Unbelievable Unbearable London: August 2008

The wettest August in London since 1917 sobbed BBC News - the 'typical Brit summer' seeming to stare into its own reflection.
Decline of the bee on BBC TV's Newsnight
At least our poor, blighted Prime Minister Gordon Brown (and let's be honest, he's not to blame for most of the country's woes- wasn't it that other PM who keeps buying mansions attempting to emulate the Russian oligarchs) had something worth smiling about as the British Olympic team (Team GB) boasted 19 gold medals (47 in total). A helluva leap from the single Brit gold in Atlanta 1996. And you had to shed at least half a tear for former London Mayor Ken Livingstone who worked his butt off trying to secure the 2012 Olympics for London without ever allowed the glory to bask in Beijing's handover. New Mayor Boris didn't quite ride in on the red double-decker bus featured in the 8 minute Brit 'Bird's Nest' show, more like whisked from his exclusive London club.
Philip Pan (interviewed about his new book on The Daily Show)believes the Chinese government is using the Olympics to prove to the people of China that a one-party system can be just as effective as a Democratic government.

The organizers of the 'bus segment' weren't quite brave enough to 'have a laugh' and let the bus whiz by and then back track with a cultural spectrum of commuters (Royal Opera House dancers) desperately signalling it to stop (something that was quite typical of London transport). "Your time is coming, don't be late," enthused one of the amateur choir finalists from TV Last Choir Standing - one of the many acts celebrating London's 2012 outside Buckingham Palace. But Brit umbrellas were there in Beijing, and current Mayor Boris Johnson was on hand afterwards to do what amounted to a comedy stand-up routine in the style of Sir Winston Churchill as he educated the world about lost Olympic sports and how Britain invented Ping Pong on their dinner tables. Maybe Boris is inventing a new sport at his club as I speak! This is in addition to appointing himself Chairman of most London committees including Transport for London. Good news that Crossrail got the go ahead but that wont ease the strain on the underground transport network until well after the 2012 Olympics. Every week at least, commuters still struggle with tube line closures, the usual excuse proffered as signal failure. And the worry is that scenario has perpetuated itself for at least the last 10 years without much improvement.
The Undercover Economist: What will the Olympics ever do for us?
UK Tibet protester returns home

Transport: Mayor insists Crossrail won't take cash from tube upgrade
Crossrail given green light by Parliament
A BBC Four night of tube history docos was engaging, including poet Sir John Benjamin tracing the origins of the Metropolitan line and discovering a man who was Wurlitzer organ player for the Leicester Square Odeon having installed the entire apparatus in his suburban home when the cinema got refurbed: some good links on these pages
Hoy: 'It's been crazy. I'm just looking forward to sleeping in my bed'
Adlington Arms awaits golden girl. She was even given a pair of gold Jimmy Choo shoes by the town's Mayor.
Olympic handover to mark launch of £4m ad campaign for London 2012
Cycling 'Tour of Britain'
The mobile phone throwing world championships have been held in Estonia.
Dog is a winner in mobile phone throwing contest
End of the road for environmentally-unfriendly Vespa?
Peruvian jockey Alan Garcia On To A Winner

In the piazza outside the Royal National Theatre Wed/Thurs Brit aerial company Upswing are offering free bungee dancing classes and lots more.
North versus South: Green spaces - A look at Royal parks North and South of the River

But its a time of giving so let's not dwell...no, that's Christmas isn't it?, well Santa Claus auditions have already started - let's hope they haven't watched that Billy Bob Thornton movie. But it is a time to accentuate the Brit type A positive (shame Sir Richard Branson didn't succeed in his bid to run the National Lottery all those years ago, he was only going to charge expenses rather than have 'the license to print money' shareholders of Camelot, so true to its name). And let's remember that most of the increased funding for certain sports has come from the lottery not directly form government).
Government to plug £100m hole in funding for British Olympic athletes
Government turns to private sector but fails to guarantee 2012 funding: Jowell announces Medal Hopes sponsorship scheme
Olympic Funding: Sport backs £600m plan to boost Britain's athletes at London 2012
Britain's Olympic winners face funding cuts
Parliamentary meeting minutes
Fast track to glory

