sisters of faith and chance

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture! - Robert Browning

With metropolis London (ney our world) awash with fear, loathing, apathy, greed and provocation (the mercenary 'stirrers' amid the genuine, committed London student rioters et al together with Uncle Tom Cobbly in the background), The Tourist comes as a blessed relief. Most interestingly, the film's central conceit of Roman god Janus' two-headed personality is probably how most people feel (toujours but especially pre-XMas). They/we want the glamour but equally the normality. And the simultaneous presence of both just doesn't square that circle.
Disturbing doco for our times Catfish opens this week. Are people ever what they seem let alone on the internet?

In America, things assume the veneer of clarity: you either aspire and succeed or you don't and live vicariously through the dreams of others. In Britain, you are forced to pretend that aspiration is all just for show and you'd much rather be having a pint drowning your sorrows down the local pub with the 'boys' or 'gals'. Bull S**!!!! The Tourist is a 'Thomas Crown Affair' flic: how do glamourous 'porcupines' mate? - Very carefully. Angelina Jolie (as Brit Interpol agent Elise Clifton Ward) is the female James Bond 'bucking' the system and yet enjoying every minute of 'acting' in an 'Audrey Hepburn' movie: innocent, swan-like grace under fire, her eyes never rippled through paddling too hard- only melting across the screen as if a mermaid's ice-cube amid Mediterranean swelter. In sasses seemingly mid-America Mr. Normal Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp) who proves anything but.

So why would Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (of The Lives of Others- 2006) choose to be directing (and adapting [alongside other illustrious scribing talents as Christopher McQuarrie - The Usual Suspects , and Julian Fellowes - Gosford Park]) this supposed cineaste candy-floss? The Lives of Others explored 'surviving' under the former Communist East German surveillance regime. "I wanted this to be a thriller that was simply a fun time at the movies," said producer Graham King. (Great acting 'cameos' too from Timothy Dalton (as the deus ex machina Chief Inspector Jones) and Steven Berkoff (as the ruthless villain Reginald Shaw) - all seductively lensed by John Seale.) Well, the producers got a bit more than he bargained for as The Tourist seems to suggest in a world that post 9/11 and post the collapse of world banking has 'no still point' in poet T.S. Eliot's 'turning world'. What does one pretend when everything proved the pretense one knew it always was? When almost everyone looks over the shoulder of the next poor sod wondering if they have an answer to the problem thence one can steal. Perhaps it's allowing The Tourist more 'benefit of the doubt' acuity that it deserves. Yet, I think not. Costume designer Colleen Attwood combined old and new world costumes - Alberta Ferretti for the extras at the Gala Venetian ball (each gown hand-tailored as were Jolie's clothes), Inspector John Acheson (Paul Bettany) wears an Oswald Boating-designed tuxedo.

Wandering around the GSK Contemporary – Aware: Art Fashion Identity (photos HERE, video soon...) located in the 'back-end' of London's Royal Academy of Arts, the show asks us to consider fashion's relationship with normal human desire and the means of production-the affordability of haute couture albeit 'high street'. Whether the ideal ever meets the reality is perhaps the mute point. Up the corner in Cork Street is a commercial gallery showcasing Dali - an artist who never ceases to amaze as both a creative genius and precursor of advertising's cult of personality connivance. Anyone who finds themselves in Atlanta this Christmas might do well popping into a Dali show highly recommended by The New York Times.

So pissed off was one made feel this month I even considered mounting my own WikiLeaks arts site to even up the odds. But: I mean, should we let kids know that Santa Claus exists only as an advertising gimmick? Let alone....Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is a surprise Finnish hit that while masquerading as slyly subversive is really just another take on mean old Uncle Scooge. The Richard 'Donnie Darko' Kelly Claus on barbiturates albeit with happy ending.

Oz journalist John Pilger's The War You Don't See is released the week we consider whether the Julian 'WikiLeaks' Assange's of this world are for good or ill. Remember Daniel Ellsberg who in late 1969 - with the assistance of his former RAND Corporation colleague Anthony Russo photocopied classified Pentagon documents relating to the Vietnam War and released them to The New York Times? Does seeing 'truth' promulgated - something we always somewhat suspected - ever change the reality of events? If we stared the 'truth' in the face would we only ever believe it if we actually saw it in the newspaper or on TV? In Enemies of the People journalist Thet Sambath allows Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Brother No 2 (Nuon Chea) - someone he's known for many years and become fond of- to tell his story of the Killing Fields: "They and all the killers like them must be part of the process of reconciliation if [a] country is to move forward," says Sambeth. Not all viewers will agree with that somewhat 'passive' notion but even initiating a dialectic with 'the other' can be a huge step forward.

This year's Cannes Film Fest Grand Jury Prize winner (and France's 2011 Oscar contender) Of Gods and Men (director Xavier Beauvois) shows eight North African monks holding out against Islamic Fundamentalist bloodshed in the 1990s. The trajectory of them from shaking the hand of such enemies through to the eve of their possible slaughter whilst drinking communion wine to an LP of Tchaikovsky ballet music traverses another cinematic plane entirely. The returned Brit soldiers of In Our Name (though with much talent here to recommend) lack the French film's subtlety and grace often only proffering us with questionably cloudy moral codes.

Possession is cult 70s Polish cinema (in English) from "the cinema of moral concern...the ethical problems of people living in Communist Poland" explains writer/director Daniel Bird's doco (filmed for the German DVD release co-inciding with the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall). Often mistaken simply as a horror film, the film's director Andrzej Zulawski notes in an extremely candid rather disturbing interview: "evil in Communist reality, evil for us...had a very material face, you could pinpoint it...the layers of fiction, lying, [in the system] this ideology which is the contrary of its realisation...But then how come that it visits this young woman who is not evil as it visits us all. Do we nurture it in us or is it from outside and plunging into us and changing us? That would be a question."

American screenwriter Frederic Tuton spent a day visiting East Berlin "I came in as a Leftist and I came out as a moderate...a line, a line, a line and then you'd see a hole in the wall of a building, and they were waiting for an ice cream cone. One scoop: it took your heart away...It's a profoundly beautiful film and has stayed ever so...for a new audience they will be kind of amazed...I have a suspicion that certain emotions are so archetypal and so profound in our natures that they stay with us...my god, all these years and [the film] hasn't staled?...[the monster] is something that loves her in the strangest, abhorrent way in the way that she wants to be loved. I think that as a metaphor is so interesting: our loneliness can create something that nurtures our love...that somehow in our most despairing, abject pain, loneliness - somewhere, somehow is a creation of something that comforts us...She cultivated in a small flat...something unimaginable, beyond all systems, beyond the grey street and red flags." A leading Polish film critic advised Zuwalski NOT to show the monster as such. But Zuwalski and his producer (Marie-Laure Reyre) saw the first Alien movie in New York and immediately knew that they wanted Giger for their project. Unavailable, he suggested contacting Carlo Rambaldi. The DVD extras on this disc are really worth one's time.

Fresh from My Brilliant Career, Australian actress Judy Davis wasn't available but Sam Neill was. Bruno Nuytton was the director's first choice as cinematographer as [he claims] was Isabelle Adjani as actress (Zuwalski didn't know Bruno was married to her) - and though Adjani had initially declined, in 3 days was persuaded by Nuytton to agree the role. She "had a terrible reputation at the time...a strong temperament and can easily be impossible...I was blacklisted in Poland and she in France" said Zuwalski. The 1981 Cannes Film Fest was a very Polish festival with Wadja's Man of Iron (about the explosion of 'Solidarity') ultimately winning the coveted award: "it was important that this film won...but I know that 40 years later I would rather see Possession than Man of Iron," reflects Zuwalski but Isabelle Adjani won best actress for his film, "at that time the [French] Left and Possession didn't click for them, which is a pity. I don't think they really understood what the hell it was about."

