N.B. Pet Shop Boys have an extra London date at the Hammersmith Apollo on June 6. Molly Dineen’s fab doco on British farming Lie of the Land is repeated again tonight on Channel Four’s More 4. And the film Soylent Green is on the BBC in the wee hours of the morning. The TT Races featured in George Formby’s film No Limit are on too in the Isle of Man.
And here's a funky band called Pink Martini to sip Summer vodka with. They played The Roundhouse on their world tour. And this DVD of Ivan Passer's Intimate Lightning sounds great (but I haven't seen it or dealt with this tiny distributor.
The International Olympic Committee(IOC) arrive for tea and biscuits in a few weeks.
Serious concerns have been raised by police over safety and access at one of the Olympic venues.(Video on right hand side)
BBC London News, 30 May 2007
I’ve just learnt that my readership figures dipped a bit last week. Could it be the post-Cannes Film Festival traumatic stress disorder suffered by my industry readers? Or was it the admission that I got drunk and depressed? Absolut verboten! Or the remark agin the Prime Minister and his transport system (hello, doesn’t anyone watch Jon Stewart’s Daily Show no more!) Or perhaps it was the ‘F’ word or the ‘arse’ word. Amazing how prevalent these are in films and TV these days. For example. Magicians (really good in parts, great female casting, but overall a bit slow) was Certificate 15 and had quite a few ‘fucks’, definitely an ‘arse’ but I can’t quite remember about the shove and the ‘hole’. Not that we should all go round with this vernacular
It’s a bit of a week for political correctness films in London. First up, two Australian films (they’ve just had their New York release too). Jindabyne is directed by Ray Lawrence, king of Oz commercials. His adaptation of Peter Carey’s novel Bliss (1985) had a mixed opening reception and we had to wait 17 years for his next one Lantana (2001). A bit like the end of Carey’s novel where the protagonist (a disillusioned ad exec) tries to track down his lost love by planting a tree only flowering every 7 years to attract the bees that make her favourite honey. Jindabyne is based on a Raymond Carver short story 'So Much Water So Close to Home' (also used by Robert Altman in Short Cuts). Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) and his friends go on a fishing trip and discover the dead body of an aboriginal girl in a remote stream. Instead of immediately reporting it, they tether the body to a branch at the water’s edge and continue with their weekend. This is a really fine film. If only it weren’t for the ending of forgiveness and reconciliation (if it were Hollywood financed you could understand) but the funeral ending is in the original story. Not that these qualities are necessarily bad, but the beauty of the film (apart from David Williamson’s - no relation to Oz’s most famous playwright – stunning Super 35 cinematography) is its exploration of ambiguities and scapegoating. Jindabyne is the aboriginal word for valley and the small town and its lake were created by flooding the valley. So ghosts and stories of the past loom large in Lawrence’s film. The dead body is a catalyst for igniting all the repressed blame and emotions of the community. I’ve linked to the Oz not UK site as a little matter of protest, (great poster campaign, though). A PR for the distributor Revolver (refused to give her name) ejected me prior to a screening of a Taking Liberties, a doco about UK freedoms after I loudly complained in the foyer of my transport nightmare to get there. It’s OK to be left-wing in Britain so long as you’re quietly so. If you’re loudly so, then you have to be quiet in your loudness. Of course! I must apologise to that PR. I now understand, she was educating me in quantum mechanics dissent.
The second Oz film is Ten Canoes directed by Rolf de Heer, a Dutch Ozzie who works out of the comparatively unfashionable South Australia. De Heer (and Lawrence, to be fair) embodies what’s best about Australian talent: that ability to see the wood for the trees and really appreciate that bark. He lets these aboriginal characters be alive and present though most of the film is about the past, acting as more a facilitator for their stories. David Gulpilil (Roeg’s 1971 Walkabout) is the English-speaking narrator in a mostly non-professional cast (it’s the first Aboriginal language film hence subtitles) and the inspiration for the film originated in the photographs of Australian anthropologist Donald Thomson. It’s set in the Northern Territory and is a bit of a comedy about a bloke desiring his brother’s wife. The film looks stunning (Ian Jones) and it’s no coincidence that some of the world’s best cinematographers are Australian with that amazing contrast of light and death in the landscape. The importance and uniqueness of a film such as this cannot be overestimated in the history of Oz film and indeed political culture.
Time Magazine article on Rolf de Heer
Aborigines mark the day they became 'humans'
Aboriginal lives: Lilla Watson & Tiga Bayles
Interviews with the indefatigable Oz Exec Producer of Ten Canoes and fount of most film wisdom Sue Murray.
Rolf de Heer interviewed on BBC Radio 3’s Nightwaves. Thursday’s edition has a spot on the financial plight of the BFI’s publishing arm as well as John Boorman's new film. Optimum have his first feature out soon on DVD. The legendary John Calder is also being squeezed by the booming economy.
Waterloo's Calder Bookshop to close
Charade is calling for London volunteers to ‘memorise’ their chosen item of cultural history. Maybe the end really is nigh....better sort out your Donnie Darko giant rabbit coffin now.
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted
Finally, Black Gold, one of Dogwoof’s biggest releases (9 screens- big for a Chihuahua distributor), is out next week. After oil, coffee is the largest trading commodity in the world with sales in excess of $80 billion per year. This coffee doco by Nick and Mark Francis hits you like its eponymous subject. An average coffee farmer receives less than 3 cents for a $3 cup. Black Gold’s Danny Glover is Tadesse Meskele who manages the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, an organisation trying to bypass the exploitative middle-men and give the union’s 74,000 members a better deal. A 1% increase in Africa’s share of world trade would generate $70 billion per year, five times more than the continent currently receives in aid. All the coffee multi-nationals declined to partake in the doco and it’s a shame the directors weren’t a touch more Michael Moore-ish in their quest, because just as in Hollywood, not all of the big dogs and Starbucks honchos are scumbags. But it’s one helluva mountain to climb and be careful of those treacherous North-left faces.
How to survive our fast-food world A Times article about Eric Schlosser and his book Fast Food Nation.
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
9th Circle of Hell
Scott Walker rarely gives interviews, and in the exclusive studio sessions filmed for 30th Century Man of Walker’s 2006 album The Drift, you see garbage bins with plant pots atop scraping away and racks of meat carcass flayed for sound. (Jerry Goldsmith’s score for the original Planet of the Apes used kitchen utensils banging pots and pans). Walker’s moroseness through rawness long ago attracted French enfant terrible director Leos Carax who asked him to score his 1999 film Pola X. It’s now available from those bastions of foreign film Artificial Eye in a box set that includes his first film Boy Meets Girl (1983) and The Night is Young (1986). Like Walker, Carax is difficult, enigmatic and hasn’t made a film since 1999 with opinions varying radically on the level of his talent. But uniquely talented he most certainly is.
Pola X is adapted from Melville's 1852 novel Pierre, or the Ambiguities (Pola an acronym of the book’s French title and X the 10th draft of the screenplay). Carax updates from New York to modern-day Paris and Normandy. Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu, Gerard’s son) has authored a cult ‘Generation X’ style novel under the pseudonym Aladin. Riding his motorbike through forests in the dead of night he meets a girl Isabella (Katerina Golubeva), who claims to be his half-sister. The rest of the film is Pierre’s descent into hell. He leaves his bourgeois mother (Catherine Deneuve) and blond ‘Laura Ashley’ girlfriend to shack up in an anarchists’ commune. Bit like Shakespeare’s Hamlet really. The lobby music of the huge warehouse is not Chopin but a band thrashing out Scott Walker. His publisher, Marguerite, warns him of his downward spiral to the truth by quoting fin de siècle Austrian writer Robert Musil: “This need to spit the world’s sinister truth in its face is as old as the world itself. One can’t resist one’s era without being swiftly punished by it.”
