London transport? Well, the underground continues to sing the refrain of signal failure but loathed and loved mayor (elections in 4 months) Ken Livingston’s congestion charge to deter motorists from the West End has seemed to speed up the bus routes (at least the one’s I’m on). But Oxford Street will always remain like salmon spawning up river with buses bumper to bumper in most daylight hours. And no free bus transfers as in New York on your Oyster Card or anything else. However, after 3 journeys on your Oyster the cost is capped at £3 and then you can make as many bus trips as you want. But topping up your Oyster Card with cash or credit from the machine isn’t as self-explanatory as it seems, as I recently discovered. And if I was a car driver I'd feel pretty miffed too at paying the congestion charge without much incentive to catch public transport or cycle with things as they are.
The Court of Ken (Channel Four's Dispatches)
Figgis film leads Ken's politeness push
Personally, I don’t really care if Ken sips scotch all day and has stress relief in his office every afternoon so long as the trains and buses run uncrowded and on time :)
Who'll pay £1.9bn cost of Metronet collapse, ask MPs
Second train fare strike planned
Our Daily Bread finally reaches a wider audience (2006 London Film Festival). Director Nikolaus Geyrhalter lets the documentary footage of vegetable/livestock cultivation and preparation speak for itself with no music or commentary. Very effective.
A site devoted to stories and photos of the contents of people's fridges from around the world e.g. Esmeralda's fridge in Copan Ruinas,Honduras.
The Big Food Fight (Channel Four)
BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth
Filmmaker Mag on two Sundance docs Fields of Fuel and IOUSA.
Cash carrot for obese people to lose pounds
And Jermey Paxman on BBC's Newsnight chairs a debate about food. Footage too of last journos allowed to investigate Silbury Hill.So, is the Hayward Gallery show (part of its 40th birthday celebrations this year). Laughing in a Foreign Language going to cheer you up? And is that really the point? It’s highly unlikely that the ushers will ever act as warm-up men wearing red noses on their knees or ears or taking your tickets in the mouth of a Gordon Brown glove-puppet that asks you for another 20 pence for your free guide booklet (why the Hayward didn’t accept that piece of mine I shall never know :)I guess it opted for the wall scibbles piece instead. The show takes a while to get the hint of a smile before you encounter Martin Walde’s The Key Spirit where keys are strewn in front of a locked door behind which a cat ceaselessly meows. There’s more than a hint from the quotes in the booklet that your experience is going to be more akin to a Pinter play than even one by Alan Ayckbourn: “Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter,” reads the Nietzsche quote. And I’m always aware of film director Billy Wilder’s quote they quote when writing this blog: “If you’re going to tell the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.” But there comes a point (particularly in London) where you only have to present the actualities of experience for things to be hysterically funny. Jack Dee comes close to that and comedian Mark Thomas did it literally (eg oh look, the plans for the MI6 (Brit intelligence) building are available on the internet, truly, or he’d ring up a local council and ask about their nuclear evacuation plans, to which one finally replied ‘we put out plastic road cones’). Thomas is still alive. Just.
Your initial encounter at the Hayward is of Julian Rosefeldt’s large video triptych Clown, a tropical forest with an extra guest. Then its Chinese/Austrian artist Jun Yang with his small video of a Chinese man smuggled into Europe who struggles with the contradictions of the West. South African Candice Breitz has a room to herself for her video of five Japanese actors trying to communicate in only the few Japanese words known by the artist. Marcus Coates’ Journey to the Lower World is him performing a Siberian animal spirit ritual to some residents in a Liverpool tower block. One of the simplest and funniest pieces of the show is what looks at first to be a small crouching figure huddled against the gallery wall Untitle me forlornly reciting the names of London tube stations. You can use him/her as a stool to sit on but the figure is so resigned to its existence that it doesn’t even go ‘ouch’ when you do. Taiyo Kimura’s other piece is laundry basket voyeurism. Perhaps the ‘laughtest’ video comes from the seasoned Guy Ben-Ner who uses himself and his family (in this case his son cast as a feral child) filmed in his own house. (I wrote about his latest IKEA piece some months ago). Other well known names include Jake and Dinos Chapman and David Shrigley. Doug Fishbone mounts kiddies ‘joke machines’ at adult height spewing grown-up jokes when you press and Roi Vaara’s video Artist’s Dilemna twists the Robert Frost poem The Road Less Travelled by having a man on an iceflow vacillating side to side of a sign that points Art in one direction and Life in the other. You can buy the £26 poster for this or the 60 pence postcard in the bookshop to forever remind yourself of your mortal coil. Vaara also has a performance piece Wet Paint Handshakes in the show. And making you feel like you could be an artist too, or alternatively the joke’s on you, is the talking cardboard box as you exit. Not strictly part of the show in the Project Space (free entry) upstairs from the cafe, don’t miss Ed Young and Artemio’s Hollywood Remix where they re-edit Gladiator (well, bits of it) and in another room Marlon Brando’s ‘the horror’ speech from Coppola’s Apocalypse Now edited into Apoohcalypse Now with Winnie the Pooh collecting pine cones and grappling with an air rifle. Maybe kids of today are editing that way in their heads already anyway.
Written in 1908, the first poem of Khlebnikov’s Incantation by Laughter had every word in it deriving from the Russian smekh, the Russian for laugh. So what emotion does the Royal Academy’s new blockbuster show From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg engender?
Brian Sewell makes no bones about his: What an ugly business in (London Evening Standard)
He’s also in his usual candour when remembering Sir Anthony Blunt (ousted Brit spy for the Russians and keeper of the Queen’s pictures)Unearthing an interview with a spy
But I can’t agree with Sewell about Matisse’s The Dance (1910). After an introductory rather plain Room 1 of Russian art, Room 2 entices you with the French paintings collected by the textile merchants Morosov and Shchukin and now housed in the great Russian gallery collections. Tastes will obviously differ, but for me the Cezannes, in particular the Mont Sainte-Victoire painted in the year of his death 1906, were transfixing. It startles you all the more if you’ve made the journey to see his studio view for yourself. It’s as if he’s transporting Saint-Victoire through the window to within his atelier in ‘Dr.Who time-lord’ brushstrokes. Danse II then envelopes you entering Room 3. This was a Matisse commission by Shchukin to hang at the top of grand Moscow staircase. And it certainly had its detractors at the time. Another version (Danse I) hangs in New York’s MOMA. It’s so often reproduced in tawdry colours that to see the painting in the flesh is truly awesome. Photographs Matisse took of the work’s progress still exist and my one real cavil about the entire show is the lack of poems, letters, photos from the time. The penultimate Room 7 has a wall of enlarged photos so it obviously wasn’t ‘policy’ to exclude them entirely. And the master works are so strong that it really wouldn’t have detracted from them to have some extra stuff around them. You could also argue that if one is relatively unfamiliar with the period this show tantalises you enough to seek more info by yourself anyway. But the period is so much richer in avant garde Russian poetry etc than many of the paintings on show that it does itself a slight disservice. A mid-way rotunda and exit does, however, display a model and video reconstruction of Vladimir Tatlin’s unbuilt revolutionary tower Monument to the Third international from 1920. In whatever he did, Tatlin was an extraordinary figure as a couple of early paintings from 1911/12 show. Tatlin called to artists to ‘take control over the forms encountered in everyday life’ (the Constructivists).
But back to Room 3 and I certainly agree with Sewell that Picasso’s 1908 Dryad (1908)really is a masterpiece. It reminded me of those sci-fi films and HR Giger where the creature somehow assembles itself from its surroundings. Picasso has his Dryad formed as if from the trees and rocks of the forest heading straight toward you but not necessarily aggressively only out of necessity. If the show is trying to convince one that the French influence of the magnates’ collections changed the course of Russian art it certainly fails. Many of the painters went to Paris anyway. Picasso recounts Tatlin visiting his Paris studio, playing the accordion and communicating only through gestures. A photo and a story like this would really benefit the show. Bonnard’s large Summer Dance (1912) radiates across the room opposite Danse II with an almost psychedelic tsunami of flora. And further on lies a Kees van Dongen, Lucie and Her Partner (1911) whose characteristic emerald flashes appear in several Russian imitators. Many of the Russians seem less influenced by the French and more by Italian Futurism (Marinetti had visited St Petersburg in 1914). The poet Filonov is an example of this and his German War (1914) is horrifyingly prescient of the years to come. There was a legend that Filonov's ghost protected his art and anybody trying to steal his paintings or to smuggle them abroad would soon die, become paralyzed, or have a similar misfortune. Room 8 is a fitting final act to this opera with the Suprematism black squares and crosses of Malevich mounted like revolutionary flags, Kandinsky’s crazy ‘psychological effect of pure colour’ collisions, Rodchenko’s ‘alien’ sphere and Mikhail Matyshin’s Movement in Space (1922) whose colour streams launch you out of the show through the Tatlin again and into another orbit, really making you feel you’ve been part of the space race.
The 'first Futurist opera' revisited
Alexander Rodchenko: Revolution in Photography (Hayward Gallery Feb 7)
Durov’s Pig
The Guardian article
History of the player-piano industry Rolls, Records and the Return of Myra Hess
Heiner Goebbels’ massive music theatre piece (my blog review of Wars I Have Seen)
[Addition] A shame there's no podcast of Saturday morning's (2 Feb)BBC Radio 3 CD Review piece on Harmonia Mundi at 50. Indy classical label (orig Baroque music niche)still going strong in the digital download age. But there is a podcast of Music Matters Marina Frolova-Walker's new book Russian Music and Nationalism.
Another great show in a string of hits for the Tate is Juan Muñoz at the Tate Modern. I missed what everyone says was a fascinating show in the large Turbine Hall Double Bind (2001) that opened shortly before his death. Otherwise, Muñoz is probably best known for his sculptures of railings, balustrades and balconies that out of context don’t seem like much but in a show like this prove to be at the heart of his exploration of the illusory nature of support of any kind. And this is pretty obvious even to the untrained eye. In Room1, the drawing of a balustraded balcony floats mid-air on brown paper and a sculpture has wooden totems bundling together for support in what resembles an iron firetower. The Wasteland (1987), taking its title from the T.S.Eliot poem, is a whole room with optical patterned floor overlooked by a small bronze figure sat childlike on a shelf. This feeling of undermined assurance is furthered with his First Banister (1987) where Muñoz incorporates a real switchblade hidden from view and ready to strike; nearby a drum has been punctured with scissors. Two Ballerinas (1989) balance on semi-spherical bases like the scales of justice only one holds a pair of scissors in the other hand. Muñoz’s theatre becomes even more pronounced with The Prompter (1988), a room with a raised bare stage populated by a lone drum shrinking way at the back, and foregrounded by the prompter’s box shielding a dwarf. (The Tate hopes to acquire this piece). The show becomes increasingly unsettling with ‘pregnant presences’ looming large. One Figure (2000) has a man almost cradling a mirror; the side of his head pressed against it with eyes closed almost in a despairing ‘please’. Many Times (1999) is a room comprising 100 figures identically modelled on an Art Nouveau ceramic bust from a London hotel. They’re all smiling but the visitor feels more on view than they do: “It’s always been said that statues are blind,” Muñoz once commented, “They are looking inwards, and that looking inwards automatically excludes the receiver, the person in front.” In the penultimate room ‘Wasteland’ resin casts Seated Figures with Five Drums (1999) each cradles his drum in vain hope: one has it propped against his back, one as a footstool, one against his mouth, one at his feet, and one cradled like a dead child. Again, the figures appear to have no eyes. The preceding room has a figure from the car crash of Loaded Car II (1996) with backlit shadow and a mouth open in a ‘Bacon-esque’ scream of despair. The seated power play of Shadow and Mouth (1996) in the last room has one figure whose mouth to the wall is animated by an electric motor, while Staring at the Sea (1997-2000) has two men on tip-toe in cardboard masks in vain animation at the mirror, “They are there to tell you something about your looking, but they cannot, because they don’t let you see yourself,” writes Muñoz. The only figures in the show with any authority or ‘terra firma’ are ironically the Opposite Balconies (1991) mounted high up in the passage between Rooms 7/8. Their integration into society’s norms seems so complete that they look almost ferriferously ossified. And don’t miss the intrigues of Muñoz’s filmed radio play on the cafe’s video screen or those on the headphones as you exit or his Josef Conrad illustrations on Level 3. Take the kids and they may just thank you in their later years for pre-empting the harbouring of any illusions of a balanced society.
