Artwork copyright Ron Arad, photo copyright Andrew Lucre
Uberfällt dich fremde Fühlung,
Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.
As New Yorkers summer quench for less shimmering asphalt pastures, those left behind in the city face a more sobering batch of art-house film releases this week: You, the Living (Artificial Eye DVD), Lorna's Silence (Drakes Avenue UK DVD), Flame and Citron (Metrodome UK DVD). Londoners, meanwhile, plod forth virtually zombified by the last few months of Westminster political goings on and promises of economic recovery or perhaps just visibly relieved that temperatures are so mild for the un-airconditioned buses and underground that have past proved excruciating. Some buses continue ending routes just short of their destination (with no prior warning) while others in Oxford Street resemble a toddle of migrating red tortoises. Will they reach their destination before next season catches up with them?
Where are we in this street of Matrix existence, this web of wriggling happiness? Where exceeding your meagre bank overdraft by £1 can ruin your life and in which people who've been habitually modest, frugal and generous begin regretting. All the while the signs preaching: 'we are here to help'. Both sides of the Atlantic, the team of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra are here to save the world for us. But who really is our enemy? Was it truly those Nanomite guys? We don't actually care because everything about the film (from costume and production design to coherent script) beats a dozen cups of kick-ass coffee. Never mind lack of sleep, the jitters and nagging doubt of who am I in bed with. (Nice too that all those English actors in the cast earnt some non-Monopoly money for once. Apple juice anyone?) YouTube trailer sensation Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus trailer achieves UK theatrical distribution thanks to Metrodome. Yes, the film's bad, but bad enough to be 'B' movie enjoyable? Possibly for a well-oiled Friday night. Script doctors were all medicated on this one: "There's poetry here," rhapses 80s pop sensation Debbie Gibson - cut to a shoal of gambling Hammerhead sharks. Later she cheesily kisses overlookin' the sea. Alas, the monsters don't kiss and make up. But the world is saved.
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The Ugly Truth arrives to cheer us up: you don't need to adhere to the road-norm or listen to the life-guard anymore to gain TV market share. But Luketic's comedy never seems sure whether it's an emotional Bentley or one of those zippy little cars turning advertising somersaults. Do some great one-liners save lack of chemistry casting? And why is such talent as Bree Turner (the work colleague Joy) not been given a driving licence let alone a car? Thankfully, Katherine Heigl just survives the road test.
The Yes Men Fix the World (trailer), or rather the documented corporate hoaxes here pulled by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnaro, will give some humans 85 minutes of hope that there might indeed be change we can believe in: each stunt as intricately and consummately conceived as a piece of performance art. A special screening and live debate nationwide cinema satellite link-up August 11.
Terry Gilliam BFI Southbank retrospective.
Tom Tykwer's big-budget conspiracy thriller The International (now out on Sony DVD) had tepid reviews when it premiered at this year's Berlin Film Fest - the water temp remaining constant on its UK release. But Tykwer gives 300% to his craft and the DVD with audio commentary from him and writer Eric Singer is well worth one's time for that. What some maybe find missing from this film is a character depth from its protagonists Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Owen is dishevelled, grumpy, with history on his face (the role he plays often and consummately) and Watts is his side-kick but little else. Yet neither actor is asked or expected to be more than that. It's left (and very effectively) for Armin Mueller-Stahl to grasp the heart of the matter in a monologue late on. He works for a fictional version of the BCCI- the world's 3rd largest private bank in the mid-80s to early 90s. Says writer Eric Warren: "the largest corporate criminal organisation in the history of the world...the 'Chase Manhattan' but to drug dealers, criminals...". In a way, lack of character works well in a film described by the director as "an architectural voyage backwards" where architecture is a leading man and architectural transparency proves anything but for its inhabitants: faces are visible but deeds are not. Plenty of DVD extras on the now-famous shoot-out scene in the Guggenheim Museum and a cut scene, the only one showing Salinger (Owen) and his daughter (Amy Kwolek - such is an actor's life in the edit suite).
