The Wolves who learnt to swim (Part 5)

Once again I missed a meeting because of Transport for London appalling public service today. The delays are bad enough, but what is totally inexcusable is the fact that no announcements were made on the Piccadilly line before I boarded or even during the 10 minute delay. This has been the case for at least 6 years. I would strongly advise anyone thinking of visiting the 2012 Olympics to think again. And if the services do miraculously improve for that period, you'll know that the government didn't give a shit about the commuting public and their daily lives in the first place.

And while we're exposing some dreadful truths don't forget the utter hypocrisy of the Iyengar Yoga Centre in its treatment of me or that London housing association Dominion Housing Group that similarly buries its head in the sand hoping the outrageous mistakes of the past will just disappear. As doco maker Brit Molly Dineen often points out, the English never really have a relationship with their past, at least not the one that bears much semblance to history. Dead bodies certainly attract press attention but don't seem to change much policy.

Am I being too harsh on London transport? Ask at least 60% of commuters and I think they’ll agree with the criticisms. This week, Mayor Livingstone is promoting London on a trip to India.

ITV Local news 20 Nov and 19 Nov): Ken and the New Delhi tube.
Listen for the public address announcement “Please do not befriend any unknown person.” But only half a million commuters use the Delhi tube compared to 4 million in London. In the 20 Nov. news there’s also a nifty traffic Congestion Charge invention to help, celebs on their favourite London spots (you can also upload your own at Monumentaladventure.com) Tracey Emin on her London landmark and the mucho energy saving Regent Street Christmas lights. The full news on demand tends to remain up for about a week.

The London Transport Musuem re-opens.

TfL to axe £150m Tube upgrades

And still time to catch the last few days of the arts festival celebrating the Kings Cross St.Pancreas opening, Arrivals Festival

Indian and Pakistani art don’t get much of a look-in on the general arts scene but Aicon Gallery's London space opened roughly a year ago in Gagosian’s large former central London haunt. If the art doesn’t immediately seem as ‘cutting-edge’ as elsewhere, it must be remembered that given the state of censorship in their countries these artists are really breaking boundaries. Ijaz ul Hassan was even arrested and solitary confined for his work in the 70’s (under Pakistan’s General Zia). His seminal 1974-5 piece The Rifle Butt is in this show Figurative Pakistan. The London trained Naiza Khan explores female identity with charcoal and acrylic paintings and sculptures in galvanised steel. Easy to get to and well worth a looksy.

Wes Anderson’s latest The Darjeeling Limited
(2007 London Film Festival closer) could well annoy Indian subcontinent purists. It’s not a great film but no Wes Anderson effort can ever be dismissed or is ever boring. (The ICA Wes Anderson day Dec 1, great idea if it’s pissing down with rain outside). Three American brothers (great performances) set off on a train voyage across India to bond after their father’s death. Somewhere in the Himalayas is their mum Patricia (Angelica Huston) now a nun. Anderson has a very sure pacing and editing hand yet Darjeeling doesn’t quite achieve the pathos of his other films. Fun score of old Indian movie soundtracks and Beethoven’s 7th Symphony ,though not simultaneously.

The other new film releases this week are all based on true stories. Werner Herzog’s eagerly awaited Rescue Dawn(just out on DVD States) has huge poster adverts across central London from UK distributor Pathe. Anyone who hasn’t seen Herzog’s extraordinary unique oeuvre is strongly advised to do so. Is Rescue Dawn a little disappointing then? Well, yes and no. Herzog was close friends with the real Dieter Dangler whose plane was shot down in Pathet Lao territory (Laos) and escaped. Ten years ago Herzog made an Emmy nominated doco Little Dieter Needs to Fly. “Dieter never wanted to be a soldier, his only dream was to fly, “ says Herzog. “He didn’t want to go to war, but when he did, he was a good soldier. He was fair, conscientious and loyal. When America gets into turmoil, one misses men like Dieter.” Rescue Dawn’s cast is superb, with Christian Bale’s child-like wonder and tiger’s eye as Dieter totally riveting. What the film lacks is the ‘way-off beam-ness’ of his other work and the triumphant music of Dieter’s rescue is a bit much. But filmmaking such as Herzog’s is rare enough in itself and reason enough to see this film. And I don’t say that ‘sitting on the fence’.

