horror, SF and comic book obsessed adolescence as Wright and Pegg which was also scored to the psychedelic sounds of ‘madchester’ they have always generated enormous affection in I and my peers since the first small screen outing Spaced, although the films are great fun they have always been a little too flimsy to harbour any enduring love for me although they certainly have their worshippers, but as a blast of raucous and cleverly (and self) referenced humor, of demented pop-cultural plundering and blitzkrieg filmmaking there is a great deal to saviour in The Worlds End which thankfully doesn’t suffer that ‘third movie in a trilogy’ syndrome which can hobble a series just as it triumphantly approaches the finish line.
Ah, sweet, idealistic youth – in the early nineties a group of young British friends in the sleepy town of Newton Haven finish school and bask in the knowledge that their whole lives are lying before them, to celebrate the misbegotten freedom the cheeky young chappies embark on a legendary bender around the town with the epic ambition of twelve pints in twelve pubs. Smash cut to twenty years later and Oliver Chamberlain (Martin Freeman) is yuppie incarnate, fond of money and eager to make his next million, Peter Page (Eddie Marsden) is largely content as the assistant director of the family car showroom. Steven Prince (Paddy Considine) holds a torch for his teenage crush Sam (Rosamund Pike) who just happens to be Oliver’s sister, whilst Andrew Knightly (Frost) has embraced the corporate life and abandoned the booze due to some unspecified, tragic incident a few years back. Pulling the gang together for one final grasp at immortality is Gary King (Pegg), a narcissistic, arrested development definition of a man whose two decades have passed in a blur of self medicated maudlin misery, with a delusional mind-set he believes that reprising their legendary pub-crawl and actually making it through to their twelfth pint at the final destination – The Worlds End – will resurrect his imploding and desolate life. Complicating the alcohol fuelled escapade is not only the married ones antipathy to such teenage excess but the rather more sticky problem of a clandestine alien invasion, I’ll say no more to avoid spoilers other than to say think Village Of The Damned, think Body Snatchers, think They Live and an absolutely livid Max.
Edgar Wright is renowned for his breakneck, flashy editing and pacing style, perhaps a visual gloss to cover the rather hollow cores of his hyperkinetic movies, impressively The Worlds End actually improves as it incrementally accelerates its momentum, the gags get better and the combat scenes get the geriatric blood-pumping as the expertly chosen score idolizes those baggy golden days of yore like a floppy fringed greek chorus. It’s a bittersweet shame that like a slightly inebriated uncle it veers off the path in the final stretch with a duo of climaxes which don’t mesh very well with the previous definitions and loosely considered ideals, as clearly the initial brainstorm session yielded numerous ideas which Wright and Pegg have bolted in to make a rather clumsy but undoubtedly loveable contraption. Like Scott Pilgrim battling through his girlfriends previous suitors The World’s End has a clearly delineated progressive structure, moving from pub to set-piece to character reveal then repeat to a stupored conclusion, the fight orchestrations are absolutely first class and possibly the most handsomely mounted element of the entire movie, even if it initially takes a little time to digest a significant tonal shift from a riotous UK comedy to these early middle-aged actors careening around the screen like a troop of red bull guzzling Jackie Chan’s. Working again with cinematographer Bill Pope (The Matrix, Spider Man 2, and some other early Raimi pictures) Wright ups the ante on his visual dexterity, it’s not quite as lens flare-tastic as the current fleet of SF movies than it is a middle class cybernetic Mike Leigh, the soundtrack alone is a greatest hits compilation of my generations youth with appearances of the obvious – Primal Scream, the Roses, the Mondays, Blur and The Charlatans – pulsing alongside slightly more esoteric fare from Definition Of Sound, The Soup Dragons, St Etienne, Silver Bullet and the almighty Sisters.
The crew have clearly mustered a conscious effort to craft a more emotionally charged and considered work than the previous installments, wrapping these ambitions around the gags which ricochet at a machine gun rate and don’t always graze the bullseye, although there are certainly a half-dozen times when I was doubled up in my chair with wracking laughter which I’m sure means that the film will reward frequent re-watches to assimilate all the easter eggs and in-jokes. Clearly they’ve thrown everything including the kitchen sink into the finale which means that the climactic contortions are a little exasperating as it appropriates both the works of Douglas Adams and a notorious antipodean anti-semite in a rather fitful and bewildering fashion, I’m also not so sure that consciously situating the film in a landscape of identikit high street retail units maps to the middle-aged ennui which the film strives to achieve, but for a ferocious assault of comedy, combat and genre celebration then you’ll struggle to find a superior generation to this strangely affectionate if uneven blend of three different movies. Then again, to be fair they have always excelled in melding genres (Shaun as rom-com-zom, Fuzz as giallo-conspiracy-action parody) so at least they’re consistent, and The Worlds End does contain the finest through-line gag of the whole trilogy in one perfectly elusive moment. With a cameo appearance from Pierce Brosnan and considering Timothy Dalton’s appearance in Hot Fuzz all they need to do is quietly go back and CGI in an appearance of Roger Moore or George Lazenby into prints of Shaun Of The Dead and they will have a Bond trilogy to compete with the ice cream franchise, if Lucas can continue to tamper with his creations and alleged molest our childish memories then I don’t see why Wright can’t follow an identical fashion, after all, it’s not the end of the world;
*It’s not often we European geeks get to lord it over our American colleagues but the film doesn’t open until last next month in North America, in the meantime certain circles have been boasting about their mastery of this list, for the record I’m on 136 and quite strangely was watching Extreme Prejudice over the weekend (the last film on the list) just as this started to do the rounds.
International Menagerie..
Clearly someone is fucking with me from above as the old-fashioned good news / bad news dichotomy strikes the menagerie with a vengeance. So I got my Toronto press accreditation confirmed today – not bad for a first time try – and I’ve just had my day-job assignment terminated at the end of next week. It makes you wonder just what sense of humor the alleged pranksters upstairs may have;
To be fair this has been on the cards for a while, it was supposed to expire at the end of last month but my leader managed to get a modest extension, alas significant – and I mean significant – budget cuts are again about to rape local government, mark my words there is going to be blood on the streets. Anyway, I like to take solace in fictional worlds as per the proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the sand, so I guess I’d best start looking for some funds for the flight and accommodation then eh?
Pacific Rim (2013)
Another weekend, another gleaming vision of hellish catastrophe and destruction. After the comedic carnage of This Is The End, the leveling of Metropolis and Smallville in Man Of Steel, the crashing starships and terrorists strikes of Star Trek: Into Darkness and I’m told the nuking of London in G.I Joe: Retaliation this summer has been one terrifying orgy of pixellated havoc, and one longs for the quiet desolation of Oblivion, the smooth search for identity amongst the lethal drone strikes and technological oppression. You might think that someone was trying to tell us something, that the cultural manifest was expressing some submerged fear of ecological or social devastation, and the permeation of these global dreads into kids movies is a rather worrying development for which we can conclude that the worlds global Armageddon clock has ticked one minute closer to the apocalypse. OK, OK, maybe its the heat stroke ’cause I’m exaggerating of course, but with the arrival of Pacific Rim, Guillermo Del Toro’s clanking, braying CGI tour-de-force which pits gargantuan para-dimensional Kaiju monsters – think Godjira or King Kong or Mothra – against building sized robotic juggernauts I am curious to see the younger generations response to this dazzling conflagration of extinction threatening violence, as make no mistake this is a film very much aimed at the younger cinema-goers of the ten to fourteen age range, rather than the slightly older teenage demographic which dominates the lucrative summer season. In terms of full disclosure I must admit that I was in a somewhat fragile, self-inflicted hungover state when enduring this berserk blend of movie genres, my expectations weren’t stratospherically high other than potentially enjoying some destructive eye candy and a couple of hours of throwaway popcorn attuned fun with perhaps a buttery smattering of Del Toro’s empathic monster-mash-ups, what I witnessed instead was a rather frustrating combination of broad clichés and juvenile plot contrivances bolted on to his otaku obsessions, a three star movie housed in the shell of cavernous cinematic promise.
The near future, and some barnacle encrusted boffins have made a slightly worrying discovery – a para-dimensional portal rift has seared through the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean, and this tear in the space-time continuum rather irritatingly appears to be coughing out mega-behemoth monsters to rampage through the shrieking populations of the Oriental plate and the western seaboard of North America. This humongous plague brings the world community together to launch a mechanical counterstrike which is christened as the Jaeger program, the ambitious construction of similarly sized robotic guardians piloted by two psychically linked souls due to the neural operative pressures being too much for a single pilot to handle alone, a hilariously implausible and unwieldy concept called “Drifting”. This international force achieves some early victories in fending off the devastating attacks, but a sinister intelligence behind the onslaught is revealed as the rate and size of the invasion exponentially grows, causing the worlds government to seek alternative methods of a hopeless defence. Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) a one man charisma vacuum and sole survivor of one of the initial alien sorties is lured back to the programme through the barking persuasion of Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba and no, I’m not making that name up), teamed up with tear-stained newbie Mako Mori (Rinko Kicuchi) this new couple must find their courage and forge a mutual trust as two deeply irritating scientists conduct some desperate R&D in an effort to build a strategy to counter the threat, played by the sneering suit Stryver from the The Dark Knight Rises (Burn Gorman) and J.J.Abrams Charlie Day a final desperate mission is hatched to assault the rift and close the breach, and as the trailer so cringeworthy instructs us to ‘cancel the Apocalypse’….