For those searching for an alternative DVD Christmas this is the release for you:
Zuwalski's Facebook site, and the visionary uncompleted sci-fi epic On the Silver Globe (Polish website)

The altogether more tamed Monsters I missed because of the tube strike and though not having had the chance to see it on general release is by all accounts well worth a 'gander'. Writer-director Colm McCarthy's debut social realist occult feature Outcast is set in the dreary council estates of Edinburgh's Lothian and though often rough and ready is far more full of promise and invention than most Brit releases, let alone of simply its genre.

A Serbian Film has been much hyped as controversial due to its cuts from the BBFC censorship board. As an academic consideration of film censorship it proves quite interesting but it pales not even in comparison to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom as transgressive cinema. A Serbian Film's slasher/porn premise is that subjugation to power makes one do horrendous acts. That's as may be. But the film isn't very incisive psychologically, nor brazenly, blackly 'Communist' comedic, nor even penetrates the depths of ethnic cleansing. A frustrating missed opportunity here when most independent/foreign films disappear without even a whisper these days. And why the distributors couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't/didn't exploit the film's product placement of a leading American bourbon is also bemusing.

The final film of this year's 54th BFI London Film Festival was Andrei Ujica's 3 hour The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu - given an extra screening due to the initial print being bereft of subtitles. (A spokes-person for the Romanian Cultural Institute said that the titles ended up on a film at the Spanish Embassy - humour in Communist vein indeed.) In description - 3hours of archival footage with never any voice/over to explain Ceauşescu's whereabouts - it all sounds as dreary as watching Soviet paint peel. Yet much of the footage had never been shown in Romania (let alone abroad) and what becomes fascinating is just how much resonance such an 'ideologue' leader has for his Western counterparts both then and now.

One scene films Ceauşescu addressing his 'cabinet' in a state room - true national socialist manner: how 'we' must maximise our agricultural assets etc etc - heads suddenly bowing in disgrace and embarrassment. The scary bit being that instead of appearing as a figure of fun and derision he so often emerges as an exemplar for the future. No need to cite contemporary or present political parallels there.
From East to West: A Portrait of Romanian Diaspora by photographer Raul Stef shows (extra)ordinary lives of some exemplary people at the London embassy.

Hungarian Hollywood exile Ernst Lubitsch's classic The Shop Around the Corner (1940) is re-released this week and proves fascinating in comparison to his early silent Lubitsch in Berlin: Fairy-Tales, Melodramas and Sex Comedies - Eureka's (region-free) Masters of Cinema Series (smartly packaged box set with essays on each sleeve cover rather than Eureka's usual booklet). All restored by the F.W. Murnau Foundation back in 2000 (first available on Kino DVD in the States and sold separately):

Ich möchte kein Mann sein (I Don't Want to Be a Man) - 1918 - featuring Ossi (played by his first muse Ossi Oswalda)
Die Bergkatze (known in English as The Mountain-Lion or The Wildcat) - (1921) - with its experimental framing masques for the picture. And
Die Puppe (1919)
Die Austernprinzessin (1919)
Anna Boleyn (1920)
Sumurun (1920)

You'd think there'd be more docos on Lubitsch around but Robert Fischer's 110min Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin proves a rarity:
Director Tom Tykwer extolls the virtues of Lubitsch's optimism: "[they] smile about the insanity that rains down on us. That's why those films have a medicinal effect. It's why they leave you with a certain addiction, because they don't blur your sight. They focus on conditions, and they force you to take a mild-mannered air and a sense of gentleness, and a positive attitude to stand up and say, 'I won't despair no matter what'."

The Criterion Collection issued Lubitsch Musicals and Trouble in Paradise
Critic/historian David Thompson on The Shop Around the Corner: "Though it all works out finally, a mystery is left, and a fear of how easily good people can miss their chances".
Was Lubitsch as ground-breaking as Billy Wilder was in his pushing of film boundaries e.g. the Hayes Code? Or indeed Preston Sturges? Or was he (as Chaplin) asking us simply asking us to smile as our hearts are breaking?

Boudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu sauvé des eaux) is Jean Renoir's 1932 B/W French film (remade by maverick Paul Mazursky in 1986 as Down and Out in Beverly Hills). In his essay for the Criterion DVD, Christopher Faulkner cites Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life and "spatial stories as those that make “sentences and -itineraries” out of the places that they “traverse and organize,” that they “select and link” together...Both Lestingois [who rescues the tramp] Boudu know their world, their city, very differently. One observes it, one acts in it. One is an eye at rest, the other a body in motion. One is static, sedentary; the other mobile, a pedestrian. One is rational, reflective, bound to time; the other impulsive, corporeal, a creature of space. One is forever stable, at home; the other forever displaced, in public. This is the phenomenology of their separate ways of being in the world. There is a sense that Boudu exteriorizes something that is in Lestingois himself, that the bookseller has summoned him up from the dark reaches of the personal and social unconscious. Boudu is everything at the center of the self and within society that has been discarded, ignored, or repressed...he does allow those who engage with him to imagine how they might politicize the individual as well as the social body through a willingness to recognize and negotiate their limits. The political geography of the self in social space has to be a somatic geography."

For Colored Girls is Tyler Perry's film of Ntozake Shange's acclaimed 1974 Obie-winning stage play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf
- originally 20 prose-poems performed by a cast of seven women and punctuated by dance and music. A classic of its time - a bare stage with every women assigned her own color of the rainbow. But Perry, rather than trusting his source material or creating a contemporary echoing cave, tries to make what is impalpable conspicuously just so. Wonderful talent here throughout including an oft under-used Thandie Newton brightly shying and shining as Tangie. It is wonderful to see Ntozake Shange revived yet so disappointing that she's not nurtured and allowed to shine brighter than a 1000 stars into the C21st.

On Tour may garner a fan club due to the presence of burlesque star Dirty Martini but the fiction rather pales agin the doco facts and female empowerment of Too Much Pussy (screened at this year's Raindance Fest.)
Burlesque opens next Friday. Will it gather a camp cult following?

The infrequently UK distributed Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek's Loose Cannons (Mine Vaganti) is receiving a justly deserved Christmas push from uber indie Peccadillo Pictures. There's so much heart and soul in this pic that nitpicking would seem rather churlish.

Artist turned filmmaker Julian Schnabel's Miral (Pathe UK) certainly has 'heart' if rather lacking in cinematic umph. It's based on Rula Jebreal's 2004 novel about an East Jerusalem orphanage/school, the Arab Children's Home (1948 to 1994): "There's no space for imagination in he Middle East. You can only tell what you've seen through your own eyes. Every day this place makes you decide who you are and what you have to do. It's something that's imposed on you," wrote Jebreal.

Ben Uhri Gallery has just acquired George Grosz's magnetic watercolour Interrogation (1936) - painted whilst exiled in New York. Equally well worth the visit are self-portraits from Maria Fidelis Girls Convent School in Camden, Wanstead High School and Acland Burghley Secondary School in Tufnell Park painted in response to their visit by holocaust survivor, Eva Kugler and artist Heather Libson. Without their labels, you'd swear some of these were executed by far more celebrated artists.

Dreamworks' Megamind has a striking resemblance to Despicable Me in that both are entertaining tricksters while neither really appeal to the intellect nor the foetus instinct. If one had a choose Megamind might probably win given that it's more slapstick than slap-happy: a film that adults will kick themselves for enjoying whilst praying that their kids won't hold them to ransom afterwards.

