Should this site move up the alphabet from alliterative 'u' to 's' - 'Sexy, Salubrious London'? Arthur C. Clarke formulated 3 "laws" of prediction in Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination (1962): "As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there."
1.When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3.Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Now as much an anti-Valentinista Day insurgent as one may dream of being, perhaps Clarke's laws could apply to 'love' (as WALL-EE would no doubt agree). For the record, Clarke adds a 4th Law in 1999: "For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert." But experts can easily be seduced by enverts as teen Percy (or Perceus, Logan Lerman) discovers in Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief on his quest for the stolen lightning bolt and return to Zeus (Sean Bean) on Mount Olympus. One stop on 'the map' is a Las Vegas casino - through imbiding its 'lotus flower' nibbles you swallow its motto 'You will never want to leave'. The State as potential happiness wheel. As with Uma Thurman's slinky seductive leather-clad, snake-headed Medusa, one needs to keep an eye on the ball and not be seduced by the patsies. Greek inscriptions morph into English (Percy is dyslectic and an unintended pun for sure on the current state of the Greek economy) and if director Christopher Columbus' (first two Harry Potters) film starts teenagers riffing on greek mythology that can be no bad thing. But that's quite a big 'if' (don't tell them about Lindsay Anderson) and adults may need a little help from Bacchus. Neither Prometheus (foresight) nor his so-called foolish lesser known brother Epimetheus (Ἐπιμηθεύς , hindsight) make an appearance. French philosopher Bernard Stiegler championed Epimetheus.
Les Amis's book Commemorating Epimetheus, 2009
BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves (Thurs) met fashio designer Hussein Chalayan, an obit for Alexander McQueen who was found dead in his flat on Thurs, designer Tom Ford on his film A Single Man, and Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz on where we are now.
Warner Brothers offers up Valentine's Day a sort of Magnolia maze of character storylines. One of the best bits is a po-faced Julia Roberts jesting on how shopping in Rodeo Drive ruined her career (the end title 'blooper' sequence). To be fair, everyone's performance is infinitely watchable and raises a smile or even two. But a date movie? Nothing much wrong with the chocolates themselves, but how many can you eat all at once?
Miguel Arteta's Youth in Revolt (adapting C.D. Payne's 1993 3-part novel) fairs better. "I was attracted to the very simple Odyssey type story-line. A boy meets girl on vacation and spends the rest of the story trying to get her back," screenwriter Gustin Nash (Charlie Bartlett). Oftentimes its coming of age raging heart gets somewhat smothered by clever gloss but then the characters do that to themselves too. Many will aspire to Michael Cera's cunning, effortless but jejune Nick Twist sprouting French new wave cinema, Fellini and Sinatra while his moustachiod, smoking jacket more seasoned alter ego Francois eggs Nick on to conquer Sheeni (Portia Doubleday). Cera's performance convinces us that this Twist kid might have it in him to be one day at least a Senator.
Greg Mottola's Adventureland goes for the incision of the heart rather than the check up and is out on Reg 2 DVD
as is Ricky Gervais in The Invention of Lying (Reg 2 Universal DVD and Blu-ray)
Beyond the Pole opens this week - a comedy about global warming produced by actress Kate Beckinsale's company.
Front Row interview
Holy Water is an Irish comedy set in a tiny village where locals hijack an armoured van of Viagra (no product placement as Pfzizer disowns the film entirely). Lots of funny bits to this film but they remain TV sketches rather than cohering.
And watch out for the DVD of OSS 117: Lost In Rio (just finished at the ICA) the almost equally funny sequel to last year's French James Bond spoof.
Bellamy's People (BBC 2 and based on the Radio 4 show) cleverly mock-docos ordinary Brits. No relation to those very much alive of course.
