.THAT: S,TRANGE. SOUND-

(you need to see a larger image of this to get my drift...)

One does wonder the point of existence after the American government bailed out its capitalist economy - or should that read 'saved the world'. Republicans became 'socialists', Democrats rampant 'capitalists' - none asking for $699 instead of $700 billion like a 99 cent chocolate bar pretending not to be $1. Retailers persist in such trompe-l'œil for admiring consumers so presumably the strategy must work. Did the American stretegy work for the world economy, though? I had a vision of angry fed-up parents who'd raised their kids in the good old suburban family way seeing their sproglings stranded on an island in their placid man-made utopian lake a-wondering whether to rescue or nuke them after the kids had burnt down the house, exploded the boat-shed and drowned all the family pets, and the neighbours. Nuking was out of the question, though, as all along the parents knew they were somehow partly responsible yet wouldn't own up. And these were kids who actually had some semblance of 'home'.

Most of the British public bought into the New Labour democracy champagne myth of spend, spend, spend, buying houses they couldn't really afford without massive bank subsidies which in turn were financed by other institutions profiteering by selling debt - simply a much larger version of that £40 you owed the mobile phone company who then sold the debt on to somebody else. Financial institutions on all waters partied on with the derivatives equivalent of debt using credit default swaps. The hard-working, reasonably honest, human in the street threatened by the government with such prospects of losing his/her financial arms and legs could only lope back inside the humble abode, pull the covers up and count sheep backwards - the woollen colours becoming more blurred everyday.

Eden Lake: horrible, brilliant and far too close to the bone of what's ahappening in English society to be remotely enjoyable.
Criminal Justice (Acorn DVD, site under construction but order number), a drama on the Brit legal system, originally screened July on BBC1 in 5 episodes and is now out on DVD. Piercing performances from Ben Whishaw, Pete Postlethwaite, David Harewood etc. More marginalising of the truth.

But can and does one feel safe even under that duvet anymore? Was it ever thus? American independent writer/director/editor/composer John Carpenter who's honoured with a new Optimum box DVD set of his work believes that "horror movies are always indicative of something in the culture," referring particularly to his 1988 They Live (Blu-Ray)- a horror/sci-fi movie that he thinks "is a documentary about what's going on now": the oppression of the poor and struggling workers coerced to buying into the consumer culture perpetuated by the upper classes and power structure. But the natives are restless as is the film's hero John Nada (Roddy Piper, an ex-pro wrestler): "I'm here to kick ass and chew bubble-gum...and I'm all out of bubble-gum!" goes the famous line. When the recesssion takes a man's simple pleasures away..."We've all got these own little lives [that everything else revolves around] and nobody's helpin' anybody," Piper notes on the DVD commentary he shares with Carpenter. I tried putting on the sunglasses to warn credit happy Londoners, but who'd listen to an impish extra-terrestrial Ozzie like me.

Indeed, Carpenter's career has been inspired by the great American director of Westerns Howard Hawks: "people in an enclosed space dealing with this hostile world outside...in situations where they are no longer able to control what's going to happen to them." What defines Carpenter from other directors is a relatively still camera watching his characters, then edited with lingerings on their external world (director Walter Hill, for example, focuses far more on the actors psychology, though in many ways both directors are quite similar). The Fog (Blu-Ray)is just that. The uncontrollable external force that drifts in from the sea to wreak havoc on the tiny seaside village. As the current financial markets continue to tumble many people must feel exactly the same. Powerless in what they thought was a relatively if not totally safe environment. But how complicit are they in the system? Does that fog embody their suppressed greed, jealousy, avarice, complacency and complicity? Was the fog itself ever as pernicious as their own fears? As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said of the 1930's American Depression, "Only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

The decision to invoke anti-terror laws was described by the Icelandic Prime Minister, Geir Haarde, as a "completely unfriendly act". ...whatever next?
Iceland tests carbon capture
BBC's Newsnight report on Credit Default Swaps , Part 2(YouTube, in a bit of a rush so couldn't find it on their own site, but it's there.)
and their report on Sovereign Wealth Funds