Sweeney Todd (trailer) has none of those after suffering almost two decades in Australian penal servitude discharged back to Dickensian London as dissolute and dumb as any Munoz figure.
Tim Burton’s film version of Stephen Sondheim’s (young lyricist for Bernstein’s West Side Story) 1979 Broadway musical could easily vie for an unseen opera haunting Munoz’s Wasteland stage. The musical is often performed in opera houses by big singers but Burton’s film is essentially what most ‘great’ opera aspires to: the intimate revelation of private passions amidst musical maelstrom. Helena Bonham-Carter as Mrs Lovett mothers Todd (Johnny Depp) back into barbering with her tiny almost sotto voce sweet voice and in return is fathered with human mincemeat for her ailing pie shop. (Remember that the red and white pole originates from barbers also being surgeons). The chorus from the original score has vanished and instead we have Todd’s dystopian vision animated by his reflection of the past in the knife blades and mirrors incessantly intoning a mantra of revenge on Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who once deprived him of his love(Laura Michelle Kelly) and daughter Joanna (Jayne Wisener) now Turpin’s ward. The film is even shot in silent movie mode, scenes tinted in steelish blue-grey or sepia to denote emotional states. “We could have a life,” says Mrs Lovett to Todd, “maybe not what I dreamed and not what you remember but we could get by.” Her jaunty, dreamy By the Sea is the only scene vibrant in colour yet reminiscent only of waxwork dummies in a holiday shop window. Joanna gets rescued, having been incarcerated by the unrequited Turpin in an asylum, and resigned with sage youthful scepticism asks of her boyish suitor (Jamie Campbell Bower), “The ghosts never go away...Run away and all our dreams come true?” The saddest music of them all settles on Mrs.Lovett’s young apprentice Toby (Ed Saunders) who reassures her like a gentle David against Goliath with “no-one’s gonna harm you Not While I’m Around”. Without spoiling the end for you, Toby could so easily ossify into another Todd after the experiencing the horrors yet to come as in Schubert’s song Litany for the Feast of All Souls: “Rest in peace all souls/ Who a fearful torment past/And those who never smiled at the sun/But under the moon lay awake on thorns”. Superb performances all round that must include Timothy Spall’s ‘swamp-creature’ beadle and Sacha Baron-Cohen (Pirelli), Toby’s be-headed master.
South Bank Show on Tim Burton
The Times on the rising stars of the cast
David Mamet’s gory descent into hell play Edmond directed by Re-Animator’s Stuart Gordon is out on Tartan DVD (my blog review).
“Don’t stir up the past,” says one of the characters in Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (San Xia Hao Ren-三峡好人), (literally Good people of the Three Gorges) winner of this year’s Venice Film Festival top prize the Golden Lion. Shot sumptuously on HD (high definition video) in the flooded and dammed Three Gorges region along the Yangtze River, Han Sanning and Shen Hong search for their past in Fengjie. The story matters less than the giant fish bowl in which they swim: strange events such as a building rocketing into the sky and a tightrope walker are witnessed as if happened in another world outside the glass bowl. Meanwhile, the minutia of consumption and sustenance, cigarettes, candy, wine and tea are foregrounded in close-up like sediment endlessly circled by the fish.
Jia Zhangke retrospective at the BFI
Nightwaves (Tues 29)
Chinese Wasteland (CinemaScope Mag)
Edward Burtynsky Quarries, not as radical as Cezanne but certainly photographs that heighten our powers of observation.
An architecture that should be impossible (Financial Times)
The Bothersome Man-Den Brysomme mannen (Verve's UK DVD offshoot Drake’s Avenue)
Tough Enough (Dogwoof DVD)
“O that the slave had 40,000 lives, one is too poor, too weak for my revenge,” quotes Orson Welles’ magnate Manderson from Shakespeare’s Othello in Trent's Last Case (1952) “...less that her body and her beauty unprovide my mind again. I’d rather be a toad,” his adulterer John Marlowe (John McCallum) completes the phrase, “and live upon the vapour than keep a corner in the thing I love for others’ uses.” It’s an hour before Welles appears on screen, his American financial tycoon character found dead with reporter Phillip Trent (Michael Wilding)in pursuit of the truth. He was probably the only actor able to steal a scene with a few words in a reverse shot not his own, hidden by an armchair and a haze of cigar smoke. And then he’s only on screen for all of 12 minutes. The plot is familiar but worth it just for Welles and of course Margaret Lockwood as his wife. Directed by Herbert Wilcox who began as a producer and director as far back as the 1920's.
Diana Dors was championed as the busty Brit Marilyn Monroe but few knew her consummate acting ability as seen in Yield to the Night
(1956) loosely based on the Ruth Ellis capital punishment story (Dance With a Stranger). Told in flashback from her prison life director J. Lee Thompson’s camera angles are mordantly off-key. No surprise he went onto direct The Guns of Navarone, 1961 and Cape Fear,1962. Note the opening scene of Trafalgar Square showing that it once had trees.
Dors shows off her trademark curves in a rather small early role Lady Godiva Rides Again. Godiva is Pauline Stroud who eventually gets shot of the beauty pageant lark into the arms of an Ozzie pineapple farmer John McCallum (a slightly less famous Peter Finch bloke). Also Joan Collins in her movie debut as an uncredited beauty pageant contestant.
For something far more sophisticated Lady Chatterley is out on DVD (my blog review)and so is Yella (my blog review).
I had an interesting quizzing from perception guru Richard Gregory on to what extent an actor’s role can inhabit and effect their daily life after a discussion on Gimpel Fils (Wellcome Foundation funded Neurotopographics) In turn he recounted the fascinating story of his unrealised collaboration with Roman Polanski, a huge fan of Gregory’s Eye and Brain back in the 70’s, with the director wanting to make an entire feature in 3D.
Polanski at Sundance (sort of..)
I saw again Gus van Sant’s Paranoid Park and marvelled at Chris Doyle’s stream-of-consciousness cinematography, and had a really fun time listening to the cast of The Shield Channel Five in the UK. The Shield- The Complete Fifth Season ">(4 Discs)DVD commentary. Season 5 is the one guest starring Forest Whitacker who the cast adored. All right, the commentary may be self-congratulatory but they have a lot to congratulate about. And they’re awesome fun to be with! Good story on The Shield’s place in contemporary TV: “One of the editors worked on a network TV show...and he kept on saying ‘why is this character doing this?’ Eventually he got ‘shut down entirely’ and they kept on saying ‘why are you asking these questions?’ He was so used to everything making sense...The Shield and its characters being completely motivated, and editing that way that he couldn’t deal with doing network TV anymore because half the shit was unmotivated and didn’t make any sense.” 7 days a week filming, 9 pages a day. Way to go. (You’re allowed to dig art house movies too). Apologies to the fine talents of Jeff Goldblum and director Frank Darabont, but Raines (ITV3 in the UK) about a detective who sees dead people to solve his crimes is cringingly funny, “Where are we going now? asks the ghost. To check the programme guide for something else is our only reply.
If Man in the Chair were made by a first-time director you’d be impressed but hoping that he’d be less sentimental in his next opus. Director Michael Schroeder is quite a veteran, though, having worked on 45 features and directed nine. Nice punky auto-theft film buff kid Cameron (Michael Angarano) befriends alco-ish old timer ‘Flash’ (Christopher Plummer) who turns out to have been a gaffer on legendary films such as Citizen Kane. Flash introduces the kid to equally legendary screenwriter (M. Emmet Walsh) and Cameron enlists the decaying veterans and others at the retirement home for his film about the state of care for the elderly. The performances are magnificent, Plummer especially, and more than reason enough to see this film. But the script is no where near as nuanced and timely as Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages. Man in the Chair is a great movie if you need some help with your parental reconciliation date.
A wonderful childs-eye view of family problems is Libero (Along the Ridge -Anche Libero Va Bene)
Filmed with inventive simplicity mostly at the eye-level of Renato’s (co-writer/director Kim Rossi Stuart) son Tommi (Alessandro Morace), Renato is drowning in debt, hot-tempered and whose frequently caring but absent wife Stefania (Barbara Bobulova) “is a girl whose pussy’s always itching for more” in Renato’s words. “Adults can make great mistakes (which they hasten to minimize), little kids, in fact, have the capacity to forgive and understand their suffering with disarming force,” says the director. Kim Rossi Stuart has had good acting roles in high profile films such as Michele Placido’s Romanzo Criminale, Antonioni’s Beyond the Clouds, and Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio (seen only once in a UK festival). Libero proves he’s an enormous talent to look forward to.
The feature debut of Russian Andrei Kravchuk The Italian about an illegally adopted 6 year-old (Kolya Spiridonov, reason to see the film) escaping to find his birth parents seems somewhat staid alongside Libero in spite of excellent production values. Far more haunting is the black and white El Violin(also from the UK indy distributor Soda Pictures) written, directed and produced by Mexican Francisco Vargas. There’s hints of Polanski’s The Pianist here with elderly non-actor Ángel Tavira (winner of Best Actor in Cannes’ 2006 Un Certain Regard) as the one handed violinist (as in reality) Don Plutarco who returns to his military occupied farmhouse, striking a rapport with the steely-eyed music-loving captain (seasoned actor Dagoberto Gama) as a guise to smuggle out the rebel ammunition buried in the cornfield. With Bunuel’s Los Olvidados (The Hopeless Ones) as his benchmark, Vargas tells his tale with unsentimental simplicity.
Marketa Lazarová
is rarely if ever seen on a big screen, though that’s the way it should be seen given the film’s extraordinary poetic imagery. 160 min of black and white mid-13th century power play is not to everyone’s taste but this DVD proves claims of the film’s greatness. The shoot lasted over two years and director Frantisek Vlácil describes the finished film as a “Film-Opera” of the battle between Christianity and paganism: “Recently I’ve come to feel that socialist thinking has in fact stopped developing, and turned into a religion, in which the dogmas and principles are untouchable. If you take a poke at them, you are a heretic.” Actress Magda Vásáryová (Marketa)was originally up for the role in Sophie’s Choice and is now a Czech diplomat and independent Presidential candidate in Slovakia. Another cinema gem beautifully transferred by Second Run DVD. Peter Hames' The Czechoslavak New Wave and The Cinema of Central Europe from Wallflower Press.
If that’s to your taste try Kino (in the States)The Films of Sergei Paradjanov (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors/The Color of Pomegranates/The Legend of Suram Fortress/Ashik Keri).
And finally one of the craziest, most extraordinary plays of post-war British theatre, Edward Bond’s The Sea. Revived at the National Theatre by Sam Mendes a decade or more ago, Jonathan Kent directs a crème de la crème cast at the Haymarket Theatre where I first trod the British theatre floorboards.
The fine Dame Eileen Atkins
Haven’t seen this production but if ever there was a play to inspire a crazy avant-gardist back to directing in the theatre, this would be it. Shakespeare included, of course.
Arts bodies await funding list
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Thursday, 24 January 2008
i lifted up my dichotomies and found a rock
Here's an advance preview of an exciting weekend of events for the Hayward Gallery's new exhibition Laughing in a Foreign Language. More on that fun show and many others things when I get my head around them...