A defence in The Guardian of Sandra Bullock (Oscar nominated for The Blind Side and pilloried for her recent comedy All About Steve)
One of the most original (its debt to pianist Glenn Gould's little known radio plays uncredited) low-budget horror flics in recent years is Bruce McDonald's Pontypool (just out on Kaleidoscope DVD). Adapted by author Tony Burgess from his novel, it's set in wintry Ontario, Canada on Valentine's Day and filmed entirely in one set - the local radio station's basement premises. A way more interesting film than the recent Paranormal Activity it's hard to go wrong with Pontypool as an alternative 'date DVD'.
Greencine podcast
Park Chan Wook's Thirst is out on DVD
BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme interview
Nobuhiko Obayashi's Hausu (House), an incredibly kookie and trippy 1977 Japanese horror/comedy is out on Eureka DVD (having just had a cinema release in New York at IFC through Janus Films). "It opened up a new chapter," says the director in the 90 minutes of interview DVD extras. "What Spielberg did with Jaws, Hause did the same for Japanese cinema." After acclaimed work in commmercials Toho Studios approached giving Obayashi carte blanche for a first feature. The same year as Dario Argento's low-budget Suspiria (new DVD from Nouveaux) Hausu makes for interesting historical comparison.
This week's release The Wolfman rather pales in comparison. Mark Romanek (director of the indie Robin Willliams gem One Hour Photo) was originally slated to direct and his attention to character detail is sorely missed in Joe Johnson's (Jumanji) slick but rather boring version. Distributor Universal owns Curt Siodmak's original 1941 classic with Lon Chaney, Jr. and Claude Rains as Wolfman's dad. The remake has Benicio Del Toro and Sir Anthony Hopkins excitingly fanginly transformed by prosthetic make-up Hollywood legend Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London, 1981). Even this cast and a stellar production team that includes Walter Murch as co-editor and Rick Heinrichs as Production Designer can't really get your flesh creeping.
The Wolf Man (1941) Special Edition (Universal Reg 1 DVD)
Zombieland (Sony Reg 1 DVD, UK March 15)
Jennifer's Body (Fox Reg 2 DVD, Feb 22)
British director Peter Strickland's Katalin Varga made on only £25,000 with an 11-strong crew out on Artificial Eye DVD (recently acknowledged at the British Film Awards).
Horror and prison movies often go hand in hand given both have outcasts that society shirks in owning up to any responsibility in creating - 'love' that never spoke its name. Jacques Audiard's A Prophet wowed critics at this year's Cannes Film Fest. Audiard's films - e.g. A Self-Made Hero (1996) and The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) - concern marginalised individuals who survive the system through their Darwinian instincts and good fortune. Not necessarily likeable, they are the dark side of our heart. A Prophet's protagonist is 19-year-old illiterate French-Arab Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim's debut) doing 6 years' prison time for petty crime. Corsican gang leader Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), who has run of the prison, sees an opportunity to manipulate Malik for his own ends. Some may understandably approach this movie with prison flic overload but what makes Audiard such a world-class director is his particular psychological precision in the lineage of films such as Rififi (1955), Le Trou (1959), Quai des Brumes (1938) and directors Jean-Pierre Melville or Bertrand Tavernier. Half-way through the 150 minutes, Audiard's gritty realism (he hired former inmates as advisors and extras) soars with the poetic of the aforementioned. Malik is allowed out on day release and his criminal associates fly him down to Corsica to do some business. He returns to gaol surreally gazing at the sand in his shoes. Another great score by Alexandre Desplat includes Jimmie Dale Gilmore's version of Mack the Knife.
New Film Focuses France on the ‘Disgrace’ of Its Overcrowded Prisons
Jean-François Richet's Mesrine - Parts 1 & 2 is out on DVD and Blu-ray.
The Army of Crime on Optimum DVD and Blu-ray
Morally provocative Brit film Boy A out on DVD
Fish Tank on Artificial Eye DVD (included is Arnold's short Wasp)
Actress Samantha Morton's directorial debut The Unloved about growing up in a children's home opens at the ICA next Friday.