50 Years Of The Cuban Revolution DVD boxset out now. Well worth a visit.
Another assured director is Thomas Clay whose Soi Cowboy opened in London last month and will soon be out on Network DVD. He cites Antonioni as "an enduring inspiration" and quotes Michel Piccoli in Godard's Le Mepris(Criterion DVD): "everything has been commodified, our bodies, our minds, our happiness". Clay's film has the space/pace of Asian neo-Antonioni cinema (Aditya Assarat's Wonderful Town, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Ploy, the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul). Exquisitely shot in wide-screen, Clay' film is less about plot and character and more about life's minutai - even slices of morning toast popping up seem interesting. Even toast has potential for destruction.
Clever soundtrack too that includes a snippet of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.
Bayreuth Festival online this weekend
Apichatpong Weerasethakul study from Wallflower Press
How does Max Mayer's Adam fare in broadening people's perceptions of Asperger's Syndrome? Predicable? Yes: but predictability we can believe in. And you probably have to be a New Yorker to appreciate just how accurate this film is as a portrayal of human emotions (Asperger's is trouble with 'normal' daily interaction). Two of the emotive music tracks are even performed by a group called The Weepies. As effective as these are, the direction and performances of Hugh Dancy (Adam) and Rose Byrne (Beth) are compelling enough to need no underpinning. Adam sees the lie but doesn't realise the truth (in Picasso's words). His violent outburst is not against his new girlfriend but against a set of norms he doesn't fully comprehend. The irony being that he's far more adjusted than many who would claim to be 'normal' through living by norms. And aren't the so-called norms simply a presentation of self in everyday Erving Goffman's books) that in themselves have dubious claims to a priori normality? Judging the film's ending as sentimental we adhere to yet another norm. How much of ourselves can we give another person and what do we need to take in return to maintain what we perceive as our own chemical balance?
Max Mayer Sundance Interview and Clip
Waterloo Road (commissioned for BBC Scotland in 2006 - 6 million plus viewers and still going strong) opened its Series 3 with a new student suffering from Asperger's syndrome. Brave stuff for Brit prime time. (my blog review)
Orphan does no favours for the world of society's outcasts and oddballs. Like Optimum's far superior horror release Eden Lake it warns us that not all our children are 'normal'. And if it were made by a first-time director one probably wouldn't feel any more kindly towards it. But the film tin does what it says. It's a yucky watch and one that's very well crafted and paced yet an hour after, nothing is remembered as that inventive or surprising. But the little girl's image on the poster as you enter Dante's London Underground does haunt you. Is that Freudian transference? I've always pondered about a North London tube named Sigmund Freud ( his house in Belsize Park is open to visitors).
Sigmund Freud hated America
Wanna fright? Let Right One In is now out on Momentum DVD provoking the question of who should be allowed to watch this brilliant Swedish vampire film. It's subject matter and protagonists are pre-teen but it's a very violent film (though less depraved than its source novel) and very much an adult film.
James Kendrick's Film Violence is published by Wallflower Press in October.
A Jean Charles de Menezes play has been written and performed. Honourable, honorable humans.
Ian Tomlinson's family accuse police of cover-up over his death
IPCC demands change in police tactics after G20 protests inquiry
G20 protests: woman may have had a miscarriage after being kicked and struck
The Independent
The very un-PC history (and hitherto untold story) of sex and violence in Australian cinema Not Quite Hollywood (Optimum UK DVD) slips quietly onto New York screens this week. Optimum's UK DVD (my blog review
along with Not Quite Hollywood, Let the Right One In, Tony Manero, Let the Right One In and others)
Richard Lorber (formally of Koch Lorber) recently NYC released Tony Manero (soon on Network Releasing DVD in the UK) and Nollywood Babylon (that had a short run at MOMA's cinema, no UK dates yet) is a frightening doco about how religion in Nigeria's capital Lagos has co-opted the country's film industry (world's 3rd largest albeit straight to DVD).