That's what sets Carpenter apart from most other directors. His films manage to be both commercial and yet socially relevant while remaining relatively independent but not totally anathema to the Hollywood studios and their stars. "In America I'm [seen as] a bum [hobo]," he quips at a Los Angeles Q&A after an Assault on Precinct 13 screening. Whereas in France he's feted as a genius by cinema forces such as the magazine Cahiers du cinéma. "Neither of them are right," he laughs in his habitually self-deprecating manner. Carpenter's own audio commentaries (Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing, They Live) are well worth the listen - informative, illuminating, inspiring to aspirant filmmakers and somewhat nicely self-deprecating as in that last quote. Assault also has an isolated music score option interesting for those following in Carpenter's self-scoring timesteps. Synth scores can so often sound cheap and tacky, but they never do with Carpenter. Also exclusive to this DVD set is a 31 min with him on his career and techniques describing his cult-following Dark Star (not in the set) as "a nice little amateur movie". He sure set the benchmark high for 'amateur movies'. Referring to Escape from New York(Blu-Ray), "any chance I get to belittle authority I love to do it." "Some men prefer to be islands," notes his producer Debra Hill: the character of Snake is " the unpatriotic, patriotic side of American anti-hero...and that's what makes America love him so much." "Good government is the solution bad government is the problem not just government,"says Carpenter.

Abel Ferrara, unlike Carpenter, is likely to ring you at 4am in the morning asking you to be cinematographer or an actor in his latest pic. And this special edition double DVD of King of New York gives an excellent overview of Ferrara's place in the cinematic canon. "I got my heart in my mouth every fuckin' second of this film," he rasps on the commentary, "this is such a joy this fuckin' movie" he later repeats. He's alluring and perversely fascinating, though, and like his films has enough energy to light up several city blocks. "Shoot him again if he's dead...that's the shit...you wouldn't even believe that a police precinct looks like Frankenstein's castle." Like Carpenter, Ferrara is an independent director too whilst not turning down a studio offer for Invasion of the Body Snatches. When King of New York premiered at the New York Film Festival the first question at the following day's screening was "this is an abomination...you should take the money and use it for re-hab centres". In spite or perhaps because of all the violence in Ferrara's films, there's a certain melancholy that pervades them all. The melancholy of redemption. Forgiveness. Payback. Of trying to believe in another future but knowing deep down it may inevitably never arrive. And caught between that notion and survival.

I've Loved You So Long ( Il y a longtemps que je t'aime)from French director Philippe Claudel is still on general release with another great performance from Kristin Scott Thomas. She convinced me. Did Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov find redemption in his murder? Should and can there ever be forgiveness? Good to see a film like this on a few screens in the mini-multiplex.

Watching the shambolic, merrily imbibed Ferrara wander through 80 minutes of a documentary shown on the prestigious French TV Notre Temps cinema slot isn't such a pleasant experience. But seen together with film historian Brad Stephens'(author of The Moral Vision) 47 minute doco you become intrigued of Ferrara's world. "The films are too complex for any reductive formula," proffers Stephens, "there's a constant sense of life breaking out of the edges of the frame." Just as Carpenter acknowledges his debt to Howard Hawks, Ferrara admits King of New York is "a movie based on other movies not real life." The irony being that that's where the truth resides more than in watching TV or reading newspaper articles about government. The only DVD extra not of much interest is the soppy soundtracked TV doco about Walken that doesn't really live up to Ferrara's description of him as "the coolest motherfucker". At an RRP of £18 this release is a fantastic bargain. There's even a 42 minute doco on the birth of Hip Hop and Schooly D featured in the film from 1979 on.

Criterion in the States (Region 1) has classy releases of indie god-father John Cassavetes' Woman Under the Influence and The Killing of the Chinese Bookie this week as well as Jean-Pierre Melville's great French cop flic Le Doulos with its Celine epigraph: "One must choose: die...or lie?"

Spend time with the paintings of LA artist Sterling Ruby and his paint seems to emit a strange glass surface in Spectrum Ripper. Indeed, the paintings gain from yet another dimension seen though the gallery's large glass panes from the street which is where his inspiration sprang from in the first place. There's a lot of theory to go with Ruby's art, but like any worthwhile show you don't necessarily need go for the PhD to gain a lot from it. And like many artists Ruby was also influenced by Mark Rothko. Many visitors to the Tate Modern's new show of his later work will no doubt become pilgrims allowing Rothko's enormous fields of colour to embody their spiritual states. The show's audio guide contains the artist's alleged utterance "I hope to ruin the appetite of every sonofabitch that eats in that room, a place where the richest bastards of New York will come to feed and show off," referring to the murals he was commissioned to paint for the exclusive Four Seasons restaurant. Though not of the Rothko pilgrims, I'm interested more in his technique and the show has some rarely seen small gouaches. The surprise for many will be the Black and Gray (1969) of the final room painted in the months preceding the artist's suicide. As the free booklet points out, Rothko had previously used a mixture of rabittskin glue and pigment for the first layer, whereas these last canvases are primed with white gesso given them a much flatter appearance. And that, for me, ironically allows perhaps a far more internal journey of thought than the earlier work as if walking on the moon in a parallel dream. A stillness, a bleakness, an acceptance - with all but one of the paintings bounded by a thin white frame unlike any of his other borderless work.

