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Did the G20 meeting beginning tomorrow really need to be held in London (the Docklands not the West End or the City) rather than another European city? Did ‘blighty’s city grind to a halt with protests etc? The British taxpayer footing the bill for this meeting as well as all the other banking woes of the country. For a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the financial crises and this meeting must seem rather like a poisoned chalice for Prime Minister Gordon Brown. But a chalice, nonetheless, and one that he seems to be brandishing with enormous relish (hence G20 in London?). His stage has been rather overshadowed, though, by President Barack Obama’s visit and actions in the Big Apple tent (such as the clawing back of AIG bonuses and the recent Chrysler ultimatum) that given the President’s short time in office must be taming even the most sceptical of coconut pelters from their trees.
Twitter used by protest groups to galvanise forces
Brown defends Government's role in Dunfermline Building Society crisis
Arts projects to tie in with Olympics are launched

Today’s relative non-battle between police and protestors (only 24 arrests by the end of the day) in the City:
Running battles in heart of London
Jon Snow interviews the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, about whether he believes we need more fiscal stimulus?
Live BBC News protest map

The fact that rarely can be uttered, though, is that if it weren’t for 9/11, the global financial game of ‘smoke and mirrors’ would have ‘kept on keeping on’ in the words of an old Oz advertising paint slogan. That is until inevitable market forces prevailed. And in that sense the terrorists’ (or in many of their supporters’ eyes ‘freedom fighters’) aim to destroy or at least avenge Western capitalism succeeded. The British (and Australians) like to blame the U.S. for the economic woes. The French and Germans are angry at being lumped in the same boat as other nations when both those countries followed fairly prudent financial practices over the years. Renting housing in the U.K. was always seen as a poor-man’s solution (and reflected in personal credit ratings) whereas on the continent it was deemed normal prudent practice. So when New Labour enabled almost anyone to get a mortgage most people leapt at the chance of gaining a foothold on the capitalist rung. Ordinary people don’t like to admit their complicity in the financial meltdown. But complicit they most certainly were. Their greed was no different (but certainly grossly less) than that of the bankers being openly despised this week by protestors. Were these Brazil President Lula’s “white-men with blue eyes” culprits?
Panorama: Credit Where It's Due
My bank account went into recent free-fall when a bank interest payment pushed my account over its overdraft limit by £1.42 for only one day. Computers are one thing but it was only after many, many struggles with ‘people’ that I got any one at the bank to listen to reason. Initially their response was one of relative triumph. So it isn’t just press hype about the woes of the ‘little man’.
Susan J. Smith on Radio 4’s Start the Week(Mrch 30)
One great capital city, 20 world leaders – and 40,000 holes in the road
Simon Jenkins' article in The Standard
Can Nintendo save the ninnies?
By Tyler Brûlé
Mission for a mandate
Richard Holbrooke on Radio 4’s Profile

Will G20 prove only to be a damage limitation exercise, however? If ever there was a time to make a financial paradigm shift then it is nigh. And President Obama has shown, in what amounts in earth time to a blink, what is achievable through strong leadership. But a paradigm shift would take a very brave man indeed. My thoughts on this coalesced watching a DVD (that’s Region 2 not Region 1 if Heads of State are giving presents) of last year’s French Cannes Film Fest prize winning film The Class(Entre les Murs) , (trailer) – though it’s not actually out yet on DVD but is still on Brit cinema screens.

I approached this film with some trepidation. Don’t know why - the director’s (Laurent Cantet) last film Time Out (L’emploi du Temps) about unemployment was great. Maybe it was the school ‘thing’ and all that. But WOW is this a really fantastic film. François Bégaudeau (a teacher who adapted his book) himself plays a teacher of a comprehensive school on the outskirts of Paris. Using non-professional teenagers and real teachers the film is a docu-drama that sounds ever so boring in description but proves totally riveting in practice. And it’s relevant to the G20 meeting because the film transcends the classroom into so many areas of debate concerning authority, co-operation, diversity and discussion – all principles that Britain’s New Labour government aspired to but has so dismally failed to deliver. Though in fairness, they did at least try. There are no Hollywood angels and demons in this film only evidence of the proposition that writer Neil LaBute puts succinctly on his DVD commentary to the film Lakeview Terrace(discussed later): “can’t we all get along and the movie says, barely.”