I was musing over the potential reaction to this film from the numerous trailers that have escaped into international digital waters over the past year or so, with a quiet mental prediction that many of Del Toro’s local acolytes would be crushed by disappointment by a diluted directorial force following the severe setbacks he suffered with his exit from The Hobbit project, so I find myself in the rather unenviable position of siding with the annoying crowd as any sense of Del Toro as a filmmaker of the calibre of Pans Labyrinth or more crucially the rewarding Hellboy pictures which of course gleam closer to the spirit, size and sensibilities of this species of colossal blockbuster – any sense of an ‘authorial’ film has been completely obliterated from this film, apart from his trademark sense of creature design and dimensions which I’ll come to shortly. Now I know I have frequently expressed the view that you should review the film that was made rather than the one which you wanted to see, but unfortunately Pacific Rim’s numerous failures and long stretches of tedious, bland characterisations interfere with would could and should have been an entertaining, titanic rollercoaster of a movie, rather than a waterlogged wreck which springs more narrative leaks and clichéd asides than a swiss cheese schooner. It’s a film for twelve years olds and has clearly been developed with a whole series of toy franchises, duvet covers and comic book tie-ins which is to be expected (what marketing dolt thought up the tagline ‘Go Big Or Go Extinct’ though? Idiot) and I’m certainly not criticising it for that, but as a singular entity, as a film alone and adrift from the associated revenue streams it cuts rather a forlorn figure, occasionally punctuated with a few set pieces which certainly raise the temperature and the heart-rate, but all the fun of a fantastical, SF, comic book ensemble that he has brought to his previous big-budget excursions is singularly silent. He never plays with the concepts of ‘drifting’ and how this could gel with concepts of a shared heroism, there is no tacit tackling of a world united against one great threat and a shared humanity, instead Pacific Rim posits a very black and white, good/evil dichotomy with blandly sketched character longueurs which rot at the films tsunami damaged thermonuclear core, and that is simply just as faintly insulting to kids of whatever age as it is to adults.
That said there is some earthy elements to enjoy, unlike most current fare the 3D is expertly arranged and avoiding a mild spoiler I’ll just say that Del Toro’s skills at wading into world building waters are fully on display with an alloy of a society which would adapt to the presence of super Kajiru in both a physical and environmental fashion (genre hero Wayne Barlow was involved in much of the creature design and organic work), the battle scenes unlike its metamorphical stablemates are clearly defined and bellowingly brutal, through robust editing and compositions you instinctively grasp a firm sense of the space and the definitions of the melee maelstroms which are clearly designed to embrace the z axis format, and the Hong Kong set-piece is the films indiscriminate climax which may serve as the best single combat sequence of the year. Del Toro’s favourite actor Ron Perlman is fitfully amusing as a gold brocaded, sleazy Kaijun artefact black marketeer and you have to applaud the directors steadfast conviction of placing a woman in a central action and narrative role, not objectifying her to some crop topped wearing, hot pants sporting sex vixen that the camera drools over as she sweatingly conducts some ‘super hot’ repairs – thankfully despite its similarities to the Transformers pictures this ain’t no Michael Bay atrocity to celluloid equality – but by the same token Mako is the single, solitary speaking-role female character in the entire movie, so why were there no other vaginas deployed among the scientific support team or military brass? Well, OK there is a Russian pilot but she is barely seen and doesn’t hang around for very long, I guess unlike the hulking strides of the Jaeger colossus these things have to change in incremental baby steps.
Writing this review to the soundtrack of Man Of Steel certainly makes this review feel more epic than it sounds, I know you’re probably thinking I’m being far too serious for a $250+ million film of this ilk but I think you’ll appreciate my concerns when you get round to seeing it, if you have kids of an appropriate age then do take them to it as you will be the greatest father/mother in the world, and your brood will probably be of the opinion that the movie is the greatest achievement of human civilisation thus far – if I was that age I’d agree. The best news is I’m writing this on my lovely new iPad, given the desolate plateau of depression that was my so-called birthday last month I figure that you have to treat yourself sometimes, as it appears that no-one in my social or genetic circle is fucking prepared to do so, it’s a wise acquisition to prepare for Toronto as I needed a tablet of some description to power out the imminent – fingers crossed for the press accreditation – reviews. Anyway I digress as I’m already being diverted into alternate waters, I do hope Pacific Rim is a hit so Del Toro gets to resurrect his Cthulhu dormant Lovecraft project, if that fails then we can only hope he gets back to the smaller films and musters another minor masterpiece, until then I guess we should start quietly praying for the imminent screen return of the outer dimension ancient ones……
The East & The Bling Ring (2013)
OK, speed review time so I apologise in advance for any inconsistencies, to continue my mental gymnastics as the intellectual training continues – picture a Rocky montage if you like. If I had to select one theme to encapsulate last weekend’s viewing activities it would have to be misguided youth. From one side of the spectrum we have a brood of furtive & idealistic eco-terrorists, taking the battle to the boardrooms of corporate America in the rather mysteriously titled The East, on the other a sly celebration of adolescent vacuousness and their orbit of a a fathomless moral void in Sophia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. Both films champion the young and idealistic as our eyes into our shared world, whether it’s the grimy scrubland of Louisiana or the Rodeo Drive commercial Gehenna of Beverley Hills, where capitalism in its all pervasive hegemony is the lurking antagonist driving the jejune antics, with entire swathes of new graduates and the young furtively divining for a career it’s an interesting time to see them represented on on-screen, especially when two pictures emerge which are attuned to the most prevalent big-screen demographics (16-24 age with a median household disposable income) which doesn’t spring from a comic book or established franchise. Now, before we get into the reviews proper I very quickly want to touch on the announcement of the new Terminator franchise upload which was announced last week, whilst this was inevitable I am quietly excited that this is being spearheaded by Annapurna pictures whom you may know is the production company of billionaire daughter Megan Ellison, they have been responsible for the recent critical triumphs The Master and Zero Dark Thirty and have thus already established themselves with a reputation for quality and artistic integrity. If I was them I’d programme something radical and go back to the first movie blueprints for a modest $30 / $40 / $50 million rebrand, pick up some hot and hungry new talent and force them to improvise with meagre resources to keep it lean. mean and keen, and not include a single, solitary reference to Ahnoldt whatsoever to break from the bloated past and signal a fresh direction – this opinion is probably why I’m still not a top-tier studio executive eh? So let’s stick to what I do know, and that’s taking movies more seriously than they were probably intended;
It’s a stalwart scriptwriting tool to plunge your hero or heroine into a moral quagmire by punting them in ‘so deep s/he doesn’t know which way is up’, in The East former FBI agent Claire Moss (Brit Marling) is an ambitious corporate security executive whom is desperate to ascend the career ladder at Niler Brood, one of North America’s most prestigious corporate security firms. With friends in high places the group specialise in Intel acquisition, Executive safety and run interference on the numerous hydra headed anarchist collectives that are ideologically idling across North America, pitted in a covert battle of wits between obscuring and disseminating the truth. Headed by the callous, greedy and similarly ambitious CEO Sarah (an underemployed Patricia Clarkson) Claire is awarded the prestige contract of infiltrating the secretive cell known only as ‘The East’, one of the most feared and secretive eco-insurgants famed for their media attuned conscious raising pranks and home invasion incursions, taking their collective battle for the environment directly to the homes and families of the most pathologically indifferent Chief Executive Officers. After ingratiating herself with the self-righteous membership Claire begins to develop feelings for her misguided colleagues, with Alexander Skasgard as a trust-fund doyen igniting some sexual tension whilst the brittle Izzy (Ellen Page) is bristles as an ideologically spurned daughter of a major petrochemical heir, both supported by Toby Kebbell (Dean Mans Shoes, Control) in his first American production. When their plan to activate a series of high-profile ‘happenings’ strays into the realm of human casualties Claire must decide where her loyalties lie, and maybe her new clandestine comrades have a few surprises in store for her as well….