The Night is Young (Mauvais Sang or literally Bad Blood) has a plot allegedly (Carax says) stolen from Raoul Walsh’s 1945 film Salty O’Rourke. And its feel is definitely Godard American movie hommage: a science fiction thriller à la Godard’s Alphaville in which Alex (Carax regular Dennis Lavant) gets caught up with a jeune Juliette Binoche and a gang trying to steal the vaccine for a young lovers’ disease STBO. His first film, Boy Meets Girl, is shot in beautiful black and white by Jean-Yves Escoffier also cinematographer on Mauvais Sang. Charting the key moments of his newly defunct relationship on a crude Paris map hidden behind a print in his bedroom, Alex (Lavant again) wanders the Paris night time streets and meets Mireille (Mireille Perrier) an aspiring actress. They end up at at a kind of Celebrity Big Brother party for those seeking new ‘sell by’ dates. Carax is much more the romantic anarchist than ideological deconstructionist. Indulgent? Maybe. Seductive? Of course, but make another film soon please.
Look forward to Volume 1 of Optimum’s fantastic Godard collection but more of that next week. A Father’s Day present for recalcitrant outsiders, perhaps? Or maybe this set from Godard’s self-confessed Italian equal Piero Paolo Pasolini. Tartan Video has already issued Vol.1 and Vol.2 is also packaged with a novel, Ragazzo from 1955 for which he was indicted on charges of "obscenity". Also two rare shorts and great trailers.(An overview of his life in this Senses of Cinema essay.) Godard, originally a film critic, was an engineer of cinema, pushing and pulling the medium to break its limits and find new ones. Pasolini, originally a Marxist poet, weaves images and words mixing materials like a fashion designer. My favourite of this set is the black and white Hawks and the Sparrows (Uccellacci e Uccellini) 1966, literally big birds and little birds. Opening with Mao’s quote: “Where is mankind going? Who knows!”, it intelligently pokes fun at all the political ‘isms mixing Fellini (Pasolini worked on Nights of Cabiria), commedia dell’arte, with a wonderful St. Francis of Assisi send up where the two protagonists, Ciccillo and Nino, try to convert hawks and sparrows by learning their respective languages of, well, hawking and hopping. The pair has been prompted to do this by a left-wing intellectual talking crow, by the way, “The road begins and the journey is already over”. He hops along with them for most of the film until they get fed up with him and he meets a tasty end. The music is spaghetti western cult Ennio Morriconi and it’s the only film I know where the opening and closing credits are sung!
Pigsty (Porcile) 1969, is probably of most interest to cineastes as it’s been lacking a decent print transfer for ages. Tartan’s, as with the others in the set that also includes Oedipus Rex
(Edipo re) 1967, is absolutely pristine. It weaves two stories. One of a young bourgeois son Julian (Jean-Pierre Leaud) afflicted with indifference, his father an ex-Nazi industrialist. "I discovered that even as a revolutionary I was a conformist," he says to his girlfriend who’s off to piss for peace in Berlin. The other story (probably Julian’s hallucination) has a medieval knight (Pierre Clementi) who discovers cannibalism (opening shot of him quaffing a butterfly into his mouth) and thereafter does battle to feed himself. The browns and mauve greys of the volcanic wasteland look absolutely stunning here. Back at the villa, Julian’s father (Alberto Lionello) welcomes old friend Herdhitze (Ugo Tognazzi) and they enter into a dialectic justifying their political actions. “There comes a time when my abjection of pigs whose bellies can hold an entire social class is purified by regret of the past. And that’s where I’m wrong. When you think about the future [my abjection] becomes even more cynical. And that’s where I’m right, the ambiguity of goodness.” I.e. you can justify anything if you try and always smell of daisies. Of course pigs always receive a bad press and are, in fact, one of the cleanest animals. Julian is so screwed up by this inherited intelligence that he descends into screwing the grunting beasts finally being eaten “out of disobedience” to the social order. “He betrayed us all without ever promising to be faithful.” And it’s all not as hard as you think to watch and certainly more fun than those dialectical materialism textbooks.
Another wayward genius is Mexican (Chilean actually) Alejandro Jodorowsky, so wayward his country disowned his child of 1973 The Holy Mountain when it was revived on the beach at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. “I wanted to wake up [to heal] a society that has been ill since the Middle Ages,” he says of his art. This 6-disc set of his first four films from Tartan is another must for an aging hippy’s Father’s Day for many reasons (Holy Mountain and El Topo available singularly). The three features all have audio commentaries by the director, Holy Mountain (Don Cherry) and El Topo soundtracks are available here on CD for the first time, and the print of Holy Mountain (available only in bootleg copies for years because of Jodorowsky’s falling out with his producer, Beatles manager Allen Klein) is now fantastic thanks to restoration. The before and after are shown in one of the extra features and the colour differences are dramatic, indeed. Kinda important if you’re a visual poet, non? There’s also a feature length doco on the director. Check the Senses of Cinema essay for more info.
Jodorowsky has an extensive theatre background (I wanted to be the Cecil B. DeMille of the happening) that he blends with his rich visual imagination to create “a cinema better than LSD” and says he uses mostly non-actors and interesting weirdos and himself in the lead role. After The Holy Mountain, though, he failed in his attempt to film Frank Herbert’s Dune with Salvador Dali, Pink Floyd, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, Alain Delon to name a few. George Harrison was to appear in Holy Mountain but, according to Jodorowsky, objected to showing his ass being wiped on screen! The Holy Mountain is all about the tarot “a great optic language that talks about the present. If you use it and see the future you become a conman,” Jodorowsky believes. The Alchemist (Jodorowsky) turns the Thief's excrement into gold, then offering to try it on his soul. The opening images are similarly provocative and unforgettable like the Toad and Chameleon Circus - real animals - the former in armour, and the latter dressed in Aztec outfits re-enacting the Conquest of Mexico on the real street. El Topo recently had an airing at the NFT in April – wow, but if you can’t track these films down in a cinema, this box set will do very nicely.
For a chill out, you could try the new DVD of the Pet Shop Boys tour Cubism live last year in Mexico City. The director is David Barnard (Björk, Gorillaz) and behind PSB’s cool, bourgeois exterior lurks pure anarchy. Songs about anti-ID cards (heard the latest New Labour anti-terrorism news?), suburbia, AIDS and the imprisonment of relationships with laid back audio commentary by Tennant and co. I couldn’t help humming and jiving along too.
Pola X is adapted from Melville's 1852 novel Pierre, or the Ambiguities (Pola an acronym of the book’s French title and X the 10th draft of the screenplay). Carax updates from New York to modern-day Paris and Normandy. Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu, Gerard’s son) has authored a cult ‘Generation X’ style novel under the pseudonym Aladin. Riding his motorbike through forests in the dead of night he meets a girl Isabella (Katerina Golubeva), who claims to be his half-sister. The rest of the film is Pierre’s descent into hell. He leaves his bourgeois mother (Catherine Deneuve) and blond ‘Laura Ashley’ girlfriend to shack up in an anarchists’ commune. Bit like Shakespeare’s Hamlet really. The lobby music of the huge warehouse is not Chopin but a band thrashing out Scott Walker. His publisher, Marguerite, warns him of his downward spiral to the truth by quoting fin de siècle Austrian writer Robert Musil: “This need to spit the world’s sinister truth in its face is as old as the world itself. One can’t resist one’s era without being swiftly punished by it.”
The Night is Young (Mauvais Sang or literally Bad Blood) has a plot allegedly (Carax says) stolen from Raoul Walsh’s 1945 film Salty O’Rourke. And its feel is definitely Godard American movie hommage: a science fiction thriller à la Godard’s Alphaville in which Alex (Carax regular Dennis Lavant) gets caught up with a jeune Juliette Binoche and a gang trying to steal the vaccine for a young lovers’ disease STBO. His first film, Boy Meets Girl, is shot in beautiful black and white by Jean-Yves Escoffier also cinematographer on Mauvais Sang. Charting the key moments of his newly defunct relationship on a crude Paris map hidden behind a print in his bedroom, Alex (Lavant again) wanders the Paris night time streets and meets Mireille (Mireille Perrier) an aspiring actress. They end up at at a kind of Celebrity Big Brother party for those seeking new ‘sell by’ dates. Carax is much more the romantic anarchist than ideological deconstructionist. Indulgent? Maybe. Seductive? Of course, but make another film soon please.