In the meantime:
Brian Haw violently assaulted then arrested at downing street today
Peace protester injured in demo
Court case data CDs lost in post
No fines for New Year rail fiasco firm
Why laziness is the best option at the bus stop
Dossier on Iraq WMDs 'must be made public
In the meantime:
Brian Haw violently assaulted then arrested at downing street today
Peace protester injured in demo
Court case data CDs lost in post
No fines for New Year rail fiasco firm
Why laziness is the best option at the bus stop
Dossier on Iraq WMDs 'must be made public
Friday, 18 January 2008
The aesthetics of almost
“A film can’t be true but it can be sincere,” states film Austro-German director Michael Haneke in an interview for his Code Inconnu (Code Unknown) (The French Collection: Vol 1 & 2 DVD). And in his essay Violence + Media, partly quoted in this last year’s Times BFI London Film Festival programme, (for his own English language re-make of his Funny Games) he furthers this point: “This endless one-upmanship [between film and TV reality] led to a permanent quest for maximum intensity that has resulted in growing confusion between reality and fiction.” Last week, two American films Charlie Wilson’s War and Dan in Real Life met a somewhat unfavourable Brit crit reception for not being, in a nutshell, ‘true to life’. And anyone who reads this column with any regularity will know I’m not a particular fan of ‘social realism’ but rather heightened realism. It’s quite like the term ‘naturalism’ used in theatre, a term that has nothing to do with realism in the common sense at all. As I noted last blog, the new Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile) wouldn’t have had the same subliminal impact had it not been for the ‘heightened realism’ of the cinematography that to all intent and purposes looked ‘naturalistic’. And this week abounds with further examples.
But first let me give an example of daily observation, or the lack of it. There’s a well-frequently dance studio near Bond Street (won't name,wasn't life threatening)where I used to do class many-a-time (in those days, not so long ago, with taped-over holes in the floors big enough to catch your foot on). But that got sorted. Finally. (A bit like ‘mind the gap’ on the underground.) Are you surprised? Anyway, I went in to take class the other day; paid a mandatory daily membership on top of the class fee only to find the male changing room had become the ladies. “First floor” a worker bee buzzed in passing. Wander, wander, wander like a lonely cloud all the way to the top floor finally alighting back at reception. “There’s been a flood in the toilets,” says a female worker bee adding slightly more enlightening instructions to the alternative. No signs anywhere, I might add, and the alternative a toilet with space for one with no shower. Back down the stairs wasting my limbering time. “Any chance of my daily membership being refunded?” I asked reasonably and forlornly (as I didn’t have full use of the facilities and would ‘whiff’ all through my subsequent meeting and all the way home). The response was not unlike the underground ‘we’re sorry your experience with us was a misery but have a nice day’ (my loose translation of female worker bee speak). “I don’t really think that ‘pat’ response is very satisfactory”, I moaned in a quiet husky voice. “I won’t have my staff spoken to in that way,” buzzed female bee No.2. Here we go, I thought. It happens so many times in London, complain about something – even in mild mannered tones (and they were, believe me)- and you’re basically told to put up with it or ‘f**k off’. I did get my membership money back but what a palaver. As the story’s losing altitude, even for me, suffice to say that most people simply don’t see reality and its consequences even on a small everyday scale.
In an interview on the now art-house classic Three Colours Blue (Vol.1: Juliette Binoche), Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski recalls trying “to find a sugarcube that soaks up [coffee] in 5 seconds” as his way of evoking the emotional world of Juliette Binoche’s character in one of the scenes. And to think she turned down Spielberg’s Jurassic Park to do Three Colours Blue. She joked with Spielberg that she’d prefer to play a dinosaur. On the Code Inconnu disc (not as easy as the others in the two sets to digest), Binoche praises Haneke’s direction for “leaving the actor face to face with silence” a skill she believes is the result of Haneke’s work in the theatre - it's “not reality but a model of reality”. Haneke is a perfectionist and “the champion of absolute pessimism” says his producer on Hidden (Caché) Haneke’s most accessible and successful film so far. Dominik Moll is equally fastidious in directing his Lemming basing his characters’ psychological states around the much touted myth that the little lemming rodents from Scandinavia commit suicide when in fact what really happens is that they end up in deep water they will never be able to cross. These recent ‘back catalogue’ DVD sets from Artificial Eye are most definitely excellent bargain value with four of the six discs including substantial extras, and a chance to watch European directing at its finest.
Binoche never got to play a dinosaur, or even voice-over a lemming in Ice Age but she brings her enormous quiet presence to Peter Hedges’s comedy drama Dan in Real Life playing the new light in columnist Dan’s (Steve Carell) recently widowed 3-daughter life. But on arriving at his family get-together in Rhode Island he discovers she’s the girlfriend of his brother (Dane Cook). This is a charming, beautifully scripted film that perhaps wears its ‘theatre reality’ too much on its sleeve for some and lacking the filmic detail spoken of in the last paragraph. Hedges is ex-theatre, so is highly respected casting director Bernard Telsey as is the rest of the cast, though with equally substantial film experience. Carell and Binoche didn’t really come from theatre and that makes for very good screen chemistry, as they’re sort of outsiders forcing themselves to fit in. There’s a wonderful scene when Binoche and Dan’s brother set him up on a double date with a podgy girl from his school days. Except she blossomed into a gorgeous long-legged, hip-swinging plastic surgeon brunette (Emily Blunt). Discovering the latter info and the instant light in Dan’s eyes as they all sit in the bar, Binoche’s radiant face suddenly looks as if the blood has been vacuum sucked from her entire being. It’s a moment so common in cinema but I’ve never seen it done with such skill as Binoche displays here. Nice debut soundtrack too (is that a ‘soundtrack Betty Blue in-joke’ at the seaside?) by Norwegian pop star Sondre Lerche. Definitely not a film as ‘pat’ as the critics make out. But it ain’t Ingmar Bergman.
An offbeat New Zealand comedy is Eagle vs Shark (Optimum DVD with substantial extras) (US Buena Vista DVD). “Human beings are essentially the losers [the geeks] of the animal world and somehow we become winners but we’re still losers,” muses first feature director Taika Waititi (his short film Two Cars, One Night was Oscar nominated). “It’s a not very romantic black comedy,” says Jemaine Clement (Jarrod) a bit of a candle-making video game dork who is seeking revenge on his high school nemesis, “He’s gonna reap what he sowed and it sure ain’t wheat.” The shy unpopular Lily (Loren Horsley) gets sacked from her job behind the till at ‘Meaty Boy Burger’ but gatecrashes Jarrod’s video game showdown costume party - she shark, he eagle hence the title. Lily is based on a character Horsley created for the stage. “There’s people in the world who don’t even have sleeping bags,” says Lily who’s like a beautiful little flower nestling beside the forest log. Horsley, looking nothing like her character, even took Lily on a day-out while workshopping the script in Salt Lake City as part of Sundance’s nurturing lab. Lily was totally ignored and sneered at says Horsley. Waititi’s cites Mike Leigh and Wes Andersen as influences and this film really holds its own in the crowded world of quirky indie film. Nice stop-motion animation too. Great weekend DVD date.
YouTube Eagle vs Shark trailer
Jemaine Clement is also part of the duo Flight of the Conchords (HBO/BBC Four) trying to make it in New York. Jemaine and Bret (Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, play fictional versions of themselves) with band manager Murray (Rhys Darby), a Deputy Cultural Attaché at the New Zealand consulate. This is some of the funniest TV comedy we’ve seen in recent years and songs like Albi the Racist Dragon have the clever insight of Chris Rock’s patter except slowed down in a parallel universe.
YouTube behind the scenes vid
If you like your comedy cleverly American unsubtle Superbad is out on DVD.
Judd Apatow has also co-written Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story out this week - a spoof on the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. Sounds like a song I remember from an off-Broadway spoof with country lilt, “I told my daddy I hadda be a cowboy, ride off in sunsets and chase those rainbow drea-ee-ee-eams”. Sounds better when I sing it :)
And speaking of cowboys, is Charlie Wilson’s War as bad as the Brit crits paint it? Based on the real story (George Crile's book) of ‘80s larger-than-life Texan congressman Wilson who masterminded the covert war against the Russians in Afghanistan, critics are wanting it to be something it’s clearly not. It’s whiskey tippling, womanising Wilson’s story not a Tom Hanks ‘feelgood save the world’ movie. The script is by West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin with his characteristic fast-paced dialogue and direction by exemplary Mike Nichols. Nichols did a production of Beckett’s existential comedy Waiting for Godot many years ago at Lincoln Center New York with the likes of Robin Williams and Steve Martin and though I didn’t see it, it sounds like Charlie Wilson’s War (CWW) suffers that production’s same ‘swings and roundabouts’. There’s loads of detail but maybe not the detail some would prefer. There’s almost the element of slap-stick in CWW with Wilson’s ‘fluffy bunny girl’ staff and Julia Roberts’ rightwing Texan billionairess Joanne Herring who helps fundraise for Wilson’s war. Characters like Herring really exist, believe me, and Roberts’ portrayal isn’t a characature. But the movie is stolen by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s world-weary CIA op Gust Avrakotos; “You ain’t James Bond,” quips Wilson, “Well you ain’t Thomas Jefferson, let’s call it even,” riposts Gust. “These things were glorious...and then we fucked up the endgame” roll the final credits. Don’t go looking for too much Graham Greene in this Buster Keaton pic.
The Times interview with the real Charles Nesbitt Wilson
It’s pretty much Philip Seymour Hoffman month in London (he’s one of the few actors we could happily celebrate all year). He’s also in Sidney Lumet’s (now 84 years old) Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead a flashback heist movie in which on the slide 6-figure exec Andy (Hoffman) has overreached himself persuading his also sliding brother (Ethan Hawke) to rob his parents sleepy suburban jewellery store – a victimless crime. Or so he hoped until bro takes a gun-happy mate with him who kills Andy’s mom (a cameo for stage stalwart doyenne Rosemary Harris whom only became ‘known’ to a cinema audience through the Spiderman films). The ever superb (almost octogenarian himself) Albert Finney is the dad who won’t let go of the bone. It’s a first feature for writer Kelly Masterson and it’s more cleverly subtle than it may first seem. Hawke bravely plays it ‘on edge’ most of the time and brings it off. And the end has a panging twist on the nature of crime.
The Savages is another movie about family and Tamara Jenkins first feature as writer/director in 10 years since The Slums of Beverley Hills. Hoffman again plays a brother, Jon Savage to his sister the struggling playwright Wendy (Laura Linney) whose difficult father (Philip Bosco) has dementia. Jenkins was reading Bruno Bettleheim’s The Uses of Enchantment about fairy tales and based the siblings on Hansel and Gretel “really a story about children confronting mortality for the first time – they are rejected by their parents, thrown into the woods and forced to find their own way, to grow up and become individuals, in a sense,” says Jenkins, “The story is definitely not [Bergman’s grim death flic] The Seventh Seal.” Definitely try The Savages for a poignantly humorous look at families growing old. Co-producer is Ang Lee’s mentor Ted Hope.
The Coen brothers latest No Country for Old Men is no relation but based on the Pulitzer Prize winning maverick Cormac McCarthy’s 2003 thriller novel with the old-age story of a man Moss (Josh Brolin) who finds a bag of money ($2.4 million in cash) with the remorseless Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in pursuit. You can never not like a Coens movie, some may be more personally preferable to others but there’s always some unseen clock ticking away in their woodwork. The film is released hot on the heels of its Golden Globe awards in the US for Bardem’s Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay for the Coens. Don’t wait for the DVD; see this in the cinema because Roger Deakins’ cinematography is breathtakingly the ‘No Country’ character.
