Cocoon 2011
Just a brief piece of filler, as you’ll have to excuse this Friday evening as I shall be enjoying the arrival of summer with a few cocktails on my recently acquired Thames view balcony, relaxing with my thoughts;
Alas I didn’t get to see Linklater’s film on Wednesday due to some lawyers calling a bloody meeting at 4:30pm which dragged into the evening, hopefully I will make up for this cinematic sleight by catching Malck’s latest over in Greenwich this weekend…..
2001 vs. 2016
I think we can judge that a productive weekend, cleaned the flat from top to bottom, packed everything, watched the first part of Rivette’s mammoth 13 hour Out 1: Noli Me Tangere and rewatched the new Blu-Ray of Antonioni’s L’Eclisse, and even carved out time for a haircut. I was fairly brutal with my purge, consigning to the dust-bin of history many artefacts and possessions, ready for a new sleeker and streamlined Menagerie from next weekend. Never one to miss a coincidence I also stumbled across the embedded documentary which is excellent and consider me deeply impressed – this is the best Kubrick related paraphernalia I’ve seen in a few years. This web sourced documentary on 2001 slowly pirouetted across my news feed, an impeccably researched treatise on the greatest film ever made, with a fine collection of revealing archive photos, technical insights (revolutionary rotoscoping, 35mm separation masters, rear projection, travelling mattes, etc.) and associated production paraphernalia. Nothing particularly new for we long in the tooth fanatics, but fair play to the designers as they’ve really done their homework in terms of the finer details of the production, delving deep beneath the surface to excavate the finer minutiae of the cultural construction, artistic process and decision trees;
It also delves into film grammar, the choices over composition, movement and tempo, with a blistering befuddlement concerning what happened to some of the props and physical artefacts of the production – I wonder how much a genuine approved stylo of Picasso or Rembrandt would go for today? Just from the first section, it is fascinating to me that Kubrick’s decision to strip away some of the films contemporary elements of when it was made – the orbital weapon platforms, cold war exegesis and 1960’s progressivism – the parsing away has made it a real and larger omnipotent work that still resonates across the decades. Anyway, I could go on but we don’t have the time, so I’ll just leave part two for you here. Oh, the coincidence? Well, the address of my new manor also finds a namesake in the vessel that transports Heywood Floyd to the Lunar Base for his briefing on the mysterious monolith – here’s to the future eh?
Star Wars Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015) The George Lucas Edition
Inevitable of course and there are a few of these doing the rounds, but this is just perfect;
Right, I’m off to the BFI for more star gazing, wish me luck….
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Reprise
Once more through the Stargate gentle reader, as if anticipating an appropriate manner in which to celebrate the Minty’s incept date the BFI only go and launch a free members screening of the greatest film of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film was selected by James Lavelle as part of his Meltdown festival which he’s curating through a programme of performances and artistic pursuits hosted at London’s South Bank, he’s a massive Kubrick fan (apparently) and has since shot up in my esteemed expectations, with particular inspiration from the film lavished upon the first UNKLE album. The usual suspects were also out in force with long-time Kubrick producer Jan Harlan also in attendance this for rapturous 70mm restoration print of the masterpiece, like any good acolyte this was my fourth supplication of the film at the silver screen, and like the imperceptible mysteries of the universe it never gets old. I’ve already orchestrated my extensive thoughts on the film here so I don’t have much else to add, apart from a few general comments and some material I’ve collected over the past few weeks;