Meanwhile, a different kettle of fishies altogether: in 1950 when the first C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia was published in England, reviewers were luke warm echoing beliefs at the time that "stories should help children to understand and relate to real life, that they should not encourage them to indulge in fantasies, and that fairy stories, if for any children at all, should only be for the very young," noted Lewis' friend and biographer George Sayer. Though Lewis admired Tolkein (The Lord of the Rings) the latter "thought that it was a terrible mistake to put them [real people] together in Narnia, a single imaginative country". The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader isn't helped much by its (3D) but there's much to admire rather than marvel in Fox's attempt to save the initial Disney 'franchise' from dissolving.

Digory Kirke in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tells the young heroes that their sister's claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth. C.S Lewis' notion of 'Universal Morality' or the 'deep magic' is thus elucidated by the writer:
"These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in."

The resonances of C.S. Lewis' Christianity hover far beyond a particular religious affiliation. "There is a magic deeper still the Witch does not know", "defeat the darkness in yourself", "don't run from who you are". In an age when social networking sites and reality TV continually commercially exploit everyone's need for the mirroring of desire and self, the world of Narnia offers a rare realm of self-knowledge and empowerment. Hopefully, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair will yet be released late 2011-2012.

Sofia Coppola's 2010 Venice Fest prize winning Somewhere proves it was not mere nepotism on the part of Jury head (and ex-lover of Sofia) Quentin Tarantino. Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is movie star single-parent of the utterly beguiling 11 year-old Cleo (Elle Fanning). There's little hint of a Jim Jarmusch/Wim Wenders slightly world askew here. The somewhat eerie magic is simply the reality: Cleo's castigating stare at Johnny across the breakfast table as his one-night stand amiably shares their 5-star hotel table. The terrifying fact that there is no wizard anymore simply the poor limping fiend of market capitalism. Simply the wondrous optimism of the child Cleo. "You'll be fine," mundanely assures Johnny's ex-wife over the phone as he sits drunkenly morose after Cleo's departed for summer camp. One day maybe he won't be just fine. But what can/could anyone do? Santa Claus always comes but he never was there. Pixar's Toy Story struck at the heart of what it was to be human: the toys are REAL, the DREAMS were real for ever and a day. Make believe is something that will never vanish - the priceless commodity. Growing up was the importance of 9 and a HALF, of 5 and almost 6, of all of 3 quarters: fractions that make us whole whilst also offering an escape route into the future.

dog and nothing but a dog, black, white or other,
empty-handed messenger, because there is no
mystery
except the thread which from our hands
leads round the far side of things, round the collar of the landscape
and up the sleeve of a star.
The root of the matter is not
in the matter itself
dog and nothing but a dog,
with your eyes gazing into
the sweet shell of terror,
stay, you are so fair.
Verweile doch, du bist
so schön

And Faust feels he loves the dog with a love
whose essence is hopelessness just as
hopelessness has its essence in love,
knows what he should do but cannot,
not having a bandage
nor
a veterinary's licence
nor
the right to redress the acts of omnibues
The root of the matter is not
in the matter itself and often
not
in our hands

Miroslav Holub

do that voodoo that you do so well

"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer." 
Ralph Waldo Emerson

As more university students riot in London over Conservative government grant funding cuts (some linking arms in fact to protect not damage police vans against 'rogue' anarchist protestors) the Metropolitan Police warned that "the game had changed" and that Britain entered a new era of protest. Waiting for Superman - the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim (of the Al Gore doco An Inconvenient Truth) is released in the UK this week. It doesn't have the 'bluster' of a Michael Moore doco and is all the better for it as the footage speaks for itself. And what graphics there are prove both witty and downright depressing, highlighting the lack of education in American schools. Latest Washington D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee has one of those faces that seems to naturally consistently smile - though probably not to the extent of ameliorating the enemies she's made in shaking up the existing system and closing down ill-functioning schools. Teachers can gain tenure in two years "as long as you keep breathing" (the quote is not hers) and thereafter is impossible to fire them. There's much cause for optimism, though, in the many schemes that are now opting out of the old ways.

Without that education, the role models for most kids moving into adulthood are those of the other films released this week - all focussing on violence and endurance. Not that the latter quality is necessarily negative only that unless one has an all round education the quality that is most likely to emerge and be misconstrued is 'gung ho' not endurance.

When Denzel Washington's Frank Barnes (stalwart engineer) leaps from the roof of one railcar to the next in Unstoppable , he's not doing it for the helicopter news teams, or to prove his masculinity. It's a calculated risk in order to stop the driverless, out of control freight train (based on actual events of 2001). Which begs the question are intelligence and education necessary for bravery?

Kids nowadays are too often given the impression that 'street savvy' is more useful than education. The characters in Tony Scott's film (scripted by Mark Bomback) rather uninterestingly divide into the hard working man versus the out-of touch corporates. Thrilling and (as you'd expect) expertly crafted, everything in the film suggests depth and detail without really delivering. We know no better than to accept the freight train physics on offer (wouldn't it be great to have a DVD interview extra with technical details of the actual event and interviews with long-serving engineers?) And though in a Hollywood pic you kinda expect denouement cut-ways to crowds cheering on the heroes, it does the suspense of Scott's direction somewhat of a disservice. Andrei Konchalovsky's Runaway Train became a metaphor for the juggernaut of human existence - its characters psychological throttling each other in the engine cabin. Tony Scott's train could have been a meditation on man and the machine in an age when the cogs have barely the finance to be oiled let alone managed. The irony of Unstoppable is that it stops while the inertia of its heroes is taken solely for granted.

Riffing on F Scott Fitzgerald's "there are no second acts in American lives", Jason Massot's doco Road to Las Vegas is immediately arresting showing an Alaskan 5-kid Afro-American family arriving in Las Vegas penniless (living out of their car) and 4 years later, after trials and tribulations, surviving with a roof over their heads thanks to "metal girl" breadwinner Vanessa on a wage of $22 per hour when the average is $5. What you don't get,though, is more of a sense of that time or a real sense of place. One longs to hear similar stories and see more moments such as when husband Maurice discovers a bird's nest in the woods - entering an existential world rather than seeming sentimental.
Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis with its newly discovered footage is a highly recommended DVD Christmas gift (if only to then borrow it from the friend you just gave it too;)

George Clooney's sniper in The American (much anticipated from director Anton Corbijn, Control) hopped off the train of life long ago. "I don't think God's very interested in me" says Clooney 'the photographer' to Abruzzo local priest (Paolo Bonacelli) (of the tiny village Castel del Monte) who's befriended him. This mountainous region east of Rome is a world away from even such a small metropolis. Respected critic Roger Ebert felt it harked back to European cinema, "Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon's in Le Samourai ( Jean-Pierre Melville). ["Bourne meets Antonioni!" is not a marketer's dream tagline"] quipped NYC's Village Voice.

Well, it's a film beautiful to behold - think minimalist Bond movie (Martin Ruhe's cinematography) yet akin to Unstoppable it entices the viewer with detail when the bigger picture isn't really there. Wim Wenders and Bertolucci spring to mind and one is somewhat disappointed. The psychological momentum is all thanks to Clooney's skill at brooding (plus Corbijn's in eliciting those qualities) and the gorgeous girls with guile- Italian prostitute Clara (Violante Placido) and his fellow sniper Mathilde (Thekla Reuten): a very seductive Euro-cine film without classic dialectic qualities. And though the girl you've been sleeping with cinematically wasn't quite a Clara, it won't put you off trying to find one. Whether she'll be the deadliest of the species only time will tell. Very subtle music score by German singer-songwriter Herbert Grönemeyer.