An amazing 11 film box DVD set of the Coens oeuvre is released Feb 18 through Spirit Entertainment. No website – I guess that’s how they keep costs down and manage to offer this set for only £69.99. Even at RRP price it’s bloody amazing. No review copies available, but 7 discs even have substantial extras, and Fargo has an audio commentary by its No Country for Old Men cinematographer Roger Deakins, and The Man Who Wasn’t There a commentary with the Coens and Billy Bob Thornton! Wow!
Tom DiCillo’s 1995 Living in Oblivion (Second Sight DVD-Region 0) is so thought of as an indie classic that it was included in New York’s Golden Age of Cinema Festival in 2002 (funny interview extra included). It also won best screenplay at the Sundance Fest in 1995. DiCillo used his experiences on his first feature flop Johnny Suede to make this spoof about the filmmaking process, on-set in B/W on-screen in colour. DiCillo relates the fascinating history of the film, financed by friends who also got main parts (including Jim Jarmusch’s brother Tom), in his non-stop audio commentary. Steve Buscemi is the indie director (who was himself at the time trying to get his directing debut Trees Lounge off the ground) struggling to make his frustrating dream. But Living in Oblivion is far more than just a jolly spoof. The dark comic tone of the film is pretty faultless. DiCillo cites an unnamed Wim Wenders’ film (presumably The State of Things, further BFI screenings with a stunning new print Jan 18/20) in which a film crew is making an existential sci-fi outside of Lisbon, Portugal. “Every single thought that they had was thinking heavy metaphysical thought. [But] most of the time people are thinking much more realistically than that [on a movie set]...There’s no other reality than the ‘oblivion’ of the film you’re making...trying to get [at least] one millisecond of magic on film”. Another great weekend DVD.
Good Wenders interview on BBC Radio 3’s NightWaves (Mon Jan 14)
Wonderful child's-eye view of family reality in Libero (Along the Ridge -Anche Libero Va Bene). Review next week.
Paul Schrader's The Walker (HMV link with trailer) now out on DVD my blog review)
A surprising fascination is Nicolas Philibert’s doco Back to Normandy in which he returns to the French village where he worked with the mostly non-actors, assisting Rene Allio’s 1975 fiction film Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère, the true story of a young 19th century villager who slaughtered his family because of how they treated his father. The film is based on the 80 beautiful pages he wrote in prison later edited by French contemporary philosopher Michel Foucault. A truly wonderful meditation of the concept of reality.
Financial Times Philibert interview
Amiable, intrepid Louis Theroux goes inside San Quentin prison, Behind Bars (BBC 2 TV last Monday Jan 14th)
Brown: No guarantees for taxpayer in Northern Rock bank rescue plan
Ghosts of the Cite Soleil (Revolver budget DVD) is Ager Leth’s getting low-down and dirty doco with the government backed gun-toting Chimeres of President Aristide’s Haiti and in particular two brothers. Very visceral. And J.C. Chavez Diego Luna’s doco about the life of Mexico’s boxing legend (expensive, no extras).
Spain (Un) censored season continues at the BFI Southbank.
ICO Essentials: The Secret Masterpieces of Cinema has six themed programmes on a national tour. One of my only other inmates for the screening Philip French (The Observer) quipped something about canapes (I'm sure he won't mind that little indiscretion). But you could live on canapes like these for years and not go hungry.
And there’s always loads of good theatre in London but this week is a bumper crop made all the more galling given the unencouraging funding news from the Arts Council and the British Council (BBC Nightwaves Jan 14):
New Neil LaBute play at the Bush Theatre, interview on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row (Tues Jan 15)
New David Hare play The Vertical Hour, Broadway now at the Royal Court. BBC Radio 4’s Front row interview (Wed 16 Jan-only available for a week,alas)
And the restored stage on which Shakespeare plays were first performed the Rose Theatre in Kingston (a bit of a trek if no car) opens tonight with the theatre’s passionate supporter Sir Peter Hall directing Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Front Row interview (Thurs Jan 17)
And Radiohead gave a free gig this week playing their new album in full In Rainbows plus encore!.
And classical singer Mark Padmore blows the whistle on rehearsal scrooging in BBC Radio 3's Music Matters (podcast too). Conductor Valery Gergiev blows some steam too.
But first let me give an example of daily observation, or the lack of it. There’s a well-frequently dance studio near Bond Street (won't name,wasn't life threatening)where I used to do class many-a-time (in those days, not so long ago, with taped-over holes in the floors big enough to catch your foot on). But that got sorted. Finally. (A bit like ‘mind the gap’ on the underground.) Are you surprised? Anyway, I went in to take class the other day; paid a mandatory daily membership on top of the class fee only to find the male changing room had become the ladies. “First floor” a worker bee buzzed in passing. Wander, wander, wander like a lonely cloud all the way to the top floor finally alighting back at reception. “There’s been a flood in the toilets,” says a female worker bee adding slightly more enlightening instructions to the alternative. No signs anywhere, I might add, and the alternative a toilet with space for one with no shower. Back down the stairs wasting my limbering time. “Any chance of my daily membership being refunded?” I asked reasonably and forlornly (as I didn’t have full use of the facilities and would ‘whiff’ all through my subsequent meeting and all the way home). The response was not unlike the underground ‘we’re sorry your experience with us was a misery but have a nice day’ (my loose translation of female worker bee speak). “I don’t really think that ‘pat’ response is very satisfactory”, I moaned in a quiet husky voice. “I won’t have my staff spoken to in that way,” buzzed female bee No.2. Here we go, I thought. It happens so many times in London, complain about something – even in mild mannered tones (and they were, believe me)- and you’re basically told to put up with it or ‘f**k off’. I did get my membership money back but what a palaver. As the story’s losing altitude, even for me, suffice to say that most people simply don’t see reality and its consequences even on a small everyday scale.
In an interview on the now art-house classic Three Colours Blue (Vol.1: Juliette Binoche), Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski recalls trying “to find a sugarcube that soaks up [coffee] in 5 seconds” as his way of evoking the emotional world of Juliette Binoche’s character in one of the scenes. And to think she turned down Spielberg’s Jurassic Park to do Three Colours Blue. She joked with Spielberg that she’d prefer to play a dinosaur. On the Code Inconnu disc (not as easy as the others in the two sets to digest), Binoche praises Haneke’s direction for “leaving the actor face to face with silence” a skill she believes is the result of Haneke’s work in the theatre - it's “not reality but a model of reality”. Haneke is a perfectionist and “the champion of absolute pessimism” says his producer on Hidden (Caché) Haneke’s most accessible and successful film so far. Dominik Moll is equally fastidious in directing his Lemming basing his characters’ psychological states around the much touted myth that the little lemming rodents from Scandinavia commit suicide when in fact what really happens is that they end up in deep water they will never be able to cross. These recent ‘back catalogue’ DVD sets from Artificial Eye are most definitely excellent bargain value with four of the six discs including substantial extras, and a chance to watch European directing at its finest.
Binoche never got to play a dinosaur, or even voice-over a lemming in Ice Age but she brings her enormous quiet presence to Peter Hedges’s comedy drama Dan in Real Life playing the new light in columnist Dan’s (Steve Carell) recently widowed 3-daughter life. But on arriving at his family get-together in Rhode Island he discovers she’s the girlfriend of his brother (Dane Cook). This is a charming, beautifully scripted film that perhaps wears its ‘theatre reality’ too much on its sleeve for some and lacking the filmic detail spoken of in the last paragraph. Hedges is ex-theatre, so is highly respected casting director Bernard Telsey as is the rest of the cast, though with equally substantial film experience. Carell and Binoche didn’t really come from theatre and that makes for very good screen chemistry, as they’re sort of outsiders forcing themselves to fit in. There’s a wonderful scene when Binoche and Dan’s brother set him up on a double date with a podgy girl from his school days. Except she blossomed into a gorgeous long-legged, hip-swinging plastic surgeon brunette (Emily Blunt). Discovering the latter info and the instant light in Dan’s eyes as they all sit in the bar, Binoche’s radiant face suddenly looks as if the blood has been vacuum sucked from her entire being. It’s a moment so common in cinema but I’ve never seen it done with such skill as Binoche displays here. Nice debut soundtrack too (is that a ‘soundtrack Betty Blue in-joke’ at the seaside?) by Norwegian pop star Sondre Lerche. Definitely not a film as ‘pat’ as the critics make out. But it ain’t Ingmar Bergman.
An offbeat New Zealand comedy is Eagle vs Shark (Optimum DVD with substantial extras) (US Buena Vista DVD). “Human beings are essentially the losers [the geeks] of the animal world and somehow we become winners but we’re still losers,” muses first feature director Taika Waititi (his short film Two Cars, One Night was Oscar nominated). “It’s a not very romantic black comedy,” says Jemaine Clement (Jarrod) a bit of a candle-making video game dork who is seeking revenge on his high school nemesis, “He’s gonna reap what he sowed and it sure ain’t wheat.” The shy unpopular Lily (Loren Horsley) gets sacked from her job behind the till at ‘Meaty Boy Burger’ but gatecrashes Jarrod’s video game showdown costume party - she shark, he eagle hence the title. Lily is based on a character Horsley created for the stage. “There’s people in the world who don’t even have sleeping bags,” says Lily who’s like a beautiful little flower nestling beside the forest log. Horsley, looking nothing like her character, even took Lily on a day-out while workshopping the script in Salt Lake City as part of Sundance’s nurturing lab. Lily was totally ignored and sneered at says Horsley. Waititi’s cites Mike Leigh and Wes Andersen as influences and this film really holds its own in the crowded world of quirky indie film. Nice stop-motion animation too. Great weekend DVD date.
YouTube Eagle vs Shark trailer
Jemaine Clement is also part of the duo Flight of the Conchords (HBO/BBC Four) trying to make it in New York. Jemaine and Bret (Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, play fictional versions of themselves) with band manager Murray (Rhys Darby), a Deputy Cultural Attaché at the New Zealand consulate. This is some of the funniest TV comedy we’ve seen in recent years and songs like Albi the Racist Dragon have the clever insight of Chris Rock’s patter except slowed down in a parallel universe.
YouTube behind the scenes vid
If you like your comedy cleverly American unsubtle Superbad is out on DVD.
Judd Apatow has also co-written Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story out this week - a spoof on the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. Sounds like a song I remember from an off-Broadway spoof with country lilt, “I told my daddy I hadda be a cowboy, ride off in sunsets and chase those rainbow drea-ee-ee-eams”. Sounds better when I sing it :)
And speaking of cowboys, is Charlie Wilson’s War as bad as the Brit crits paint it? Based on the real story (George Crile's book) of ‘80s larger-than-life Texan congressman Wilson who masterminded the covert war against the Russians in Afghanistan, critics are wanting it to be something it’s clearly not. It’s whiskey tippling, womanising Wilson’s story not a Tom Hanks ‘feelgood save the world’ movie. The script is by West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin with his characteristic fast-paced dialogue and direction by exemplary Mike Nichols. Nichols did a production of Beckett’s existential comedy Waiting for Godot many years ago at Lincoln Center New York with the likes of Robin Williams and Steve Martin and though I didn’t see it, it sounds like Charlie Wilson’s War (CWW) suffers that production’s same ‘swings and roundabouts’. There’s loads of detail but maybe not the detail some would prefer. There’s almost the element of slap-stick in CWW with Wilson’s ‘fluffy bunny girl’ staff and Julia Roberts’ rightwing Texan billionairess Joanne Herring who helps fundraise for Wilson’s war. Characters like Herring really exist, believe me, and Roberts’ portrayal isn’t a characature. But the movie is stolen by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s world-weary CIA op Gust Avrakotos; “You ain’t James Bond,” quips Wilson, “Well you ain’t Thomas Jefferson, let’s call it even,” riposts Gust. “These things were glorious...and then we fucked up the endgame” roll the final credits. Don’t go looking for too much Graham Greene in this Buster Keaton pic.