Current music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Antonio Pappano reminds us in another revealing BBC Radio 3 Norman Lebrecht interview, that with current British investment in music "people are going to become musically stupid". Like the Olympics, the annual BBC Proms continues to astonish with both home grown and foreign musical talent in spite of this. Last Saturday, Pappano conducted the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (oldest member its 19 year-old leader) in an 'American' themed evening with playing as bold as its programme. (Still available to listen on line - what a wonderful thing the internet can be, even in Tierra del Fuego you can be a Promenader). And with BBC's iPlayer on demand I think you can still catch the breathtaking youngsters of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Prom 38 conducted by Daniel Barenboim (who formed the group in 1999 with Palestinian philosopher Edward Said bringing Arab and Israeli musicians together). What mesmerised in this concert was the strength and individual voice of each player as if each had a message of unification for the world. And that's not just words to justify the whole enterprise, that's what you saw and heard. Such spirit gave Haydn's Sinfonia concertante the quality of what a Sainte-Colombe family concert must have been like (next paragraph) and made Brahms Symphony No.4 of turmoil sound like its first ever performance.
Barenboim's new book Everything is Connected
The importance of music for retailers and their customers

Lebrecht BBC Podcasts - watch on line for a week or download for 30 days using BBc iplayer.
Aural obituary of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in BBC Radio 4's The Last Word(Friday 15th August)

BBC 2's Maestro is a Strictly Come Dancing/Dancing with the Stars for celebrities brave enough to look foolish conducting an orchestra. For those in the 'maestro' know it's probably fairly excruciating to watch a TV news presenter, a famous DJ, David Soul, a famous actress and others be taught the craft of conducting. But by the end of the second episode you did wonder whether it might just inspire youngsters ill-versed in the classical conducting world to (if not) literally take up the baton then tune into some BBC Proms for a new experience.
Proms interview podcasts

French cinema icon Gérard Depardieu has always resembled a retired boxer even in his earliest films (trivia question - has he even thrown a movie punch?) but always emerges a gentle giant continuing to give great low-key performances (see The Singer(Quand j'étais chanteur) . Part of Optimum's The Gerard Depardieu Boxset bargain, his part in Tous les Matins du Monde (1991)is relatively small but pivotal. Winner of seven French Césars (their BAFTA's), Alain Corneau's film explores the world of obscure 17th century violist composer Monsieur de Saint Colombe (Jean Pierre Marielle) who since his wife's death has lived as a recluse with his two equally musically talented daughters. One day, would-be court composer Marin Marais (Depardieu's son Guillaume playing the young man, Gérard the older) arrives begging for lessons (Colombe is well known to the Louis XIV court as is his contempt for it, though before this film only Marais' name really survived). 'Do you want to make music for the King to dance to or be a real musician,' challenges Colombe. Having had an affair as a youth with Colombe's daughter Madeleine, the successful older Marais pays the bed-ridden girl a visit, "you are full of magnificent ribbons sir, and fat," she jibes. Not much happens in this film but the music comes from deep within the earth, and it's a script always full of gentle wit and musical insight as when Marais is peeing outside in the dark and Colombe makes him listen to the cascading urine: "Music is only there to speak what words cannot say," he advises. If you're ever in Durham, its Cathedral library has a manuscript copy of Colombe's Six Suites for solo bass viol. The composer is credited with having added the 7th string to the bass viol in France as well as inventing the wound bass strings while his bowing wanted to reach perfection in imitating the human voice.
San Diego rockers Louis XIV sold out London date
Synching feeling: stage director Robert Lepage