Edge of Darkness is based on a 1985 BBC 6 x 50 minute episode TV drama written by the much revered Troy Kennedy Martin who died last September: the BBC police drama Z Cars (1962 - 1978), Colditz (1972 - 1974), The Sweeney (1975 - 1978) and screenplays for The Italian Job (1969) and Kelly's Heroes (1970). At the time secrecy surrounding the nuclear industry and the Gaia hypothesis of environmentalist James Lovelock were hot topics: the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in Russia (1986); 1985 saw the first screening of Peter Watkins' nuclear war television film The War Game banned on TV since 1965; it was the era of the Trident nuclear submarine, a time when most left-wing activist were heavily surveiled in the UK, the Greenham Common protests; the Sizewell B nuclear power station and concerns about the safety record of the Sellafield nuclear power plant; and President Reagan's 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) using ground-based and space-based systems against nuclear attack. Walt Patterson, who acted as series adviser, was a leading commentator on nuclear affairs, best known for his book Nuclear Power. Following Edge of Darkness, he acted as specialist adviser to the British House of Commons Select Committee on Environment for their 1986 study, Radioactive Waste.
The BBC series director Martin Campbell went onto direct Hollywood movies and it seemed a sensible and possibly exciting move for him to direct Mel Gibson's film version (distributed by Icon in UK, Warner Bros. in the States). Ray Winstone, by accident or design, replaced Robert de Niro (who left first day of shooting) as CIA agent Matt Jedburgh. Winstone's world-weary red wine connoiseur gives the film's only remnant of the more surreal quality Troy Kennedy Martin was striving for. Martin's original script and impetus image (vetoed by the BBC) had Craven (originally played by Bob Peck) turning into a tree for the final episode. For the most part, though, the remake is saddled with a quarter century of conspiracy/thriller films (Gibson himself was in one of the better ones Conspirary Theory, Richard Donner, 1997) never managing to inject the genre with new juice. Screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed) casts Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) as a Boston Police Department homicide detective. And Mr. Gibson, now craggy faced, can certainly still powerfully hold the screen and an entire film. But sadly, this film totally missed the chance to graze contemporary damage limitation territory akin to Graham Greene.
Congressman Charlie Wilson of the Tom Hanks' film Charlie Wilson's War died this week (aural obit on BBC's Last Word) as well as Brit jazz legend Johnny Dankworth and Alexander McQueen.
Under appreciated on its initial release, the surreal qualities of Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (Reg 1 Warner DVD, Feb 23) repay a second viewing. Based on New York Times journalist Kurt Eichenwald's 2000 book, The Informant: A True Story, Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) is a $350,000-a-year corporate V.P who whistle blows on his company engaged in global price-fixing to the tune of billions. "We carry this around [a Christmas-card photo of Whitacre and his family] to remind ourselves that Mark Whitacre is a real person, with a real family, and that he's depending on us," says an FBI agent. "It's like a Michael Crichton novel" Whitacre's inner-voice voice-over keeps saying. This existential voice also muses on Oscar de la Renta ties that are always on sale because nobody buys them and the noses of polar bears. A great script by Scott Z. Burns, a score by Marvin Hamlisch (The Way We Were), and great looking HD (hi-def) photography - all playing cheesily with the bleached out look of 70s TV shows (remembering TV shows were mostly shot on 35mm film stock) though the film is set in the 90s.
Warner US also issue as part of their 'double' DVD series Harrison Ford in Presumed Innocent and Roman Polanski's fascinating Frantic. Also Richard Kelly's The Box in both DVD formats (Warner Reg 1).