Rescue Dawn the truth

Can Ridley Scott also be considered an auteur? His American Gangster with Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington has just hit Brit screens, a chance to have a think about that question. There was even a New Auteurs discussion at this year’s The Times BFI London Film Festival(LFF) with filmmakers Carlos Reygades (Silent Light released Dec.7), Penny Woolcock (Exodus, broadcast this week on Channel 4 TV, Soda Pictures DVD), Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop – shame I missed this), and Nadine Labaki (Caramel, released March). Reygadas: “I don’t like to see non-faces, it reduces the power of cinema to a fancy-dress party, a Nicole Kidman dressed as an astronaut...it’s normal but I don’t like it in cinema. The style is how you feel things and what is sad in cinema is that form and meaning and divorced [unlike] in music.” For Bahrani, film is “a dictatorship not a democracy. Everyone should rent Herzog’s Burden of Dreams to realise that.” Bahrani's just finished his latest film, “and by the end they [cast and crew] all wanted to kill me!” Penny Woolcock: “God is a complete bastard in the Old Testament...the dystopian vision [Exodus] wasn’t as much a fable as people might think.” Nadine Labaki: “I want to explore other realities, not as an escape, worlds different to my own reality.” But the overriding feeling from that debate was a kind of false humility – ‘we don’t want to work with celebrities, prefer non-actors, and it’s all a collaborative process’. But most film directing requires an ego at least of sorts. The only ‘socialist’ filmmaker I really trust and believe when he says that of the collaborative process is Ken Loach – he was heading one of Time Out’s free Close Up discussions, The Director and the Editor.
It's a Free World

(Sorry - but there's a large chunk missing here because my computer was f**ked. Hope to insert this or I guess I'll just have to re-write it). Well, here’s the re-write (not as good as the first- or maybe it’s better - you’ll just have to trust and ponder with me on that).
So. Is Ridley Scott an auteur or a canny collaborative artist? His seminal Blade Runner has a UK theatrical re-release this week before its world-wide ultimate DVD December outings. American Gangster looks great, feels great but doesn’t seem to originate from inside Ridley Scott greatness. This is the true story of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) decent enough black guy in 70’s Harlem, New York made good/bad through drug running in what was then predominantly racist racketeering. The only clean NYPD cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), whose wife is deserting him with kid, pursues him. Lucas marries the stunningly beautiful, intelligent and savvy Eva (Lymari Nadal)who obviously loves him but we never experience the minute details of what this relationship is about for them. The lives are presented to us not experienced by us.

Ridley Scott is hot (Sunday Times)

Superfly guy (the real Frank Lucas)

Back to the LFF, auteurship and I Always Wanted to be a Gangster. I can’t really better my colleague Jonathan Romney’s catalogue summary suffice to say that writer/director Samuel Benchetrit seems to have seen most movies and truly re-invents them for himself. Auteurship.

I’ve been waiting and waiting and emailing and emailing the US distributor for UK release news of Fay Grim. States DVD Well, no word of general distribution but the LFF screening certainly proved that there’s no-one like director Hal Hartley. This is his first pic in a decade. Remember those films of the 90’s with non-sequitor dialogue, characters who fought like kids in a playground pushing each other around with the palms of their hands, and nifty soundtracks composed by Hartley’s pseudonym Ned Rifle? Well, here’s the sequel to Henry Fool (1998). Henry vanished after accidentally killing someone and his wife Fay (Parker Posey) is being blackmailed by CIA Agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) who’s after the whereabouts of Henry’s 8-volume Confessions. We travel through Paris and Istanbul seen through Hartley’s almost perpetual 45 degree angle High Definition lens. Good or bad? Well, it’s Hal Hartley and he’s back!

Talk to Me is directed by Kasi Lemmons (initially an actress) and written by fellow actor/writer Michael Genet about his dad Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor), programme director for a Washington radio station in the 60’s. He assigns a morning chat spot, much to the consternation of station director E.G. Sonderling (Martin Sheen), to extravert motormouth ex-con Ralph ‘Petey’ Greene (Don Cheadle). “We can’t become the establishment or they’ll turn on us,” says Dewey. The first thing Petey does is slag off Tamla Records and Motown founder Berry Gordy as a capitalist pimp for black musicians. Petey became so popular that 10,000 mourners turned out on a freezing winter’s day for his funeral even in 1984. This film is not auteurship and certainly not gritty, but Lemmons and Genet utilise their acting experience to engender fantastic performances and detail from the leads in a way American Gangster never manages. I could do without the penultimate poolroom scene duologue because Lemmons had already hooked us before this. Dewey nabs Petey a dream spot on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. But when the music intros and Petey slinks through the curtains he realises he has nothing to say to the predominantly white studio audience and leaves with a resulting punch-up with Dewey. He was “keepin’ it real” but it certainly wasn’t “just another suburb of Petetown” as Dewey assured him. There’s a great following scene where Dewey switches on the Tonight Show and says “I learnt to walk, talk and dress by watching [that show]”. Given the provocative material it may seem a tad sentimental to some. But for a fairly mainstream picture like this to start honestly addressing the issues of where do I fit in and have I compromised my integrity to do so, this a real achievement I think.