The ravishing cinematography by Yves Angelo can also be savoured in his own directorial triumph Le Colonel Chabert (1994) based on a Balzac novel about a soldier missing for 10 years in the Napoleonic wars and presumed dead. Returning to Paris he finds that his 'widow' (Fanny Ardent) has since remarried to a politically avaricious social climber. Chabert hires a lawyer (Fabrice Luchini) to regain his fortune but like Colombe finally retreats from the idiocy of the world. Almost surreal is Betrand Blier's Buffet Froid (1979) a black comedy with a young Depardieu caught up in a series of Paris murders.Very bizarre and compelling. In lighter mode, Depardieu plays the kind of role he can do effortlessly standing on his head (he was cast in the Hollywood remake), Mon Pere Ce Hero(1991) - a divorced father who takes his precocious teenage daughter on holiday to the Bahamas as a bonding exercise.
Buffet Froid French trailer

Working Title (Brit company behind hits like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Billy Elliot and Notting Hill) first forays into the teenage market with Wildchild and it isn't as excruciating as some reviews have made out. Subtle it certainly ain't but the production values are top notch and if it gets American kids exploring the film's location's such as West Yorkshire Bronte country and Kent's Cobham Hall that can be no bad thing, along with its theme of marrying individuality with team spirit. This 'LA style fashionistete gets Brit boarding school tamed' script is by first timer Lucy Dahl (based on her own experiences on both continents) and veteran multi-hit editor Nick Moore's first directorial outing.
Swinton takes on Cannes with cup cakes and Scottish rain
British films that were buried alive

Far more refined (though some might say twee is the pre-WWII Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day directed by Bharat Nalluri and based on Winifred Watson's novel about a literally down-at-heel middle-aged governess (Frances McDormand) who blags her way into the job of social secretary for kept socialite and wannabe actress Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). Mid-August seems a strange time to release what is more an autumn/winter film but maybe the soggy weather helped attendances and it looks magnificent in the cinema with John de Borman's (The Full Monty) 2:35 widescreen cinematography. The film's done tremendous business in America and though it seems to lack a certain 'edge' that quality certainly lurks in the woodwork (Simon 'The Full Monty' Beaufoy script), with the casting of Adams and McDormand truly working a spell.
US DVD out now
All hail the spinster
The Guardian Winifred Watson obituary
How a 1938 novel led to a surprise box-office hit

Where else but in England would you find a TV programme devoted to the female Vagina (The Perfect Vagina still available to ( view on 4 on Demand - 4oD for past 30 days to watch on your pc). There's even a Brit sculptor equivalent of Robert Mapplethorp's NYC sexual photos who casts molds of vaginas. I can't see that happening on Discovery or HBO! Brave, fascinating and moving documentary.

BBC Radio 4's The Archive Hour on Marie Stopes remembered not only as the founder of modern birth control but also as an archaelogist. Visit Stopes' favourite Portand Museum. BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

Distributor Revolver Entertainment's film on Robert Mapplethorpe Black, White + Gray out on DVD having just played at the ICA.

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

Also showing at last year's festival was French writer/director Catherine Breillat's new film The Last Mistress (Une Vielle Maîtresse) - now out on DVD (the first film since her stroke in 2004) based on Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's 19th-century novel Une vieille maîtresse - a book she'd so passionately wanted to adapt that she'd even bought antique lace over the years for the costumes. This is 1830s Paris with some of the most painful and erotic cinematic passion you're ever likely to see between the young Adonis, Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Aït Aattou) and aging countess Vellini (Asia Argento).
Catherine Breillat: All true artists are hated
"I am the pariah of French cinema, "she says, "Some people refuse to read my scripts...but it also makes me very happy because hatred is invigorating...only conformists are ever adored."
"All my previous films were judged nefarious or scandalous, but they did not represent the real me, " says Breillat. "I'm free at last.[This film] represents the me that does not rise up against the world and its taboos. When I'm at peace, I'm actually terribly romantic...Films are not realism. The true sense comes over in a painting when the artist does not bother with reality." I've seen The Last Mistress twice now, and its probably the 'sexiest' most sensual period film you're ever likely to see and with practically no sex scenes, "the bottomless abyss of our caresses". The DVD has a 'making of' and interview that give a taste of Breillat's world.
GreenCine interview
Une Vieille Maitresse Trailer
Chantal Akerman + Catherine Breillat. Film Theory. 2001 (7 YouTube vids)
Asia Argento Rising (Village Voice article)
Study sheds light on octopus sex which we humans devour in turn.

