parlez.)

At least X-Men Origins:Wolverine - longly awaited by much of the world – had sharper claws than the British Chancellor’s budget promulgation last week. But did the film’s director Gavin Hood also miss a chance to really ‘get real’ with the brothers’ dark relationship – the very reason he got the job? Set in the 1970s (backstory to the franchise’s other futuristic films) it could have worked well within the difficult construct of the comic book movie. But the film never ascends anywhere near Guillermo del Toro’s cinematic depths. Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber have great screen rapport and while the thrills never allow for seat wriggling (thanks to Donald McAlpine’s cinematography, the casting, and all the other production departments), and with memorable final scenes: being an ardent X-Men fan no doubt helps your enjoyment. In fact Wolverine’s budget could probably have saved thousands of crippled and struggling arts organisations both in the UK and US. But as all hard bitten cynics know too well, life’s not really like that (except by the third leaf of the amphibian pond to your far left as you exit the Ken Livingston memorial wildlife sanctuary).

Mind the gap: departing Tube chief Tim O’Toole warns of £2bn black hole
£2m to airbrush Metronet out of London commuter history
Tube fares may rise to fill £600m hole in TfL efficiency savings

The new chair of the Arts Council of Great Britain Dame Liz Forgan seemed almost ready to break into a rendition of the Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life as she credit crunch encouraged us ‘to roll up our sleeves and make the best of a bad lot’ in an interview on Radio 4’s Front Row. The more London life trundles on the more surreal it all seems. ‘Look: that business is doing well’ a dim desperate little voice is heard to echo in the Synecdoche New York (opens May 15) warehouse of London. They’re even trying to crack down on burlesque shows in the capital. What will those politicians now do without the New Labour counselling programme of electric guitar and wife’s high heels on a Friday night? Find some wandering minstrels of Devon (WMDs) I expect. Please leave Wales alone, though; the sheep enjoy the New Labour war veterans’ Bob Dylan wafting through their valleys.
Release dates for Eureka’s Soul Power now confirmed: Glastonbury Festival 26/27/28 June, general release July 10.

Gideon Koppel’s pensive doco film (shot atmospherically on 16mm) Sleep Furiously (out May 29 from New Wave) explores the lives of mid-Wales hill-farmers (50 miles further north of poet Dylan Thomas’ fictionional village in Under Milkwood ) and is cut by Michel Gondry’s editor Mario Battistel. Perhaps a tad repetitive in its imagery, the film’s daily life vignette stagings are so redolent of Dylan Thomas mulch. The superb Brit pic Helen (last blog) is also out this week from New Wave Films. Pastoral comedic is The Grocer’s Son (Le fils de l’Epicier) (ICA) (trailer)- the fictional feature debut of French doco maker Eric Guirado. We’re in sunny southern rural France with a Parisian son coping with his recuperating father’s mobile grocery van. The film’s not as deep nor as strange nor as acute as might be wished but it’s a fun 96 minutes with gently directed and nuanced performances with an almost quirky English touch.

Will Hannah Montana survive translation for French farmers? Because in spite of all its hokeyness, the film’s greatest strength is its homespun goodness and good nature. For those uninitiated through the original TV series the opening scenes can be cringey e.g. Hannah’s pink suitcases in yokel countryside. But then the Disney spell starts taking effect. Or rather the talents of the amazing almost 17 year-old Ms. Miley Cyrus. She carries this film with the ease of someone 10 years older, transfixing the audience with her big eyes, pouty lips, and her ‘this is my show folks enjoy the ride’ aplomb as the LA superstar Hannah learns to be the Montana Miley. Moreover, Cyrus can really act and hopefully will bite into some straight acting parts post adolescence. Cynics will probably cringe at Miss Hannah’s “Life’s a climb but the view is great” philosophy or its companion song in the score and the one about caterpillars and butterflies. But though the film may be wrapped in Disney tinsel the gift inside is pulsing with Nashville “I cried a river over you” strength and fragility (Miley’s real dad country and western star Billy Ray Cyrus plays her film dad). There’s also a fun movie musical hip hop country fusion sequence Hoedown Throwdown. Directed by Peter Chelsom, fellow Brit Peter Gunn is among the film’s great supporting cast – Oswald the ‘baddie’ “wretched soulless succubus” media hound. The script doesn’t exactly abound with those one-liners as did Enchanted, though. And this film is chasin' the blues away more than singin' 'em.
Right here, right now - after twenty per cent of conservatives voted for Obama, the Republican party was left in tatters

BBC 4 documentary series looking at the history of 20th century farming in Britain
Mud, Sweat and Tractors
Molly Dineen and her film The Lie of the Land (Channel 4)
Modern Life (La Vie moderne) is out from Soda Pictures