The film grossed $13.1 million opening US weekend ahead of Machete $11.4 million.
In many myths and folk tales, a hero is a man or woman (the latter often called a heroine), traditionally the protagonist of a story, legend or saga, who commonly possesses abilities or character far greater than that of a typical person, which enable him or her to perform some truly extraordinary, beneficial deed (a "heroic deed") for which he or she is famous. These powers are sometimes not only of the body but also of the mind. Heroes are typically opposed by villains. He is a man distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength. I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. - Bob Dylan

If Robert Rodriguez's Machete (Danny Trejo in the lead) crossed just one more Hollywood border trope it might even be up there in the art house league alongside video artist Tracey Moffat - so consummate is Rodriguez's film craft (director/writer/producer/editor). If you don't enjoy female bitching empowerment/male blood and guts bonding then it's probably not quite your cup of tequila tea. Those left, will grin and chortle as hypocritical Texas senator (repub/dem) McLaughlin (De Niro) hops about, thinks he's home free then gets machine gunned and electrocuted. Or Lindsay Lohan as kidnapped web nympho/daughter April of duplicitous businessman Booth (Jeff Fahey). Or Steven Seagal on webcam till he emerges in the final showdown dressed like the local bar's Chairman Mao lookalike winner. Then there's Cheech Marin as the uber broad church Padre.....what's not to lik...

Gregory Crewdson's new show at the White Cube (West End) Sanctuary shows B/W photos of the long derelict overgrown backlots of Cinecittà studios, Rome. Fascinating photos but are they 'art'?

Mayor Gallery in London has an intriguing show of Christine Keeler images, Daily Mail, The Independent

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2010 returns to its original ICA home after decades exiled elsewhere. There's much to ponder here (at least 75%) that could easily be the work of a future famous Mr/Ms X/Y. Has anyone been so humorously obvious as Greta Alfaro (In Ictu Oculi) and filmed live vultures devouring a dinner table ;)? New Contemporaries video artist Laure Prouvost shows Charlie(Nov 26) - she seems to be following in the footsteps of Godard whose latest, Film Socialisme, is as intriguing as he always was in piecing together our fragmented existence (released around May, 2011 by New Wave) .

Into Eternity (ICA until Nov 28) is an elegiac yet sobering meditation on nuclear waste disposal. Nobody really knows the future...
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's (of Uncle Boonmee) Syndromes and a Century also plays the ICA (Dec 4/8) as well as some Tarkovsky and other gems...


If George Clooney's Clara's not your type then feisty Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) will definitely give you a workout. If you weren't overwhelmingly gripped by Part II of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy The Girl Who Played With Fire, final installment The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest plays better - perhaps because it works better as a self-contained thriller. Directed by Daniel Alfredson, 'the Section' is a rogue outfit of psychiatrists, politicians, lawyers, still operating after 30 years, whose sole aim is protecting Soviet defector Zalachenko (who raped his daughter Salander hence her mental hospital incarceration to keep her mouth shut). It's great for the Swedes to have a world-wide hit on their hands - all those great unheralded actors getting showcased and the rest of the production team etc etc. And though it's all little more than a very slickly produced thriller, the fact remains that 'Sections' still probably exist in every world democracy. David Fincher is to remake Dragon Tattoo for Hollywood.

Great French theatre/opera director turned cineaste Patrice Chéreau gets a DVD release of an early film (usually only ever seen on TV at 3am) Flesh of the Orchid - (screenplay by Chéreau and another French cinema legend, Jean-Claude Carrière) based on James Hadley Chase’s 1948 psychological thriller. Is Charlotte Rampling’s Claire another victim of society's repressions or a victim of her own making?

Hanif Kureishi had his short story Intimacy adapted by Chéreau: "Patrice seemed interested in the power of impersonal sexuality, in passion without relationship, in the way people can be narcissistically fascinated by one another's bodies and their own sexual pleasure, while keeping away strong feeling and emotional complexity....Patrice and I talked about keeping the camera close to the bodies; not over-lighting them, or making them look pornographically enticing or idealized…The point is to look at how difficult sex is, how terrifying, and what a darkness and obscenity our pleasures can be." Chéreau's Persécution (from last year's London Film Festival) still has no UK release planned. Plus ca change...
Small DVD outfit Bluebell Films also release actress Jane Birkin's Boxes - that reeks of the mid-70's or 80's but is in fact 2007. An illustrious cast conjure the ghosts of Anna's (Birkin) past. Not for all tastes this film.

Peter Blake has witty current work at Waddington's that most certainly helps one see the world differently outside the gallery: Homage 10x5: Blake's Artists
Maya Hewitt's modest nocturne is at Bischoff/Weiss.

Opening today at the BFI Gallery is The Yvonne Rainer Project (VIDEO interview here) - one of America's most groundbreaking choreographers. Showing for the first time in Europe is her provocative 2002 installation After Many a Summer Dies the swan: Hybrid. Associated film programme.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.- Umberto Eco


[ADDITION to last post]

Another impressive 1st writer/director feature from Axiom is Kyle Patrick Alvarez' Easier With Practice (based on a Davy Rothbart short story) following two brothers, Davy (The Hurt Locker's Brian Geraghty) an unpublished writer who drags his sibling along (Kel O'Neill) on his 4 month gig across middle America. Easier to believe than it seems, Davy falls 'in love' for an anonymous caller with whom he regularly starts having phone sex. Alvarez won the Someone to Watch award at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards as well as his film (one of the first shot on the digital RED camera) being nominated for Best First Feature.

, , , , ,

"To maintain this fabric of absolute normality requires powerful repressive forces"- JG Ballard

Talk about soul-searching! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (the final-ever Part 2 is next Summer) is positively European in its sensibility with cinematographer Eduardo Serra extracting the essences of the wand-wielding trio of teenagers and those of the English landscape to alchemically expose mendaciousness. Early in the plot Harry must drink a potion proffering replicas of himself so as to escape possible harm. Thereon, the pace creeps ever more darkly and slowly to the cliff-hanger ending while along the way almost suspending into existential elevation in scenes such as the Forest of Dean (actually filmed in Burnham Beeches) where Hermione's (Emma Watson) parents used to take her.

It's interesting to compare the gently erotic scenes of the latest Harry Potter with those of the 2D animation Chico and Rita where the drawing of artist/designer brothers Javier Mariscal and Tono Errando enter a sensual, erotic realm far more than live action full frontal ever could (not of course that there's any of that in Harry Potter - all gently blurred). While it takes a while to gather steam, Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, Calle 54) directs this 40s/50s Havana/New York jazz lost/found love story so that the animated lines gently envelop you like those of a melismatic Bolero duet (soundtrack is by Cuban great Bebo Valdés). Chico (Emar Xor Ona) is a piano player and Rita (Limara Meneses) a singer.

This year's Cannes Fest Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives gets quietly seductive too. But then so has most work of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Having twice viewed it I'm in a very miniscule minority that aren't raving about it. And that I stress is a very personal opinion. Only because the director's earlier work casts spells from the very, very ordinariness of everyday life whereas his latest film concerns extraordinariness and the transmigration of souls. The Uncle is suffering from kidney failure and one night at dinner the ghost of his deceased wife appears. Thereon, is a journey to the heart of the soul that many viewers will find totally transfixing.
A surprising hit of the week (nay month) is Brazilian writer/director Heitor Dhalia's Adrift, also gorgeously photographed (Ricardo Della Rosa), but always to embody the performances of father (Vincent Cassel), cheated upon wife (Deborah Bloch) and confused, frustrated teenage daughter (Laura Neiva) - a stunning acting debut as the entire film centres around her performance.