I not sure what Breillat's take (if any) is on American Jewish novelist Philip Roth but Spanish director Isabel Coixet 'does a Breillat' with Elegy, Nicholas Meyer's adaptation of Philip Roth's 2001 novel The Dying Animal. This is Ben Kingsley as sixtyish Columbia Uni lit prof and TV pundit David Kepesh falling for Consuela (Pénelope Cruz) who Coixet just about convinces you is the 24 year-old of the book. And this is treacherous literary reef material to bring to the big screen so easily becoming an enormous squelching mud pie. But Coixet, often operating the camera herself handheld a la Danish maverick Lars von Trier, transfigures the book into a poignant cine-music drama. Both protagonists have a dozen instruments inside them - little wind figures suddenly catch your ear, the delicate difference between a violin's up and down bow becomes apparent and magnificent solos take your breath away. Perhaps if you've never experienced some of Roth's literary emotions it might be more like your first classical concert with the 'enjoyment luck' of the draw all down to the choose of repertoire. But there's some incredibly fine acting here in addition to Kingsley and Cruz - Kepesh's no-strings his own age (well 10-15 years younger) lover (Patricia Clarkson), Dennis Hopper as a poet and his longtime friend and confidante, with Peter Sarsgaard Kepesh's thirtysomething love/hate son.

More of the grizzled male world in Alan Rudolph's Trouble in Mind (1985) out on Nouveaux DVD digitally remastered from a restored print with a brand new interview with Rudolph and star Keith Carradine. Rudolf isn't a name familiar to those outside the film industry and even then.."the only script I've ever written that somebody wanted to buy," chuckles Rudolf as he talks of meeting producers, "this is almost like a real movie, is what they were thinking." Ex-cop Hawk(Kris Kristofferson)has served his long murder rap in prison and returns to old haunts in Rain City (a thinly disguised Seattle with a "retro-future look") where army recruitment jeeps roam the city and protestors are quashed. Ex-flame Wanda (Genevieve Bujold) runs a cafe/diner and settles Hawk upstairs but nothing more. Also newly arrived in town is sweet country-girl Georgia (Lori Singer) baby in toe and straggly boyfriend Coop (Keith Carradine). Very soon he slips into the underground stream of crime that seems to rule the city (crims utter surreal lines like "Cervantes says delay always breeds danger") looking more and more like a David Bowie fan in his chic new clothes and coloured quiff. "A little bit of everyone belongs in hell," says Hawk to his old Lieutenant detective.

I'd been a long time since I'd seen this film and it's as haunting as I remember it. Rudolf always creates a tone all of his own, here abetted by Mark Isham's bluesy score of ostinato atmosphere (one of his first after Mrs. Soffel and The Times of Harvey Milk in 1984). Hawk began making models of the town in prison and many of the film's overhead/exterior shots use these creating further weirdness. To top it all cult drag queen Divine is given a straight acting role as the milk-drinking crime boss Hilly Blue meeting his end in a comic book shoot out. Topping and tailing the film are two haunting songs - Marianne Faithful rasping rhapsodically through Richard M. Jones' Trouble in Mind and Kristofferson's own El Gavilan (The Hawk), "Will you remember way down the road somebody loves you more than you know".
Marianne Faithful - RARE Live , YouTube clip, cult site.