Billy Corben’s fast-moving doco Cocaine Cowboys is the true story (Scarface, Miami Vice) of the Miami cocaine trade and one which surprisingly hasn’t been told. Miami rose from being a sleepy vacation spot of the 60s to the Paradise Lost of Time Magazine’s Nov 1981 9-page cover story. There were so many murders that the Dade Medical Examiners office had to hire a refrigerated truck from Burger King to store all the extra bodies. And the police corruption so great that the entire police academy class of 1980/81 went onto jail or death. The interviewees often give contradictory stories and some very surreal ones. A fully laden boat smuggler offered to tow a US Customs vessel up the canal after its engine exploded. And while a preacher was giving an anti-drugs sermon, a bale of cocaine from a plane came crashing through the roof. “How many people had to die for the [billions of dollars worth of construction] shiny Miami skyline?” asks a TV reporter.

Another topic we thought had been extensively covered is the history of Brazilian music. Writer/producer Robin Denselow really surprises and enlightens us with Brasil, Brasil(a 3-part doco airing on BBC Four 23rd Nov at 9pm). It’s quite rare you finish watching part one of a series thinking wow, what don’t I know in the next episodes. Well, that’s how you feel after Brasil, Brasil. It traces the music’s history from the early part of the century “God is samba” says one Bahia musician, and the mad monk from the Lisboan court who introduced chorinho (crying) to Brazil, thence the Vargas dictatorship and his national unification through samba of both black workers and the middle-class, the advent of Carmen Miranda and then bossa nova. Don’t miss.

The newish distributor of Cocaine Cowboys, Slingshot Studios headed by Elizabeth Draper also releases the LFF Water Lilies (Naissance des pieuvres) (literally, Birth of Octopuses) in Januray 2008. Set in the uninspiring Paris suburb of Cergy, it’s a FEMIS film school graduation script so impressing jury member Xavier Beauvois that he suggested Céline Sciamma direct the film herself and helped find her finance. “I wanted to get far away from the teen movie genre and erase the codes of today with no mobile phones,” said the sprightly, petite, be-spectacled Céline over an LFF breakfast. “To get in the mind of a girl...the girl’s job of being a girl, the matrix of that where everything is born. As Simone de Beauvoir said, “one is not born a woman, but becomes one.”

The shy flat-chested Marie (Pauline Acquart), her chubby friend Anne (Louise Blachère) and the traditional sexy Floriane (Adele Haenel) are 15 year-olds in a synchronised swimming team. "[I wanted] to avoid the typical situation in adolescence films, in which parents symbolise a kind of law and morality, with stereotypical rebellion scenes. The real enemy in adolescence is oneself, ” said Céline in an interview with Cineuropa.

Boy A (LFF and 29 November Channel Four) from Irish director John Crowley is the harrowing Jamie Bulger like tale of Jack Burridge (fantastic performance from Andrew Garfield (Lions for Lambs) who’s been finally released from his sentence for his part in killing a schoolgirl. He’s assigned a new identity and re-located to Manchester where he finds a job with the help of caseworker Terry (Peter Mullan) and starts a relationship with his boss Michelle (Katie Lyons). But the truth finally outs him. It’s not pleasant subject matter but the moral question of whether he should ever be forgiven angers and preys on your mind long after the film finishes.

Secret Sunshine (Milyang) ( LFF) is written and directed by Korean Lee Chang-Dong (also a novelist) who was involved in South Korea’s New Wave of film and who is currently the country’s Minister for Culture and Tourism. After her husband’s death in a car crash, Shin-ae (Jeon Do-Yeon, Cannes Fest Best Actress this year) moves, with her young son, away from all her family to her husband’s hometown Milyang (secret sunshine). She opens a piano academy and tries to avoid the local Christian group’s kindly persistence yet it’s a very religious film. More tragedy strikes her and Shin spirals into mental disintegration with her ever benevolent, smiley suitor Jong (Song Kang-Ho) feeling utterly helpless. It’s quite an amazing 2.5-hour film, subtly humorous, and shot in a widescreen format that emphasises Shin’s struggle within an ordinary Korean town.