The East takes a serious subject with a serious rancor, and like the groups it examines is a rather droll and humorless affair, with a righteous idealism smouldering at its eco-friendly roots. One glaring error for a thriller is something of an absence of actual nail-biting moments, as The East prefers to grow and inculcate Claire organic character alteration, her beliefs and views evolving as her ambition are warped by her experiences, as the scales fall from her eyes and she understand the sheer scale and human costs of the West’s veneration of profit as the absolute apex of existence. These illuminations ignite an ethical revaluation as sure as a flint spark can preamble a forest fire, and Marling is convincing as a conflicted ideologue being turned from the flock, but the lack of a commitment to thrilling twists and turns does pitch the film as something of a dour affair, without even facsimiles of real world figures of hate like the Koch Brothers or the Occupy movement generating an emotional sneer from either side of the political culture wars. It raises some interesting and difficult questions in relation to 21st century First World collusion, how one can simultaneously prosper in a commerce worshiping society and retain ones individual moral code? Is that moral code polluted and twisted in the first place? How can you divine right from wrong in a system whose manipulation by self-interest groups rigs the game in their privileged favor? How do you make the impossible compromises to progress one’s career at the sacrifice of others lives and localities? The film certainly has its heart in the right place and is appropriately ambivalent with its shakily sustainable conclusions, but is a little ungamely and hesitant in delivery, particularly when dissolving the driving factor behind specific individuals to psychologically simplistic paternalistic issues rather than a genuine passion for social and environmental change, The East tills fertile ground for further discussions of the social consequence of a so-called ‘lost’ economic generation but a little more Hitchcock would have welcome among the histrionics.
A thousand miles away both geographically and figuratively is The Bling Ring, another installment in Sophia Coppola’s aureate abasement of the privileged and wealthy, based on the 2010 Vanity Fair article “The Suspect Wore Louboutins” by Nancy Jo Sales the film takes an almost psuedo-documentary approach to a recent spate of high-profile burglaries of the rich and famous among the Hollywood hills. New to Tinseltown is Marc (Israel Broussard) who quickly makes friends with a clique of squawing pubescents who share his fascination with fashion and the lifestyles of the celebrity circus, besotted with the blossoming beauty of Rebecca Ahn (Katie Chang) Marc finds himself embroiled in her frequent acts of petty larceny, pilfering wallets and watches from the unlocked vehicles of their entitled communities. Like any addiction the appetite for more risky and rewarding returns soon grips the pair and aided and abetted by their two friends Nicki (Emily Watson) and Chloe (Claire Julien) their antics accelerate to the actual breaking and entering of celebrities homes who rather conveniently signal when they will be absent by hosting MTV parties in Miami or Grammy shindigs in Manhattan, the banusic quartet feasting in an orgiastic display of enough Chanel, Gucci, Burberry, Marc Jacobs, Cartier, Rolex and Tiffany to stock a buffalo’s boutique. With the genius level intellect afford them by their similarly vacant parents the group parade their booty through social media boasting and status enhancing jibes at the next socially imperative party, leading the authorities to apprehend the group only for the symbiotic serpent of fame to devour it’s own tail….
One can only satanically hope that the next school shooting – and let’s be honest here, we all know there is going to be another massacre as sure as day follows night – one can only hope that the next maniac attends the Hollywood Hills High school and decides to inflict his wrath on these vapid abuses of Deoxyribonucleic acid, an unholy prayer which might just pause our inevitable plummet from civilisation given this generations ascension to any positions of influence or power. There is not a single solitary creature with whom to sympathise here, Coppola giving her ‘ohmygod’ squeaking parasites just enough celluloid rope to hang themselves on the altar of irritation, and the only adult character (Nikki’s mother) with a notable role is similarly infuriating as a home schooling airheaded nutbag whom insists her children gather for a faux pseudo self-help religious prayer every morning and holds seminars on how to purge corrosive life forces from ones inner self. It’s these scenes with Leslie Mann as the similarly narcissistic matriarch which provides most of the films cautious chuckles, the scene where she attempts to usurp the spotlight of her daughters fame being a rare moment of levity among a knuckle chewing litany of image obsessed, intellectually castrated cultural psychopaths. Coppola gets a fair amount of criticism for her gilded vision from within the bubble of the rich and famous, but if the adage of ‘film what you know’ is accurate then I’m not quite sure what her detractors expect, and I rather like the airless, hermetic and slightly daydreamish qualities that quietly permeates her films, although The Bling Ring certainly lacks the levitating lethargy of her earlier accomplishments The Virgin Suicides or Lost In Translation. As you’d expect the film also has a bruising soundtrack which is expertly cut to the montages of commercial cocaine, like a Vanity Fair advertising insert come to life Coppola revels in the ornate trappings of elite clothing, footwear and jewelery of which a single piece would equate to a small South American countries GDP, whilst the vacant and materialistic prada heeled urchins never once refer to their crimes as transgressive infractions, merely as ‘shopping’ as a victimless exercise in self-absorbed idiocy.
There is one directorial flourish at the midpoint of the film which neatly encapsulates the entire thematic and cultural malaise in a single evocative shot, one home invasion which plays out in a slow zoomed single take, like a 21st century Edward Hooper landscape the minimalist interior suggesting the goldfish bowl prism of the modern celebrity and marketing machine. Similarly affecting are the infrequent sequences of these young mistresses of the universe writhing in slow motion projection like a bacchanalian tribute to their neophiliac narcissism, but the film itself is somewhat transparent and doesn’t linger in the memory, there’s no real commentary or contemporary illumination being provoked here, and the film lacks any real satiric venom which could have been injected by a script pass by the likes of a Bret Easton Ellis and his immolating immediacy – The Bling Ring is Coppola treading water in her beachwear line of Jimmy Choo’s, rather than finding inspiration in her ennui afflicted individuals. The film is dedicated is the memory of the brilliant cinematographer Harris Savides and this was the last film he worked on, which is enough of a reason to see the film for cinema fans, an elite class collaborator with the likes of Coppola, Fincher and Gus Van Sant.
Kubrick Exhibition LACMA Tour 2013
There’s a few of these reports doing the rounds, given the subject matter you’d think someone would have invested in a stabilizer but here we are;
That’s probably the most exhaustive video out there, I’m not in any way a camera nerd but to see some of those technological artefacts that were used to film Lyndon, Odyssey, The Shining and others is quite exciting to see. This closes in LA today, and yes one is feverishly praying that some London museum steps in to host the next phase of the exhibition – given that Kubrick lived in the UK for almost forty years where many of these masterpieces were crafted is that too much to ask?
Killing Season (2013) UK Premiere & John Travolta In Conversation
Honestly, the things I do for you people. I’m not sure how to start this report from Tuesday’s curious evening at the BFI, other than to say that I loathe John Travolta. Now I have nothing against John Travolta as a human being of course, I’m sure he’s exceedingly generous with charitable donations, loves his wife and kids, and hugs puppies and promotes equal rights for all, what I’m referencing is of course ‘John Travolta’ the screen persona, the actor who for reasons I can’t quite logically articulate or justify I can barely watch on-screen without feeling an indistinct stirring of irritation and mild hatred. I’m not sure why this is, I’m certainly not proud of the antipathy, but I think we all have for some horrible reason an aversion to certain people and public personas who just wind us up for intangible reasons, as I’m betting there is some celebrity figure from the realm of media, entertainment, politics (actually scratch that one, most of them are irritating aren’t they?) whom also riles you up and makes your skin crawl, and you will actively go out of your way to avoid a movie, a TV series, a chatshow appearance or interview which includes this frustrating figure. It was therefore with a mild sense of nausea that I attended the UK premiere screening of his new film Killing Season followed by an exceptionally rare Jonathan Ross hosted Q&A on Tuesday evening, and already the event had irked me as it clashed with a screening of Herzog’s Stroszek which I had to cancel, as in the interests for the blog I thought that this might be of a slightly higher film culture visibility than one of Werner’s suicide inducing screen ballads. In any case it was quite a curious event, so let’s begin with the trailer and a capsule review of the film;
As you may have gleaned from that the trailer the film was terrible, a supposed cat and mouse game between retired US veteran Benjamin Ford (De Niro) and the hilariously incomprehensibly accented Emil Kovac (Travolta) twenty years after De Niro’s UN platoon discovered a massacre during the Yugoslavian war, and decide to take justice into their own hands and summarily execute the Serbian marauders led by Travolta. This ludicrously offensive films begins with a portentous context setting crawl about how serious and solemn the conflict was before hard cutting to an exciting twitchy-cam combat sequence – and this tonal repulsion is only compounded by a script which then meanders through the most pedestrian route of character development and conflict interaction between the slumming leads. You know a film has rejected any semblance to credulity or emotional engagement when in one scene one of the characters instructs the other to stake himself to the ground by inserting a steel rod and tassel through the void created by an earlier arrow wound, and this is just one of the early problems of tis deeply tedious and tawdry film which increasingly obeys the simple ‘I’ve got the upper hand, no a-ha now I’ve got the upper hand’ model of so-called tension and suspense. You can pretty much chart the entire trajectory of the mercifully short 90 minutes directly through to the final shot, and as usual Travolta is just hilariously serious and studious with an approach to acting which finishes with plastering on some make-up, adopting some ridiculous facial features and emitting the worse accent since Don Cheadle’s Ocean’s 13 cockney rhymed Jeremy Hunt. In short, avoid at all costs.