It’s a shame to give away the ending of The Class (so spoiler alert) but when, on last day of term after everyone else has left, one girl quietly approaches the teacher and says that she has learnt nothing (after the rest have all admitted to learning at least something) we too are left staring perplexed at the world around us. What is worth knowing? What is ‘worth’ anyway? Does diversity ever really work when people naturally gravitate to those of like-minded backgrounds? What about diversity of wealth? I imagine many people will walk quietly away from the G20 week pondering exactly the same questions. Do I really have what I thought I had in common with some of my fellow protestors? But by the same token, I have learnt something about myself if not the world. And is that not the same thing? Equally for the Heads of State: was this a wasted opportunity? Maybe Obama’s right after all. I wish I had his ‘balls’ some may say. Who can we trust? Goddamit, why can’t we throw caution to the wind and be braver? (After all, who’d have thought a Brit govt could successfully start going after tax havens) But birds will naturally always find something to pilfer and with which to build their nests. The Class proffers all these questions with naturally no answers. If the teacher hadn’t let slip one particular comment would the entire life of his rambunctious student Souleyman (Franck Keita) have been any different? And if just one person (either protestor or policeman) at the London protests today got out of hand would things have had a very different outcome?
School reporters ready to go live
Interview with the actress playing Esmeralda
US website
UK distributor
Rouge has an issue on teenage-ness in the cinema.
Clint Eastwood’s The Changeling
(trailer) now out on DVD.

Jacques Maillot’s recent French film Rivals (Les Liens du sang) (out on DVD with alas no interview extras) set in 70s Lyon explores the living threads of two brothers - police inspector François (Guillaume Canet) and his older brother released from prison Gabriel (François Cluzet). A bit taxing if you need to read the subtitles but worth it.
(French site)
The Dardenne brothers The Silence of Lorna (Le Silence De Lorna) (now out on Drakes Avenue DVD) (trailer)offers another fascinating view on survival.
Lust for life: Cystic fibrosis sufferer Alex Stobbs on conducting a three-hour Easter epic by Bach.
And François Truffaut's classic 1959 The 400 Blows(Les Quatre cents coups) gets a BFI re-release.
Criterion DVD Blu-ray
Also Truffaut’s The Last Metro(1980) Criterion DVD and Blu-ray
Ari Folman’s animated Waltz with Bashir out on DVD and Blu-ray from Artificial Eye
Exploitation producer Herman Cohen captured the 1950s teen market with such titles as I was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. Wheeler Winston Dixon looks at his career and the thematic subtexts that underpinned his work.
Fancy designing an alien for the Doctor Who TV series?

Waterloo Road (youtube) is a series commissioned for BBC Scotland in 2006 (6 million plus viewers and still going strong), and like The Class, set in a teenage comprehensive school of mixed ability students only in Britain. You wouldn’t call the scripts ‘cutting edge’ nor the camera work but for a prime time series they still pack quite a punch. This DVD box set of the 10 eps in Series 3 opens with a new student suffering from Asperger's syndrome while Ep. 4 tackles the issue of HIV. Great casting too.
Bovvered?

Duane Hopkins' debut feature film Better Things (set in the Cotswolds) screened at last year’s BFI 52nd London Film Festival is almost too art-house cutting edge to hold one’s attention. But Hopkins’ is obviously passionate about exploring lives both young and old in the cinema so we keenly await his next film.
“Why did she think falling in love would make it any easier?”
BBC interview with Duane Hopkins
another
Mike Leigh: The BBC Collection (DVD)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner in the BFI Top 100 and out on DVD and Blu-ray

Helen, released May 1, is a far more captivating blend of cinema technique and narrative.
My blog review from January:
Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s film Helen may well prove to be one of 2009’s highlights in the way that Joanna Hogg’s very still, very European film Unrelated was for 2008. (Both are distributed by the same company, New Wave Films formed by former Artificial Eye boffins Robert Beeson and Pam Engel).Helen (produced by the wonderfully named company desperate optimists and a UK/Ireland co-production) began as nine short films known as the Civic Life Series made over the past 5 years. All were shot on 35mm cinemascope, on relatively low budgets using mostly locals with little or no acting experience. “[We wanted the audience] to feel this tension between the slickness of 35mm production values and the rawness in the performances allowing for something admittedly flawed but ultimately human and honest to come through,” said the directors. “Normally the editing process allows the filmmaker to eliminate or disguise mistakes but with Civic Life the imperfections and flaws have become one of the defining features of the works.”

Given that, Helen from start to finish looks stunning, more of an art work –perfectly framed, sculpted, painterly (Ole Birkeland, camera) – bringing to mind Antonioni films, Pirandello playwrighting, the recent London Film Festival ‘scope film Afterschool or Anton Corbijn’s black and white Control. 18 year-old Joy is missing and another girl (Annie Townsend) Helen, currently in a care home, is asked to ‘play’ Joy in a police reconstruction of her last hours after being selected from her schoolmates. The next 80 minutes doesn’t as much narrate a story as leave space for its audience to blend these emotional colours for themselves. Very European and yet quintessentially the whispering death and emotional renewal of English landscape.
Interview
This [fictitious] interview
Dispatches: Britain's Challenging Children