Look forward to Volume 1 of Optimum’s fantastic Godard collection but more of that next week. A Father’s Day present for recalcitrant outsiders, perhaps? Or maybe this set from Godard’s self-confessed Italian equal Piero Paolo Pasolini. Tartan Video has already issued Vol.1 and Vol.2 is also packaged with a novel, Ragazzo from 1955 for which he was indicted on charges of "obscenity". Also two rare shorts and great trailers.(An overview of his life in this Senses of Cinema essay.) Godard, originally a film critic, was an engineer of cinema, pushing and pulling the medium to break its limits and find new ones. Pasolini, originally a Marxist poet, weaves images and words mixing materials like a fashion designer. My favourite of this set is the black and white Hawks and the Sparrows (Uccellacci e Uccellini) 1966, literally big birds and little birds. Opening with Mao’s quote: “Where is mankind going? Who knows!”, it intelligently pokes fun at all the political ‘isms mixing Fellini (Pasolini worked on Nights of Cabiria), commedia dell’arte, with a wonderful St. Francis of Assisi send up where the two protagonists, Ciccillo and Nino, try to convert hawks and sparrows by learning their respective languages of, well, hawking and hopping. The pair has been prompted to do this by a left-wing intellectual talking crow, by the way, “The road begins and the journey is already over”. He hops along with them for most of the film until they get fed up with him and he meets a tasty end. The music is spaghetti western cult Ennio Morriconi and it’s the only film I know where the opening and closing credits are sung!
Pigsty (Porcile) 1969, is probably of most interest to cineastes as it’s been lacking a decent print transfer for ages. Tartan’s, as with the others in the set that also includes Oedipus Rex
(Edipo re) 1967, is absolutely pristine. It weaves two stories. One of a young bourgeois son Julian (Jean-Pierre Leaud) afflicted with indifference, his father an ex-Nazi industrialist. "I discovered that even as a revolutionary I was a conformist," he says to his girlfriend who’s off to piss for peace in Berlin. The other story (probably Julian’s hallucination) has a medieval knight (Pierre Clementi) who discovers cannibalism (opening shot of him quaffing a butterfly into his mouth) and thereafter does battle to feed himself. The browns and mauve greys of the volcanic wasteland look absolutely stunning here. Back at the villa, Julian’s father (Alberto Lionello) welcomes old friend Herdhitze (Ugo Tognazzi) and they enter into a dialectic justifying their political actions. “There comes a time when my abjection of pigs whose bellies can hold an entire social class is purified by regret of the past. And that’s where I’m wrong. When you think about the future [my abjection] becomes even more cynical. And that’s where I’m right, the ambiguity of goodness.” I.e. you can justify anything if you try and always smell of daisies. Of course pigs always receive a bad press and are, in fact, one of the cleanest animals. Julian is so screwed up by this inherited intelligence that he descends into screwing the grunting beasts finally being eaten “out of disobedience” to the social order. “He betrayed us all without ever promising to be faithful.” And it’s all not as hard as you think to watch and certainly more fun than those dialectical materialism textbooks.
Another wayward genius is Mexican (Chilean actually) Alejandro Jodorowsky, so wayward his country disowned his child of 1973 The Holy Mountain when it was revived on the beach at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. “I wanted to wake up [to heal] a society that has been ill since the Middle Ages,” he says of his art. This 6-disc set of his first four films from Tartan is another must for an aging hippy’s Father’s Day for many reasons (Holy Mountain and El Topo available singularly). The three features all have audio commentaries by the director, Holy Mountain (Don Cherry) and El Topo soundtracks are available here on CD for the first time, and the print of Holy Mountain (available only in bootleg copies for years because of Jodorowsky’s falling out with his producer, Beatles manager Allen Klein) is now fantastic thanks to restoration. The before and after are shown in one of the extra features and the colour differences are dramatic, indeed. Kinda important if you’re a visual poet, non? There’s also a feature length doco on the director. Check the Senses of Cinema essay for more info.
Jodorowsky has an extensive theatre background (I wanted to be the Cecil B. DeMille of the happening) that he blends with his rich visual imagination to create “a cinema better than LSD” and says he uses mostly non-actors and interesting weirdos and himself in the lead role. After The Holy Mountain, though, he failed in his attempt to film Frank Herbert’s Dune with Salvador Dali, Pink Floyd, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, Alain Delon to name a few. George Harrison was to appear in Holy Mountain but, according to Jodorowsky, objected to showing his ass being wiped on screen! The Holy Mountain is all about the tarot “a great optic language that talks about the present. If you use it and see the future you become a conman,” Jodorowsky believes. The Alchemist (Jodorowsky) turns the Thief's excrement into gold, then offering to try it on his soul. The opening images are similarly provocative and unforgettable like the Toad and Chameleon Circus - real animals - the former in armour, and the latter dressed in Aztec outfits re-enacting the Conquest of Mexico on the real street. El Topo recently had an airing at the NFT in April – wow, but if you can’t track these films down in a cinema, this box set will do very nicely.
For a chill out, you could try the new DVD of the Pet Shop Boys tour Cubism live last year in Mexico City. The director is David Barnard (Björk, Gorillaz) and behind PSB’s cool, bourgeois exterior lurks pure anarchy. Songs about anti-ID cards (heard the latest New Labour anti-terrorism news?), suburbia, AIDS and the imprisonment of relationships with laid back audio commentary by Tennant and co. I couldn’t help humming and jiving along too.
Wednesday, 23 May 2007
8th Circle of Hell
Watch itvlocal.com, London’s local news, tonight(23 May) and you'll understand why the notion of hosting an Olympic games in this city is going to be a farce if not a death trap. Not exponential but excremental! I boarded a District line train around 6.30pm tonight only to be told that there was a signal failure at Victoria as WELL as the reported Bermondsey fire. Pretty hot down there, too. You know what Mr and Miss New Labour; shove your ASBO (anti-social behaviour order) right up your arse till it cripples you. And then experience how well your social transport system deals with the afflicted! Almost every single day there's a nightmare. [Today, Thursday 24 May absolutely crap Metropolitan line due to another signal failure]. And no judicial court in the land will side with your view of things. And to be fair with comment:
Tube and bus plans to help beat the heat this summer
New Victoria line train unveiled to the public
Not much use if we'll all trapped down there sweltering, though.
All the way from Japan: lessons in how to run a railway
I dredged myself out of my depressive slime to write this blog. I'm not looking for sympathy only understanding and intelligence. I really feel like the character out of The Bothersome Man released by the ICA this week. He commits suicide only to find himself in a New Labour Hell. Everything is green in the valley (but no Welsh dissenters please or you'll be phone tapped by central government). So boring is his new 'happy' existence that he throws himself under an underground train. But being New Labour heaven (albeit in Norway), he can't die. Dripping blood, he returns to his understanding New labour wife who, oblivious to his condition, asks if he wants to go 'go-carting' on the week-end. Sounds like my Housing Association once again. I'm very drunk whilst writing this, and who could blame me! Nobody remotely sane at any rate. So, with more blood dripping I'll try to review (honestly) some more DVD's for you.
For Father's Day, there's a really great set of Clint Eastwood movies (half of which he's directed!!!) released June 11, and they don’t duplicate anything from the 8-disc Legacy set from 2002. 8 discs for £39.99 (or even cheaper if you don't look hard enough!) and much better value than Universal’s other Clint Eastwood: Western Icon Collection (2 discs just released in the States). All titles except Breezy will also be released individually on 4 June(RRP: £9.99). I didn't get any review copies, but the boxed set seems like bloody good value to me (you can't even bootleg them for that price!). What can you say? An actor who comes through all that shit to be a world famous actor and director and mayor of the town he lives in. Have another drink, Clint.
NPR (National Public Radio interview from 2000)
Flags of Our Fathers & Letters from Iwo Jima DVD UK released July 9.
As you’ve probably gathered, I don’t watch that much TV but the other night the BBC proved a treat. First up was the first part of Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain. Now forget (or not) the fact that Mr.Marr looks like a Lord of the Rings groupie, and concentrate on his fantastic juxtaposing of historical facts. It’s well in the spirit of this blog actually. Good bit on the rise and fall of Ealing Studios. Passport to Pimlico (48), unmissable and very contemporary; Whiskey Galore (49), same time as the Saraband for Dead Lovers I reviewed, all culminating in the For Sale sign going up in 1955. Ask any Brit film exec and they’ll tell you times haven’t changed that much.