The Times interview with the real Charles Nesbitt Wilson
It’s pretty much Philip Seymour Hoffman month in London (he’s one of the few actors we could happily celebrate all year). He’s also in Sidney Lumet’s (now 84 years old) Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead a flashback heist movie in which on the slide 6-figure exec Andy (Hoffman) has overreached himself persuading his also sliding brother (Ethan Hawke) to rob his parents sleepy suburban jewellery store – a victimless crime. Or so he hoped until bro takes a gun-happy mate with him who kills Andy’s mom (a cameo for stage stalwart doyenne Rosemary Harris whom only became ‘known’ to a cinema audience through the Spiderman films). The ever superb (almost octogenarian himself) Albert Finney is the dad who won’t let go of the bone. It’s a first feature for writer Kelly Masterson and it’s more cleverly subtle than it may first seem. Hawke bravely plays it ‘on edge’ most of the time and brings it off. And the end has a panging twist on the nature of crime.
The Savages is another movie about family and Tamara Jenkins first feature as writer/director in 10 years since The Slums of Beverley Hills. Hoffman again plays a brother, Jon Savage to his sister the struggling playwright Wendy (Laura Linney) whose difficult father (Philip Bosco) has dementia. Jenkins was reading Bruno Bettleheim’s The Uses of Enchantment about fairy tales and based the siblings on Hansel and Gretel “really a story about children confronting mortality for the first time – they are rejected by their parents, thrown into the woods and forced to find their own way, to grow up and become individuals, in a sense,” says Jenkins, “The story is definitely not [Bergman’s grim death flic] The Seventh Seal.” Definitely try The Savages for a poignantly humorous look at families growing old. Co-producer is Ang Lee’s mentor Ted Hope.
The Coen brothers latest No Country for Old Men is no relation but based on the Pulitzer Prize winning maverick Cormac McCarthy’s 2003 thriller novel with the old-age story of a man Moss (Josh Brolin) who finds a bag of money ($2.4 million in cash) with the remorseless Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in pursuit. You can never not like a Coens movie, some may be more personally preferable to others but there’s always some unseen clock ticking away in their woodwork. The film is released hot on the heels of its Golden Globe awards in the US for Bardem’s Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay for the Coens. Don’t wait for the DVD; see this in the cinema because Roger Deakins’ cinematography is breathtakingly the ‘No Country’ character.
An amazing 11 film box DVD set of the Coens oeuvre is released Feb 18 through Spirit Entertainment. No website – I guess that’s how they keep costs down and manage to offer this set for only £69.99. Even at RRP price it’s bloody amazing. No review copies available, but 7 discs even have substantial extras, and Fargo has an audio commentary by its No Country for Old Men cinematographer Roger Deakins, and The Man Who Wasn’t There a commentary with the Coens and Billy Bob Thornton! Wow!
Tom DiCillo’s 1995 Living in Oblivion (Second Sight DVD-Region 0) is so thought of as an indie classic that it was included in New York’s Golden Age of Cinema Festival in 2002 (funny interview extra included). It also won best screenplay at the Sundance Fest in 1995. DiCillo used his experiences on his first feature flop Johnny Suede to make this spoof about the filmmaking process, on-set in B/W on-screen in colour. DiCillo relates the fascinating history of the film, financed by friends who also got main parts (including Jim Jarmusch’s brother Tom), in his non-stop audio commentary. Steve Buscemi is the indie director (who was himself at the time trying to get his directing debut Trees Lounge off the ground) struggling to make his frustrating dream. But Living in Oblivion is far more than just a jolly spoof. The dark comic tone of the film is pretty faultless. DiCillo cites an unnamed Wim Wenders’ film (presumably The State of Things, further BFI screenings with a stunning new print Jan 18/20) in which a film crew is making an existential sci-fi outside of Lisbon, Portugal. “Every single thought that they had was thinking heavy metaphysical thought. [But] most of the time people are thinking much more realistically than that [on a movie set]...There’s no other reality than the ‘oblivion’ of the film you’re making...trying to get [at least] one millisecond of magic on film”. Another great weekend DVD.
Good Wenders interview on BBC Radio 3’s NightWaves (Mon Jan 14)
Wonderful child's-eye view of family reality in Libero (Along the Ridge -Anche Libero Va Bene). Review next week.
Paul Schrader's The Walker (HMV link with trailer) now out on DVD my blog review)
A surprising fascination is Nicolas Philibert’s doco Back to Normandy in which he returns to the French village where he worked with the mostly non-actors, assisting Rene Allio’s 1975 fiction film Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère, the true story of a young 19th century villager who slaughtered his family because of how they treated his father. The film is based on the 80 beautiful pages he wrote in prison later edited by French contemporary philosopher Michel Foucault. A truly wonderful meditation of the concept of reality.
Financial Times Philibert interview
Amiable, intrepid Louis Theroux goes inside San Quentin prison, Behind Bars (BBC 2 TV last Monday Jan 14th)
Brown: No guarantees for taxpayer in Northern Rock bank rescue plan
Ghosts of the Cite Soleil (Revolver budget DVD) is Ager Leth’s getting low-down and dirty doco with the government backed gun-toting Chimeres of President Aristide’s Haiti and in particular two brothers. Very visceral. And J.C. Chavez Diego Luna’s doco about the life of Mexico’s boxing legend (expensive, no extras).
Spain (Un) censored season continues at the BFI Southbank.
ICO Essentials: The Secret Masterpieces of Cinema has six themed programmes on a national tour. One of my only other inmates for the screening Philip French (The Observer) quipped something about canapes (I'm sure he won't mind that little indiscretion). But you could live on canapes like these for years and not go hungry.
And there’s always loads of good theatre in London but this week is a bumper crop made all the more galling given the unencouraging funding news from the Arts Council and the British Council (BBC Nightwaves Jan 14):
New Neil LaBute play at the Bush Theatre, interview on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row (Tues Jan 15)
New David Hare play The Vertical Hour, Broadway now at the Royal Court. BBC Radio 4’s Front row interview (Wed 16 Jan-only available for a week,alas)
And the restored stage on which Shakespeare plays were first performed the Rose Theatre in Kingston (a bit of a trek if no car) opens tonight with the theatre’s passionate supporter Sir Peter Hall directing Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Front Row interview (Thurs Jan 17)
And Radiohead gave a free gig this week playing their new album in full In Rainbows plus encore!.
And classical singer Mark Padmore blows the whistle on rehearsal scrooging in BBC Radio 3's Music Matters (podcast too). Conductor Valery Gergiev blows some steam too.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Like the titan Arum lily, yesterday will prove one of the most scent-filled 'colour of money' days and BBC's Newsnight had a good coverage:
New Labour gives go-ahead for nuclear power plants in the UK and in the same prog
"The world's cheapest car has been launched at India's biggest auto show in Delhi; it will cost about £1,200. It's estimated that up to 60 million more people in India could now afford a car, but is this a good idea considering the impact it will have on CO2 emissions? "
Can the world afford the Tata Nano?
Siberia basks in the oil boom
Belly dancer and ambassador also given a theatrical outing with another Arcola discovery.
And government agencies keep losing things (ITV Local news last night (Thurs 10 Jan-click Your News on left and then 'Mayorial candidate link' to right. How appropriate :) Little things like personal data.
Scots data files lost in the post
Government dementia is terrible isn't it? There are some nice nursing homes, though. I say some as quite a few are being sold off to private investors. How very New Labour. And poor Peter Hain even forgot to declare half his political campaign contributions
Peter Hain fights to save job in funds scandal
And Brit politics just doesn't have the je ne sais quoi of their American counterparts. See Jon Stewart's The Daily Show for this, Jan 9 was especially funny.
Now where was i ....
New Labour gives go-ahead for nuclear power plants in the UK and in the same prog
"The world's cheapest car has been launched at India's biggest auto show in Delhi; it will cost about £1,200. It's estimated that up to 60 million more people in India could now afford a car, but is this a good idea considering the impact it will have on CO2 emissions? "
Can the world afford the Tata Nano?
Siberia basks in the oil boom
Belly dancer and ambassador also given a theatrical outing with another Arcola discovery.
And government agencies keep losing things (ITV Local news last night (Thurs 10 Jan-click Your News on left and then 'Mayorial candidate link' to right. How appropriate :) Little things like personal data.
Scots data files lost in the post
Government dementia is terrible isn't it? There are some nice nursing homes, though. I say some as quite a few are being sold off to private investors. How very New Labour. And poor Peter Hain even forgot to declare half his political campaign contributions
Peter Hain fights to save job in funds scandal
And Brit politics just doesn't have the je ne sais quoi of their American counterparts. See Jon Stewart's The Daily Show for this, Jan 9 was especially funny.
Now where was i ....
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
Once upon a time there will always be ...(the end.
And staying with my last blog Germans, if you’re in Berlin, this year’s film festival has Gegenschuss – Aufbruch der Filmemacher (Reverse Angle – Rebellion of the Filmmakers) dealing with the origins, development and crises of the legendary film publisher, Filmverlag der Autoren, from the early 1970’s and directors such as Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders.
Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film Shine A Light will open the 58th Berlin International Film Festival February 7.
And the latest in new young German cinema.
“I'm a drifter and an outsider. There's not one single environment I can totally belong to. My cultural roots are something illusive,” says Ang Lee.
A Kurdish Iranian ‘road movie’ is Half Moon (Nîwe Mang/Nîvê Heyvê)
from writer/director Bahman Ghobadi (his third feature) and one of the New Crowned Hope films commissioned to celebrate Mozart’s 250th birthday. Mamo (Ishmail Ghaffari) is the Mick Jagger of trad. Kurdish music and has been given special permission to perform a concert in Iraqi Kurdistan, so off they all bus-trundle along the dusty roads with the essential but forbidden female element Hesho (Hedye Tehrani) hidden away. And that’s basically it. But I much preferred this to much lauded The Kite Runner. Not that the latter doesn’t deserve its praise or the wider audience that it’s Hollywood distribution will attract. It’s just that Half Moon is the delightful ramshackle cabin you laughingly stumble upon on your journey compared to The Kite Runner’s (director Marc Forster is helming the latest Bond movie) beautifully maintained Bed and Breakfast. And what’s also interesting is that Half Moon is photographed, as in The Kite Runner, in wide-screen (I guess as most visual stimuli these days are wide-screen we should say wide-wide-screen without getting too technical) whilst never wallowing in exotic ‘art-house’ beauty.
Adapting The Kite Runner
Terror whistleblower walks free
And a plug for the enterprising, adventurous Arcola Theatre in Dalston who present the Brit premiere of Ariel Dorfman's (Death and the Maiden)Purgatorio designed by a couple of my now jet-setting opera designer chums Charles Edwards and Jon Morrell. They did a great job of making one of my 'handkerchief' stagings look as if it were a Christo event :) Be interesting to see what they concoct in the Arcola space on another low budget.
A similar cinematic effect to Half Moon is achieved in 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile) the much heralded Cannes Festival Palme d’Or winner this year showing us the grim process of an illegal abortion in Romania. What prevents this film from being simply a worthy experience and makes it a transcendent one (aside from the tragically beautiful performances) is the way writer/director Cristian Mungiu and his cinematographer Oleg Mutu make every location a silent character moving within the same emotional time frame as the actors. As if, as in a horror movie, the walls, rooms and corridors resonate almost imperceptibly with the beating heart of the foetus. Quite an achievement.