Would Peter Harness’ Brit seaside retirement home script Is Anybody There? work without Michael Caine in the lead? Yes, probably. But what Caine movingly brings to the retired magician Clarence is a lot of Caine himself considering old age, and there are some heart-stopping moments in this script that haven’t come his way since his wonderful role in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters. Clarence’s big monologue about life is delivered to Edward the 10 year-old son of the home’s owners who’s befriended the old man. Edward (Bill Milner from Son of Rambow) has also found himself alone in the world and a resident’s last gasp leads him to believe in ghosts. Directed by John Crowley there’s nothing particularly new here and its wonderfully acted array of slightly oddball characters. But the central relationship is so strong and so devoid of cloying bathos that it haunts us like a never forgotten sunset on the sea.
John Burningham author of children's books : 'In 2009 being young is terrible. You can't run wild'

Shifty is being touted as the year’s indie Brit hit – shot over 18 days on 35mm film for a £100,000 budget – a first feature for writer/director Eran Creevy. It’s a good film but one that still lacks a distinctive edge on second viewing. Nodding in the direction of Mike Leigh or Ken Loach it doesn’t quite achieve their black humour of predicament and actually the film feels more like very good TV drama (absolutely no backhanded complement intended I must add). Yet there are some funny lines, the casting is great, the photography, and it seems churlish to say anything negative or perhaps want more from what is a tremendous result from very finite resources. And it’s a film focussing on its characters rather than its issues and identities (Shifty is a London drug dealer and a Muslim so he’s “fucked either way”) which is often not the case with Brit films of this sort. Creevy will make a really good second feature too but will it be an Eran Creevy film with its own distinctive flair just as Shane Meadows carved out his territory?
Sunday Times article

One wished there’d been a bit more ‘reality’ to the satirical In the Loop - the TV series lampooning Westminster politics and translated to the big screen by centring its plot on a political jaunt to Washington. Broadly and barbarously funny as it is, the idiocy of the Brit delegation often sat uncomfortably with realpolitik. The TV series worked so brilliantly because it created its own quarking mad parallel Westminster universe but meeting the Americans is like entering an alien dimension (exactly the point of course, with their razor sharp pragmatism - superficially at least). Perhaps if the Brit side had donned more the mantle of maturity when with the Americans they would have seemed even more ridiculous and therefore even funnier sitting trouserless in their hotel room eating take away while watching shark documentaries on cable TV. If you died laughing with The Office, the In the Thick Of It series will nail down your coffin’ lid. FAQ About Time Travel is a ropy first feature by Brit TV comedy director Gareth Carrivick – a bunch of lads gather in a pub in a sort of ‘garden shed’ Doctor Who spoof. Exec Produced by America’s HBO, there’s a lot of self-deprecating English humour here and in a way its ‘shaggy dogness’ works well in its favour. But wait for the DVD.

Another ‘reality’ Brit director Kevin Macdonald has assailed Hollywood with State of Play a thriller based.on Paul Abbott’s BBC series. Whilst Hannah is attempting to save her Tennessee home town from developer greed, the tectonic politics of Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill and the city’s Globe newspaper rumble as the greenback widens the cracks it attempts to close. “Public office, the nature of the beast” scrowls Russell Crowe’s hardened investigative journo to his old friend but now U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck). This film is what Hollywood is capable of when it lets the creatives take charge (which isn’t very often). It’s not Polanski’s Chinatown, most thrillers rarely are. But State of Play heads in the right direction. It goes for character milieu rather than plot. A good thriller is like looking under a rock at the lifeforms beneath. We don’t need really to know where the rock is, who lifts it up, why the rock was lifted in the first place. But there’s a fascination about why those organisms do what they do there. Jack Nicholson’s private eye is full of contradictions lacking in Crowe’s dishevelled reporter Cal. And though somewhat of a cliche such a focussed unpostered performance still interests us. He could be on the take too. Cards are played close to the chest. So we keep watching. Nothing too unusual either about Affleck’s politician but the relationship with Cal is drawn and we watch and wait. All the while Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography immerses us in their world. And what’s that little creature imping in under the rock – oh it’s the newspaper’s online blogger (Rachel McAdams) who will change things forever.

Werner Herzog’s always searching for other peoples’ worlds and so to Antarctica - Encounters at the End of the World. Vowing never to film any fluffy penguins, Herzog even finds one lone penguin who’s either a visionary or an idiot as it waddles towards the mountain range while everyone else heads the other way. Some of the world’s great minds work at McMurdo research station -“professional dreamers” who found their home.

North Face is out on Metrodome DVD
Choreographer William Forsythe's City of Abstracts at Tate Modern
William Blake show at Tate Britain
Thomas Joshua Cooper's new works The World's Edge (interview)
Radio 4's The New Galileos
Radio 4's In our Time on the vacuum of space (April 30)