One American reviewer called Atom Egoyan's Adoration (New Wave in the UK, released last May in the US by Sony Pictures Classics) "muddled" and admittedly some will find writer/producer/director Egoyan's latest style over substance. But as in all this director's films Adoration inhabits a childlike world of complexity weaving in and out of dream and acute observation. The story's based on a real incident from 1986, in which a Jordanian terrorist hid a bomb in hand luggage of his pregnant Irish girlfriend (unbeknownst to her) on an London-Israel El Al flight. Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) gives this story as a translation exercise for her high school students as if one's father were the terrorist. She encourages Simon (Devon Bostick) to present it as fact and he in turn promulgates it over the internet. "An exercise in what?" asks Simon about the story proposal. What follow are acrobatic narratives that though sometimes overpowering are also quiet, meditative and intense - just as those of real life. The film is full of lines such as "anger sucks up a lot of intelligence" and people "embrace being a victim until it blinds us". The idea of projection and the remembrance of a catastrophe that never happened is intriguing: how we deal (or not) with grief and the death of a loved one. The film's violin storyline at first seems a little trite but its enduring image is strong - no matter how beautiful the neck scroll of a violin it doesn't change the sound only appearance if sawn off. Love and grief are the things themselves: how far do we go in preserving appearances over emotion's intimacy. It can't be co-incidence that Mychael Danna's score (Egoyan's erstwhile composer over the years) utilises a musical trick (made manifest by Jerry Goldsmith's Basic Instinct score) that eerily oscillates between two remote key signatures.
By now most people have heard about Lee Daniels' Oscar nominated film Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire (a New York poet and writer) with its compelling central performance by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe. For those viewing this out of a sense of moral duty they'll be surprised at just how mordantly funny and affecting it is given the weight of political values it's been forced to carry. The scenes with Mariah Carey as the social worker really are tremendous (and would be in any film). Seeing for yourself is always believing - that's given the wood from the trees.
Inspired by the Brothers Grimm The Frog Prince, female empowerment would not be the appropriate description for Disney's The Princess & the Frog (the studio's first hand-drawn feature in over five years). African-American Tiana (voice of Anika Noni Rose), waitress and the daughter of a New Orleans seamstress (mum voiced by Oprah Winfrey) clenches her lips and kisses a talking frog - Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) in the hope of upsizing him and funding her own restaurant in New Orleans. Instead she's downsized to the lily pad and the couple start hopping around the swamps of the Bayou. The characters they meet (Ray the firefly, Louis the jazz alligator) are jolly as is the canoe slapstick routine escaping amphibian hunters. And there's a moment when you think the couple just might remain frogs and ribbit happily forever. But the darker side of this world (Dr. Facilier and his talisman) is no match for Disney's classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) has no place in this 20's Cajun celebration under the Obama carapace as we tap our toes out the cinema to Randy Newman's catchy songs. Out on DVD formats in the States March 15.
Leap of faith, The Independent article
Disney by Hand - the art of traditional hand-drawn animation at the Barbican
Randy Newman was an essential element of Pixar's Toy Story 2 (3D) - hard to believe now that at one point Disney was on the brink of shelving the entire project. When She Loved Me (performed by Sarah McLachlan) was Oscar nominated in 2000 for Best Song and used for the flashback montage in which rag doll Jessie experiences being loved, forgotten, and ultimately abandoned by her owner, Emily. Andy's first instint on his return from camp is to immediately embrace Woody forgetting that the reason he left him behind was the doll's broken un-seamed arm. 2D worked just fine but the use of 3D really does enhance the depth of these characters' 'reality' - a world where perspective on childhood, love and loss is the most important element in keeping one's sanity. As is make believe.
3D TV BBC Click
Up is out on DVD Feb 15
"We can design a system that's proof against accident and stupidity; but we CAN'T design one that's proof against deliberate malice."- Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey
"We will go on living," says Olga in Chekhov's Three Sisters, "The music is playing so happily, so cheerfully, that it seems, in just a little time, we will know why we live, and why there is all this suffering… If only we could know! If only we could know!"
Yinka Shonibare’s project Scapegoat Society has Ali MacGilp and Cassandra Needham suggest examination of the hostile process whereby people absolve themselves from responsibility by moving blame towards another person or group.
Crash (Gagosian Gallery) brings together works by artists tuned to the Ballardian universe.
The Last Station opens next Friday (19th).
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