In this context, it’s worth taking a look at American Louise Lawyer’s new photographic exhibition at Sprüth Magers Lee. She photographs art through the mundane eyes of what surrounds it, whether it be a polished wooden floor, a lampshade or just the gallery wall itself.
And if you’re in the Netherlands, Hal Foster of the 'postmodernism of resistance' reviews Eindhoven 's Forms of Resistance for the latest Artforum. He gave a wonderfully typically alternative series of lectures recently at the Courtauld Institute that perhaps could be summarised with his quotation of Kafka, "There is hope but not for us." Foster challenges the presumptions of continuity and discontinuity in art theory.
What next for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square?
Hitchcock’s 1938 The Lady Vanishes is re-released the end of the week as part of the BFI’s Margaret Lockwood season.
Criterion US DVD
"When Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol wrote their pioneering study of the director, they concluded that the film "requires little commentary" ... Watching the film again, in a bright new print struck by the British Film Institute, that seems to me to be an unsupportable position. The Lady Vanishes is the most political film that Hitchcock ever made, " argues Mathew Sweet’s (who scripted the BBC's recent 'I love Brit film series' British Film Forever) article for The Guardian. And having just seen it again today after many, many moons I totally agree. Eminent film scholar wrote that it was his "least substantial" but Sweet takes up Durgnat's political observations. John Russell Taylor in his book Hitch described it as "the lightest and purist of diversions". The comedic tone Hitchcock creates in this sly thriller is superlative and much has been made of Hitch’s use of sound in his Hitchcock, The Early Years (Optimum DVD). And watch the sly camera moves and close-ups too and the Launder/Gilliat script: “Why climb a fence when you can sit on it, as the old Foreign Office proverb goes [sic]”
Margaret Lockwood is also in the DVD release of Trent's Last Case.
An oddity is the DVD of Woody Allen’s 1966 debut What’s Up Tiger Lily? (budget price, no extras) a re-dubbed version of a Japanese spy film by Senkichi Taniguchi. Loads of ‘Austin Powers’ sexual innuendo but it hasn’t really stood the test of time. Allen’s early stand-up (I used to have them on vinyl!) from the same period is far superior.
Anyone for some very cheesy soundtrack music from the 'Mozart of porn' Klaus Harmony evoking a Germanic Benny Hill chasing after his lust object through the churchyard? But if anyone suddenly looks over your ear quickly switch to this website with great links to speech radio progs or someone who collects the detritus of audiotape fragments. Or far preferable, seek out the soundtracks of Fassbinder's composer Peer Raban.
Violinist Tamsin Little will be following Radiohead’s lead by giving her next album away called The Naked Violin as a free download from January 14th.
And hidden away in the Westminster Reference Library (1st floor) is an ingenious use of ‘Tom Thumb’ space for an "over-sized pop-up book" with 42 artists exhibiting in a few meters art inspired by the writings of Hans Christian Andersen.
I have longed to move away
-Dylan Thomas
I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors´ continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.
I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half blind.
Neither by night´s ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death´s feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.
Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film Shine A Light will open the 58th Berlin International Film Festival February 7.
And the latest in new young German cinema.
“I'm a drifter and an outsider. There's not one single environment I can totally belong to. My cultural roots are something illusive,” says Ang Lee.
A Kurdish Iranian ‘road movie’ is Half Moon (Nîwe Mang/Nîvê Heyvê)
from writer/director Bahman Ghobadi (his third feature) and one of the New Crowned Hope films commissioned to celebrate Mozart’s 250th birthday. Mamo (Ishmail Ghaffari) is the Mick Jagger of trad. Kurdish music and has been given special permission to perform a concert in Iraqi Kurdistan, so off they all bus-trundle along the dusty roads with the essential but forbidden female element Hesho (Hedye Tehrani) hidden away. And that’s basically it. But I much preferred this to much lauded The Kite Runner. Not that the latter doesn’t deserve its praise or the wider audience that it’s Hollywood distribution will attract. It’s just that Half Moon is the delightful ramshackle cabin you laughingly stumble upon on your journey compared to The Kite Runner’s (director Marc Forster is helming the latest Bond movie) beautifully maintained Bed and Breakfast. And what’s also interesting is that Half Moon is photographed, as in The Kite Runner, in wide-screen (I guess as most visual stimuli these days are wide-screen we should say wide-wide-screen without getting too technical) whilst never wallowing in exotic ‘art-house’ beauty.
Adapting The Kite Runner
Terror whistleblower walks free
And a plug for the enterprising, adventurous Arcola Theatre in Dalston who present the Brit premiere of Ariel Dorfman's (Death and the Maiden)Purgatorio designed by a couple of my now jet-setting opera designer chums Charles Edwards and Jon Morrell. They did a great job of making one of my 'handkerchief' stagings look as if it were a Christo event :) Be interesting to see what they concoct in the Arcola space on another low budget.
A similar cinematic effect to Half Moon is achieved in 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile) the much heralded Cannes Festival Palme d’Or winner this year showing us the grim process of an illegal abortion in Romania. What prevents this film from being simply a worthy experience and makes it a transcendent one (aside from the tragically beautiful performances) is the way writer/director Cristian Mungiu and his cinematographer Oleg Mutu make every location a silent character moving within the same emotional time frame as the actors. As if, as in a horror movie, the walls, rooms and corridors resonate almost imperceptibly with the beating heart of the foetus. Quite an achievement.
In this context, it’s worth taking a look at American Louise Lawyer’s new photographic exhibition at Sprüth Magers Lee. She photographs art through the mundane eyes of what surrounds it, whether it be a polished wooden floor, a lampshade or just the gallery wall itself.
And if you’re in the Netherlands, Hal Foster of the 'postmodernism of resistance' reviews Eindhoven 's Forms of Resistance for the latest Artforum. He gave a wonderfully typically alternative series of lectures recently at the Courtauld Institute that perhaps could be summarised with his quotation of Kafka, "There is hope but not for us." Foster challenges the presumptions of continuity and discontinuity in art theory.
What next for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square?
Hitchcock’s 1938 The Lady Vanishes is re-released the end of the week as part of the BFI’s Margaret Lockwood season.
Criterion US DVD
"When Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol wrote their pioneering study of the director, they concluded that the film "requires little commentary" ... Watching the film again, in a bright new print struck by the British Film Institute, that seems to me to be an unsupportable position. The Lady Vanishes is the most political film that Hitchcock ever made, " argues Mathew Sweet’s (who scripted the BBC's recent 'I love Brit film series' British Film Forever) article for The Guardian. And having just seen it again today after many, many moons I totally agree. Eminent film scholar wrote that it was his "least substantial" but Sweet takes up Durgnat's political observations. John Russell Taylor in his book Hitch described it as "the lightest and purist of diversions". The comedic tone Hitchcock creates in this sly thriller is superlative and much has been made of Hitch’s use of sound in his Hitchcock, The Early Years (Optimum DVD). And watch the sly camera moves and close-ups too and the Launder/Gilliat script: “Why climb a fence when you can sit on it, as the old Foreign Office proverb goes [sic]”
Margaret Lockwood is also in the DVD release of Trent's Last Case.
An oddity is the DVD of Woody Allen’s 1966 debut What’s Up Tiger Lily? (budget price, no extras) a re-dubbed version of a Japanese spy film by Senkichi Taniguchi. Loads of ‘Austin Powers’ sexual innuendo but it hasn’t really stood the test of time. Allen’s early stand-up (I used to have them on vinyl!) from the same period is far superior.
Anyone for some very cheesy soundtrack music from the 'Mozart of porn' Klaus Harmony evoking a Germanic Benny Hill chasing after his lust object through the churchyard? But if anyone suddenly looks over your ear quickly switch to this website with great links to speech radio progs or someone who collects the detritus of audiotape fragments. Or far preferable, seek out the soundtracks of Fassbinder's composer Peer Raban.
Violinist Tamsin Little will be following Radiohead’s lead by giving her next album away called The Naked Violin as a free download from January 14th.
And hidden away in the Westminster Reference Library (1st floor) is an ingenious use of ‘Tom Thumb’ space for an "over-sized pop-up book" with 42 artists exhibiting in a few meters art inspired by the writings of Hans Christian Andersen.
I have longed to move away
-Dylan Thomas
I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors´ continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.
I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half blind.
Neither by night´s ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death´s feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.
Friday, 4 January 2008
Once upon a time there will always be
For those who survived Christmas and ‘what not’ or were lucky enough to pride themselves on de-stressing from the year, London transport had a late present for them:
"Thousands of commuters were urged to stay away from London today after two major pieces of Christmas engineering work failed to finish in time for the return to work", The London Paper
And with the internet and newspapers full of ‘Best of 2007’s (I plead guilty to reading them too), my former broadsheet (an arcane description for ‘compact’ papers now) arts editor
The Independent’s Thomas Sutcliffe took a refreshingly ‘post-modern’ (arcane now as well?) reflection:
My year of treats and torments
And if there was a TV scheduling equivalent to being sat right next to the restaurant lavatory or the kitchen door (wasn’t that a Danny Kaye sketch?), 9am New Year’s day is probably it and Channel Five allocated it to Tony Palmer's film O Thou Transcendent: the life of Vaughan-Williams also available on DVD. For decades Palmer has flown the flag for TV music biography in Britain, though not always choosing the flagpole many broadcasters (the BBC is a bête noire) would like. The Vaughan-Williams was a 3-hour slot but a rewarding, fascinating one with non-sycophantic interviews as diverse as Harrison Birtwhistle (contemp modern music doyen), Fairport Convention and Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. Initially a late Victorian/Edwardian, Vaughan-Williams is essential to 20th century Brit music and while never a ‘modernist’ (his roots were in English folksong tradition), his dark, agnostic but spiritual musical quest certainly was, and he would often stick-up for composers (like Michael Tippett and his pacifism) against prevailing public opinion. Perhaps he was Britain’s Bartok after all.
The ‘high ground culture’ of opera also returned to its ‘popular’ roots over Christmas. In 18th century days instead of the ‘posh’ stall seats at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, ‘commoners’ used to ‘stand at the spikes’ - the spikes there to stop rotten tomatoes et al from reaching the performers. BBC Four (winner of most consistent Christmas ‘neuron enhancing’ programming) televised the ROH production of Donizetti’s opera comedy La Fille du Régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment) directed by Laurent Pelly last year. This was no German staging of updated political resonance but a finely honed comic delight starring currently one of the best singer/actresses around Natalie Dessay as Marie the tomboy regiment’s ‘daughter’. She’s flushed out of her boots by tenor Tonio (the handsome ever-mellifluous Juan Diego Flórez) who has the famous aria with nine high C’s. There was even a turn by roly-poly Brit TV comedy star Dawn French in a speaking role. The conductor who knows his Italian opera inside out was Bruno Campanella. Great widescreen, surround sound TV.
Latest one-name sensation Adele has her debut album 19 (the 19 year-old Brixton Brit Adele Adkins) out in a few weeks:(Radio 4's Front Row Fri 4th) Exclusive BRITs YouTube Channel Launched
and lots of YouTube on dj spyder's site. I first saw her more than holding her own with other guests including Björk on Jools Holland's TV show. There’s a captivating rawness to her style as if she’s just picked up the microphone out of nowhere to sing her soul to you.
Former Midnight Oil rocker named Australia's environment minister
Fascinating discussion on the life of French existentialist Albert Camus: Radio 4’s In Our Time chaired by arts broadcaster supremo Melvyn Bragg. Downloadable podcast too to stimulate the neurons on your morning commute. Is there such a thing as happiness? Why not read some Camus as an antidote to the post-festive season blues? And a meditation by Franophile novelist Edmund White about the no-smoking ban for French cafe culture (Radio 4's Front Row Thurs 2 Jan end of programme, also a Vangelis interview). Gitanes will never be the same.