Nick Park’s latest animation is out on DVD: A Matter of Loaf and Death
And Wallace & Gromit present a World of Cracking Ideas at the Science Museum at the Science Museum.
Nick Park: 'I'm like Wallace - a tinkerer'

Some interesting Brit related content in the latest issue of Senses of Cinema:
Speck of Dust in Her Eye:Living London Returns
Sally Jackson’s Living London

We have Will Smith and James Lassiter’s company Overbrook to thank for Lakeview Terrace, (trailer) just released on DVD and Blu-ray. I wrote very highly of this Samuel L. Jackson film on its release and though the audio commentary from lead actress Kerry Washington and writer Neil LaBute is often more descriptive and production anecdotal rather than revelatory, it’s still a great value package with 14 minutes of deleted scenes and a thorough 20 min Behind the Scenes. The film “almost becomes a Western” notes LaBute with the family protecting the homestead. Kerry Washington: “We haven’t really seen a modern, hip, inter-racial couple, ever” on screen. For lead actor Patrick Wilson, it’s “not so much about race as opposed to personal space.” What would have been useful from LaBute’s commentary is to have had his perspective on the film and his own very unique take on male relationships – something that has made his name in the theatre and thence the film adaptations of his work. Still, there’s more to ponder here than a dirty dozen or more Hollywood thrillers. It’s not that the American dream is inherently evil or self-destructive just that the people striving inside it can often be rather lacking, wounded, and suspect. “Can’t we all get along and the movie says: barely,” says LaBute.

You’d think that with a director’s reputation such as John Huston’s behind it (The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen), Wise Blood (1979), (youtube), would have been a cinch to get greenlit. Even with a budget of less than $1 million! But it was the Germans who in the end saved the day - the film gathering a cult following throughout the world ever since. This Second Sight DVD is for once a step ahead of Criterion in New York who issue their DVD version on May 11 - presumably it’ll be the same beautiful print from Janus. Again it’s a rather topical film in a way for the protesters of the G20 summit. Hazel Motes is a character “imbued with grace...and his rebellion is against that,” notes Benedict Fitzgerald who co-authored the adaptation with his brother Michael (the sons of poet Robert Lowell). It was the first novel of maverick American authoress Flannery O'Connor (banned in South America) who explained that Motes “integrity lies in his trying with such vigour to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind," but for her "Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to." Free will, she says, "does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man." Michael Fitzgerald, notes in the generous and fascinating DVD interview extras (2009), that writing the screenplay was “secretarial work” so good was O’Connor’s dialogue.

Returning from a war Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) has come to the conclusion that the only way to escape sin is to have no soul and attempts to drum up followers for his new "Church of Truth Without Jesus Christ" in the deep South. “We’re all liars...none of us are really true to our ideas,” says Dourif. “Critics couldn’t quite understand what [O’Connor] was up to...her moral imperatives, her Catholicism in her storytelling...as horrid on self-examination and human activities...in order to make their salvation...in the story plausible, a surprise, or a...hoped for inevitability...I doubt that there are any other writers now focussing on anything like this,” says screenwriter Fitzgerald. What fascinated Huston as he progressed was the misunderstood comedy of the story (hence the misspelled Jhon Huston in the opening credits),”the religious heart...was a straw heart”. The idea of becoming a saint. What would that be like shown in all its fervour, passion and ridiculousness. A film once seen, never forgotten.
The very funny and provocative Religulous opens in cinemas this week
Bill Maher: The God Botherer

A guilty comedic pleasure is the DVD of My Best Friend's Girl. I still have problems with the film itself (though it’s far more cleverly constructed than many give it credit for) in that in many ways it says we should forgive a***holes and learn to lovvvvvvve. But you have to give the guys involved (and Lionsgate the distributor) credit for one of the most entertaining (if not actually funny) DVD commentaries around. “Nobody’s listened this far into the commentary – the undiscovered country,” somebody quips. They even phone up other cast members from the recording suite ‘out of the blue’ asking for their input. Jason Biggs wife (Jenny Mollen who plays Colleen) even manages to hot foot it into the studio before an audition and share in some of the lubricating Irish whiskey being supped by all. The DVD extras are genuinely funny – all the outtakes, The Cast’s Guide to Dating, and their recollections of prom night. There’s a more subdued separate commentary from director Howie Deutch that’s not too boring either. And it’s all a love fest for Boston (the city not a new Gwyneth Paltrow child)- nothing wrong with that. Really good value DVD this one, only, don’t tell your ‘arthouse’ movie friend or they might suggest you go back to taking your medication.
Wonder if Richard Holbrooke would enjoy this one after the football? Go on, put one in their ‘goody bags’.....

The 7th Polish Film Festival continues to placate your ‘arthouse’ friend including:
Polish New Wave-The History of a Phenomenon that Never Existed (3-5 April at Tate Modern)

more tomorrow...