Which reminds me, The Last King of Scotland about the Scottish doctor befriended by Idi Amin is just out on DVD. I’ve seen the film but not a chance to view the DVD. It looks well packed with extras, though; with an audio commentary I’d love to hear because it was quite an Ealingesque feat to get produced. It’s probably what the industry calls a ‘break-out’ film, i.e. one that transcends its national boundaries making world-wide sales. An inevitability of ‘break-out’ is that it’s a bit Hollywood, but that’s not necessarily an evil thing! And inevitably a documentary take, General Idi Amin Dada (Autoportrait) directed by Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female) back in 1974, is even more compelling. Former Brit colony Uganda gained independence in 1962 and Amin’s popular coup d'état was in 1971. The soundtrack is his own accordion music and his English is utterly unique “I think this might be captain of crocodiles. [clapping his hands] He understand me now. He’s moving. And we are now going, actually, to the headquarters of crocodile where they produce more children. And it is a very attraction.” Like Dr. Doolittle, he talks to the animals trying to understand their eating habits. No wonder Schroeder tried to keep an intimate distance. Tangentalising even further, same DVD company Eureka have just issued Pabst’s 1929 silent film Diary of a Lost Girl(Tagebuch einer Verlorenen). Thymian (the iconic Louise Brooks) is unwittingly seduced and made pregnant by her father’s assistant. Packed off to a reformatory she eventually finds salvation in an upmarket brothel. When you think about the time it was made it’s really quite extraordinary. And Pabst’s use of editing and attention to detail make watching it a treat rather than a chore 80 years on. Interesting to contrast this with the ordinary Berlin lives of People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) from the same year (great new score from my colleague Elena Kats-Chernin), and part of Camden Arts Centre’s free film events. Moving on and back to Andrew Marr’s Britain.
The details are great and horrifyingly depressing. You forget, or never knew, that severe food rationing continued well into the 1950’s. Tins of the fish snoek (better than the human biscuits of Soylent Green I guess) “a vile, disgusting mush” were later sold off by the government as fish bait or cat food. Steam locomotives were proudly displayed at the Festival of Britain while France had just gone electric the year before. Socialism gave way to Churchill’s “government of national nostalgia...the new Elizabethan age” in 1951 with notions of “the Commonwealth, a golden future, and a British California”. But at least the country had a National Health Service (NHS) thanks to the socialists. Next up on the BBC was Stephen Fry’s QI. I don’t think BBC America screen this, and if they did, it’d probably be at 3am in the morning. This is a fun, highly educational two-aside panel game deflating conventional wisdom. Hardly quantum physics. Or is it? It’s a myth that Eskimos are all Inuits and that they have 32 words for ice and snow. Four words for snow suffice but they need 32 demonstrative pronouns. So there you go.
A number of celebs tried to debunk their flat-earthist colleagues at the TV BAFTA’s Sunday night. Joan Rivers was a naughty girl showing us the back of her BAFTA when she’d been ordered many times not to. It wasn’t really hers but after her performance art stint she managed to make off with it anyway. Graham Norton was in fine fettle as MC. Granada’s Andy Harries (the real mover, shaker behind The Queen) was justly honoured, and Richard (Four Weddings and a Funeral) Curtis, pooh-poohed Bob Dylan in favour of someone called Gilbert from the 70’s, and recommended that we all watch more TV to become better people. Shades of Soylent Green masquerading as socialism? Surely not. Must’ve been that curry I had at lunchtime.
Anyhow, back to my Tuesday night’s Beebing (English verb that is obvious to all including Eskimos by now): oh, we were already there. Was: an Omnibus on maverick composer Scott Walker. Most of the material is in the feature length 30th Century Man. “Great music to fuck to,” as one interviewee sagely mused. And if it wasn’t for “bleak 60’s England” as Walker put it, he wouldn’t have started writing. Walker has forever been one of my heroes. What can I say? He fell off the map for many years (or was he pushed) and most people outside the business still don’t know who he is. We’ve had Sting doing Dowland, now it’s time for an Elizabethan Age revival of Walker. Vivat hex!
Tube and bus plans to help beat the heat this summer
New Victoria line train unveiled to the public
Not much use if we'll all trapped down there sweltering, though.
All the way from Japan: lessons in how to run a railway
I dredged myself out of my depressive slime to write this blog. I'm not looking for sympathy only understanding and intelligence. I really feel like the character out of The Bothersome Man released by the ICA this week. He commits suicide only to find himself in a New Labour Hell. Everything is green in the valley (but no Welsh dissenters please or you'll be phone tapped by central government). So boring is his new 'happy' existence that he throws himself under an underground train. But being New Labour heaven (albeit in Norway), he can't die. Dripping blood, he returns to his understanding New labour wife who, oblivious to his condition, asks if he wants to go 'go-carting' on the week-end. Sounds like my Housing Association once again. I'm very drunk whilst writing this, and who could blame me! Nobody remotely sane at any rate. So, with more blood dripping I'll try to review (honestly) some more DVD's for you.
For Father's Day, there's a really great set of Clint Eastwood movies (half of which he's directed!!!) released June 11, and they don’t duplicate anything from the 8-disc Legacy set from 2002. 8 discs for £39.99 (or even cheaper if you don't look hard enough!) and much better value than Universal’s other Clint Eastwood: Western Icon Collection (2 discs just released in the States). All titles except Breezy will also be released individually on 4 June(RRP: £9.99). I didn't get any review copies, but the boxed set seems like bloody good value to me (you can't even bootleg them for that price!). What can you say? An actor who comes through all that shit to be a world famous actor and director and mayor of the town he lives in. Have another drink, Clint.
NPR (National Public Radio interview from 2000)
Flags of Our Fathers & Letters from Iwo Jima DVD UK released July 9.
As you’ve probably gathered, I don’t watch that much TV but the other night the BBC proved a treat. First up was the first part of Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain. Now forget (or not) the fact that Mr.Marr looks like a Lord of the Rings groupie, and concentrate on his fantastic juxtaposing of historical facts. It’s well in the spirit of this blog actually. Good bit on the rise and fall of Ealing Studios. Passport to Pimlico (48), unmissable and very contemporary; Whiskey Galore (49), same time as the Saraband for Dead Lovers I reviewed, all culminating in the For Sale sign going up in 1955. Ask any Brit film exec and they’ll tell you times haven’t changed that much.
Which reminds me, The Last King of Scotland about the Scottish doctor befriended by Idi Amin is just out on DVD. I’ve seen the film but not a chance to view the DVD. It looks well packed with extras, though; with an audio commentary I’d love to hear because it was quite an Ealingesque feat to get produced. It’s probably what the industry calls a ‘break-out’ film, i.e. one that transcends its national boundaries making world-wide sales. An inevitability of ‘break-out’ is that it’s a bit Hollywood, but that’s not necessarily an evil thing! And inevitably a documentary take, General Idi Amin Dada (Autoportrait) directed by Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female) back in 1974, is even more compelling. Former Brit colony Uganda gained independence in 1962 and Amin’s popular coup d'état was in 1971. The soundtrack is his own accordion music and his English is utterly unique “I think this might be captain of crocodiles. [clapping his hands] He understand me now. He’s moving. And we are now going, actually, to the headquarters of crocodile where they produce more children. And it is a very attraction.” Like Dr. Doolittle, he talks to the animals trying to understand their eating habits. No wonder Schroeder tried to keep an intimate distance. Tangentalising even further, same DVD company Eureka have just issued Pabst’s 1929 silent film Diary of a Lost Girl(Tagebuch einer Verlorenen). Thymian (the iconic Louise Brooks) is unwittingly seduced and made pregnant by her father’s assistant. Packed off to a reformatory she eventually finds salvation in an upmarket brothel. When you think about the time it was made it’s really quite extraordinary. And Pabst’s use of editing and attention to detail make watching it a treat rather than a chore 80 years on. Interesting to contrast this with the ordinary Berlin lives of People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) from the same year (great new score from my colleague Elena Kats-Chernin), and part of Camden Arts Centre’s free film events. Moving on and back to Andrew Marr’s Britain.