Mesrine: Killer Instinct (Momentum) (trailer) is essentially a bio-pic of the French gangster anti-hero. There's even a Part 2 (Mesrine: Public Enemy No.1 released August 28). Not sure that this film gives us the French cine-psychological crime insight of Claude Chabrol, Jean-Pierre Melville or many other directors but Mesrine cranks up the pace and volume after an hour or so (very convincing Gerard Depardieu cameo) and Vincent Cassel is, as always (remember him from Sheitan (Russian site)), a captivating screen presence. Many fine performances from known names here including Elena Anaya as Mesrine's Spanish girl. Not sure that he really was a Robin Hood though (he was co-opted by the Free Quebec movement), maybe Part 2 will elucidate. Or one could read the plays of Bernard Marie-Koltès and see the film made of Roberto Succo.
And so to the world of Takeshi Kitano or rather his deadpan gangster/cop on-screen presence as well as writer/director/editor (othertimes a famous Japanese TV host/comedian and formally a boxer and dancer and 70s TV sitcom star). A unique cinema world for "the way he illustrates fear...and death" notes Chris D. (author of Outlaw Masters of Japanese Cinema) on the audio commentary for Violent Cop (as well as Sonatine). "The blurring of the underworld and the police force didn't occur in Japanese films until the mid-70s...he heightens realism by decreasing characters' reactions to the violence...gives new meaning to the word slapstick...humour between what we expect and what transpires...[needing] no artificial plot devices" The commentary is quiet, restrained, never sycophantic and while not quite revelatory nonetheless interesting to hear from someone who's both an expert and huge enthusiast. Kitano has "a stoic persona whether happy or sad" partly resulting from a severe accident to one side of his face (he even drew a false eye on his patch for TV interviews). Kitano's world maybe violent but it's also deeply sad. How did violence become the norm for these "young rebellious energies recruited into the yakuza"? The films are available single or as a box DVD set.
Bizarrely the first ever retrospective (and that includes Europe) of Basil Wolverton's comic book genius continues for one more week in New York at Barbara Gladstone Gallery. But then people aren't well-known for their objectivity about other people's creativity.
Neighbourhood Watched (BBC One) slips in late night in the dead summer August BBC schedules (kept alive by the Proms) exploring social housing (one in five Brits) housing officers at work. It's not Molly Dineen but what is? Fancy hearing my story? Nobody's given a toss in the past. Soon will, though:) My fire escape hallway for starters.
The Meerkats trailer rather pales when you've seen even a few eps of David Attenborough. I can't imagine Sir David uttering the immortal lines "what nature gives with one hand is taken away by another." And if they were, one certainly wouldn't cringe. In this doco they're voiced by Paul Newman (one of his last jobs) - but what a voice. (We still cringe a bit, though, at that line) Newman sounds like he's actually done battle with la cobra that the meerkats pick a meal with. Back lit by the sun these cute furry creatures resemble aliens from another planet. They've also come to be the emblem of Neighbourhood Watch signs in London (standing alert on their tippie toes). Decades ago before the meerkats became household names, I remember one of the first docos showing a diligent kat unceremoniously falling off a branch as it swooned under the sweltering sun. In this BBC outing, they all gently fall asleep on top one another. Ahhhhh.... Much like Neighbourhood Watch I expect. That's when they're not picking fights with highly venomous creatures. The G.I. Joe team were saving the world. Only joking of course. Moving swiftly on....
Norman Lebrecht talks to president of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Michael Kaiser. Known as 'the turnaround king' of performing arts. Kaiser has saved numerous artistic organisations from closure Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Kansas City Ballet). There is hope for some but not for us, so said Samuel Beckett.
Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia (1993) continues in London. Read it if nothing else and the experience of living in Britain becomes clearer.
A very candid Will Alsop quits architecture for painting
And last chance (until Thurs 13 Aug) to catch "Sergio Leone's elegiac, ironic and supremely cinematic milestone movie" Once Upon a Time in the West on the large NFT1 BFI Southbank screen. (Mon is the smaller NFT3)
(my blog review form last year's LFF)
there's a bit more cerebellum to come so please be patient...and if not that then be consciousness, clear and somewhat careful ;)
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