So have we learned and appreciated anything new coming out of this screening? Well, speaking humbly 2001 is a masterpiece in how it evolved technology and drove the medium of film forward in terms of optical effects, it is a masterpiece in how it shattered film structure and narrative flow, how it trusted its audience to feel in the intentionally designed gaps both intellectually and spirituality, and it is a masterpiece in its marriage of music, composition and performance. There are maybe a few dozen examples of that level of film in the movie’s relatively brief history but what really elevates the piece into one of the masterpieces of any form of human endeavour like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel or Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring is how these elements all oscillate together, how they overlap and ameliorate each other, how they provoked a quantum leap forward in the art form in every one of its formal and artistic levels and that’s when you’re genuinely gracing genius level merit. I hear that the BFI will be premiering a new digital print of the film at the end of the year as part of their epic three-month SF season, I’m sure that’s great and everything but seeing this in immaculate 70mm is simply unbeatable, with all the scratches and matte lines still intact which just feels more, well more genuine. Until then Taschen have followed up their incredible Kubrick and Napoleon books with something truly intergalactic;
So, yeah if anyone has a spare £500 knocking around and you’d like to get me a little birthday present I think we have a solution. I should mention that Jan Harlan was in exceptionally good and exuberant form and he regaled the audience with a few production anecdotes well-known to us Kubrickophiles, he did muster a big laugh when he explained how Stanley wrestled with the voiceover he initially scheduled for the film (and thank god that decision was abandoned eh?), realising that ‘if members of the audience are not of the capacity to understand the film then explaining it to them certainly won’t help’. There are some incredible photos which started doing the rounds recently and I’ve finally taken the plunge and invested in the Kubrick Blu-Ray collection which is a bargain for £22, you will laugh I’m sure when I reveal that like many disciples I had boycotted the product as it quite clearly has been transferred in the wrong aspect ratio for some of the pictures, but for that price I’m sorry but the chance to see Barry Lyndon in HD alone cannot be resisted any further;
How Did This Get Made?
So I’ve found a new podcast occasional readers, How Did This Get Made? is a light-hearted, slightly snarky look at some of the worst films ever made, deconstructed and mocked with a cool mix of humor and affection. They’ve covered the obvious, the Gigli, Birdemic, The Room and Speed 2’s of the world, but their efforts have revealed to me something truly legendary, Ladies and Gentlemen behold the wonder that is Tip Toes;
This is a magnificent find and a stone cold classic in the annals of spectacularly misjudged, incompetently made, complete and utter disasters. Just to be clear in the podcast they’re not poking fun at or denigrating dwarves, or little people of whatever your acceptable nom de plume may be, it’s simply a horrendous film of Ed Wood proportions, with characters who sport the same clothes and costume in every scene despite the film taking place over a year, of scenes that drop into the narrative utterly unconnected to preceeding or subsequent developments, of having Gary Oldman shuffle around on his knees pretending to be a dwarf. It’s not a spoof or a comedy, it was completely serious and even got submitted to Sundance. It is a masterpiece of bad films and you simply have to see it as soon as possible. Speaking of How Did This Get Made?, how the fuck did this get made?
Absolute Genius with a capital G, that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks…..EDIT and would you believe it, it’s Stanley’s birthday today. Coincidence? Yes. Yes it is.
2001 Dragon Titles?
Potential opening titles? Apparently so;
I’m terrified. Fret not, there is still joy and cosmic wonder in the world, I just got sent this which is an outstanding excavation;
That is brilliant, on a purely nostalgia level this is the intro I had on my ‘pristine’ widescreen VHS version of the film that I coveted back in the day, now my eye is drawn to the Blu Ray hovering in the corner. I particularly liked the ‘as fresh as it was twenty years ago’ reference from Terrence Davis no less, a rather stilted analysis by todays standards – pot, kettle, black? – but the appreciation shines through….and to connect the dots of this post….