I do like Jonathan Ross as a UK movie culture figure (I haven’t watched any of his chat show stuff in decades) as he clearly has a genuine breath, knowledge and passion for the artform from obscure B movies and exploitation pics out to the established and revered classics, we all remember the fantastic shows he fronted and commissioned back in the 1980’s don’t we? On stage you can see just what a brilliant interviewer he is, he’s quite disarming and isn’t afraid to prick that self-important celebrity bubble when the occasion demands (‘John, exactly what accent was that you were using in the film?’) and he asked the more serious instructive questions on Travolta’s collaborations with De Palma and Malick alongside the inevitable attention lavished on the likes of Saturday Night Fever and of course Pulp Fiction. I thought Travolta was quite a guarded persona despite his batting away Wossy’s most direct questions – ‘You’re seen as something of a remote figure, do you take refuge behind any screen persona? – with a simple ‘This is me, what you see is what is get’ reply, although of course he did shy away from any Scientology queries or indeed any reference to the classic Battlefield Earth which curiously was also omitted from a ten minute context setting montage that the BFI threw together to inaugurate the interview.
There were some reasonably smart questions from the audience as well, one asking his insider opinion on the current state of the industry which he lamented for the move toward spectacle and away from character driven pieces. Well, this is course a perfectly fair point and it’s all very well bemoaning the lack of character based vehicles in todays American marketplace but when you’re actively producing unimaginative, formulaic dreck like Killing Season which from its script stage must have blatantly obvious that it isn’t delving into anything other than Hollywood archetypes of conflict equaling character, of violence eclipsing any other solution to progress (which is exactly the point the film is so wistfully and therefore hypocritically espousing) then you really don’t have a wounded leg to stand on, not to mention how you’re devolving an incredibly complex array of social, historical and political forces which led to the conflict down to two guys violently fucking each other up for an hour without any real consequence or physical cost. Still, I did warm to Travolta a little when he got on to the fun they had shooting Face Off between Nick Cage and John Woo impersonating each other, I must give that another watch as that was a fun action movie and there was a fairly amusing running gag about how Richard Gere essentially wouldn’t have a career if he didn’t seize upon the parts which Travolta had rejected like discarded crumbs from his table (American Giglio, An Officer & A Gentleman, Days Of Heaven), although I was surprised to hear that with the latter Travolta was Malick’s first choice for the male lead, and it was studio machinations to award Gere the part which heavily contributed to his disgust with the industry and self-imposed Paris exile for the next twenty years. I was also just as intrigued to see Travolta’s wife Kelly Preston in the audience a few rows from me, she’s an actress in her own right which you may recognise from the likes of Jerry McGuire, Twins and the yuletide ‘classic’ Jack Frost, I have some slightly more formative adolescent memories of her from the movie Mischief which I’m sure some of you hairy palmed perverts will also fondly remember…..
The Best Movie You’ve Never Seen?
When was the last time I forged a list post? Seems like a long time ago, at least way back in the chilly depths of winter. The publication of a new interesting sounding book has got the cinephile community all a chatter, as author Robert K. Elder has interviewed thirty-five filmmakers, movers and shakers and asked them to identify one best ‘neglected’ or ‘overlooked’ film for inclusion into a fun sounding film discussion book. Debating the relative merits of the list and the inevitable argumentative framing of some of the texts as ‘obscure’ or underappreciated (c’mon, A Man For All Seasons is a well-known Oscar winner surely?) has been raging over the past few days, ever since the project was highlighted in the worlds most popular film cast Filmspotting which you can source here. There is nothing we cinephiles like more than a list we can tear into, and ever since last years Sight & Sound poll controversy has settled it feels like the right time to stir things back up, to indulge in mock battles and belittle each others scope and breadth of the medium of the movies, all in a very gentlemanly well-spirited fashion of jocularity of course you understand.
I’ll admit I was also disappointed at the near total lack of female directors out of the 35 or indeed many ‘people of colour’ if I can use that rather odd phrase, I know the pool from which to draw these opinions from is somewhat smaller than Male White Dude directors, but surely Charles Burnett or John Singleton, a Lynne Ramsey or Andrea Arnold could have been approached? I dunno, maybe Elder did spread his net wider than the dominant demographic, but I doubt it. Anyway out of the list I’ve seen 22 and have heard of 29 which isn’t a bad ratio for so-called deeply cult and obscured fare, hell I may even have reviewed a few of ’em here on the blog which I think cements some level of credible cinephile credentials, whilst others like Who’ll Stop The Rain? (AKA Dog Soliders) and Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguschi’s most famous film so again not really an obscure film, such an odd choice) have at least merited passing mentions. So I thought we’d have a look at a mix of those I’ve seen or not, some which I admire or not, purely in an instinctive, potpuorri sort of way for a fairly lazy blog post which will server as a prelude to a whole panoply of BFI visits I have planned over the next fortnight – six films, including one of the strangest double bills I’ve yet mustered, and I have to slot in Before Midnight somewhere as well which is getting ‘one of the films of the year’ level reportage. But for now let’s get started with a few drinks;
Under The Volcano (1984) – This was quite a shock, despite being a big John Huston fan and even having read of biography on him around a decade ago I’d never heard of this, poured during this retrospectively interesting twilight phase of his career (see also the strange Wise Blood) which begin back in the 1940’s with the The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre and other numerous classics. This is sweating in its entirety on YouTube but I think I’ll rent the disk and give this a proper viewing, just from the write-up it sounds like an ideal Peckinpah companion piece to the likes of Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia or The Getaway. Which takes us nicely from an authorial standpoint to this;
After Dark My Sweet (1990)- I do pride myself on my credentials when it comes to Film Noir and Neo-Noir, so yes I have heard and indeed seen this James Foley adaption of a nasty little Jim Thompson bruiser. Of the later cycle of lipstick smeared femme fatales, stupid & sleazy con-men, urban spiritual malaise and the greedy moral abyss of post-war capitalism this is one of the best, alongside the likes of The Last Seduction, One False Move or The Grifters.
Fearless (1993) – I’ve mentioned this before, one of the great unrated films of the 1990’s, with a career defining turn from Bridges despite his more visible turns in Starman, Liebowski and more recently True Grit. It’s interesting that Richard Kelly selected this as it shares something of an ambivalent and conflicted central character as his initial smash Donnie Darko, not to mention a plane crash serving as the inciting incident. After the patchy successes of 2010’s The Way Back Weir’s career seems to have returned to hibernation, a shame as I guess we’ll never see that Pattern Recognition adaption now. To be fair whilst it’s a great Gibson it already feels a decade out of date….
Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988) – I’d have opted for the shiver inducing Clownhouse myself if we’re going to reach for the Coulrophobia weapon, the subsequent sordid history of that film’s director alone is a terrifying thought. Killer Klowns however has its own devoted breed of fucked up fans, like other 1980’s horror fare – The Ghoulies, Gremlins, Street Trash, Basket Case, Reanimator – you do get some films which are indistinctly subversive of the genre and society which bred them, hence the seizure by some rabid fans – its only (un)natural. It’s not one of my favourites and I don’t remember a great deal of it to be honest but I’ll give it another whirl of the carousel for old times sake, I’m hoping it has something of a lurking dreadful sense of dark humor plastered underneath that elongated face paint and rainbow of colourful costumes…..
The Swimmer (1968) – I smirked when I saw this on the list, this is one of those strangely neglected gems which very rarely comes up for air. A personal project of Burt Lancaster it is the middle-aged companion piece to The Graduate which takes that upper middle-class sun-kissed Connecticut lifestyle and gives it a satirical dunking, with the titular and existential stranded swimmer having no option to reach home other than traversing through the backyard pools of his affluent neighbours.
L’Ange (1983) – I’ll confess this is another new one for me, I guess I just ain’t up to speed with my French experimental avant-garde texts. A time, a place and a requisite mood help to indulge yourself in this type of unorthodox material, but I think you have to keep your horizons broad and digesting such unusual and perhaps challenging feasts does feed the understanding of what can be done with moving images, their collusion with sound and uneasy partnership with the ubiquitous two-dimensional rectangular portal.
Ivans XTC (2000) – I think I may have touched on this before, possibly the most vicious take on Hollywood moral quagmire since Sunset boulevard, it’s certainly got more of a polished razor’s sheen than Altman’s The Player inflicted on the hands that feeds. Directed by Bernard Rose – he of Candyman and Paperhouse cult credentials – this has bitter and arrogant executive Danny Huston, himself a scion of Tinseltown royalty experiencing all his so-called friends and colleagues abandoning him as he contracts a terminal disease. Relentless and unforgiving, you’ll never want to eat lunch in this town again….
Breaking Away (1973) – Growing up with a cycling mad brother it was inevitable that I’d suddenly screech across this, one of the great coming-of-age teenage movies which could possibly be up there with Stand By Me. Funny, poignant, and direct in the telling, it also has one of the all time great jump cut gags which only makes sense if you’ve seen the film and understand the father character, regardless it’s a genius moment of comedy which actor Paul Dooley still gets fans quoting to him on the street. This sepia kissed genre has recently had a minor resurgence with Sundance smash The Kings Of Summer which has just opened in limited screens in the States, of course a certain Man Of Steel has unfortunately annihilated its chances at box office supremacy. Still, that’s one of the films of the year so if you have the means and temperament then support some independent cinema for a change, and monitor your local listings.