Ashley Horner's brilliant love (this year's NYC Tribeca Film Fest and Edinburgh) is quite a lot more than just sweltering summer sex in a Northern England garage with en suite fields. Noon (Nancy Trotter Landry) is a taxidermist and boyfriend Manchester (unemployed) takes sexually explicit photos of her. Accidentally leaving some on a pub table, a stranger inveigles him into showing them in a city gallery. While not a revelatory film it's an extremely assured one. Another Brit director who may well conjure something quietly amazing in the future.
Clio Barnard's award winning The Arbor about the short life of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar (using real interviews lip-synched by actors) continues screening across the country.

Mammoth, on the other hand, the first English language opus by provocative Swede Lukas Moodyson is somewhat of a disappointment relative to his usual fare. New York games guru Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal), hugs his wife (Michelle Williams) and daughter (sparky, adorable Sophie Nyweide) before hopping over to seal a deal in Thailand. His 'spiritual' journey is paralleled by Gloria (his Filipino nanny) and her own 2 sons back home. While the film is hugely 'atmospheric' and seductive (more great cinematography - Marcel Zyskind) it's never more than the sum of its well crafted parts.

Leap Year is the 1st feature of Michael Rowe (and winner of this year's Cannes Fest Camera d'Or - Juan Manuel Sepulveda) set in the shabby Mexico City apartment of Laura Lopez (Monica del Carmen). Over 29 days her many one-night stands and 'rough sex' empower her rather than the opposite. In description the film may sound like many others but it's the singularity of vision, of seeing this woman practically 'body build' her psyche in her lonely space without a directorial recourse to cinematic stunts. One for those who like Catherine Breillat's films.
[ADDITION at end of latest post]

Another impressive 1st feature is Marc Dugain's An Ordinary Execution (adapting/directing in French from his own novel) shot entirely hand-held with a great cast of André Dussolier as Stalin and Marina Hands (Lady Chatterley) as the doctor who is summoned to 'cure' him using her 'laying on of hands' energy after the dictator has purged all Jewish doctors in 1952. She's forced to abandon her husband and forbade to speak of the consultations so as not to "pander to the people's propensity for the irrational". There's not a whiff of 'period' film or star-turn bio-pic performance to be found here. And though one could never feel sympathy with Stalin, the film is a fascinating meditation on the pain of others and the self-reflecting nature of cure. "Nature is beautiful- a pity it is so contradictory," says Stalin gazing out onto the lake at his Georgian dacha - truly believing that perfect order will result in the perfect State. "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

Re-released in cinemas for its 50th anniversary Peeping Tom and out on Blu-ray today (par excellance commentary by film historian Ian Christie from the standard DVD). We'll never know whether the film would have gained an audience at the time by promulgating the damning reviews of disgust on a poster saving director Michael Powell's career from future oblivion. But he never worked again after this masterpiece of cinematic psychological trauma- a man whose childhood torments him into filming the death of his victims. It's become somewhat of a benchmark in considering films 'of its kind' and censorship's boundaries.

Pang Ho-Cheung's Dream Home is ghastly, gruesome stuff - almost as if Ken Loach had dreamed of a social realist horror/slasher pic. Wanting to remain living with her childhood view of the water, the ever increasing Hong Kong property prices keep thwarting Cheng's (Josie Ho) ambitions even though she works two jobs. "A cut throat film about the cut-throat property market" goes the poster's tag line. What humour there is blackly assured as is the film's overall tone. (Trailer)

It makes Let Me In (the remake of last year's Swedish cult vampire hit Let the Right One In) seem like Sunday brunch with the Addams Family. If you're a fan of the original (and I only recently saw it again in the big screen) it's hard to suspend the Swedish version whilst watching this, so closely does the American version follow the original's narrative. It's a bit like the book of the movie syndrome - the two could never be the same but if seeing the movie makes someone curious enough to seek out the original then all the better for the world.

We Are What We Are (Somos Lo Que Hay) (Mexican writer/director Jorge Michael Grau 1st feature) is an impressive debut (chosen for this year's New York Film Fest) without really being sure exactly where to go with its 'social realist' vampiric material.

Not something that could ever be said of Mike Leigh and his latest Another Year. And though it may all be a touch predictable for Leigh devotees, there are very few directors in the world (let alone Britain) who can generate performances that amount to psychological fragments so powerful that while they are geographically specific also symbolise a broader human sociology. Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are nice, intelligent, hard-working middle-class folk as is their son Joe. When Leigh was trying to work out a 'look' for the film his regular cameraman Dick Pope presented him with four options - hence the story's four seasons was born (great tree poster). Into their lives keeps popping Gerri's work friend Mary (Lesley Manville) who's treated like her 'sister' and sadly for her almost behaves as if she is. This film will linger in the minds of many viewers. The contradictory beauty of the world.

Patrick Keiller's Robinson in Ruins is his character's (from previous films) fictional journey around Oxfordshire - documentary footage narrated by Vanessa Redgrave's very apt gentle manly timbre. Robinson's quest to preserve the earth by communicating the world's blunders to higher non-human intelligences. It's as if Monty Pythonite turned TV doco world traveller Michael Palin was on quinine musing of man's misadventures.
And some fascinating rarely seen short public service films by director John Krish in A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War Britain - a book and DVD also available. Do foreigners know that London once had trams -The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953). Kids and teenagers even these days would find Our School(1962) both funny and educational - one of the kids is so charismatically 'mouthy' that you'd have expected him to become an actor. While I Think They Call Him John (1964) is a moving portrait of a man coping on his own after his wife's deceased. It could have been made yesterday.
Aristotle's Lagoon (a repeat on BBC4) tells the little known story of the philosopher's biological investigations on the island of Lesvos. Many of them proved absolutely spot on.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.” William Blake, 1790

...to airy nothing....

You'd think one would end up being jaded and disillusioned about film's future after watching 75 pics of the 54th BFI London Film Festival (LFF for short) in just one month. Surprisingly and hearteningly, though, such a mad endeavour only increases curiosity about the world and the power of film to structure our ever more increasing fragmented existence. Some of these films will be mentioned in more depth in this post, while others may take a while longer. But the oft asked cliche question of 'did you see anything outstanding' can only fairly be answered by noting that each in the following list had at least a special something if not considerably more 'somewheres', while one inevitably missed seeing some other notables:


A Screaming Man (Un Homme qui crie)
A Brighter Summer Day
Amigo
Another Year (just UK released)
The Arbor (just UK released)
Archipelago
At Ellen's Age
Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu, The
Autumn
Carancho
Cold Weather
Dear Doctor
Double Tide
Father
Film Socialisme
Fire in Babylon
Guilty Pleasures
Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires)
Howl (UK release-Feb 25)
It’s Kind of a Funny Story (UK release-Mrch 11)
King's Speech, The (UK release- Jan 7)
Le Quattro Volte
Leap Year (UK release-Nov 26)

Loose Cannons (UK release- Dec 10)
Mammuth
Mars
Meek's Cutoff
Microphone
Miral
Mysteries of Lisbon

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (UK release-Dec 3)
Robinson in Ruins (just UK released)
The Sleeping Beauty
Somewhere (UK release-Dec 10)
Special Treatment
Spork
Super Brother
(Svankmajer's) Surviving Life

The Taqwacores
Treacle Jr
Two Gates of Sleep

Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives (just UK released)
Vapor Trail (Clark)
Waste Land
What I Love the Most (Lo que mas Quiero)
Willam S. Burroughs: A Man Within
Winter Vacation

My month's viewing began with the film that opened this year's New York Film Festival, The Social Network - and there wasn't much in NYFF that wasn't in the LFF with the notable exceptions of:

Post Mortem (Pablo Larraín -Tony Manero)
Old Cats
Tuesday, After Christmas
Black Venus (Abdellatif Kechiche -The Secret of the Grain)
and an Oliveira re-issue The Strange Case of Angelica but the LFF had Rite of Spring from 1963.