The details are great and horrifyingly depressing. You forget, or never knew, that severe food rationing continued well into the 1950’s. Tins of the fish snoek (better than the human biscuits of Soylent Green I guess) “a vile, disgusting mush” were later sold off by the government as fish bait or cat food. Steam locomotives were proudly displayed at the Festival of Britain while France had just gone electric the year before. Socialism gave way to Churchill’s “government of national nostalgia...the new Elizabethan age” in 1951 with notions of “the Commonwealth, a golden future, and a British California”. But at least the country had a National Health Service (NHS) thanks to the socialists. Next up on the BBC was Stephen Fry’s QI. I don’t think BBC America screen this, and if they did, it’d probably be at 3am in the morning. This is a fun, highly educational two-aside panel game deflating conventional wisdom. Hardly quantum physics. Or is it? It’s a myth that Eskimos are all Inuits and that they have 32 words for ice and snow. Four words for snow suffice but they need 32 demonstrative pronouns. So there you go.
A number of celebs tried to debunk their flat-earthist colleagues at the TV BAFTA’s Sunday night. Joan Rivers was a naughty girl showing us the back of her BAFTA when she’d been ordered many times not to. It wasn’t really hers but after her performance art stint she managed to make off with it anyway. Graham Norton was in fine fettle as MC. Granada’s Andy Harries (the real mover, shaker behind The Queen) was justly honoured, and Richard (Four Weddings and a Funeral) Curtis, pooh-poohed Bob Dylan in favour of someone called Gilbert from the 70’s, and recommended that we all watch more TV to become better people. Shades of Soylent Green masquerading as socialism? Surely not. Must’ve been that curry I had at lunchtime.
Anyhow, back to my Tuesday night’s Beebing (English verb that is obvious to all including Eskimos by now): oh, we were already there. Was: an Omnibus on maverick composer Scott Walker. Most of the material is in the feature length 30th Century Man. “Great music to fuck to,” as one interviewee sagely mused. And if it wasn’t for “bleak 60’s England” as Walker put it, he wouldn’t have started writing. Walker has forever been one of my heroes. What can I say? He fell off the map for many years (or was he pushed) and most people outside the business still don’t know who he is. We’ve had Sting doing Dowland, now it’s time for an Elizabethan Age revival of Walker. Vivat hex!
Monday, 21 May 2007
7th Circle of Hell
Who'd want to live in London the way transport is at the moment? Three major lines down today and its 'pot luck' if you catch the right announcement to guide you in another direction. The weather's crap as well. As it stands, this city doesn't have a hope of providing an infrastructure for a 2012 Olmypic Games. And my view was backed up by a representative from Arups the engineers the other night. Wait for my next dagger!
Friday, 11 May 2007
Part Three: English Stew
Where is the grass greener, then? Well, if you’re climbing up walls, you should take a look at the Royal National Theatre ‘fly’ tower. Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey have been grass artists for almost two decades. And now they’re growing some on those ugly concrete walls of the South Bank. But until they join forces with the quantum physicists and develop a flying grass carpet, like me, you’ll just have to retreat into the world of movies and DVD’s. And Optimum Releasing is doing a great job with helping on that front. Another classic out this week is Saraband for Dead Lovers. We’ll come to comedy later, don’t worry.
Based on the 17th century historical tragedy of Sophie Dorothea’s loveless marriage to England’s King George I in Hanover, it was the first colour feature from Ealing Studios. “Royalty must not look for happiness such as others enjoy. We are not to have hearts. We are not to have feelings. That is not within our province. We have no more right to inequality of temper than the town clock has to irregularities of time. People set their lives by us.” That advice to Sophie from higher up in ‘the firm’ could’ve been spoken by Her Majesty only but yesterday, except that the town clocks in America keep better time than in England. If you were to see this film on afternoon TV (which you never do), you’d instantly be struck by its immediacy of emotion. One forgets that when this was made in 1948, people were still horrified by forbidden passion in high places. There’s no posturing here only wonderfully truthful performances. It’s no surprise that the director Basil Dearden went on to make some of the most ground breaking films of British cinema: Victim (1961) about homosexuality and Sapphire (1959) rascism, and the Rossellini-esque The Blue Lamp (1949). The wonderful production designer on Saraband, Michael Relph, went on to be Dearden’s producer.
Speaking of design, Optimum have also released (bargain price hence no extras) Roger Corman’s horror Masque of the Red Death (1964) his 7th Edgar Allen Poe adaptation (actually it’s two stories). Ever the enterprising cheap skate, Corman’s sets were transformed (art director Robert Jones) by reusing the lavish ones created for Becket (just released on DVD in the States). In addition, he had the young inventive cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, who went on to become another of Britain’s most important directors (the DVD of one of his best, Bad Timing, is just out). The expressionist use of colour to denote psychology state is quite different to most Hammer Horror films (and a prelude to Roeg's later film Don't Look Now). Jane Asher is the young girl caught in Prince Prospero’s (Vincent Price) demonic web. You can also see Asher over the next few weeks in the BBC’s hospital drama Holby City. She still looks ravishing over 40 years later! Maybe there’s something in those Vincent Price movies after all :) Investors stake hopes on revival of the Dracula pictures’ creators
Moving across the English Channel for a moment but still in aristocratic psych probing mode, is the DVD of Gabrielle. It’s the fourth film from one of Europe’s greatest stage directors Patrice Chéreau (triumphs include the controversial 1976 Bayreuth Der Ring Wagner Cycle). I used to saddle my horses in pre-Chunnel days eloping to see his Paris theatre productions. Everything from Racine to the young and exceptional playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès, very little produced in Britain (I tried!). Chéreau rarely tackles theatre now, but Thespis’ loss is most definitely film’s gain. To quote Isabelle Huppert from the copious DVD interview extras: “In some films, you feel you are close up whereas in fact you’re miles away. But a film where you feel the bare bones, something so alive, incredibly intimate, damaged is quite rare.” Based on a Joseph Conrad novella The Return, it charts the unravelling of a Belle Époque bourgeois marriage after Gabrielle (Huppert) has an affair (well a shag actually). Pascal Greggory plays her husband. Chéreau, with characteristic modesty, quotes Roland Barthes: “A little formalism distances you from the truth. A lot of formalism brings you back to it.” More the classical sonata form of Schubert or Beethoven than Debussy or Faure. It’s not an easy film to watch and is quite wordy, in French style. But the use of language (Anne-Louise Trividic’s adaptation) is fascinating as it’s an invented one, neither period nor modern. It’s also shot in Cinemascope (enhanced for widescreen DVD) and I wish I hadn’t missed it in the cinema because it casts quite a spell in that form.
Christophe Honore’s Dans Paris re: contemporary Parisian emotional commitment doesn’t fare well in comparison, and most of the Brit critics found it a quite tedious. Honore is a talented director though and it’s worth a look as Dans Paris’ producer Paulo Branco has a great eye for supporting unusual talent. A Portuguese film of his that still hasn’t had a UK release is Alice (Raindance Fest 2006). You’d think an enterprising distributor would spark into action given the current front page Brit tabloid coverage of the missing 3-year-old Madeleine ‘Maddy’ McCann on the Algarve. Marco Martins’ Alice is very similar and based on the actual Lisbon disappearance of a couple’s daughter. Mario, the father, starts mounting CCTV cameras around the city in desperation as 193 days have passed without a sighting. It’s a poignant, haunting, heartbreaking film of a couple slowly drifting apart through helplessness.
But to end on a lighter note for the weekend, Optimum [again, don’t you hate them :)) ] have an incredibly good value (6 features for £39.99) release of the George Formby Collection. Taking his name from the Merseyside (previously Lancashire) town, George Booth became Britain’s most popular film star when he made No Limit (also released as a single disc) in 1935 about the Isle of Man TT (motorcycle races). Incidentally, does anyone still get taken in by capitalism’s .99p thinking they’re saving a pound and not just a penny? I don’t think even Formby’s characters were as daft as that! My only cavil about this DVD set is the lack of an interview extra (that could have gone on the single No Limit disc) placing Formby in the pantheon of comedy as he’s little known outside the England, let alone a younger generation.