Brazilian artist Matheus Rocha Pitta explores displacement and continuity of meaning in the striking Drive thru #1 at Sprovieri Progetti. Rocha Pitta packages earth the same way as drugs and displays this in sculpture, video and photos as in a police 'apprehension'. Meeting the artist at this week's opening we spoke of the London police killing on the underground of innocent Jean Charles de Menezes. Rocha Pitta thought the difference between such incidents in Brazil and Britain was the politicisation. "In Brazil the police kill you as a man whereas with a killing like Menenzes they are killing a symbol." The exhibition shows how the Brazilian police dematerialise symbols of law by placing the confiscated goods into a new sphere of circulation. Sprovieri's owner, together with Paola Colacurcio, has also just opened Galeria Progetti - a new space in Rio de Janeiro exploring the emerging South American art scene.

Just published, is the first English language biography by Richard Bourne of Brazilian President Lula, a relatively unknown figure outside world politico circles as compared to say Venezuala's Chavez. And I'm sure his journey from left-wing crusader to steering Brazil amongst the reefs of world economic diplomacy would be an enlightening read (though I won't have time myself with all those festival films). Which reminds me that there's also the annual Brazilian Film Fest at the Barbican.

Alexandra about the war in Chechnya,a typically meditative film from Russian writer/director Alexander Sokurov, opened a few weeks ago. A grand-mother (the inspired casting of legendary opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya) arrives to visit her combatant captain grand-son: "a film without any war in shot, without bombing and shooting...the hardest thing was to get off the tank. And I don't only mean literally. To get off the tank to a peaceful life - that is the hardest thing for everyone in Chechnya today," Vishnevskaya said in an interview. Sokurov reiterated this in an interview for BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme some weeks ago (26 September) saying that he wouldn't sit at the same table with anyone who promoted violence. Point taken. But where's the line drawn between promoting and provoking debate about violence? And who draws it? Michael Powell never really worked again in England after making Peeping Tom. But anyone familiar with Powell's work knows it was never meant to be a mere 'slasher' movie.
A couple more days to see the Powell/Pressburger A Matter of Life and Death (1946) at the BFI's National Film Theatre (only on the smaller NFT3 now alas).

At James Hyman's gallery there's a show by one of China's leading artists Sun Liang with his anguished skeletons from the 1990's and his more calligraphic painters of now. The catalogue has an essay by BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves and fomer ICA director Philip Dodd. And the new, long awaited Saatchi Gallery has just opened in Chelsea with new art from China, The Revolution Continues. Haven't got there yet.

'They' (critics like Roger Ebert) say that Albert Finney's perpetually drunken performance as a pre WWII ex-diplomat in Mexico is the best ever on-screen for John Huston's Under the Volcano (1984). Has Finney ever been less than riveting in any of his performances? I think not. This UK DVD (Mr. Bongo) has stiff competition though from Criterion's extra-packed Region 1 release, Mr.Bongo is trailer only. Nonetheless, the Janus print is pretty good and among all of the film's great qualities, worth noting is the Alex North (a composer constantly trying remain inventive amidst Hollywood musak). North was originally commissioned to score Kubrick's 2001, but the director changed his mind. I happen to think Kubrick made the right decision but North's wonderful score is still available on CD.

Mr. Bongo's DVD this week of Cuban film Memories of Underdevelopment (cinema release reviewed some postings ago) shows all too well the ennui of revolution. Meanwhile, Bluebell Films (yeah! they now have a website) showcases the less famous (overseas that is not in Finland where he founded famous bars, one of the leading film production companies etc) older brother of Aki Kaurismäki, Mika. The Liar(Valehtelija), a B/W 50 minute short from 1980, was Mika's grad film from the Munich Hochschule (starring his brother) with 'vodkarised' lines just like his brother e.g."Do I have to hang myself in your eyelashes so that you could see me?" Jackpot 2 (32 min, Col) is another absurd comedy of alienated youth while the feature length Zombie and the Ghost Train (Zombie ja Kummitusjuna,1991) has no fangs but lots of real musicians playing, well, dissolute musicians. Ever heard of the band Harri and the Mulefukkers? The mid-price DVDs also come with 10 min interview extras with Mika. Aki directed a version of Crime and Punishment in 1983.
Criterion DVD: Aki Kaurismäki's Proletariat Trilogy

In 1977, John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 was described as the hit of the London Film Festival (LFF). Cold Lunch (Lønsj), by the very assured first time Norwegian writer/director Eva Sørhaug, probably won't be a hit but it certinly deserves a UK release. Set among strangers in the same Oslo neighbourhood it's full of the daily emotional detail of these people's lives replete with very black humour befalling the baby near the end of the film. Sørhaug consummately uses the big screen as well. She hopes that "everyone will set sail after seeing the film". I hope she doesn't escape to a desert island before making another movie.