Like it or not, social networking site Facebook has defined a human generation and perhaps even one to follow. So can director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's film even attempt to excavate such a contemporary site? It doesn't seem that they even intended it do so (though many hoped it might attempt this feat). There are not psychological artifacts here
to be unearthed. What it does try to do (succesfully or not) is to argue that there is always an archeological fragment in our past (youthful or otherwise) that defines us forever and a day. In Mark Zuckerberg's (Jesse Eisenberg) life case it was a girl. There's even a quote from English writer John Milton, “creation myths need a devil”.
One is equally mindful of the quote (not in the film) from LP Hartley's The Go-Between, "the past is another country: they do things differently there". And the film asks not so much do we all inevitably sell our soul to our own devil. Rather, as if being a museum curator do we at one and the same time relish the thought of finding new fragments with which to piece together an antiquity while simultaneously dread the thought that our assumptions about those initial shards of light may prove totally wrong.

The pych-cinematic musing is mine but the original argument belongs to Dr Peter Stewart (Reader in Classical Art and its Heritage, and Acting Dean of The Courtauld Institute of Art) who lectured on this the other evening (at some time in the future the audio will be available on their website). It's probably easier simply to quote from the Courtauld's precis:
"All art history involves inherent tensions between the materiality of the works of art – their rootedness in time and space – and the mobility of the ideas and imagery that they embody. The tension is all the more striking in the study of ancient art. On the one hand, classical art history, with its traditional dependence on archaeology, deals with perishable, intractable objects dug up in particular places. On the other hand, it has always been concerned with the intangible spread of Graeco-Roman styles and iconography, with abstract typologies, material and visual cultures and how they transcend material constraints. This lecture explores some of the forms of material resistance which have filtered our experience of ancient art, including the accidents of archaeological survival. But such limitations affect not only the objects that we study, but also the processes of studying them. Our construction of the past, the books and articles we read and write, the photographs we reproduce or view, the dissemination of ideas on paper or on the web... These too have their hidden material constraints."

The British Museum's Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead has just opened (photos HERE) as has the Wellcome Institute's High Society
(Video interviews and photos HERE)

Dr Stewart spoke of ideas facing resistance "moving nimbly in mysterious ways" and quoted Steve Jones who when writing about Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species cited a peer reviewer at the time who, going to great lengths to find something constructive to say, concluded that the book would make a very good "manual for pigeon breeders".

Jean Becker’s previous film Conversations With My Gardener was delightful, soulful and unassuming. So too is his latest My Afternoons with Marguerite (La Tête en Friche) in which Gérard Depardieu's beafy Germain dons the cloak of gregariousness at the local bar but rather more enjoys hanging out with pigeons by the park bench each of which he's named. Nonagenarian Margueritte (Gisèle Casadesus) arrives one day and over the course of many visits reads him Albert Camus' novel of existential absurdity La Peste (The Plague). "Life makes promises it can't keep," she says but her offering of 'reality' is the gift to Germain of a dictionary "on this earth we are all couriers...with a dictionary you travel from word to word". As in The Singer, Depardieu's almost illiterate 50 going on 60 Germain is 'paired' with a lovely young lass. But it's never mawkish: simply somewhat sad, rather gentle and ultimately life enhancing for all of us and the three characters.

Fezeka’s Voice is uplifting too. For 12-years choirmaster Phumi Tsewu has been teaching the children at Fezeka High School in Gugulethu, Capetown, South Africa both traditional and Western classical music. Several even dream of becoming opera stars. Director Holly Lubbock documents their preparations and journey to last year's Salisbury International Arts Festival. There's perhaps a little too much background 'doco' music and maybe a touch too much sentiment. But the strength of the story and its individuals is overwhelmingly powerful and full of life's details - how two of the teenagers suddenly find themselves with 'surrogate' mums. How one boy is amazed that older people in this part of England mow their own lawns and do their own chores- unthinkable for him in South Africa where you'd pay someone and he's shown how to eat rhubarb straight from the garden. Produced by Ciel Productions and All Living Things, one can't help but believe that in this doco, however shattered and scattered the lives have been for some of these teenagers, there is hope in uniting at least some of the pieces to form new lives. Or as Phumi Tsewu says close to tears, the achievement of lifting these kids out of the impossible "mire" that they found themselves in.

Photos HERE from the LFF press conference for Africa United.

In the Courtauld's public temporary space, are Cézanne's Card Players of the 1890's, two from the permanent collection alongside those purloined from around the world's galleries. Of course, the 'fragments' of sketches and unfinished oils aren't really what the Courtauld's director Dr. Peter was lecturing about. However, so often a famous painting is only ever seen in its 'iconic' status never in context with those similar in earlier periods or from the same time. Moreover, none of the paintings on show here have an exact year of execution only circa (c.) and even then often c. within a period of 2-4 years. A long time in an artist's life and development. Interesting too is the fact that the artist didn't just rely on pencil strokes to outline the figures often using a brush to paint lines. And then reinforcing them to create a contour - very untypical of C19 practice when most artists disguised all traces of lines. Much like the tiny specks that Canaletto used to conjure the light of dawn, the small striking thick patches of Cézanne colour up close magically merge as one moves away from the painting. Talks and events throughout the run of this show before traveling to the Metropolitan Museum in New York (Feb 7-May 8, 2011)
Don't miss the extraordinary visceral, whirling, whaling Untitled (Crouching Figures) c.1952 of Francis Bacon (temporarily on loan from his Estate) in the next room alongside Daumier's Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that Bacon "thought to be amongst the greatest paintings in the world..."

Hollywood is perhaps no where near equivalent to a blockbuster museum show where most if not all the objects on display have the same marketing push as a suchlike studio movie but as we painfully know oftentimes far surpass in artistic merit. Aftershock(China's 2011 Academy Awards entry) directed by Feng Xiaogang (based on a novel by Zhang Ling) uses Hollywood cliches rather than tropes as an act of remembrance for the victims of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that killed almost a quarter of the city's population. "It's not that I don't remember, it's that I can never forget," says the daughter Fang Deeng (Zhang Jingchu) who's adopted by a couple of Red Army soldiers but who her parents believe is dead (they had a moral choose whether to save her or her brother). It's powerful (thanks to the acting), affecting but melodramatic storytelling. And one wishes for more of the bleak and oblique new Chinese cinema of Winter Vacation (LFF) or dramatised arguments akin to those posed in Draquila-Italy Trembles(LFF): Sabina Guzzanti's doco on the wake of corruption in the aftermath of Italy's 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. Corruption is rife everywhere in the world, and of course, particularly Italy. But would new housing projects have had even a chance if it weren't for political clout? There's the rub. There's captivating footage also from the seismologists. Could there be any city in the world that would evacuate their citizens on even the firm likelihood of an earthquake, circa??? No economy would justify that economically even 10 years ago let alone now. There's the mortal coil.

Closing tomorrow (Saturday Nov 13), artist Christian Marclay at White Cube (West End) has created one of the most extraordinarily simple, immediate and resonant video installations one's likely to see, The Clock. Every minute of the 24-hour clock has a synchronous segment of movie footage delineating that particular minute i.e. a watch reads 2.43, a character says 9.54 etc. Not every single frame tells the time, but you can set your watch by the sequences. It's the work's universal simplicity that allows it to resonate with dialectics of editing, traditional narrative character development, montage etc. For example, would simply looping the final scene in Aftershock - a lone man cycling past the walls of names erected in memory of the earthquake victims - have deeper emotional resonance than its traditional narrative film of 135 minutes? Moreover, does the 'excess' (24 hours of it) of Marclay's work have more or less the same impact as sitting only through a few hours of it?