If you've never seen the work of another cinema maverick Terence Malick then his debut Badlands (1977), with youngsters Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek on a killing spree somehow spiralling out of this world, is re-released in a new print this week. Very emotive given the rise of London crime in recent years.
The start of something beautiful (Ryan Gilbey in The Guardian)

The young teenagers and their rhythms of rural Turkish Anatolian life in lyrically beautiful Times and Winds(Bes Vak) was first seen at the 2006 London Film Festival, played New York last year, and finally gets its UK cinema release this week (Q&A with director Reha Erdem ).
(my blog review)

A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory was part of LFF's Experimenta slot last year and just showed at the ICA. Director Esther Robinson's doco delves into her mysterious uncle Danny who only made shorts for about 6 months, but who was one of the very few people to whom Warhol ever loaned his Bolex. He began as an editor for the Maysles brothers, no less, and became a regular at Warhol's factory designing lighting for the Velvet Underground shows. In 1966 he disappeared without a trace. I began my breakfast chat last year with Esther with memories of my own quest Hybrid Magazine many years ago (Page 2) for another failed New York legend Jack Smith. Mary Jordan was the one tenacious and brave enough to deal with the estate's rights issues with her doco finally surfacing in last year's LFF.

"Yes, Mary and I compared war stories. [But, of course, Danny was family]. I'm a musky American full of love. But I don't think there was much love in 60's experimental work. Artists have two families their birth and artistic. [And it's about] the choice you make. Jack Smith chose [his artistic family] well. Danny did in the beginning but it wasn't a nurturing family. When he needed something emotional from that [Warhol] world it wasn't there. Drugs derailed Danny and it didn't Warhol. The amphetamines increased that singular, narcissism in the centre where you remember yourself. Danny was much more a chronicler of what happens, watching and capturing. Jack Smith was [more about] being in the world. Jack had this spectacular frame [of existence]. Danny had exuberance through his frame - sensual and joyful. And Warhol was almost operatic because they were all kids, fighting, with promise but how do you actualise that promise. [There was] a rapid breakdown of social codes, high-class kids' world blown apart, wanting something to hang their personalities on. They didn't have scrappy survival instincts. Drugs gave them bravery." One of Robinson's most revealing interviewees is musician John Cale who reflects that each of the Warhol group really wanted to remember Danny in their own image, constructing the myth to fill in the voids. Esther: "I was speaking to one of my interns [about this] that nobody chooses this [profession] out of sheer ego, at some point it chooses you. The orbit of something eclipses you. But the world likes neat categories."

Same distributor Revolver Entertainment also releases (ICA) the fascinating amazingly hitherto untold story of the Los Angeles art scene The Cool School narrated by Jeff Bridges. Most documentaries focus on the New York scene but director Morgan Neville was surprised nobody had ever approached the seminal Ferus Gallery (1957-1966) crowd of Ed Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin. Dennis Hopper naturally makes an appearance.

Serota gets a job for life at the Tate
Tate that: Serota defies his critics

Lyricism and art probably aren't words that spring to mind when the name The Walter Hill Collection is mentioned but this bargain 6-disc Optimum set shows why such words should apply. There are no disc commentaries, "I don't like running commentary tracks. Watch the damn film," he's been quoted as saying, but there is an exclusive recent interview extra that proves Walter Hill to be one of the most erudite and eloquent Hollywood directors around. "Filmmaking is like joining the circus," he advises. His interviews cited by Wiki are all worth reading. Start perhaps with Sean Axmaker's 2005 GreenCine.

The moral complexity of Hill's films dates back to Charles Dickens he argues in Optimum's interview - Sam Peckinpah via Kurasawa via John Ford via D.W. Griffiths via Dickens. "You don't love who you're fighting for and you don't hate who you're fighting against," says Robert Duvall's character in Geronimo. "I guess you get into the "What is a Western?" question," quoting from GreenCine's interview. "I think probably what I was referring to - beyond my kind of adolescent sense of drama and heroism and all that kind of thing, liking things to play out through physical action - I guess it's that the Western is ultimately a stripped down moral universe that is, whatever the dramatic problems are, beyond the normal avenues of social control and social alleviation of the problem, and I like to do that even within contemporary things. It seems to me I'm always trying to get that quality into the movies, where you're away from the normal recourse of civil relief to the problem and the characters have to work it out for themselves."