Formby’s gimmick was the cheeky ukulele-accompanied song of his films and his character the hapless working-class outsider who, though the butt of everyone’s joke, ends up the hero getting both the girl and the job. No Limit was directed by Monty Banks, an American Italian who later married Gracie Fields and cut his teeth on Hal Roach slapstick comedies in the States. Even a seasoned cynic like me finds these Formby films irresistible. What's great is that all the comic turns are absolutely plausible, and you feel that given enough time Formby's character could really excel in all the jobs he unwittingly falls into. And within the comedy runs a surprisingly sharp critique of the English class system. Formby's character is a forerunner of Michael Crawford’s accident-prone Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and other classic BBC TV comedies such as It Aint Half Hot Mum and Dad’s Army. Interestingly, Basil Dearden (Saraband) was the assistant director on It’s in the Air (1938), in which the RAF-rejected George Brown (Formby) “If I had any more sense I’d be daft”, ends up RAF pilot in under a week. Dearden also co-wrote the screenplay for Let George Do It! (1940) in which Formby, a member of the Dinkie Doo Concert Party, ends up in Bergen rather than Blackpool replacing a wartime British intelligence officer. Optimum has also released the Terry Thomas films. But that’s another story. Goodnight.
Based on the 17th century historical tragedy of Sophie Dorothea’s loveless marriage to England’s King George I in Hanover, it was the first colour feature from Ealing Studios. “Royalty must not look for happiness such as others enjoy. We are not to have hearts. We are not to have feelings. That is not within our province. We have no more right to inequality of temper than the town clock has to irregularities of time. People set their lives by us.” That advice to Sophie from higher up in ‘the firm’ could’ve been spoken by Her Majesty only but yesterday, except that the town clocks in America keep better time than in England. If you were to see this film on afternoon TV (which you never do), you’d instantly be struck by its immediacy of emotion. One forgets that when this was made in 1948, people were still horrified by forbidden passion in high places. There’s no posturing here only wonderfully truthful performances. It’s no surprise that the director Basil Dearden went on to make some of the most ground breaking films of British cinema: Victim (1961) about homosexuality and Sapphire (1959) rascism, and the Rossellini-esque The Blue Lamp (1949). The wonderful production designer on Saraband, Michael Relph, went on to be Dearden’s producer.
Speaking of design, Optimum have also released (bargain price hence no extras) Roger Corman’s horror Masque of the Red Death (1964) his 7th Edgar Allen Poe adaptation (actually it’s two stories). Ever the enterprising cheap skate, Corman’s sets were transformed (art director Robert Jones) by reusing the lavish ones created for Becket (just released on DVD in the States). In addition, he had the young inventive cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, who went on to become another of Britain’s most important directors (the DVD of one of his best, Bad Timing, is just out). The expressionist use of colour to denote psychology state is quite different to most Hammer Horror films (and a prelude to Roeg's later film Don't Look Now). Jane Asher is the young girl caught in Prince Prospero’s (Vincent Price) demonic web. You can also see Asher over the next few weeks in the BBC’s hospital drama Holby City. She still looks ravishing over 40 years later! Maybe there’s something in those Vincent Price movies after all :) Investors stake hopes on revival of the Dracula pictures’ creators
Moving across the English Channel for a moment but still in aristocratic psych probing mode, is the DVD of Gabrielle. It’s the fourth film from one of Europe’s greatest stage directors Patrice Chéreau (triumphs include the controversial 1976 Bayreuth Der Ring Wagner Cycle). I used to saddle my horses in pre-Chunnel days eloping to see his Paris theatre productions. Everything from Racine to the young and exceptional playwright Bernard-Marie Koltès, very little produced in Britain (I tried!). Chéreau rarely tackles theatre now, but Thespis’ loss is most definitely film’s gain. To quote Isabelle Huppert from the copious DVD interview extras: “In some films, you feel you are close up whereas in fact you’re miles away. But a film where you feel the bare bones, something so alive, incredibly intimate, damaged is quite rare.” Based on a Joseph Conrad novella The Return, it charts the unravelling of a Belle Époque bourgeois marriage after Gabrielle (Huppert) has an affair (well a shag actually). Pascal Greggory plays her husband. Chéreau, with characteristic modesty, quotes Roland Barthes: “A little formalism distances you from the truth. A lot of formalism brings you back to it.” More the classical sonata form of Schubert or Beethoven than Debussy or Faure. It’s not an easy film to watch and is quite wordy, in French style. But the use of language (Anne-Louise Trividic’s adaptation) is fascinating as it’s an invented one, neither period nor modern. It’s also shot in Cinemascope (enhanced for widescreen DVD) and I wish I hadn’t missed it in the cinema because it casts quite a spell in that form.
Christophe Honore’s Dans Paris re: contemporary Parisian emotional commitment doesn’t fare well in comparison, and most of the Brit critics found it a quite tedious. Honore is a talented director though and it’s worth a look as Dans Paris’ producer Paulo Branco has a great eye for supporting unusual talent. A Portuguese film of his that still hasn’t had a UK release is Alice (Raindance Fest 2006). You’d think an enterprising distributor would spark into action given the current front page Brit tabloid coverage of the missing 3-year-old Madeleine ‘Maddy’ McCann on the Algarve. Marco Martins’ Alice is very similar and based on the actual Lisbon disappearance of a couple’s daughter. Mario, the father, starts mounting CCTV cameras around the city in desperation as 193 days have passed without a sighting. It’s a poignant, haunting, heartbreaking film of a couple slowly drifting apart through helplessness.
But to end on a lighter note for the weekend, Optimum [again, don’t you hate them :)) ] have an incredibly good value (6 features for £39.99) release of the George Formby Collection. Taking his name from the Merseyside (previously Lancashire) town, George Booth became Britain’s most popular film star when he made No Limit (also released as a single disc) in 1935 about the Isle of Man TT (motorcycle races). Incidentally, does anyone still get taken in by capitalism’s .99p thinking they’re saving a pound and not just a penny? I don’t think even Formby’s characters were as daft as that! My only cavil about this DVD set is the lack of an interview extra (that could have gone on the single No Limit disc) placing Formby in the pantheon of comedy as he’s little known outside the England, let alone a younger generation.
Formby’s gimmick was the cheeky ukulele-accompanied song of his films and his character the hapless working-class outsider who, though the butt of everyone’s joke, ends up the hero getting both the girl and the job. No Limit was directed by Monty Banks, an American Italian who later married Gracie Fields and cut his teeth on Hal Roach slapstick comedies in the States. Even a seasoned cynic like me finds these Formby films irresistible. What's great is that all the comic turns are absolutely plausible, and you feel that given enough time Formby's character could really excel in all the jobs he unwittingly falls into. And within the comedy runs a surprisingly sharp critique of the English class system. Formby's character is a forerunner of Michael Crawford’s accident-prone Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and other classic BBC TV comedies such as It Aint Half Hot Mum and Dad’s Army. Interestingly, Basil Dearden (Saraband) was the assistant director on It’s in the Air (1938), in which the RAF-rejected George Brown (Formby) “If I had any more sense I’d be daft”, ends up RAF pilot in under a week. Dearden also co-wrote the screenplay for Let George Do It! (1940) in which Formby, a member of the Dinkie Doo Concert Party, ends up in Bergen rather than Blackpool replacing a wartime British intelligence officer. Optimum has also released the Terry Thomas films. But that’s another story. Goodnight.
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
Part Two: English stew
Still in documentary mode, the Maysles' have a retrospective at the NFT this month including a talk this Friday by Michael Chaiken of the Maysles Institute in Harlem, New York. As you'd expect from the NFT there are loads of rare gems here. Shane Meadows gets a retrospective too. Also, a South Bank Show on TV. His latest This Is England opened a few weeks ago to unanimously rave reviews. I first viewed it at last year's Times BFI London Film Festival but was in two minds about it. On a recent second viewing I realised why. Although the film is set in Thatcher's 80's Britain, Meadows' title suggests that things haven't changed that much. And I agree with him. But it's a very emotive subject in this country at the moment with the knives out for anyone who dissents from the views of their friends and colleagues. The BBC's award winning investigative doco slot Panorama broadcast Monday night a provocative piece about the town of Blackburn in Lancashire. Its MP and also Leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw, recently enraged many of his constituents with his view that the wearing of the Muslim veil segregated rather than integrated communities. In September, the Education Minister Alan Johnson has announced a policy of 'community cohesion' endeavouring to make schools multi-ethnic in Britain.