Just closed but running concurrent with the London Film Festival (how many of those in the 'traditional' cinemas ventured in?) was Julian Rosefeldt's American Night (2009). A slick, funny, five-screen projection (anamorphic 16mm transferred to HD) that used the Western genre and its iconography (directed actors not existing footage) to deconstruct the myth of America's founding.

American Lewis Klahr's shoestring montage animations using old comic books Prolix Satori (and a workshop run on Oct 21) were a quiet hit of the London Film Festival. (AUDIO of the Q&A HERE soon...)

Veteran Czech animator Jan Svankmaeyer appears on screen in the opening of his Surviving Life explaining that due to economic restraints he's used mostly animated cut-out photographs to tell his funny psychoanalytic story.
Sharon Lockhart's Double Tide is composed of segments though the film seems utterly seamless in time and space. We watch a Maine clamdigger at work during the low tides of dawn and dusk.

more tomorrow including.........

Patrick Keiller's Robinson in Ruins

A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War Britain by director John Krish

Film Ist from last year's LFF screens at the ICA with a Q&A (Nov 19) with the director (Nov 17 (part1) and Nov 19 (part2))

The 54th BFI London Film Festival

The 54th BFI London Film Festival has descended upon us. Photos of Never Let Me Go (you are cordially reminded that all photos on this website - and those in future - are Copyright 2010 Andrew Lucre unless otherwise attributed)

One would need the heart of a rock not to hear the silence of this film's stones.
Opening in the UK early next year.

ONE, singular sensation, every little step he takes

How do the street regulations, noise restrictions, tube transport nightmares of 2010 London temporarily/or permanently change our idea of self and what lessons are there to be gleaned from the Italian Renaissance? Louise Duggan (a cyclist herself) from the quango CABE delivered a paper in last weekend's Street Life and Street Culture: between Early Modern and the Present (PHOTOS HERE)on how removing the manifested bureaucratic clutter (e.g too many road signs, railings) in Kensington High Street resulted in a 47% accident reduction compared to the 35% in other parts of the borough. It reminded one of artist Ryan Gander's 'desire paths' - the routes within the urban environment that we as humans naturally create for ourselves rather than following those of authority's artificial constructs.

Niall Atkinson's (University of Chicago) impetus was Tiepolo's Amphion (The Force of Eloquence, Amphion raising the walls of Thebes with his lyre [1724-25 -fresco] and the stones that would create the ideal city resulting in human conflict, commerce, clatter confined within the city square. He lead onto how the sounding of bells in Renaissance towns was a parochial control of communal space e.g. nuns were allowed to demolish bells that were too loud. Space was sanctified by the use of sound, seepage prevented. Atkinson related how an artisan's pay strike bore terror into denizens and the beings of authority when they sounded bells in a different order than usual. The powers that be conceded defeat. Communities larger than local neighbourhoods became possible only through the use of bell ringing. Montreal had/has a law whereby street musicians are banned from performing at night. In Renaissance Florence prostitutes would wear bells on their ankles to signify their presence. Even night must brace itself for order and control.

Georgia Clarke from the Courtauld Institute began this final follow-on conference from last year by describing the multiplicity of differing accounts for Charles V's 1529 entry into Bologna. Eye witness reports of the King's hat, clothes, street adornments different enormously from one anther. Sound artist Dan Jones (also film composer for some of David Attenborough's TV nature series) evoked his aural Sky Orchestra of surround sound balloons and regaled us of his latest project orchestrating ice cream vans. While Ornette Clennon (Oxford Brookes Uni) cited Merleau-Ponty, Butler and Lacan in exploring collective improvisation - how kids in their identification with each other approached a communal psychic space. And subjectivation in search of the nexus of youth street culture's essence and that of the modern day 'media' version: the juissance (foreknowledge of death) becoming a fetish (e.g. youth enforcement of 'respect') "hailing its subjects into being that will ultimately destroy the culture that brought them into existence. Kristian Kloeckl of the MIT's Sensible City Lab concluded the day with their findings on mobile phone network data gathered from AT&T and tasters of recent similar projects.

Was it the Italian vino or the stimulated, focussed mind resulting from the day's symposium that made the tube gremlins just that more bearable on the return journey home? A young staff member of the London Transport Museum was in attendance at the conference and I bemoaned the fact that nowadays we enter the 'tube' as if a 3D version of Dante's Hell whereas in the museum's recent show Suburbia the London underground of yesteryear was an exciting adventure (city rush-hours not permitting of course). Admittedly, last weekend's tube underwent engineering works that closed 2 lines and substantially another but by late Saturday evening the Bakerloo was shut- no fault of engineering work (at least that's what staff said at Piccadilly Circus and the packed Piccadilly line crawled its way westwards due to: yep you guessed it- signal failure. Announcements were chaotic and contradictory as always whereby you'd be at a complete loss even with a Baedecker Underground Guide phone app. Friday morning was, alas, no better. And several days this week were no better.

The Royal Academy's Treasures from Budapest: European Masterpieces from Leonardo to Schiele is a strange enterprise given that weekend trips to that splendid city are cheaper than a taxi into London's West End and less stressful than schlepping on transport. But such an exhibition does focus the mind in a way probably not so possible if one were simply sampling a weekend of that city's culinary delights. Pedestrian in its curatorial chronology, there are many wonders to behold nay scrutinise in this show from the Museum of Fine Arts (established in 1906). A couple of stunning Tintorettos, the spellbinding intimacy of Raphael's unfinished Esterhazy Madonna (1507-08), the detective like detail of Altdorfer's Crucifixtion (1518) with an older white bearded man hidden way back in the crowd perhaps barely able to see anything. Goya's Water-carrier and Knife Grinder (1808-12) are rarely, as here, seen as a pair as one or other is usually on loan. Their simplicity is quite staggering. Little gems in the show include Cornelius Dusart Peasant (1680s-90). Then onto Caneletto's Lock at Dolo (c.1756) with the tiny specks of white oil paint that conjure in the viewer either a shimmering sunset or devouring dawn. And check out the eeriness of Kokoschka's Veronica's Veil (1909) (his caretaker's window washing daughter) and reputably his favourite religious work. The penultimate room showcases the Schiele (on the poster) and the stunning simplicity of a 1905 Picasso water colour Mother and Child - just when one thought the old man couldn't surprise you anymore. In the bookstore on the way out splurge on the exhibition's little pad of stickies as a riposte to the age of the techno app.

The psychic 'tube' effect on people who are already suffering stress through work, health or relationships has probably yet to have a paper written up about it. Does Julia Roberts' new film (an adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's book) Eat, Pray, Love (150 week stint on the New York Times best seller list) work medicinally for us as well as for those who've suffered the author's fate of divorce and depression? In a recent BBC Woman's Hour interview Gilbert described the book's experience as permitting "yourself to dive into what you want without holding back...For most women almost [a] pornographic fantasy of what it would be like to eat whatever you want and ignore the consequences." Gilbert goes on to speak of life's oftentimes "dryness without an absence of wonder". For Julia Roberts fans (yes they still exist and I openly confess to being one:) they will love seeing her delightfully cascading through Italy, India and Bali (lovingly photographed by double Oscared Robert Richardson). In fact Roberts even looks 10 years younger for it all. Along the way there's Richard Jenkins hiding and healing his past in an ashram and Javier Bardem's dishy Felipe - the kinda guy a girlfriend would warn their best friend against while simultaneously harbouring a little canoe of lust. Some audiences, though, will be bloated by all this as if a Thanksgiving Dinner with friends that every year reminds one of why you don't see these guests more often.