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl's Import/Export, from last year's LFF has just managed a general release (Trinity Filmed Entertainment had bought it prior to the festival). It's a film full of emotional truths as well with beautiful camerawork from Ed Lachman. Olga (Ekateryna Rak), a single Ukranian mum, travels to Vienna finding work in an old people's home. Pauli (Paul Hoffmann) gets beaten up in his security guard job and teams up with his father on a trucking job exporting clapped out pinball machines to Eastern Europe, hence the film's title. One of those rare films that transcends social realism into something more poetic but no less unremittingly grim.

Il Divo (LFF, released by Artificial Eye probably late Jan '09) (official site) is Paolo Sorrentino's latest film about Giulio Andreaotti, Italy's seven stint Prime Minister. Melancholy pervades most of Sorrentino's work and, as always too, the film has the magnificent look of a stage set. What is fascinating, though, is that Andreaotti (Toni Servillo) is like a lame duck in a ballet of political scandals swirling around him rather than seen as a 'biopic'. There is neither action nor inaction, he is simply the sacrifice in this Rite of Spring; the minotaur trapped in his labyrinth forever condemned, the spectrum forever ripped open.
Making Divo not easy for director (Variety)
Thirty minute interview with American choreographer Merce Cunningham who was just in London with the annual Dance Umbrella festival underway.

I Am Alive (Sono Viva) (LFF) is the debut feature by brothers Dino and Filippo Gentili after many years writing scripts in Italian TV and cinema. "Crazy things happen in the world not like here where nothing happens," says the local bar owner. But the man's darkness will always be somewhere. Worth a look and bodes well for a second feature.
interview on MySpace in Italian

Nothing much but everything happens in Tulpan (LFF, released May 09 by New Wave Films), Sergey Dvortsevoy's first feature showing life in the Kazakhstan steppes. Asa returns from naval service to his home town (or in this case tent) hoping to marry - a Brit serviceman returning to his northern England council flat is probably not so far fetched an analogy. However, he dreams of the other world seen in magazines, "what do you need the city form it's hard there too," asks a friend. But Asa aspires to have TV, imagine "the steppes and 900 [satellite] channels. We've seen these exotic ethno films before, but this film does have a zingy humorous pathos, a camel 'first aid' bandaged as if out of a Monty Python sketch, and a shepherd giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to a difficult birth baby lamb (or is it a yak).

Toni Servillo from Il Divo can also be seen as Frank, one of the five storylines of the Italian organised crime syndicate Camorra in the film Gomorrah (now on general release) based on Roberto Saviano's bestseller book. "The raw material I had to work with...was so visually powerful that I merely filmed it in as straighforward a way as possible, as if I were a passerby who happened to find myself there by chance,"says director Matteo Garrone. This style of directing harks back to Italian neo-realism eschewing any Scorsese Hollywood blang, though some may prefer the latter approach with its character development to Garrone's sparcer style. Or indeed a more abstracted Sorrentino approach. But it's a powerful film and scenes such as young kids being forced into driving the trucks of toxic waste for illegal dumping are unforgettable. According to Saviano, if the illegal waste managed by the clans was accumulated, it would create a 14,600 meter high mountain with a base measuring three hectares; almost double the height of Mount Everest at 8, 850 meters high. His other facts are no less mind-opening.
Harley Granville-Barker's extraordinary 1907 play about capitalism Waste at the Almeida Theatre

Citizen Havel (Obcan Havel) (LFF)(official site) is a doco made over 10 years by Václav Havel's friend Pavel Koutecky´ chronicling the former dissident and playwright in his new role as President of the Czech Republic. Koutecky´ died in 2006 so his friend Miroslav Janek spent the last few years piecing together the material. It's an endearing portrait of a man and politician who everything was expected of by many of his countrymen, and who in reality could only ever possibly do his best. The former Communists came to power within that space of his human failings. Overall, it's a lighthearted film with great footage of President Clinton's visit when Havel presented him with a saxophone at his favourite jazz club and the President proceeded (impromptu?) with a rendition of Gershwin's Summertime. And Havel recommending a restaurant to The Rolling Stones on their tour.