Hill began working Second Unit on Norman Jewison's The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt and since then pretty much everything he's been involved with holds a fascination for the cinema goer including of course his writing/producing credits on the first Alien pictures. There's a tenderness to many of Hill's characters whether he's written them himself or not. A tenderness tempered by a streetwise intelligence. In one of his favourites Johnny Handsome (1989), based on John Godey's novel, stool pigeon petty crim Mickey Rourke is offered reconstructive facial surgery (Forest Whitaker's surgeon) for the disfigured face he was born with, no thanks to the cynicism of the cop on his tail Morgan Freeman. Predictably but elegaically, the film shows Johnny unable to quiet his thirst for revenge on the crims who murdered his former buddy in a bankjob. The score is by Ry Cooder, who Hill practically discovered for The Long Riders (1980) and Cooder's first film score. Hill hates the "overstated, punctuated Hollywood score" and for him Cooder scores "around the edges of a scene rather than punching up the emotive values". That latter film's casting of the four families of outlaw brothers using real life acting brothers e.g. James and Stacy Keach as Jesse and Frank James digs incredibly deep into the characters' intimacy and antagonism seen on screen.

Southern Comfort from the following year(1981) couldn't be more relevant in these Iraq War days showing how the dormant propensity for survival and violence affects nine part-time Louisiana National Guardsman in 1973 as a prank on local Cajuns backfires into a nightmare. Another great Ry Cooder score. Extreme Prejudice (1987) covers similar moral ground with six men disembarking at a Texas airport all of whom are supposedly dead and missing in war action. Their paths cross with Texas Ranger Jack Benteen (Nick Nolte) and county Sheriff Hank Pearson (Rip Torn) who are in pursuit of Cash Bailey, a playboy drug lord money laundering in the State and involved with Benteen's former girl. "There are no heroes," says one of the bitter soldiers, "we're just numbers on a bureaucratic desk". Another great off-kilter score from Jerry Goldsmith.

The hit cult film that made Hill "an employable director for the first time" was The Warriors (1979) based on Greek history and the story of Xenophon and the march of the ten thousand to the sea. All the teenage gangs from New York's five boroughs are asked by their leader Cyrus to sign a unification peace treaty but he's assassinated early on and the Coney Island gang called The Warriors have to make it back to their hood before sunrise. Much to the delight of fans, Paramount issued a Director's Cut DVD some years back but the Optimum version is not this but the original 4 minute shorter version - the only let down of the set. And Hill's still riveting script for The Driver(1978) must surely deserve an award for best car park scene in a movie with its opening elevator shot

One of Hill's least favourite films for fans is his Red Heat (1988), a star vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger and available singularly (bargain price) or as part of Optimum's new 'Arnie' box set. It's a really cleverly executed and fun film, though with, as you'd expect from Hill, fantastic character delineation. "We're police officers not politicians - it's OK to like each other," says Arnie's Chicago cop Ridzik (James Belushi) given the unenviable job of partnering Russia cop Ivan Danko (Schwarzenegger) as he bulldozers his way through the streets in extradition quest of drug czar Viktor Rostavili (Ed O'Ross - DVD extra on how he's not remotely Russian but was always cast so). The pre-digital stunt choreography by long-time Arnie collaborator Bennie Dobbins is also stunning (DVD extra Stuntman for All Seasons as the film is dedicated to him after he died of a heart attack in the final week's shoot). Loads of other very nuanced acting performances from Pruitt Taylor Vince as the put-upon Night Clerk and Gina Gershon (in one of her first roles) as the gangster's moll.