Critic Mark Kermode's BBC Film blog refreshingly seems to attract normal people who are bored of 'normal' people and 'normal' films. Last week's release of Made in Dagenham (released Stateside by Sony Classics in November) elicited some interesting 'threads' on the strength of it's trailer:
"I'd like to see the formula challenged, for example that they fail in their objectives royally, eg Full Monty - they decide not to strip, Billy Elliott- he breaks his leg, Calendar Girls - no one buys their calendars. I'd watch this film if I knew all the staff who asked for more pay were not sacked from the jobs, but then had their brains eaten by some Romero zombies while Zombi (the band) provide an awesome Synth heavy soundtrack,"wrote S Ford on Kermode's site. Amber from the States wrote that it may be a film "I can maybe watch with my mother and we can both enjoy without me vomiting sugar rainbows on the cinema floor and her not regarding me as a sociopath for the rest of my life."

It takes some time for Made in Dagenham to catch fire but once alight it's more funny and engaging than many 'issue' based films about workers rights though lacking the comedic jet blackness of Ken Loach's more wry films. And Sally Hawkins as the 'wrong side of the tracks' council housed unwitting activist gives a performance that is far more interesting than just a 'look I can act something different to my role in Happy-go-Lucky' (Mike Leigh).

A film of surer tone is Bernard Rose's bio-pic of 70s/80s Welsh drug smuggler Howard Marks Mr. Nice -who after concurrently working for Brit intelligence and later doing prison time went on to create one-man stage shows and write newspaper columns. Rose's direction is quiet, fastidious and distanced as if a meditation on the absurdity of life's daily round.
Greg Berlanti's Life As We Know It doesn't always work but there's so much good casting chemistry and tiny excruciatingly funny moments that you easily forgive the film any of its shortcomings. Holly (the ever deliciously 'smile your troubles away' Katherine Heigl) and the sadly sincere straight man Eric (Josh Duhamel) are lumbered with a 1-year-old Sophie when old friends die in an accident. Trouble is, this couple never got it together from their friends' arranged blind date that years ago never gelled. Brit cinematographer Andrew Dunn seems to be shooting digitally that, while sometimes a little off putting also allows the film a halcyon immediacy.

Actor/writer/director Ben Afflecks's bank heist The Town is, as you'd expect, fairly darn impressive. While Affleck succeeds in giving his characters moral dilemmas, the final sentimental though moving pay off for Rebecca Hall's garden allotment bank clerk doesn't quite feel 'earned' from a higher deus ex machina plummeting us into catharsis. Nor does the film's apparent condemnation of cop killing quite find its own moral equilibrium.

The rapid fire editing of Takers didn't perturb me as some other reviewers. And though it's effective in entertaining as the heist runs its course, there's little that's memorable (perhaps why it's US distributor Warners passed it over to Sony for UK release). Director John Luessenhop and most of his co-screenwriters made their money in the markets or law and there's certainly a cold, calculated quality to the whole filmic experience. Cozier's (Idris Elba) just out of rehab sister is played by the always watchable Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies). But it's a 'nothing' wallpaper role. Sony's recent debut directed Armored was far more nuanced.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps we feel the screen allows us to know this man Gordon Gekko intimately. We look into Michael Douglas' eyes and he convinces us with every minutai flicker that there is a human being within those corneas. But it's a trick of the movies. And that seems to be the point of Oliver Stone's thrillingly directed Wall Street sequel. Stone and his cameraman (Robert Richardson again) probe his gallery of masterful actors. We feel that there is indeed a filial bond between Gekko and his eco-daughter (Carey Mulligan) and her boyfriend Jake (Shia LaBeouf) and that they feel that too. And yet like the constant ebb and flow of money market tide it all seathes - illusory within the shifting sands. "Money's a bitch that never sleeps," says Gekko. Dialectically intriguing about Stone's film is not that it fails to look the economic debacle in the face without blinking - rather that with a 'better' script that tried to make 'sense' of it all Douglas' Gekko screen persona would be Godly invincible without batting an eyelid. They are convinced of running from a Medusa within. Yet the hiss and roar is the crashing tide by turns consoling, infuriating, somnambulant.

Out this week is Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, Sophie Fiennes' alluring documentary about German artist Anselm Kiefer's La Ribaute - installations in a derelict silk factory near Barjac, France.
Or there's Pierre Coffin's Hollywood animation Despicable Me to cheer up everyone. The 3D doesn't add much to the film's many wry moments but the final titles would get a 3D award if such existed for credits.

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar's A Town Called Panic a Belgium stop-motion animation (based on the cult 2003 TV series) with little toy figures (Cowboy, Indian and Horse) bobbing around on their tiny plastic plinths is possibly the only cinematic anti-venom for the world's economic woes. Totally wacko, trippy, bonkers and chronically smile inducing it should be made available free of charge to all patients on the NHS (National Health Service). (Zeitgeist released last Dec in the States)

The French language digital animation Dragon Hunters had a brief cinema release before DVD and is lovingly inventive in the tradition of Laloux's animations. The film's floating rock formations look very similiar to those in Avatar - but crazy minds to have a tendency to think alike.
The Secret of Kells is just released by Optimum

And musing on other worlds, one of the many 'hidden' delights of this year's 18th Raindance Film Festival was New Zealander Thomas Burstyn's doco This Way of Life shot over 4 years (winner of the fest's Best Doco last night). Watching the survival struggles of a Maori family's 6 kids and 50 horses is a salutary microcosm of the bigger world. Every year one thinks that Raindance will prove to be just a bratty cousin to the enormous London Film Festival. Yet it never is and many of this festival's films, as always, are certainly the equal if not more so of that bigger fest juggernaut: the hits I caught in no particular order-

Ben Miller's Brit comedy Huge
All I Ever Wanted: The Airborne Toxic Event Live (DVD out next week)
Five Daughters (winner Best UK Feature)
I Believe in Angels
Rebel without a Clue
Too Much Pussy: Feminist Sluts in the Queer X Show
Macho(winner Best Micro Budget film)
Vampires
Armless

Galloping or for some lollapalling through our now very strange, troubled world should we stand by the oft quoted moral of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: when the legend becomes truth print the legend? With every tag line of World's Greatest Dad our hearts sink - Robin Williams as a poetry teacher (again), the film's title...But hangon, how could that be, it's produced by Richard Kelly's Darko Ent.? Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait's film is right up there with the year's best in its critique of the fame/respect game. What's fascinating about the film is that it offers no answers never really negating the Liberty Valance ideal - just exposing a world replete with ironies. For some of us our existential penny drops when the lambs stop bleating; for others when the snakes slide forever into their silence.

There's spades of heart and morality in Jackie Chan's Little Big Soldier and plenty of comedic animal antics. The doco Budrus (a highlight of this year at the Tribeca Film Fest) brings us crashingly back to realpolitik as does Restrepo (this year's Sundance Fest Jury Prize winner). And interestingly so too does Anusha Rizvi's satire Peepli Live one of the very few films from the Indian subcontinent in recent memory to even approach Satyajit Ray's comedy of life. And don't for a minute think the film's corporeal politics is a million miles away from your London doorstep.

Nor is the US truck driver (Ryan Reynolds) in Iraq held hostage in a Buried coffin (Lionsgate released in the States, Icon in the UK). A very clever, accomplished conceit from director Rodrigo Cortes though some may find the ending copping-out but for others it'll be there but for the grace of 'youknowwho' go I. Frozen may be relatively thin ice for some but its cinematography is so stunning and boy: after watching this movie one really will think twice metaphorically and actually before braving a ski-lift as night falls.

If the film could mix a vampiric humour riffing on that ep of Curb Your Enthusiasm in which strict Jewish customs prohibit after dark opposite sex proximity then it would prove an invincible iceberg. Now: where's Werner Herzog's lone penguin gone? ^ =