The Trial (1962) – It also strikes me as odd having two Welles movies on the list, sure F Is For Fake was notoriously difficult to see prior to the proliferation of the Internet with bootlegs and rare prints being digitally archived, but The Trial was widely available and showed on TV here in the UK a few times, and surely any Welles film would be on the cinemaeastes radar given that he, y’know, directed the widely accepted greatest film of all time from the 1950’s until 2012? In any case this has a curious serendipity as F Is For Fake is screening at the BFI in August which I may attend, before then we have another Welles screening tomorrow so he’s currently on my radar, cinematically speaking. His version of The Trial is a marvelously dense piece, both visually and dramatically, with a wonderfully European flavoured cast (Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider) – which befits its Cold War / Iron Curtain dimensions. An exhaustive documentary on arguably Welles last masterpiece here, I’ll just luxuriate in that deep focus framing seen above in the opening scene.
Trouble In Paradise (1932) – And finally another shameful omission by yours truly. I’ve never really gravitated to the Ernst Lubitsch champagne fizzing film frivolities, like Renoir he’s an early golden era director whose importance and influence I can certainly appreciate – the Rom-Com wouldn’t exist without Lubitsch or the subsequent careers of Preston Sturges and Woody Allen as we know them – but I do find the canyons of history and different cinematic styles, dialogue and social constructions quite difficult to overcome and thus enjoy his films on their own, period specific merits. It’s the arch theatrical acting, the (by our contemporary standards) unfunny gags and the gilded, opulent lives of the bourgeoise which obstruct me in giving a fuck about these privileged numbskulls, during he great depression and the imminent rise of Hitler one assumed they’d have slightly more serious things to worry about – the more things change etc. eh? Nevertheless one strives to widen one’s boundaries and I shall give this a visit and see if Bogdanovich is on the money, but I have to say I have sporadically been revisiting some Renoir such as La Grande Illusion in a similar vein and they really don’t connect at all….
Richard Matheson RIP (1926 – 2013)
Memo to Death – can’t you like, take a fucking week or something you cretin? Every week we seem to hear of another mournful passing, and alongside Harryhausen we’ve just lost our second titan of speculative imagination in 2013, and that’s without counting the fantastic Iain M. Banks on the purely SF literature level – this is a film blog so I prefer to keep these sections partitioned after all. I have enormously fond memories of my brother anxiously ordering a copy of I Am Legend through our local library as for some reason it was quite a rare, out of print book in the UK back in the midst of the late 20th century, so when I finally staked my prey and read the damn thing is was quite an experience. As a SF & horror acolyte since adolescence I knew whom Matheson was of course from his numerous credits on The Twilight Zone, his involvement with X Files precursor Kolchak The Night Stalker and numerous movie credits, his passing has a curious timing given that one of his abominable creations has morphed into a particularly virulent cultural meme which is currently infesting big screens around the globe – such a shame that the movie isn’t even remotely qualified to shine in his shadow. So, like Matheson’s writing I’ll keep this obituary succinct and polished, with a warm vein of humanism running underneath the placement of his protagonists in fantastical themed jeopardy – here is an absolute classic which always crosses the mind when I take to the skies;
Yeah, we also love the 1985 George ‘Mad Max’ Miller remake with the bug-eyed John Lithgow as well. Not a bad footnote to your career to having one of Spielberg’s first ever efforts culled from your source material;
Now I haven’t seen this in many years, but I’ll always remember this crazy, existential ending – so yeah spoilers for a 50+ year movie – a film which has quite amusingly been read as a response to the emasculation of expanding feminism of the 1960’s – interesting point;
If that hasn’t blown your puny mind then how about this news, apparently it was Richard’s brother Chris Matheson who wrote Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure – awesome. But let’s close with two all time SF and horror classics, first of all the ultimate Communist metaphor;
One modest interview and finally a Menagerie favourite which I’ve covered numerous times before, easily the best version og his immortal tale of a man alone among the monsters, until he realises that maybe they aren’t the monsters…..
James Gandofini RIP
Some sobering news to wake up to this morning, as Tony Soprano has finally been snatched up by the pizzeria in the sky. Fifty-one is absurdly young isn’t it? I think I first noticed him alongside many others in this infamous scene of True Romance, given it’s incredibly violent nature it kinda feels wrong to push that upfront in an obituary post, so lets open with his first big screen role what he earned when his small screen career really started to gain traction;
There was such a world-weary, hand-dog demeanour on one hand, with a quivering quiet menace on the other, you just know that if he had a couple too many drinks then things could get really ugly around this guy;
In two scenes he totally stole that movie. I also looked his turn in this, proving their was some breadth to his skills beyond Italian American nervous wrecks, and of course he also had a long and distinguished career in theatre before getting picked up by the small and silver screens;
He also had that working class, second son of immigrants aura to him, proudly American but also melded to his home country origins, I think we have to as be obvious as a corkscrew rammed through the ear and close this brief mark of respect with the role he was born to play;
Cannes Canned….
After a spectacularly entertaining weekend down on the South Coast I’ve been catching up with our gallic cousins and their cinema adoring ways, as the 66th incarnation of the worlds most famous film festival closed yesterday. Never a stranger to controversy the filthy minded French decided to award the prestigious Palme d’Or to a lesbian love story which apparently features long sequences of unsimulated sex, thus to maintain my journalistic integrity I will of course (coughs) be seeking this out as soon as it opens in London. I might even go and see it a few times, just, well, ’cause I’m sure it will reward repeat viewings, right? I will obviously have to penetrate its numerous thematic and social layers, so maybe three or four visits should suffice? Jury president Mr. Steven Spielberg esq. explained the rationale behind the decision, stating “The film is a great love story … We were absolutely spellbound by the two brilliant young actresses, and the way the director observed his young players”;
Interesting choice of phrase Steve. Just to be serious for a moment this does sound great, and very timely given the presence of the gay marriage debates and legislation being enacted in certain states of the US and across swathes of Europe. A three-hour long lesbian coming-of-age drama kinda makes a change from Iron Man 3 I guess….
Looking to the land of the rising sun Takashi Mikke’s new one was savaged across the board, I’ll still go and see it and give him a chance, given his proclivity I guess he’s due a dud given the great height’s he’s been hitting over the past few years. Of more interest is countryman’s Hirokazu Koreeda drama Soshite Chichi ni Naru which gentley wooed many of the crowd, and picked up a festival prize as well. Less impressive was Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring which vanished without a trace, although it apparently features a pole dancing scene which auterist spotters have linked back through three of her films, the overall opinion seems to be that the film is as vacuous as its privilged and pilfering characters.
Back in America and Alexander Payne’s Nebraska got a lot of love, and Bruce Dern moseyed off to the sunset with a best actor gong, so I’m really looking forward to this one. It has kind of a The Last Picture Show vibe to it, and those landscapes can look phenomenal when properly photographed in black and white. The Coens also took home the Grand Prix, although I have zero interest in 1960’s folk music, well, it’s still the Coens, and thus is essential viewing. Speaking of zero interest, there’s a biopic of Liberace you say?;
I know that trailer’s been out for a while but I’ve only just sat down and watched it, I predict a Oscar nomination for Mr. Douglas come next February, he’s kinda at the right age to get given a best actor gong isn’t he? Like I said Liberace holds zero interest for me but it’s Soderbergh so like Magic Mike I’ll overcome my antipathy to the source material and give it a chance, as usual it’s got that Soderberghesque lenses, gels and filtered ‘look’, and Matt Damon looks like he’s trying something different as they say. Speaking of elderly sex-pests (Douglas that is, not Damon) Polanski made a complete twat of himself with his dinosaur opinions, given his rather sordid history you’d think he’d be primed to keep his stupid mouth shut? His comments have kinda soured me on seeing his new film Venus In Furs but we’ll see if that opinion changes.
One of the ’emerging’ films which seems to have leapt out from the Croisette is J.C. Chandor’s follow-up to Margin Call (I watched that again earlier in the year and it actually gets better the second time around) which sees Robert Redford surviving a sinking, storm-swept ship. There’s no-one else in it, he speaks maybe a dozen words in the 90 minutes picture, so this sounds like one of those cinematic experiments which when successfully executed can be truly sublime.
Finally, looking over to the genre side of things then Jim Jarmusch’s vampire drama has had a mixed response, with phrases like ‘energetic’ and ‘studenty’ spurting around. Jarmusch has been a like lukewarm over the past years I find, but that’s quite a cast and I’ll give anything a chance which aims to pump some new blood into the post Twilight vampire genre. But you know me gentle reader, even before the festival started I was anxiously looking forward to Refn & Gosling’s second collaboration, and the reports of mass walkouts and boo’s hurled at the screen due to some insanely gratuitous violence have got me all a flutter, what can I say except I guess I’m a sick fuck? Kristen Scott Thomas is apparently phenomenal;
That’s Kubrick’s last cinematographer Larry Smith who crafted those neon glowing visuals, here’s a painful clip – you have been warned.