Other curios in the set are Red Sonja 1985 (remember Brigitte Nielsen as the avenging warrior queen) with an Ennio Morricone score and amazing cinematography from the great Giuseppi Rotunno. And Raw Deal (1986) with Arnie as a demoted local sheriff saving the day by infiltrating the Mafia (his timing as in Red Heat is really spot on and to be learned from) plus editing from legend Anne Coates and photography from Brit Alex Thomson. The much awaited commentary voiced by Arnie and director Paul Verhoeven for the American special DVD release of Total Recall (also available on Blu-ray) is a little disappointing (more anecdotes from Arnie would have been nice but I guess he has a lot on his mind these days) but nonetheless it's well worth buying the DVD for all the other extras detailing the truly amazing special effects - Rob Bottin's make-up, the puppeteers, and Eric Brevig from Dream Quest Images who went on to join ILM (Industrial Light and Magic). It's all very much in the spirit of Fritz Lang and his use of models in creating fake perspective. Total Recall was one of the last non CG (computer generated) films and it's quite apt that Arnie should have been born in Graz, Austria home to one of the world's leading new arts technology festivals Ars Electronica given that he went onto to star in the techno blockbusting The Terminator movies. Greedy to ask (and probably too back-stage geeky I know),but would have been fascinating to have stand-alone interviews with producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna of their infamous Carolco company 1982-1995 (Chaplin, Basic Instinct, Terminator 2, The Doors and some of Walter Hills) and a vital if often eyed with suspicion force in Hollywood.
BFI's The Time Machine season kicks off their 75th birthday celebrations next month.
An ordinary lady who had an extraordinary job censoring Churchill''s phonecalls.
Amateur diplomat sought Nazi pact

The Quiet American (1958) (budget-price DVD, no extras) directed and adapted by Joseph L. Mankiewicz from Graham Greene's novel is a curate's egg of a film. Greene disowned the film that ignored his anti-American message claiming it was a "propaganda film for America" portraying the Communists as responsible for the terrorist acts that, in the novel, were provoked by anti-Communists. The film is also dedicated (as a closing title) to Ngo Dinh Diem the U.S.-backed president of South Vietnam. The background is the First Indochina War and Saigon in 1952 with Thomas Fowler (Michael Redgrave) a complex, disillusioned middle-aged Brit correspondent losing his young girlfriend Phuong (Giorgia Moll) to the clean-cut idealistic Amercian Alden Pyle. It's well worth reading Robert Gorham Davis' March 11, 1956 original New York Times book review claiming that "there is no real debate in the book...Fowler, however, is often quoting almost verbatim from articles which Graham Greene wrote about Indochina for The London Times last spring. He had visited the Communist territories and been much impressed by the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. When these articles were published in this country they caused an especially strong reaction in the Catholic press." What a great novelist believes and what actually emerges through the lines of his books are often two different things, though. And the film is worth seeing for the great Michael Redgrave's (of the acting dynasty) performance that would not be out of place in a Walter Hill pic. "I was tired of the whole pack of them, with their private stores of Coca-Cola and their portable hospitals and their wide cars and their not quite latest guns," says Fowler. But like many, he's trapped between the exotic, easy, exciting life of foreign shores and a still depressing post-war London where a 'conventional' marriage awaits his return (David Lean territory) and one that he's never come to terms with.

"The people they stare, and ask who I am;
And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money."

...is a poem by Fowler found in Greene's book, though not the film. Phillip Noyce's 2002 film starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser followed Greene's novel more carefully and was released pre the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the black and white photography of Robert Krasker, born betwixt Egypt and Australia (Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), David Lean's Brief Encounter) creates for Mankiewicz a strange dialectic of its own given the exotic location. As any scientist worth their salt will tell you the facts alone rarely show the true hand of God. And very few films or indeed novels even approach Graham Greene's "dangerous edge of things".

President Bush quoting from The Quiet American
Robert Greenwald's site Brave New Films offers the Democrat perspective on the race for US President.
Democracy digitised (BBC's Newsnight)
Hillary: the real Denver story
David Hare on how the BBC killed the TV play
And Satellite Earth is a fascinating BBC doco showing just what's happening in the race for the skies above us and its historical context.
and Australian Aboriginal astronomy.

Unbelievable Unbearable London

Saturday 30 August 2008

Addition:

Wednesday 27 August 2008

...only a few months ago, a lifetime some may say...

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