Frozen River & Kubrick’s Moon
Given the reviews I’ve read of ‘Frozen River‘ since catching it at the Apollo a couple of weeks ago it appears obligatory to use the terms ‘frigid’, ‘blue-collar’ and ‘promising talent’ in any review of the film, the latter phrase referring to lawyer turned writer/director Courtney Hunt who has been working on her debut project for over ten years. Oscar nominated Melissa Leo is Ray Eddy, a trailer park dwelling mother of two whose gambling addicted husband has just fled the coup with the families savings that were intended as a down payment on a new home. The family lives in Northern New York state, an area which straddles the Canadian border on one side and a Mohawk reservation on the other, an enclave with its own state sanctioned legislation and customs where law enforcement are not welcome and will not tread. In the process of attempting to tracking down her husband and recover her savings Ray falls in with the similarly desperate Lila Littlewolf, a young Mohawk mother whose infant child has been remanded into the custody of the tribal elders due to her past criminal activities and grievances with the law. Both women, living in poverty, desperate to support and protect their families almost imperceptibly drift into the smuggling immigrants into the states from Canada, across Mohawk land, Ray’s white heritage ensuring their car won’t be stopped by the authorities. As you’d expect things don’t exactly go to plan…
It’s ‘Thelma & Louise’ in winter without the laughs. The film encompasses all the best that US independent cinema has to offer – good performances, strong characterisations, interesting locations and an emphasis on a social strata not usually covered in American cinema – the working class, the marginalised, society’s forgotten. There are plenty of ideas floating around to mull over, the themes of immigration 
entwined with the native American experience over the past few centuries is interesting, financial imperatives and fiscal survival driving essentially decent people into the realms of illegality, the landscape capturing the bleak realities of both women’s lives as they are of course both skating on the thin ice referenced in the films title. I thought I recognised Melissa Leo and it took a while to click that she was of course the great Detective Kay Howard from ‘Homicide’ back when it was good (essentially the first two or three seasons), I read that she left in despair when the suits started pressuring the shows creators to bring in more conventionally attractive actresses to supposedly boost ratings because of course the reason people watched a smart, cerebral crime procedural show like ‘Homicide‘ was to gawp at pretty ladies right? Idiots. ‘Frozen River‘ was good and recommended although I suspect you won’t be able to catch in the UK very easily, despite the unanimous praise it was showing on exactly two screens in London due to exploding wizards and child robots dominating the multiplexes. I may have got that the wrong way round.
From the intimate to the galactic, ‘Kubrick’s Moon‘ was a panel discussion at the NFT to discuss the movie ‘2001‘ in light of recent technological trends and developments rather than any specific discussion of the films mythology, themes or production history although some of these elements did creep into the fascinating discussion that took place. The delegates were drawn from a variety of disciplines, mostly non-film which was preferable as I didn’t really want to see a re-hash of the same articles, analysis, opinions and observations I’ve absorbed over the years, besides I didn’t want to embarrass anyone by leaping on stage to correct any inaccuracies. That’s a joke. Mostly. Documentary film maker Theo Kamecke was present as was author Simon Ings, BBC science correspondent Christopher Riley and Kubrick assistant Anthony Frewin was on hand to provide some ground zero, firsthand context to the discussions of the film itself and Kubrick’s intentions.
Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic kicked off proceedings with a half hour riveting cantor through the past fifty years or so development of space travel, I’m a convert of what they can achieve with their project which has been built and begins detailed testing in December. Flights will begin at around the £200K mark so it’s probably best to start saving now. The panel discussion then opened up and it was swiftly confirmed what Kubrick got wrong (HAL) and what he got right – everything else. To clarify, we’re not talking about regular lunar commercial travel being in place by 2001, a date selected by Kubrick for its intrinsic elegance rather anything clumsy like 2347 or 2284, more the design and some of the specific environmental observations nestled with the movie. People seem to forget this – the film, after five years of production and shooting – was released before we actually set foot on the moon. Kubrick hired two of the top available specialists – Fred Ordway and Harry Lange– as senior consultants for the film and of course there are tales of how through these connections he coaxed out some of the films legitimacy from technicians actually working on the Apollo project. Frewin provided a comment that had crossed my mind the last time I watched the movie which was that when approached from one angle it could be said to be that 2001 is a film as much about the 1960’s as any supposed prediction for the future – a function of all the best speculative fiction, to take contemporary concerns and developments and extrapolate them into some imagined dimension to better explore their contours and implications without the encumbrance of realism.
