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? ^ =
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