Cereal Killer….
Hmmm. I was born in Woolwich y’know, although my family moved to East Anglia when I was a few months old, so I don’t really have any emotional connection to the place. Nevertheless yesterday’s events are quite odd to behold as a Londoner, and the inevitable groups across the political spectrum exploiting the murder is truly nauseating, so I could do with a bit of laugh this morning – this did the rounds a couple of weeks ago but it still makes me chuckle, eat your fucking cereal Ryan;
I wonder if Rodriguez is holding emergency marketing talks ahead of the release of his sequel?
RIP Ray Manzarek
Yeah I know, blatantly obvious, but this is one of my all time favourite tracks so that’s my excuse;
BFI John Boorman Season – Beyond Rangoon (1995)
Can a movie change the world? Over their long and illustrious history they have certainly provoked non-fictional responses, shamefully screenings of DW Griffiths still controversial The Birth Of A Nation aligned with an upsurge in lynchings in the deep South, and Spike Lee’s incendary Do The Right Thing is claimed to have sparked a plague of public clashes in New York. Ronald Regan reputedly begin to chill to the prospects of discussions with the Soviets after being moved and stunned by seeing the TV movie The Day After*, but then again he also asked to see the War Room that was depicted in Dr. Strangelove, once he was inaugurated, a tale that one assumes was apocryphal as the alternative is too terrifying to entertain. Closer to home and sticking with TV movies Ken Loach’s brutal Cathy Come Home led to questions in the House Of Commons and new legislation to modernise social service provision, I’m sure there are many other examples where the fictional has influenced the real, where an issue or subject, an event or is brought to the radiating and excoriating sunlight. This brings us to Beyond Rangoon, John Boorman’s scathing portrayal of the military junta in Burma, as seen through the eyes of a naive American traveller played with a sweltering charm of Patricia Arquette. Released in 1995 this was one of the first films to spotlight the regime’s appaling behaviour – atrocities which still occurs daily by the way – and is partially credited with accelerating the release of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, an event which raised the previous invisible issue to the world media and all the attention that has subsequently been directed to that beautiful corner of the planet.
I wanted to revisit this film for a couple of reasons, first of all I remember seeing this on VHS back in the late nineties and being floored by an unexpected slap of a film, a powerful yell for justice and hu, excoriating a litany of violations and suppression which had previously been unknown to me. Secondly I wanted to select something a little of the beaten track for my Boorman season, it would have been too easy to cover the usual suspects of his career – Deliverance, Point Blank, Excalibur – plus if the film was as good as I remembered then maybe a humble review might just prompt some readers to hunt it down and widen its exposure, however infinitesimal. Set in 1988 the film charts the brutal suppression of that years pro-democracy uprising, transmitted through the eyes of audience surrogate Laura Bowman (Arquette) who travels to Burma with her sister Andy (Frances McDormand who is always great) to repair her soul after the murder of her husband and son by burglars. After losing her passport she stumbles into one of the 8888 protests and is tarred with guilt by association, the junta accusing of her of aiding and abetting the insurgents for foreign exploitation, and she is soon on a desperate mission to flee to the safety of Thailand with her new friend U Aung Ko, a persecuted professor whom was one of the central revolutionaries protesting the scripture of Democracy .
Any film that achieves an ‘awestruck’ achievement from the notoriously grumpy Andrew Sarris has to be doing something right (it even got into his top dozen for 1995) but memory is a funny old thing, and I found this film to be a rather turgid affair, with only a few scattered high points of sweltering interest. Maybe it’s the cynic that has festered in me in the past twenty years since the film was released, the idealistic scales falling from ones eyes after two decades of real world events and political experience, or that this movie’s style of storytelling seems clumsy in comparison to today’s hyperkinetic norms, but Beyond Rangoon suffers from a rather patronising tone which takes the time to show just how IMPORTANT it is as if speaking to an impatient child, rather than letting the story unfold organically through Laura’s eyes as witness to the horrific events and struggle for liberty. I’ve always liked Patricia Arquette although she seems to have dropped off the radar in recent years, for some reason the screenwriter has encumbered her with a redundant voiceover which tells us exactly what she is thinking, when this should really be expressed through her performance as she comes to terms with her bereavement through supporting and assisting others. Similarly the Burmese protesters and activists are little more than ideological ciphers, spouting their concerns through political speeches rather than human beings covertly discussing their experiences with a sympathetic alien , overall it’s all quite forced even as you admire the ambition to weld together an important ‘issue’ film with a convincing character study, to make the tonic more palatable for an unsuspecting audience.
As I mentioned before Boorman likes to use a journey as a narrative structure, with his protagonists subtly changing and morphing as their sojourn unfurls, the experiences of life and the people they meet altering their world view and ideology over the course of their odyssey. This is the trajectory of Beyond Rangoon and the film gains a new momentum as it hurtles into its second hour, when John Seale’s expressive photography expands the vista of the film and it actually starts to arrest the attention with drama and peril, the expedition generating some missed heat and drive as Laura frantically navigates the wilderness with her wounded compatriot in tow. Unfortunately an early Hans Zimmer score hobbles some of this liberty with the obvious employment of Far Eastern chimes and wistful panpipe warbling, as one of my favourite contemporary composers (alongside Howard Shore and Clint Mansell since you ask) he falls seriously into cliché mode here, as it is the most obvious choice to employ the native instruments of the culture you are unearthing, especially in such a doe-eyed, sentimental fashion. To be fair though the film’s heart is in the right place and its position as possibly the first serious work to shine a light on the horrendous abuses in Burma shouldn’t be faulted, even if the delivery method of the movie doesn’t match the historical bravery that the movement should be assigned. It seems as if Boorman was the go to guy in filming movies with a mixture of action and issues, usually in difficult foreign climates (see also The Emerald Forest as well as Deliverance), smuggling a little political persuasion amongst the characterisation, which charitably speaking yield mixed results. Whilst we’re on the subject can I also recommend the surprisingly moving Luc Besson biopic The Lady which centres on Aung San Suu Kyi’s extraordinarily brave fight for justice, it’s a much more nuanced presentation of the political intertwining with the personal with a terrific central performance from Michelle Yeoh an achievement which really deserved some award kudos but was sadly overlooked. So that’s my knuckles rapped for being a bit creative isn’t it? Next time I’ll stick to the formula and focus on the agreed ‘classics’ I guess, thinking logically there is a reason why the likes of Hope & Glory and Point Blank are remembered and Beyond Rangoon is relegated to the back benches of cinephile scrutiny….
*One speculates what he would have made of Threads, the UK equivalent which remains one of the most harrowing and terrifying pieces ever submitted to film in my opinion. My entire school generation still shudder at the mention of it…..
Cannes 2013 Film Schedule
What a week eh? I think we can all agree that this is a period we’d all like to get behind us, whether it’s the nauseating hagiography of the worst and most destructive entity to assault my country since the Führer’s Luftwaffe or carnage inducing explosions over in North America, not to mention the mind-boggling decision not to acquiesce to the vast majority of the public’s demand that something needs to be done to control the horrific proliferation of massacre and murder implements – exactly how the fuck can those Senators ever look their constituents in the eye again? Simply unbelievable. Still, we’re here to talk about the movies of course and today saw the unveiling of this years programme for the worlds most prestigious film festival, and whilst I can’t say I’m jumping up and down with excitement there are some appearances which deserve mention. Looking at the list of films in competition I am struck by the same response I experience whenever I receive a new edition of Sight & Sound, namely that I rather arrogantly assume I know a lot about cinema until confronted with a dozen directors and filmmakers that I simply have never heard of – like clockwork this occurs pretty much every month. There is still so much to learn and see, and of course this is a good thing. So forgive me for a rather Westencentric and English language orientated look at what’s on offer, here’s the latest sight of the opening gala selection;
Just posting this makes my skin crawl but one strives to be neutral, as you have gathered I loathe Baz Luhrmann and all the atrocities he has visited upon the cinema, especially Australia and Moulin Rogue which are worthy of particularly venomous scorn. It’s nothing personal, I’m sure he’s lovely chap whom is kind to pets and children but I simply can’t stand his films, and even the threat of repeated molestations by a horde of famished rapedogs couldn’t drag me to the cinema to see this. It wasn’t always this way, I was entertained by Strictly Ballroom for example when that came out back in nineteen ninety whatever, although upon reflection I was smoking a lot of weed then and my critical facilities may have been somewhat warped. Gatsby is a big, prestige product however and some quarters are really looking forward to it, so I’ll pinch my nose and let you make your own mind up.