The film has an inherent positivism, a vision of humankind reborn, evolved, transformed and the revelation of our sharing of the universe with some unknown, omnipotent guiding force which gives us succour in that we are not alone in a rudderless, indifferent, cold universe – and people say Stan was a miserable sod. The use of technology is simultaneously worshipped (via the monolith’s alien technology) and admonitory in the form of HAL, the films only real character with any sense of personality, one of Kubrick’s little jokes there. Some other general data and anecdotes where thrown around much to the audiences and panels amusement and fascination. A discussion about HAL led into the revelation that the Internet has recently overtaken the 1HB or One Human Brain threshold – it’s actually fairly difficult to track down any clear material on this phenomenon on the very vessel on which it resides – the web – which either can make you chuckle with the irony or like me develop a slight case of paranoia. I think the point is that the number of nodes, of websites and convulsions through its infrastructure has hit the same volumes of neurons firing off in one human brain, if the futurologists are to be believed at this rate of expansion it should equal the entire population of the planet by 2025. I don’t know about you but what with all the porn, conspiracy theories and self important bloggers (like yours truly) I don’t envy the prospect of the net becoming self aware as it would be, in a very real and literal sense, fucked in the head. I’ve seen ‘The Forbin Project‘ too thank you very much. NASA’s monthly payroll cost is $200 million. $200 million. A month. That’s more than the entire development budget for the whole Virgin Galactic programme.
Apparently James Lovelock, the founder of the Gaia movement had his eureka moment when he saw the mythical photograph taken of the Earth from the lunar surface and realised that our humble little planet could be viewed as one organism, all the facets of which are inter-dependant on each other. Whatever your views on the tree-huggers that instinct was instrumental in the detection and measuring of climate change which is a pretty important problem we’re 
currently facing. Some talk was made of Kubrick’s analysis of the Drake Equation (he thought it inevitable that we would make contact) explained by Carl here which led into thoughts of perhaps looking closer to home for purportedly ‘alien’ evidence given the recent exhumation of unusual silicon material from the Mariana trench by the Nereus. To end on a sombre tone, apparently the first message beamed into space from our paltry little rock was by the Nazi’s when they transmitted Hitler’s address at the 1936 Munich Olympics out into the galactic ether. Thanks guys, either some war-mongering, xenophobic green fuckers will pick up that transmission and assume they’ve just been offered out in the galactic equivalent of the pub car park or some peaceful, harmonious celestial solars will see this and decide to nuke us from orbit – we’re screwed either way. Here’s some Kubrick related stuff I’ve unearthed from youtube recently including a brief extract from the Academy Tribute event from 2007, finally if you are ever offered the chance to see this then decline, it’s terrible which was a shame given the pedigree of the people behind the camera.
EDIT – Ok, I was hoping that some of the ‘Avatar‘ footage might have leaked by now but apparently not, probably for the best. Instead here is the stunning Tron 2 trailer which I’ll admit has got my nerd button fully depressed, good ole Bridges is effortlessly cool as always:
Who knows, if it’s a hit then maybe, one day, we’ll finally get that ‘Automan‘ movie…
Che – Part 2 (2009) & 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sort of….
Yeah, so I know I said I would be abandoning my recent trend of Monday matinees but sometimes events conspire to make me a liar. Having already taken the day off to stay up for the Oscars I realised I have a number of movies and film events in the pipeline over the coming few weeks, therefore I really should be making the most of my spare time to ensure I catch what else I can when I can, I really enjoyed the first part of Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che‘ diptych so a cinema visit to round off the project was essential. I’m glad I reconsidered.
‘Che – Part 2‘ follows neatly on from the events in Part 1, concentrating on the revolutionary struggle that the guerrilla icon spearheaded in Bolivia during 1967. In an effort to replicate his earlier successes Che travels incognito to the Latin American battleground and swiftly ingratiates himself with the fledgling Communist revolution against the US bankrolled puppet government of President Barrientos. In a protracted and grim land campaign the uprising is incrementally crushed, the machinations of both the Soviet and American superpowers ultimately rendering the insurrection as doomed to failure. He never really stood a chance.