But many British are very wary of these ideas(l). And this was reflected in the recent council elections (a bit like the US primaries) that dealt Labour a devasting blow. This is the context in which This Is England is being seen. But it is very difficult to transcend this context and I'm not sure whether Meadows is quite sure either of which note to strike. It's essentially Meadows' autobiographical coming of age film with the unforgettable Thomas Turgoose as the 12-year-old skinhead Shaun in northern England. (A Guide to Recognising Your Saints looks very tame in comparison.) His dad's been killed in the Falklands war, and though he has a nice mum, he falls in with a motley gang of adult skinheads, who kit Shaun out in red braces and natty shirt. Meadows was championed early on by producer Stephen Woolley after he saw a competition short. He wasn't wrong. At times, This Is England could be Scorsese with its superb pairing of violence and humour. Shaun's kissing lessons with the Boy Georgie girl Smell, short for Michelle (Rosamund Hanson) are brilliant. And Danny Cohen's cinematography (16mm transferred to 35mm) suggests Italian neo-realism more than Terence Davies or the doco-fiction cinema of Ken Loach or Alan Clarke whose Made in Britain is probably the closest British film in comparison. And yet. I still have problems with This Is England. The redemptive ending of Shaun relegating the nationalistic St.George's flag to the seaweed of the sea feels, in the current climate, a party political broadcast for unity and understanding. All the film's characters are meticulously written to show their frailty and confusion of political direction. The king pin of the group Combo (Stephen Graham), having encouraged Shaun to be racist towards a Pakistani shopkeeper, ends up in the clink (we assume) for threatening the guy with a machete. On release, he tries unsuccessfully to make a mends with his ex-girlfriend, presenting her with a little box he made whilst in prison. He weeps. Later he turns nutter on the Jamaican of the gang, Milky (Andrew Shim) later pleading "It's not my fault, I didn't mean it." "They fear us because we're the voice of the people," he says earlier on in the film.
The wounds Milky suffers are for real, and if Combo had an even more 'off' day with the Pakistani, the guy would be dead. As an audience we are made to feel we've had the cathartic experience of a Greek tragedy, though no tragedy has actually taken place. The film's culture mixing of 'ska' music gives way more to a melancholy found in the classical music of British composers such as Finzi and Vaughan-Williams, though none is used. There's no character in the film such as Judi Dench's bitter, malevolent teacher in Notes on a Scandal: a monster you empathise with rather than sympathise.
Mark Wallinger's yesterday short listed Turner Prize State Britain suffers from a similar problem, I feel. (South Bank Show link) In Tate Britain's central hall, the Duveen Galleries, the artist has recreated peace campaigner Brian Haw's Parliament Square protest with its placards and nick-nacks. On 23 May 2006, most of Haw's anti-Iraq war protest was removed after the passing of a government law prohibiting unauthorised demonstrations within one kilometre of Parliament Square. If taken literally, the edge of this zone bisects Tate Britain. Wallinger has been a provocative artist over the years and his latest is no less impressive. However, there's something quite sanitised about walking around the installation. For those, and there will be many, who never passed by Haw's Parliament Square protest, it will undoubtedly be thought provoking. It reminds me though of Umberto Eco's 'simulacra' essay of the postcard and the wax-works becoming realer than the real when the original is unattainable. Maybe a video of the protest's dismantling, or rather a re-enactment, might have worked better. As it is, the work isn't abstract enough to exist in a parallel universe, nor annoying enough to upset anyone. In Oz capital, Canberra, the 'Aboriginal embassy' as it was known camped provocatively on the lawns of what is now the Old Parliament House. It was on an axis between parliament, the lake and the War memorial across from it. It was moved to the secluded trees to the west. Maybe Wallinger should have put his recreation in formaldehyde like Damien Hirst's dead menagerie - adding a touch of Molly Dineen. I don't know. "It's the opposite. We [the British] pretend we're moving forward by severing ourselves from the past," Dineen said in her Nightwaves interview,rebutting Philip Dodd's idea that the British are amnesiacs.
I thought about this the other Friday night as artist Louise Wilson gave a talk about Bill Brandt's WW2 photographs during his London stay. We view them now as respectful historians. How shocking were they when first shown? Remember the US outrage at the photograph of the falling man capturing his leap from the burning 9/11 Twin Towers? When does a piece of journalism become a work of art?
Another unmissable NFT retrospective is the neo-realist Roberto Rossellini. And just out is the DVD of Fellini's The White Sheik (Lo Sceicco bianco) 1952. Fellini met Rossellini in 1942 and worked on several scripts Rome -Open City, Paisa. After La Strada (1954), the Italian Marxists accused Fellini of betraying neo-realism. I Vitelloni ("big slabs of veal") of 1953 was about the alienation of middle-class kids. In The White Sheik, a honeymooning wife (Brunella Bovo) sneaks away to deliver a fan letter to her soap-opera magazine idol accidentally finding herself face to face with the fanzine editor. "Real life is made of dreams (La vera vita è quella dei sogni.)," says the editor. But later in the film the naive bride discovers that dreams can also be "a bottomless pit" after finding herself on the film set and being seduced by the the butcher boy turned 'B movie' Valentino. Leopoldo Trieste, who plays the hapless Chaplinesque husband Ivan, was a screenwriter for Franco Rossi and Pierto Germi among others. But his puppy-dog eyes caught Fellini's when he was scouring for new talent. The film was also the first collaboration with the iconic composer Nino Rota. Good extras on the disc, including the erotic secret spaghetti recipe of Fellini's wife Giuliette Masina (she's the googly eyed prostitute Cabiria in White Sheik, and of course later in Nights of Cabiria), and an interview with keeper of Fellini scripts at Indiana Uni's library in America's mid-West. How very Fellini. The filming of the boat at sea in the film is a trick for low-budget filmmakers to remember. The DVD has a very underwater sound, and in Fellini fashion together with the post-voice dubbing, I didn't really mind. Actress Isabella Rossellini has an exhibition about her father at the Italian Cultural Institute and the Westbrook Gallery (8 Windmill Street, London W1T 2JE (7-26 May). The photographs also appear in a book In the Name of the Father, the Daughter and the Holy Ghosts, published by Shirmer/Mosel in 2006 in Germany and by Haus Publishing in Britain.
But many British are very wary of these ideas(l). And this was reflected in the recent council elections (a bit like the US primaries) that dealt Labour a devasting blow. This is the context in which This Is England is being seen. But it is very difficult to transcend this context and I'm not sure whether Meadows is quite sure either of which note to strike. It's essentially Meadows' autobiographical coming of age film with the unforgettable Thomas Turgoose as the 12-year-old skinhead Shaun in northern England. (A Guide to Recognising Your Saints looks very tame in comparison.) His dad's been killed in the Falklands war, and though he has a nice mum, he falls in with a motley gang of adult skinheads, who kit Shaun out in red braces and natty shirt. Meadows was championed early on by producer Stephen Woolley after he saw a competition short. He wasn't wrong. At times, This Is England could be Scorsese with its superb pairing of violence and humour. Shaun's kissing lessons with the Boy Georgie girl Smell, short for Michelle (Rosamund Hanson) are brilliant. And Danny Cohen's cinematography (16mm transferred to 35mm) suggests Italian neo-realism more than Terence Davies or the doco-fiction cinema of Ken Loach or Alan Clarke whose Made in Britain is probably the closest British film in comparison. And yet. I still have problems with This Is England. The redemptive ending of Shaun relegating the nationalistic St.George's flag to the seaweed of the sea feels, in the current climate, a party political broadcast for unity and understanding. All the film's characters are meticulously written to show their frailty and confusion of political direction. The king pin of the group Combo (Stephen Graham), having encouraged Shaun to be racist towards a Pakistani shopkeeper, ends up in the clink (we assume) for threatening the guy with a machete. On release, he tries unsuccessfully to make a mends with his ex-girlfriend, presenting her with a little box he made whilst in prison. He weeps. Later he turns nutter on the Jamaican of the gang, Milky (Andrew Shim) later pleading "It's not my fault, I didn't mean it." "They fear us because we're the voice of the people," he says earlier on in the film.