I think we’re all looking forward to this, it looks ravishing and Refn seems to be powering from strength to strength as his career accelerates, one wonders if he can take the material to the next level or if this will just be a pleasantly violent and stylish thriller yarn. Now, is he still on board for the long languishing Logan’s Run remake or not? I heard that Gosling had bailed but maybe he’s looking at replacements….
This looks like a slightly different tack for the Coens, it’s difficult to articulate but this looks a lot more ‘realistic’ and less mannered than most of their recent output, I can’t say I’m chomping at the proverbial bit to see this but one has to see everything new of theirs at the flicks doesn’t one?
I quite like Sophia Coppola’s movies but this looks a little samey, but then again if it ain’t broke don’t fix it I guess? The woeful travails of the incredibly wealthy, those poor souls navigating their empty lives as they are ferried from fashion show to red carpet premieres, the poor little darlings, it must be so horrid…
And finally as I don’t have the time to delve further at the moment, I don’t want to be a complete philistine and will actually post some foreign language competition, so let’s go with the always reliable Mikke Takashi – looking amusing as always. I didn’t even know Alexander Payne had another film in the can so that’s a nice surprise, a new Polanski is always worth a look and if like me you’re a little lukewarm on this schedule as there isn’t anything which really leaps out as a must see – other than Only God Forgives maybe – there may be some hidden gems tucked away under those directors we’ve never heard of. Now, if you’ll excuse me in keeping with the spirit of the week I’m off to laugh uproariously at some innocent youngsters get torn to pieces by a pack or slavering hell beasts, it’s the only way to keep sane….
Sundance London 2013 – Prologue
What a relief. Yes, the good news that after last years unforseen setback we’ve corrected the course of the good ship Menagerie, and we will be covering this years Sundance Film Festival at the O2 in sunny Greenwich. I’ve been waiting with bated breath to hear about this, whilst I was quietly confident you really never know, but the schedule has just come through so now we have to decide which films to cover. Looking at the programme over the four days and weighing up screening times my current plans revolve around The Look Of Love, Touchy Feely, Sleepwalk With Me, Blackfish, Mud, and In A World, and a certain other picture that we’ll come to shortly. It looks similar to the LFF in that there’s a twin track of Press Screenings which start on the Monday, or you can apply for tickets for the public screenings – tricky. I’m actually working up until Wednesday next week which somewhat throws a spanner in the works in terms of the press screenings, which I assume will be early in the morning or at lunchtime – we shall see. Then again every single one of the 22 films I saw at the LFF in 2012 were at press showings which really isn’t ideal, it’s much more fun seeing movies with a paying audience, there’s certainly more chance of a tangible atmosphere which very rarely materializes when a bunch of jaded old hacks get together for a group grumble. Then again with the great unwashed you’re taking your chances with some Doritos munching, phone fiddling cretin whom might sit next to you and destroy the ambiance through their selfish behaviour, it’s a tough life sometimes. Anyway, there’s still not a great deal around in terms of video trailers for the festival, although I have sourced this which may get the celluloid blood pumping;
Not wishing to leave anything to chance I have separately purchased tickets to a certain Upstream Colour, as there is simply no fucking way on god’s green earth I am missing this film, especially since all of the numerous podcasts I listen to have essentially claimed it as the greatest American film of the past five years which in its own quiet way ‘revolutionizes cinema’. Now, granted, these chaps like myself can veer into the dense waters of hyperbole from time to time but it really does sound extraordinary, and one hopes that the hype can meet the movie. The good news is the Sunday screening is at the O2 Super Screen which to put it bluntly is fucking massive, so I’ll try for press tickets first and we’ll have this screening as our fallback – deal?
I’ll probably wanna see it twice anyway, does this give me an excuse to post the trailer again? I mean, it’s not like I watched it half a dozen times over the weekend or anything. I wonder if Shane Carruth is actually gonna be around for promotional purposes, if so then I might bravely broach my first interview opportunity ever…
Elysium (2013) Trailer
Crikey, it’s all going a bit SF at the moment isn’t it? Everyone seems jolly excited about Matt Damon;
There’s been plenty of speculation that with Oblivion, Elysium and Gravity that this could be a flagship year for original SF material, given that these projects are not derived from pre-existing material such as comic books, TV series, toy lines, board games or other vapid sources. I prefer to remain cautious and will wait to see the quality of the individual missions, the former has received a somewhat tepid response, this I thought has a compelling visual sheen but is keeping its cards close to its chest (which is a complementary observation), and the continued sensor silence on Gravity makes me suspect that there is a serious malfunction that is still being rectified. Still, I’ll catch the Cruiser over the next few days and report back on the first wave’s success or failures…..but for now run from those thetans Tom, run!!;
BFI John Boorman Season – Fellowship Speech
Whilst I turn my attention to the first of my reviews here’s a little more context setting to the programme, a video of the speech that Boorman gave when accepting the highest accolade of the UK industry a couple of weeks ago;
Watch this space for the first review, probably mid-week. In other news my interest grows in The Evil Dead remake which hit over the weekend, I’m hearing reports of it being the most gory, ferociously fun horror film in five or six years, I’m still a little hesitant but the Red Letter Media gang grudgingly gave it a pass and I’m usually in tandem with those sick fucks……
The Witch is Dead….
Y’know, I’ve been thinking through the various ways we could mark todays events, maybe a look at some of the core political films of the era (lots of Alan Clarke, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach in other words), or something along the line of a general movie politics post, but I think I can keep this short and sweet, with an obvious but apt clip;
I don’t wish ill of many people, I really don’t, there’s more than enough hate and divisions in the world, but I think you can make a special case for poisonous political fanatics whose disgusting ideologies and policies are still harming people today – thus I hope she is consigned to the dustbin of history. Good fucking riddance….
Roger Ebert (1942 – 2013)
‘Pearl Harbor” is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle’ – now that’s how you open a movie review. So farewell Roger Ebert, perhaps the last ‘famous’ film critic, an inspiration to many whose movie lore expanded past the mainstream to the arthouse, a tireless campaigner for cinema appreciation and education. It was only when I got onto the web back in those twilight years of the 20th century that I fully appreciated his enormous position in North America as simply ‘the’ face of modern mainstream film criticism, growing up in England my movie eduction revolved around Empire Magazine, the film section of my local library, Barry Norman and the now sadly defunct phenomenon of BBC and yes even ITV film seasons, an educational resource which peaked with those precious few years of Moviedrome. As such I can’t say that I’m enormously moved by his passing on an emotional level as many of my North American colleagues seem to be, I didn’t grow up watching him on the box as my formative cinema tastes were maturing, but I can appreciate the unparalleled impact and influence he had on the movies, and some of the recollections and tributes that I’m seeing are really quite moving. As the plaudits quite rightly stroll in – this Herzog response is probably the best I’ve seen so far – I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t offer something a little more substantial than a couple of sentences and a montage tribute, so lets start with this infamous exchange of fire over what else – a Kubrick movie;
I’m at the age when I prefer to have my preconceptions challenged, not to get angry like a petulant child if someone slates a movie I love or admires a movie I hate, but to make me pause in my opinions and perhaps take a look at something from a different angle, and many of Ebert’s reviews manage that difficult feat. This may sound like damning with faint praise but when I’m throwing together one of my inferior efforts that Chicago Sun Times library is my immediate fall-back position for any links, as I can rest safely in the knowledge that even if his review isn’t positive it will at least be interesting, well written and illuminating, and hopefully make me look as if I know what the hell I’m talking about through sheer osmosis. When scathing, he could also be very funny.
By all accounts he was an upbeat and optimistic guy, even when ravaged by the cruel cancer that took him, unpretentious and modest he walked into the cinema with an optimistic mood, with no hidden agenda to settle scores or stir controversy purely as a profile raising exercise. Enormously prolific he churned out a staggering 300 reviews last year alone, even on the day of his passing no less than seven reviews sprang up on his blog, and he was renown for supporting and encouraging younger writers, taking the time to foster colleagues when he could quite easily remained aloft his perch as the worlds most famous film critic. His politics were also sound, he was a great advocate for Universal healthcare and his writing was excellent beyond the world of cinema, I was directed to this article about a London hotel a few years ago which I thought was fantastic. Unlike many critics he actually had some direct experience of writing for and the production of the movies, working with Russ Meyer no less he was the wordsmith behind the cult classic Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls;
Like any critic he had some personal favourites, he was an early champion of dismissed fare such as Grave OF The Fireflies when Japanese anime was usually dismissed as juvenile (incidentally prefiguring that sudden tsunami of affection for the likes of Studio Ghibli) as he came to every piece with no preconceptions, whether is was animated or documentary he invested the same critical facilities, neither high or low brow, taking each movie on its own, individual terms. Did he always get it right? Well no, quite famously among cinephile circles he hated Blue Velvet in 1986 but was modest enough to revisit the movie some years later and accept that he was wrong (how rare is that in a critic of any field?) and he had a strange affection for the work of Alex Proyas, particularly his choppy Dark City, I love that when someone for whatever reason has an almost unexplained connection with someones work which they can’t quite explain or vocalise, it’s one of those difficult to articulate mysteries of the relations between movie and spectator sometimes, and anyone who also defends Joe Versus The Volcano is OK in my book – here’s his top ten list, and this is oddly sweet.