Together these two films form a powerful cinematic experience, like LOTR ‘Che’ is essentially one film partitioned (yeah I know LOTR was three but you know what I mean) into two distinct segments, I look forward to the DVD/Blu-Ray release to spend a long afternoon puzzling over this enigma. I particularly like the way Soderbergh avoids any obvious psycho-babble to explain Che’s drive and passion, there are no flashbacks in either film to any childhood brushes with authority or some clumsy formative experience that would explain his zealous and all consuming devotion to the cause. The film is much more linear that Part One, there are no trademark Soderbergh hopscotching around the tale’s time-frame, it starts with his arrival in Bolivia, moves through the unfolding events month by month and concludes with his (Erm, SPOILERS) final betrayal and execution. Another first class performance from Del Toro keeps the man ambiguous with a clear aura of charisma that inspired his troops and subsequent student radicals over the past forty years . There were a few unexpected faces in the film, the actress from ‘Run Lola Run‘ as Tania and Lou Diamond Philips of all people as the communist leader Mario Monje, the most surprising appearance however was a blink and you’ll miss it thirty second turn from this blog’s favourite member of FAG. The final few scenes are expertly sculpted, a gripping battle closes the film leading to a sombre yet memorable conclusion. Quite an achievement, more of this type of stuff please? OK, thanks.
So you’re probably wondering what I mean by ‘sort of’. A few weeks ago I noticed in the local press that something called the Starlight Cinema was hosting a free screening of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘ in Canary Wharf. So lets see, Minty’s favourite film, being shown in a free screening on his doorstep – how could I possibly overlook this? I ambled over to the venue and realised that the film was being projected in a business hall I had attended a conference at a couple of years ago, not the most auspicious of environments to see the film but I soldiered on. Unfortunately it was soon revealed that the film was being video projected on a small screen and worst of all as the film began it appeared that some technical genius had screwed up the contrast settings, the projection was out of alignment and there was visible interference between the shifting colors on the AV system that was obviously designed for PowerPoint presentations, not film screenings. You can imagine my reaction. I had planned to to pick up the Blu-Ray of the film to celebrate a certain impending anniversary – more on this early next month – so bailed out after the opening ‘Dawn Of Man’ sequence, for a free screening I can’t really complain although I would have been pissed if I’d had to leg it across London for this experience. C’est la vie.
‘My God, it’s full of Stars….’
I’ve been musing all last night and this morning about how to tackle this sad news and decided that its probably best for the great man to speak for himself (pilfered unashamedly from a comment on Metafilter);
From 2010:
‘Held there by curiosity, and a growing fear of the long loneliness that lay before him, that which had once been David Bowman, Commander of the United States spacecraft Discovery, watched as [its] hull boiled stubbornly away. For a long time, the ship retained its approximate shape; then the bearings of the carousel seized up, releasing instantly the stored momentum of the huge, spinning flywheel. In a soundless detonation, the incandescent fragments went their myriad separate ways. Hello, Dave. What has happened? Where am I?” …
“I will explain later, Hal. We have plenty of time….’
I grew up reading the big three of SF, a love I inherited from my Dad as my family home was littered with books by Clarke and Asimov in particular. I’ve already discussed my relationship with 2001: A Space Odyssey, suffice to say I will be having a tribute viewing over the Easter weekend, I was planning to watch the commentary on the new 2001 DVD release but I think its more fitting to watch it ‘properly’.
I was never much of a ‘hard’ science fiction fan, give me Ray Bradbury, William Gibson or Philip K Dick any day (truth be told with the exception of Gibson and a bit of Iain Banks I don’t read any SF these days) but what I did like about Clarke was his ability to evoke the universe as quite staggeringly beautiful in its enormity, hows it’s mysteries and wonders are almost spiritual in their vastness.
I hope someone’s keeping an eye on Bradbury. Final word from Clarke which I have published here before, but it bears repeating;
‘Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe and sometimes I think we aren’t. Either way the implications are staggering’….
Minty's Menagerie 
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