The Baader Meinhof Complex (LFF and on general release 14 November) directed by Uli Edel who's spent an enjoyable time directing mini-series in Los Angeles does rather resemble his usual fare, not raising itself out of 'bio-topic' mode, in spite of its impressive acting and production values. It's playing some multi-plexes in London on its release but would it really get an audience grappling with the political and social complexities? A 'where are they now' Baader's Angels season that played the ICA recently did a much better job of that.

Witness a ballet of steel with Richard Serra's new show at Gagosian. He makes steel change density before your eyes sometimes seeming almost like wood.
Around the corner and up a very long road is Catherine Yass's High Wire had its thunder rather stolen by the doco film Man on Wire, but Yass was experimenting with aerial cameras back in 2002. Worth seeing for the old gymnasium space alone. In fact the whole Kings Cross area is unrecognisable from a few years ago. The new King's Place with its multi-level gallery/concert hall/bars does remind one of all the new development that took place in New York's downtown meatpacking district - and even more midtown. All very corporate. For some diverse opinion try Kings Cross Access campaign group

Ramin Bahrani's Chop Shop from last year's festival still hasn't had a London release[The Works international sales] (New York release), another site
Koch Lorber in New York have a DVD out complete with audio commentary from director and actors. Bahrani's Goodbye Solo in this year's LFF is even better and almost 'commercial' dare I say the word - as if a Jim Jarmusch-esque film could ever be dubbed that. Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané) is a Senegalese North Carolina taxi driver who gets curious about his grizzled old passenger William (Red West - Elvis Presley's bodyguard) and tries to befriend him, though it's fairly much a one way street. No music score apart from source and simple sublime cinematographer from Bahrani regular Michael Simmonds. This is an art house movie for those who would never normally think of going to one.

And for a grand operatic cinema experience (and John Carpenter concurs on the 2003 Paramount DVD) here comes the restored version of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una Volta il West, 1968) . Seen on the big NFT1 screen it really is breathtaking. Look at Henry Fonda's slightly sad, world-weary killer eyes compared to those of the childlike optimism of Ernest Borgnine (Cabbie in Carpenter's Escape from New York). Jason Robards' knowing glint, Charles Bronson's devil-may-care outsider. Look at the eyes, the eyes, the close-ups, the fly of the opening scene, the transfixing, incandescent Claudia Cardinale and the way her eyes harden to the ways of the West, harkening back to the gal perhaps she once was. Is this misogyny or just the way of the world? The detail, the detail and oh, oh, that Morricone score like a Verdi opera soaring and saddening at the cost of human progress. The pirate Simon Boccanegra sailing so high only to realise that socialism and capitalism are only a double edged sword and that biting the bullet is perhaps the only option.
LA Times article

The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Joh-un Nom, Nappun Nom, Isanghan Nom) is South Korean Kim Jee-Woon's homage to Sergio Leone, (Korean site) and a funny one that doesn't outstay its welcome with loads of great sight gags. Based on the cult Indian television character, Quick Gun Murugan (LFF) by director Shashank Ghosh just about pulls off its Western spoof set in Mumbai,- a cross between Mike Myers, Bollywood or Tollywood (Tamil cinema), and Supersize Me - meat eaters versus veggies. The costume designers having the time of their lives.
And pop in to see the "Pope of Indian Political Pop" Chintan Upadhyay's first London show Mistake exploring female foeticide and genetic engineering. Really strong sculpture downstairs.

Before the days of Robert Altman et al came Gore Vidal's play The Best Man (now on DVD) and filmed in 1964 by Franklin Schaffner with Henry Fonda as Bill Russell, one of the Presidential candidates. Vidal's lines zing with contemporary clarity: "In those days we used to have to pour God over everything like ketchup." "People like your sort they figure [the public] if you've got so much money of your own, you won't go stealing theirs." Reluctantly Russell considers whether he should use the 'private life' dirt rather than sticking to public policies to win the party nomination. "One by one these compromises, these small corruptions destroy character...I only want to be human and it is not easy. Once this sort of thing starts there's no end to it which is why it should never begin." Where does it end? The outgoing President (Oscar nominated Lee Tracy) replies, "...in the grave where the dust is neither good nor bad, just nothing."
BBC One's series Stephen Fry in America has begun with his usual flair with all the material something we haven't seen on TV screens before.
Extract from Payback, Margaret Atwood's new book
(Frost/Nixon opens The Times BFI London Film Festival tonight (Wednesday) - with a towering performance from Frank Langella as Nixon [everyone else is good too, by the way] but that performance really is worthy of an Oscar nomination if you compare them down through the ages as he captuers every complexity of that man. 'They' really don't want one to succeed. But success at what kind of price to humanity. And the soul. You can criticise Hollywood movies, but when it manages to open up those questions...

Raindance, Pasolini's Salo DVD, and more soon....