The wounds Milky suffers are for real, and if Combo had an even more 'off' day with the Pakistani, the guy would be dead. As an audience we are made to feel we've had the cathartic experience of a Greek tragedy, though no tragedy has actually taken place. The film's culture mixing of 'ska' music gives way more to a melancholy found in the classical music of British composers such as Finzi and Vaughan-Williams, though none is used. There's no character in the film such as Judi Dench's bitter, malevolent teacher in Notes on a Scandal: a monster you empathise with rather than sympathise.
Mark Wallinger's yesterday short listed Turner Prize State Britain suffers from a similar problem, I feel. (South Bank Show link) In Tate Britain's central hall, the Duveen Galleries, the artist has recreated peace campaigner Brian Haw's Parliament Square protest with its placards and nick-nacks. On 23 May 2006, most of Haw's anti-Iraq war protest was removed after the passing of a government law prohibiting unauthorised demonstrations within one kilometre of Parliament Square. If taken literally, the edge of this zone bisects Tate Britain. Wallinger has been a provocative artist over the years and his latest is no less impressive. However, there's something quite sanitised about walking around the installation. For those, and there will be many, who never passed by Haw's Parliament Square protest, it will undoubtedly be thought provoking. It reminds me though of Umberto Eco's 'simulacra' essay of the postcard and the wax-works becoming realer than the real when the original is unattainable. Maybe a video of the protest's dismantling, or rather a re-enactment, might have worked better. As it is, the work isn't abstract enough to exist in a parallel universe, nor annoying enough to upset anyone. In Oz capital, Canberra, the 'Aboriginal embassy' as it was known camped provocatively on the lawns of what is now the Old Parliament House. It was on an axis between parliament, the lake and the War memorial across from it. It was moved to the secluded trees to the west. Maybe Wallinger should have put his recreation in formaldehyde like Damien Hirst's dead menagerie - adding a touch of Molly Dineen. I don't know. "It's the opposite. We [the British] pretend we're moving forward by severing ourselves from the past," Dineen said in her Nightwaves interview,rebutting Philip Dodd's idea that the British are amnesiacs.
I thought about this the other Friday night as artist Louise Wilson gave a talk about Bill Brandt's WW2 photographs during his London stay. We view them now as respectful historians. How shocking were they when first shown? Remember the US outrage at the photograph of the falling man capturing his leap from the burning 9/11 Twin Towers? When does a piece of journalism become a work of art?
Another unmissable NFT retrospective is the neo-realist Roberto Rossellini. And just out is the DVD of Fellini's The White Sheik (Lo Sceicco bianco) 1952. Fellini met Rossellini in 1942 and worked on several scripts Rome -Open City, Paisa. After La Strada (1954), the Italian Marxists accused Fellini of betraying neo-realism. I Vitelloni ("big slabs of veal") of 1953 was about the alienation of middle-class kids. In The White Sheik, a honeymooning wife (Brunella Bovo) sneaks away to deliver a fan letter to her soap-opera magazine idol accidentally finding herself face to face with the fanzine editor. "Real life is made of dreams (La vera vita è quella dei sogni.)," says the editor. But later in the film the naive bride discovers that dreams can also be "a bottomless pit" after finding herself on the film set and being seduced by the the butcher boy turned 'B movie' Valentino. Leopoldo Trieste, who plays the hapless Chaplinesque husband Ivan, was a screenwriter for Franco Rossi and Pierto Germi among others. But his puppy-dog eyes caught Fellini's when he was scouring for new talent. The film was also the first collaboration with the iconic composer Nino Rota. Good extras on the disc, including the erotic secret spaghetti recipe of Fellini's wife Giuliette Masina (she's the googly eyed prostitute Cabiria in White Sheik, and of course later in Nights of Cabiria), and an interview with keeper of Fellini scripts at Indiana Uni's library in America's mid-West. How very Fellini. The filming of the boat at sea in the film is a trick for low-budget filmmakers to remember. The DVD has a very underwater sound, and in Fellini fashion together with the post-voice dubbing, I didn't really mind. Actress Isabella Rossellini has an exhibition about her father at the Italian Cultural Institute and the Westbrook Gallery (8 Windmill Street, London W1T 2JE (7-26 May). The photographs also appear in a book In the Name of the Father, the Daughter and the Holy Ghosts, published by Shirmer/Mosel in 2006 in Germany and by Haus Publishing in Britain.
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
English stew
Just when you thought it was safe to get back on the trains...
Stranded passengers leave trains
Bit like those recorded messages at call centres isn't it,"we know you are waiting" and you finally hang up in anger.
And you'll love this one:
Pregnant woman shot dead in 'parking' dispute
Sounds like the Housing Association I live in (bit like the American housing co-ops only without co-op). Every couple of months you get sent a little glossy brochure from the über association with happy smiling faces, particularly of ethnic minorities. Blurbs describing how fantastic every tenant feels and how their lives have been transformed. The truth is far from...
The various contractors need no coaxing to elucidate on that. I've put up with clutter in the front hallway for years. Then a bike, traversing space getting smaller, and now a bigger bike making it almost impassible. You'd think it was a joke wouldn't you until you read headlines like that in The Telegraph. but we won't name names yet shall we. A little stew anyone?
Someone else the conventional English wise don't like is artist Steve McQueen. Good Artforum review of his Queen and Country by Brit. Martin Herbert. The show travels to London soon. Great article on Saul Levine's films too in the same issue.
Nothing to do with London (unless you live around Dalston) but nice to see that Reha Erdem's Times and Winds I mentioned a while ago has done well at New York's Tribeca Fest.
Tonight (and online for a week) is Nightwaves, hosted by the long ago ousted ex-ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) director Philip Dodd. Contemporary Utopias (how appropriate) and the wonderful Brit doco maker Molly Dineen about her new one. She was definitly in the linage of the Maysles brothers and Fred Wiseman spending upwards of a year or more with her subjects, preferring camera to video, but feeling the need to 'cast' her main subjects.
Molly Dineen and her new film 'The Lie of the Land'
and British Farming Forum and a brief int
Screens Thursday 21.00 tonight and you can watch it on Channel Four's website but only if you're in the UK, alas, and not as video on demand. Those reading this overseas can, however, watch a revealing and honest spot on BBC's Newsnight Is France too Serious? in which Britain's French cultural attaché, Sophie Claudel, says it is time for the French to be more self-critical.
Worth listening to last night's Nightwaves too for a better understanding of current Brit politics.
Stranded passengers leave trains
Bit like those recorded messages at call centres isn't it,"we know you are waiting" and you finally hang up in anger.
And you'll love this one:
Pregnant woman shot dead in 'parking' dispute
Sounds like the Housing Association I live in (bit like the American housing co-ops only without co-op). Every couple of months you get sent a little glossy brochure from the über association with happy smiling faces, particularly of ethnic minorities. Blurbs describing how fantastic every tenant feels and how their lives have been transformed. The truth is far from...
The various contractors need no coaxing to elucidate on that. I've put up with clutter in the front hallway for years. Then a bike, traversing space getting smaller, and now a bigger bike making it almost impassible. You'd think it was a joke wouldn't you until you read headlines like that in The Telegraph. but we won't name names yet shall we. A little stew anyone?
Someone else the conventional English wise don't like is artist Steve McQueen. Good Artforum review of his Queen and Country by Brit. Martin Herbert. The show travels to London soon. Great article on Saul Levine's films too in the same issue.
Nothing to do with London (unless you live around Dalston) but nice to see that Reha Erdem's Times and Winds I mentioned a while ago has done well at New York's Tribeca Fest.
Tonight (and online for a week) is Nightwaves, hosted by the long ago ousted ex-ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) director Philip Dodd. Contemporary Utopias (how appropriate) and the wonderful Brit doco maker Molly Dineen about her new one. She was definitly in the linage of the Maysles brothers and Fred Wiseman spending upwards of a year or more with her subjects, preferring camera to video, but feeling the need to 'cast' her main subjects.
Molly Dineen and her new film 'The Lie of the Land'
and British Farming Forum and a brief int
Screens Thursday 21.00 tonight and you can watch it on Channel Four's website but only if you're in the UK, alas, and not as video on demand. Those reading this overseas can, however, watch a revealing and honest spot on BBC's Newsnight Is France too Serious? in which Britain's French cultural attaché, Sophie Claudel, says it is time for the French to be more self-critical.
Worth listening to last night's Nightwaves too for a better understanding of current Brit politics.
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