So his passing marks the passing of an era, there is no-one remotely qualified to step into his shadow in terms of populist, widespread appeal, which is just another symptom of film criticism in the era of the internet I guess – I wonder if 90% of your friends and family could even name another film critic other than Barry Norman or Jonathan Ross, at least if you’re in the UK. Here’s a fine quote summarising his world view which I think is apt, this ideology ain’t a bad way to be remembered ““Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.” – Amen to that, finally this was one of his favourite films of the past decade, so this seems apt to wrap things up;
Roger Ebert RIP
Fuck. Damn. I thought it didn’t sound good when just a few days ago he mentioned he was withdrawing for another round of treatment but this is sudden. I’ll put something more substantive together at the weekend but for now given his American heritage;
One of the all time legends of film criticism and appreciation. FUCK cancer…..
Citizen Lame……
Let’s take a quick break between the reviews as the next assault is going to be quite a lengthy effort, suffice to say Spring Breakers is one of the films of the year, an instant cult classic in the vein of Drive or Monsters that I’ve also attempted to devote an appropriate level of detail, for prosperity’s sake of course. Whilst I get myself all worked up over that lets take a quick look at other developments, first of all this has been doing the rounds and is quite an amusing read, I’m all for the spearing of sacred cows and welcome any alternative to the tedious retreading of hagiographic wisdom, but it does help if you get your damn facts straight. Not wishing to sound patronising or anything (which always makes me think of people who start sentences with ‘I’m not racist or anything but….’) but you can almost picture these twentysomething young whippersnappers, fresh faced out of film / journalism school, their tongues lodged firmly in their cheeks as they enthusiastically sharpen their critical pencils and muse over making a name for themselves via whipping up some controversy by claiming that ‘Citizen Kane? Citizen Lame more like’, or ‘The Godfather?’ that’s like a really rubbish soap opera, yeah? And it’s all in the dark, you can’t even see what’s happening’… I mean c’mon, how you can possibly electronically show your face after claiming that The Third Man is a ‘far superior Welles film’, when of course it wasn’t a bloody Welles film, he’s in three scenes, one of which with dialogue which admittedly is a stone cold classic sequence, yet the controversy rages still on whether he ever wrote or ad-libbed his speech. OK, OK, I’m deliberately being combative, I have no idea about most of these people’s ages or credentials other than recognising some of the sites they contribute to, and seriously I’d quite like to read more expansive reasons for their dislikes (some of which I fully agree with, Jules Et Jim? Most of Fellini? I also fucking loathe Moulin Rogue! with the intensity of a trillion suns so I’m an instant supporter of Jonathan Lack) but this Drew Hunt chap? Sterilisation* springs to mind, to protect the future gene pool. Now, here are some lesbians;
So then rest in peace Jess Franco, one of the worst directors ever to pollute the movie screens. Now I don’t necessarily mean that in a derogatory way, like Ed Wood the man has many devoted supporters as of course sometimes things that are very bad can be thoroughly entertaining, then again having sat through both Oasis Of The Zombies and more recently his bloody awful Dracula picture I’m afraid I’m not one of ’em. But he is quite a titanic figure on the exploitation fan front, as Kim Newman quite succinctly put it ‘RIP Jess Franco, maker of 200 movies, some of which he hadn’t even seen’. Next, NSFW beware, here is the legendary John Holmes documentary which inspired P.T. Anderson to make Boogie Nights, including his commentary – I haven’t watched it yet but I’m told the similarities are quite revealing, if you’ll excuse the pun;
Sometimes I think I think about movies too much, just this morning during the commute I was idly flirting with the notion of a film festival curated by title alone, showing Trance, Vertigo, Sleeper, Dazed & Confused etc. if you catch my drift – can anyone think of any others? Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m off to the BFI for part three of my recent cinematic odyssey, before a brief respite of a few days when I see by the marketing blitzkrieg swamping London that Oblivion has crept up for next weekend, then the Evil Dead remake should hit and then there’s Iron Man 3 and then we’re into May and my BFI tickets have just been confirmed for that month and oh god will this ever end…..
*This is a joke of course. A simple hanging would be cheaper……
Sometimes Films Are Like Buses….
Typical isn’t it, after a quiet, huddled weekend hibernating from the world due to a distinct lack of multiplex opportunities and in order to shelter from this depressing weather – although I did manage to power through screenings of Blackula, Killing Them Softly, The Prehistoric Women, The Boys In Company C and The Limey as well as all of Season 1 of HBO’s Girls and polishing off Season One of Buffy which I am revisiting for my sins – well, after that I am faced with not one, not two but three potential cinema scores tonight. First of all a special preview of Trance at my local cinema which I’m kinda looking forward to seeing after absorbing some interview blurb with Mr. Boyle over the weekend, however this gets its full release on Wednesday so I think I can wait. Secondly an ultra rare, 35mm projection of this is taking place at the Prince Charles Cinema tonight;
Oh well, I’d love to see that on the big screen, particularly in light of an article I have been approached to write for April’s Sound On Sight’s monthly theme. Anyway, instead of these two opportunities I’m off to the BFI for a slightly different event, more on that soon. I guess I should also post the latest World War Z trailer which looks a little more animated than previous offerings, I wonder it that appended Zombie plane attack was one of the reshoots this cursed project undertook in a vain attempt to revitalise this project?;
Louis CK, o2 Greenwich
Given this perpetual winter weather, a persistent mild cold which refuses to be cured and continual economic trembling I reckon I’m due for a laugh, and numerous laughs I got from Louis CK who made his first UK stage appearance in six years at the o2 venue last night. Outside of hardcore comedy aficionado circles he’s perhaps not as well-known here as he is in the States, across the pond he’s something of firmament of the comedy culture and his recent series Louis – now onto its third season – has been securing howling praise across the board, a series which has proved impossible to legally source in the UK until Season 1 began broadcasting on some satellite channel earlier in the year. Other than a few scattered random clips I haven’t watch a single stand alone episode yet, I much prefer waiting for boxed sets to become available and then voraciously devour them in a weekend or staggered over the course of a week (Just mainlined Season 2 of Game Of Thrones, better than the first I thought and great fun) here’s a good example which like the rest of his material is very NSFW;
I’m not sure the gargantuan venue of the o2 was best suited to his brand of slightly confessional, vaguely dirty, mirthfully risqué material, but once he got into his stride he won the 12,000 of us over with particular highlights being the exquisite, ‘c’est magnifique’ status of freshly born ‘straight out of the pussy’ tuna for sharks spinning out from how lucky we are as a species to have evolved beyond the food chain, the usual subjects of sex and dating during middle age, how terrific post divorce life can be, and he even managed to be genuinely insightful and hilarious about one of the most tediously obvious subjects of current debate – social media, the technology and communications revolution and how that is fucking transforming our behaviour and relationships. Now I’m betting my chin-stroking analysis is just lubing up your funny bones isn’t it?;
I like him ‘cause he isn’t just occasionally ‘offensive’ by common cultural standards for the sake of being controversial, it’s clearly in service of making you look at the world and certain issues and aspects of life from a different perspective , the fact that he’s a well honed stage presence, has terrific timing and is a calm improviser doesn’t exactly hurt either. Like any good comedian he left the strongest material for last, fans will be aware of his excellent ‘of course…but maybe’ set closer, if you’re easily offended then it’s probably best to give this strand of his material a miss;
This was the first stand-up show I’ve seen since Doug Stanhope about three years ago, given that I’m remotely fascinated with the stand-up comedy world and the types of people it attracts – I’m a voracious listener to the WTF podcast after Reginald D. Hunter mentioned it in some interview – I really should try harder on the comedy front, I mean jeez, I’ve never even set foot inside the famous Comedy Store after twelve years of London living. Finally, just a very quick RIP to British horror maestro James Herbert. Like any spooky kid the ancient triumvirate of Herbert, Stephen King and Dean Koontz pretty much encapsulated my first graduation to ‘adult’ literature at the age when any young weirdo was graduating from YA material, inquisitively encountering an exciting secret world of gruesome violence and eye-opening sex scenes, particularly in the case of Herbert with some scenes from The Fog warping my adolescent brain. It’s been amusing reading similar reminiscences of my peers across the internet, I’m glad I’m not the only one who has scenes indelibly etched in my mind, and yes one can only hope that the residents of Bournemouth don’t decide en masse to walk into the sea nor the priest administrating his funeral decide to amusingly re-enact that scene from the book. In terms of the movies yes he was adapted a few times but without anything of real merit being summoned, although I was surprised to see that an adaptation of perhaps his best known book The Rats finally got made, or more specifically not that a film had been made but that I’ve never seen or heard of it before this week’s sad news – I don’t think I’ve missed much;
Minty's Menagerie 
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