Michael Moore whose Michael Moore Collection is just out on Optimum DVD, showed his total amazement in Sicko (about health services on both Atlantic sides) that new French mothers could get home help and their washing done all for free by their government. So amazed was he that the doco’s final scene [spoiler warner :) has Moore in front of the White House about to take his laundry basket to them. My blog review. Moore has many detractors but his films certainly raise urgent questions. I thought of this as I handed over my £30 to the dentist as an emergency charge the other day. This wasn’t an NHS (National Health Service) charge but one imposed by the surgery on people they hadn’t seen for sometime (even a regular like me) because the surgery just hasn’t been able to handle the strain placed on the NHS over the last few years in Britain. £30 may not seem much to some I admit, but one of the ‘commandments in stone’ of the NHS is that treatment be free to all people at the point of need. And it wasn’t. So much for me trying not to ‘take up time’ with non-urgent appointments and be self-reliant. I made a doctor’s pre-Christmas appointment (in person), turned up two days later and they could find no record of it. I’m not ‘having a go’ at anybody but that’s what it’s like now. Don’t come and join the Euro-socialist revolution just yet Mr.Moore but please keep on doco-ing and provoking debate.
NHS dentistry in crisis as record number of practitioners defect to private sector (11 Jan addition to this blog)
Ofcom confirms under-16s 'junk' ad ban
A very far from fictional scenario is Will Smith’s I am Legend (BFI Imax) (forget the multiplexes!) in which a doctor (a very convincing one-minute cameo from Emma Thompson) has discovered a cancer cure by ‘piggybacking’ the cure onto the smallpox virus. Every one of the 10,009 trial patients was cured. Fast forward and Will Smith’s war hero Dr.Robert Neville is helping evacuate New York City before a deadly mutant strain takes hold. But too late, they all go mad and die. Fast forward another 3 years and the only survivors seem to be bands of ‘zombie’ mutants who can only survive in the dark, and the immune Will Smith plus gorgeous dog. Oh, and free-range deer (rifle practice wasn’t Dr. Neville’s strongpoint so he’s basically vegan). The film’s basically Will Smith and dog as he continues experimenting (not on dog) to find a cure, so it’s quite an achievement for director Francis Lawrence (and screenwriters Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman) to have fashioned a thrilling pic from what seems the very familiar material of Richard Matheson’s novel (1954). Without spoiling the ending, the logic is somewhat lacking if you know the only escape routes out of Manhattan.
For those with more stamina and good eyes for sub-titles (Mandarin) is the incomparable Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (Se,jie 色，戒) (US DVD Feb 19) – he of The Hulk and Brokeback Mountain.
Sadly, Taiwan removed the film as its best foreign film Oscar entry, because key crewmembers were not locals. Beginning in Hong Kong (1938) drama student Wong Chia Chi (wonderful newcomer Tang Wei) is enlisted by a Japanese occupation ramshackle resistance group to play the lust-object siren (18 certificate rating) to lure top Chinese collaborator Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) to his death. The action (or rather Lee’s masterly grasp of human in-action) switches to 1942 Shanghai. Adapted by regular Lee colleague James Schamus and Wang Hui Ling from Elaine Chang’s short story it’s a long film wrapping itself around the viewer like a python, with an ending some women will find perversely heartbreaking.
Very useful info on Wikipedia:
In the Shanghainese dialect, the words "lust" (色) and "lost" (失) are homophones.
The translation of the Chinese title 色、戒 as "Lust, Caution" misses most of the sense of the original. The meaning of the second word is closer to "warning" or even "renunciation," and also alludes to the ring (戒指) to be worn by Wong Chia Chi.
Sex 'pivotal' to Lust, says Lee
Excellent interview with Ang Lee on Radio 4’s Front Row (Tues 1st)
Observer profile
The siren of Jacques Rivette’s Don’t Touch the Axe (Ne touchez pas la hache) is Duchess Antoinette (the captivating and willowy Jeanne Balibar) of 1820’s Paris for whom the far from exciting general Armand (moody Guillaume Depardieu) is smitten. The title refers to the axe that befell the head of Charles I and is based upon a Balzac novel. It’s a long slow haul of a film but so is most of Rivette’s oeuvre. Yet so strong is Balibar’s allure and so finely tuned is Rivette’s pacing that once you’ve entered Rivette’s world (and it isn’t that easy) you’re in another dimension. Bluebell Films release some Rivette rarities Feb 25 on DVD: Wuthering Heights, Gang of 4 and Love on the Ground
Artificial Eye has also just released the indispensable Vol.2 Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Vol.1. Fassbinder is one of the most controversial directors in German film history leaving disgruntled armies in his wake (he died in 1982 leaving 41 films in 14 years about people who defy social norms!) and staunch supporters in equal numbers. The wendepunkt (turning point) of his career is In a Year of Thirteen Moons (In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden) (1978) in the Vol.2 set written and directed as an antidote to his lover Armin Meier’s suicide. It has a towering performance from Volker Spengler as Elvira/Erwin who is neither a transvestite nor post-op (though there was a discrete op in Casablanca) but as simply voiced in the trailer “a human being searching for love and tenderness”. Radical theatre/film/opera director Werner Schroeter has a fascinating interview extra and Fassbinder’s long-time editor and founder of the Fassbinder Foundation Juliane Lorenz notes that Thirteen Moons is “about the source of pain...a film that stabbed into everyone’s flesh”. And a 45 minute panel discussion after a celebratory Berlin screening in 1992 (including legendary East German playwright Heiner Müller and a laconic Spengler) gives a good taste of the fireworks surrounding Fassbinder; 1992 being one of the years with ’13 new moons’ of the film’s titles:
Every 7th year there is a moon year. People whose lives are strongly influenced by their emotions suffer more intensely from depression in these years. To a degree this is also true when a moon year also has 13 new moons, inescapable personal tragedies occur. In the 20th century this dangerous constellation occurs 6 times. One is 1978. A truly extraordinary masterpiece.
Many have criticised the director for using his actors (and crew) as puppets and indeed his films are at many times highly choreographic and stylised. There’s even a surreal scene where they all 'karaoke' dance to Jerry Lewis’ You’re Never Too Young. Veronika Voss- 1981 (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss literally the longing of VV, a sort of Sunset Boulevard) though shot on film stock is almost an early experiment in doing high definition in black and white (the digital pixels of HD soaking up the white light). As Xavier Schwarzenberger notes in the DVD extra he wanted to create “a white film.. finding the depth of white” although the film is “a dark magical fairy tale” and in most Fassbinder films you could almost turn the colour off and still achieve that ‘glow’.
The opening titles to Fassbinder’s 1979 The Third Generation (Die Dritte Generation) describe it as “A comedy about parlour games in six parts, full of suspense, excitement and logic, cruelty and madness, just like the fairy tales we tell children to help them prepare for death through the changes of life.” A comedy of anarchy and an interesting companion to Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst) (1978) a political melo-dramatic portrait Fassbinder co-directed with other German luminaries.
Criterion's (US DVD) The BRD Trilogy with Veronika Voss
Arrow's The Fassbinder Commerative Collection Volume 1 and Vol2
and Fantoma in the States has some Fassbinder, too. Jim's Film Website is also an enthusiastic source of info.
In a parallel universe is Wim (Wings of Desire) Wenders whose Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten) opens in a new print as part of the Wenders retrospective at the BFI Southbank
.
Axiom Acquires Wim Wenders catalogue
The Independent previews the retrospective
Sight and Sound article, Senses of Cinema
We’re so used to seeing widescreen that the TV box shape of Alice in the Cities (Fassbinder often framed for TV) rivets our eyes with the white light of Robby Müller’s cinematography (I was blessed to be photographed by Robby in Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark). Perversely we see the German journalist Phil Winter (Rüdiger Vogler) taking colour Polaroids (the latest thing in the early 70’s) that we obviously see in B/W as he tries to make sense of America. Stuck on his article he’s also stuck at the airport and meets 9 year-old Alice (Yella Rottländer) whose mother (Lisa Kreuzer) vanishes leaving him with the girl who he escorts back to Germany whence they try to find her mother via her grandmother. All they have is a photo of the house and the film becomes an engrossing ‘road movie’ (also the name of Wenders’ company Road Movies). Very little happens but like Ang Lee even when it doesn't happen we’re always interested.
Anchor Bay 10-disc set
One of my Wender favourites is The State of Things receiving a rare outing in the retrospective.
In the DVD War Over High Definition, Most Buyers Are Sitting It Out (New York Times)
Like Wenders, silent movie master F. W. Murnau was lured by the mystery of America but died in car crash shortly before his major deal with Paramount was to commence. If he lived there’d be Murnau ‘talkies’, as it was the studio tried to add some dialogue to his City Girl but later cut it. His silent self-financed Tabu of 1931 in this beautifully frame by frame restored DVD print through Eureka is quite possibly the first time the film has ever been seen in Murnau’s intended version. Paramount wasn’t worried about the naked breasts of South Sea island girls, but the gyrating hips of a fully clothed American just couldn’t be seen. Like Fassbinder, Murnau wanted to choreograph his performers and rejected a documentary approach suggested to him by the cinematography. There’s an excellent very spontaneous (bouncing questions off each other) audio commentary (author experts R.Dixon Smith and Brad Stevens) on both Tabu and the similarly restored Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror from Murnau’s early German years in 1922.
Great YouTube trailer
Based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Murnau hadn’t acquired the rights but changed all the names. The company Prana later lost a court case to the Stoker estate and were asked to retrieve and destroy all prints, so we were lucky that Nosferatu survived at all as many of Murnau’s others have been completely lost. Prints were all hand-tinted using different tints to evoke the psychological states of the character. This is an absolutely enthralling DVD and an excellent introduction to anyone unfamiliar with the processes and psychology of silent cinema.
Phantom(1922)(US DVD by Flicker Alley, the nickname of Cecil Court, London home of the Brit silent film industry)
Look forward in a few weeks to more Eureka gems with Murnau’s Der Letzte Mann (1924) (aka The Last Laugh) and Fritz Lang’s Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon)
To be continued tomorrow...
"Thousands of commuters were urged to stay away from London today after two major pieces of Christmas engineering work failed to finish in time for the return to work", The London Paper
And with the internet and newspapers full of ‘Best of 2007’s (I plead guilty to reading them too), my former broadsheet (an arcane description for ‘compact’ papers now) arts editor
The Independent’s Thomas Sutcliffe took a refreshingly ‘post-modern’ (arcane now as well?) reflection:
My year of treats and torments
And if there was a TV scheduling equivalent to being sat right next to the restaurant lavatory or the kitchen door (wasn’t that a Danny Kaye sketch?), 9am New Year’s day is probably it and Channel Five allocated it to Tony Palmer's film O Thou Transcendent: the life of Vaughan-Williams also available on DVD. For decades Palmer has flown the flag for TV music biography in Britain, though not always choosing the flagpole many broadcasters (the BBC is a bête noire) would like. The Vaughan-Williams was a 3-hour slot but a rewarding, fascinating one with non-sycophantic interviews as diverse as Harrison Birtwhistle (contemp modern music doyen), Fairport Convention and Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. Initially a late Victorian/Edwardian, Vaughan-Williams is essential to 20th century Brit music and while never a ‘modernist’ (his roots were in English folksong tradition), his dark, agnostic but spiritual musical quest certainly was, and he would often stick-up for composers (like Michael Tippett and his pacifism) against prevailing public opinion. Perhaps he was Britain’s Bartok after all.