Night Train (Ye Che) (LFF,released Jan 9, 2008 in France by MK2, also Secret Sunshine's distributor) from China’s actor/writer/director Diao Yinan (Uniform) was made outside the Film Bureau framework and is another fascinating female story. Thirtysomething Wu (Liu Dan) works as a court bailiff in Western China and has signed up to a dating agency that proves a scam. She bumps into loner Li Jun (Qi Dao) who’s a security guard on a remote reservoir whose wife turns out to be a death row prisoner Wu arrested. “I admire those who can regain the strength to stand up even when their dignity is deprived, those who can confront the darkness of life with courage. It’s in them that I catch a glimpse of the sacred fire of humanity. I think that oftentimes women’s tenacity and strength surpass men’s, even though on the surface women seem more fragile and delicate,” says Yinan. Another great LFF film that alas may never again see the dark of a British cinema.

François (Under the Sand, 8 Women) Ozon’s Angel (LFF, released by Lionsgate UK next year) is the English language debut for this uniquely stylish French director. Adapted from Elizabeth Taylor’s (no relation) novel, it’s a fascinating take on Romance novelist Angel Deverell (superbly subtle Romola Garai), and inspired by Marie Corelli, an Edwardian (1905) star novelist (a kind of Barbara Cartland) and Queen Victoria’s favourite writer. The script adaptation is by one of England’s most interesting dramatists Martin Crimp.“I’m not interested in what’s real but what’s beneath,” says Angel. She marries a bohemian ‘socialist’ painter of grey canvases Esmé (Michael Fassbender) totally at odds with the lavish, flower-filled Paradise House she has bought in the country. “Angel is a prisoner of the character she’s created for herself to play, “ says Ozon. When a dissolute Esmé returns from the trenches of World War I, Angel’s writing reflects this in a newfound pacifism and she begins losing her readership. Denis Lenoir’s cinematography is highly stylised in the manner of Hollywood melodramatists Minnelli, Powell and Sirk and is totally breathtaking. Exterior carriage scenes etc are purposely shot with outdated, old-fashioned back projection with swelling music by Philippe Rombi.

The Last Mistress (Une vieille maîtresse) (Artificial Eye picked up for UK, IFC in the States) is eternally controversial and provocative Catherine Breillat’s latest and based on the 1850’s novel by Barbey d’Aurevilly. Spanish courtesan Vellini (Asia Argento) is a femme fatale among the aristocrats outdoing almost all her coy costume drama rivals to date. Eat muff Les Liaisons dangereuses ! (not the Laclos original but the more mainstream adaptation). This film is as sexy and just as sensual (if not as hard core) as Breillat’s other contemporary takes on sexuality.

Finally earning a DVD release (no extras) after all these years is Bertrand Blier’s Préparez vos Mouchoirs (Get Our Your Handkerchiefs) from 1978 starring a very youthful Gérard Depardieu and winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. This is a bizarre rather than amusing menage a trois/quartre with Depardieu’s husband trying to cure his wife’s ennui employing the trois but not reckoning on the 13 year-old high IQ kid quatre. Hey, this was the early 70s after all but it’s probably so politically incorrect to even mention such a film in England now. Best thing about it is Depardieu and easy to see from this relaxed, oddly charismatic performance why he became an enduring star. Lots of nice Mozart in the score (Dogma style use) and knitting (not from Depardieu, though he could easily get away with that!) if you’ve got a very broad-minded granny’s stocking to fill at Christmas. Arrow also has infamous photographer David (Bilitis) Hamilton’s soft-porn, cheesy, soft-focus oddity Tendres Cousins (Cousins in Love, 1980). Not many redeeming features unless you're into the bodies of Greek statues but great for that stocking filler when everyone’s blind drunk and for your broad-minded granddad. No worse than all that Facebook stuff, text messaging and ringtones is it?

But back to higher things and brightening London’s miserable, cold, wet, grey, Sunday nights for the pre-Christmas month is the new BBC series Cranford adapted from Elizabeth Gaskell’s writings about 1840’s rural Cheshire. If you’re not really into costume drama then this is for you. Above all it is extremely funny! The Jenkyns sisters (irreplaceable thesps Eileen Atkins and Judi Dench) soak a piece of lace in a bowl of milk, turn their backs and the cat laps the milk and the lace. They grab a long Wellington boot plonk the cat in top, pop some cod-liver oil down his throat and out shits the lace and all (great sound effects) into the boot, which they then wash out. Their young relation from Manchester Mary Smith has come to visit and informs them that the best way to eat an orange is to suck it from the top: “My sister does not care for the expression ‘suck’". Moments later Judi Dench is surreptitiously sucking away. And one certainly can’t have one candle burning shorter than the other “elegant economy”. But the sisters have their redeeming features, “No woman is equal to a man, she is his superior in every single case.” Heidi Thomas’ adaptation steers this full on 1840’s feminism into harbours of constant humour. A co-production with WGBH Boston and hopefully a new era of Gaskell readers will be born through this series.

The noble art of curtain twitching (Sunday Times)

To be continued...