The ‘high ground culture’ of opera also returned to its ‘popular’ roots over Christmas. In 18th century days instead of the ‘posh’ stall seats at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, ‘commoners’ used to ‘stand at the spikes’ - the spikes there to stop rotten tomatoes et al from reaching the performers. BBC Four (winner of most consistent Christmas ‘neuron enhancing’ programming) televised the ROH production of Donizetti’s opera comedy La Fille du Régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment) directed by Laurent Pelly last year. This was no German staging of updated political resonance but a finely honed comic delight starring currently one of the best singer/actresses around Natalie Dessay as Marie the tomboy regiment’s ‘daughter’. She’s flushed out of her boots by tenor Tonio (the handsome ever-mellifluous Juan Diego Flórez) who has the famous aria with nine high C’s. There was even a turn by roly-poly Brit TV comedy star Dawn French in a speaking role. The conductor who knows his Italian opera inside out was Bruno Campanella. Great widescreen, surround sound TV.
Latest one-name sensation Adele has her debut album 19 (the 19 year-old Brixton Brit Adele Adkins) out in a few weeks:(Radio 4's Front Row Fri 4th) Exclusive BRITs YouTube Channel Launched
and lots of YouTube on dj spyder's site. I first saw her more than holding her own with other guests including Björk on Jools Holland's TV show. There’s a captivating rawness to her style as if she’s just picked up the microphone out of nowhere to sing her soul to you.
Former Midnight Oil rocker named Australia's environment minister
Fascinating discussion on the life of French existentialist Albert Camus: Radio 4’s In Our Time chaired by arts broadcaster supremo Melvyn Bragg. Downloadable podcast too to stimulate the neurons on your morning commute. Is there such a thing as happiness? Why not read some Camus as an antidote to the post-festive season blues? And a meditation by Franophile novelist Edmund White about the no-smoking ban for French cafe culture (Radio 4's Front Row Thurs 2 Jan end of programme, also a Vangelis interview). Gitanes will never be the same.
Michael Moore whose Michael Moore Collection is just out on Optimum DVD, showed his total amazement in Sicko (about health services on both Atlantic sides) that new French mothers could get home help and their washing done all for free by their government. So amazed was he that the doco’s final scene [spoiler warner :) has Moore in front of the White House about to take his laundry basket to them. My blog review. Moore has many detractors but his films certainly raise urgent questions. I thought of this as I handed over my £30 to the dentist as an emergency charge the other day. This wasn’t an NHS (National Health Service) charge but one imposed by the surgery on people they hadn’t seen for sometime (even a regular like me) because the surgery just hasn’t been able to handle the strain placed on the NHS over the last few years in Britain. £30 may not seem much to some I admit, but one of the ‘commandments in stone’ of the NHS is that treatment be free to all people at the point of need. And it wasn’t. So much for me trying not to ‘take up time’ with non-urgent appointments and be self-reliant. I made a doctor’s pre-Christmas appointment (in person), turned up two days later and they could find no record of it. I’m not ‘having a go’ at anybody but that’s what it’s like now. Don’t come and join the Euro-socialist revolution just yet Mr.Moore but please keep on doco-ing and provoking debate.
NHS dentistry in crisis as record number of practitioners defect to private sector (11 Jan addition to this blog)
Ofcom confirms under-16s 'junk' ad ban
A very far from fictional scenario is Will Smith’s I am Legend (BFI Imax) (forget the multiplexes!) in which a doctor (a very convincing one-minute cameo from Emma Thompson) has discovered a cancer cure by ‘piggybacking’ the cure onto the smallpox virus. Every one of the 10,009 trial patients was cured. Fast forward and Will Smith’s war hero Dr.Robert Neville is helping evacuate New York City before a deadly mutant strain takes hold. But too late, they all go mad and die. Fast forward another 3 years and the only survivors seem to be bands of ‘zombie’ mutants who can only survive in the dark, and the immune Will Smith plus gorgeous dog. Oh, and free-range deer (rifle practice wasn’t Dr. Neville’s strongpoint so he’s basically vegan). The film’s basically Will Smith and dog as he continues experimenting (not on dog) to find a cure, so it’s quite an achievement for director Francis Lawrence (and screenwriters Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman) to have fashioned a thrilling pic from what seems the very familiar material of Richard Matheson’s novel (1954). Without spoiling the ending, the logic is somewhat lacking if you know the only escape routes out of Manhattan.
For those with more stamina and good eyes for sub-titles (Mandarin) is the incomparable Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (Se,jie 色，戒) (US DVD Feb 19) – he of The Hulk and Brokeback Mountain.
Sadly, Taiwan removed the film as its best foreign film Oscar entry, because key crewmembers were not locals. Beginning in Hong Kong (1938) drama student Wong Chia Chi (wonderful newcomer Tang Wei) is enlisted by a Japanese occupation ramshackle resistance group to play the lust-object siren (18 certificate rating) to lure top Chinese collaborator Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) to his death. The action (or rather Lee’s masterly grasp of human in-action) switches to 1942 Shanghai. Adapted by regular Lee colleague James Schamus and Wang Hui Ling from Elaine Chang’s short story it’s a long film wrapping itself around the viewer like a python, with an ending some women will find perversely heartbreaking.
Very useful info on Wikipedia:
In the Shanghainese dialect, the words "lust" (色) and "lost" (失) are homophones.
The translation of the Chinese title 色、戒 as "Lust, Caution" misses most of the sense of the original. The meaning of the second word is closer to "warning" or even "renunciation," and also alludes to the ring (戒指) to be worn by Wong Chia Chi.
Sex 'pivotal' to Lust, says Lee
Excellent interview with Ang Lee on Radio 4’s Front Row (Tues 1st)
Observer profile
The siren of Jacques Rivette’s Don’t Touch the Axe (Ne touchez pas la hache) is Duchess Antoinette (the captivating and willowy Jeanne Balibar) of 1820’s Paris for whom the far from exciting general Armand (moody Guillaume Depardieu) is smitten. The title refers to the axe that befell the head of Charles I and is based upon a Balzac novel. It’s a long slow haul of a film but so is most of Rivette’s oeuvre. Yet so strong is Balibar’s allure and so finely tuned is Rivette’s pacing that once you’ve entered Rivette’s world (and it isn’t that easy) you’re in another dimension. Bluebell Films release some Rivette rarities Feb 25 on DVD: Wuthering Heights, Gang of 4 and Love on the Ground
Artificial Eye has also just released the indispensable Vol.2 Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Vol.1. Fassbinder is one of the most controversial directors in German film history leaving disgruntled armies in his wake (he died in 1982 leaving 41 films in 14 years about people who defy social norms!) and staunch supporters in equal numbers. The wendepunkt (turning point) of his career is In a Year of Thirteen Moons (In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden) (1978) in the Vol.2 set written and directed as an antidote to his lover Armin Meier’s suicide. It has a towering performance from Volker Spengler as Elvira/Erwin who is neither a transvestite nor post-op (though there was a discrete op in Casablanca) but as simply voiced in the trailer “a human being searching for love and tenderness”. Radical theatre/film/opera director Werner Schroeter has a fascinating interview extra and Fassbinder’s long-time editor and founder of the Fassbinder Foundation Juliane Lorenz notes that Thirteen Moons is “about the source of pain...a film that stabbed into everyone’s flesh”. And a 45 minute panel discussion after a celebratory Berlin screening in 1992 (including legendary East German playwright Heiner Müller and a laconic Spengler) gives a good taste of the fireworks surrounding Fassbinder; 1992 being one of the years with ’13 new moons’ of the film’s titles:
Every 7th year there is a moon year. People whose lives are strongly influenced by their emotions suffer more intensely from depression in these years. To a degree this is also true when a moon year also has 13 new moons, inescapable personal tragedies occur. In the 20th century this dangerous constellation occurs 6 times. One is 1978. A truly extraordinary masterpiece.
Many have criticised the director for using his actors (and crew) as puppets and indeed his films are at many times highly choreographic and stylised. There’s even a surreal scene where they all 'karaoke' dance to Jerry Lewis’ You’re Never Too Young. Veronika Voss- 1981 (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss literally the longing of VV, a sort of Sunset Boulevard) though shot on film stock is almost an early experiment in doing high definition in black and white (the digital pixels of HD soaking up the white light). As Xavier Schwarzenberger notes in the DVD extra he wanted to create “a white film.. finding the depth of white” although the film is “a dark magical fairy tale” and in most Fassbinder films you could almost turn the colour off and still achieve that ‘glow’.
The opening titles to Fassbinder’s 1979 The Third Generation (Die Dritte Generation) describe it as “A comedy about parlour games in six parts, full of suspense, excitement and logic, cruelty and madness, just like the fairy tales we tell children to help them prepare for death through the changes of life.” A comedy of anarchy and an interesting companion to Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst) (1978) a political melo-dramatic portrait Fassbinder co-directed with other German luminaries.
Criterion's (US DVD) The BRD Trilogy with Veronika Voss
Arrow's The Fassbinder Commerative Collection Volume 1 and Vol2
and Fantoma in the States has some Fassbinder, too. Jim's Film Website is also an enthusiastic source of info.
In a parallel universe is Wim (Wings of Desire) Wenders whose Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten) opens in a new print as part of the Wenders retrospective at the BFI Southbank
.
Axiom Acquires Wim Wenders catalogue
The Independent previews the retrospective
Sight and Sound article, Senses of Cinema
We’re so used to seeing widescreen that the TV box shape of Alice in the Cities (Fassbinder often framed for TV) rivets our eyes with the white light of Robby Müller’s cinematography (I was blessed to be photographed by Robby in Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark). Perversely we see the German journalist Phil Winter (Rüdiger Vogler) taking colour Polaroids (the latest thing in the early 70’s) that we obviously see in B/W as he tries to make sense of America. Stuck on his article he’s also stuck at the airport and meets 9 year-old Alice (Yella Rottländer) whose mother (Lisa Kreuzer) vanishes leaving him with the girl who he escorts back to Germany whence they try to find her mother via her grandmother. All they have is a photo of the house and the film becomes an engrossing ‘road movie’ (also the name of Wenders’ company Road Movies). Very little happens but like Ang Lee even when it doesn't happen we’re always interested.
Anchor Bay 10-disc set
One of my Wender favourites is The State of Things receiving a rare outing in the retrospective.
In the DVD War Over High Definition, Most Buyers Are Sitting It Out (New York Times)
Like Wenders, silent movie master F. W. Murnau was lured by the mystery of America but died in car crash shortly before his major deal with Paramount was to commence. If he lived there’d be Murnau ‘talkies’, as it was the studio tried to add some dialogue to his City Girl but later cut it. His silent self-financed Tabu of 1931 in this beautifully frame by frame restored DVD print through Eureka is quite possibly the first time the film has ever been seen in Murnau’s intended version. Paramount wasn’t worried about the naked breasts of South Sea island girls, but the gyrating hips of a fully clothed American just couldn’t be seen. Like Fassbinder, Murnau wanted to choreograph his performers and rejected a documentary approach suggested to him by the cinematography. There’s an excellent very spontaneous (bouncing questions off each other) audio commentary (author experts R.Dixon Smith and Brad Stevens) on both Tabu and the similarly restored Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror from Murnau’s early German years in 1922.
Great YouTube trailer
Based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Murnau hadn’t acquired the rights but changed all the names. The company Prana later lost a court case to the Stoker estate and were asked to retrieve and destroy all prints, so we were lucky that Nosferatu survived at all as many of Murnau’s others have been completely lost. Prints were all hand-tinted using different tints to evoke the psychological states of the character. This is an absolutely enthralling DVD and an excellent introduction to anyone unfamiliar with the processes and psychology of silent cinema.
Phantom(1922)(US DVD by Flicker Alley, the nickname of Cecil Court, London home of the Brit silent film industry)
Look forward in a few weeks to more Eureka gems with Murnau’s Der Letzte Mann (1924) (aka The Last Laugh) and Fritz Lang’s Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon)
To be continued tomorrow...
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