uccellacci e uccellini

April in London has perennially lived up to poet T.S. Eliot's description as "the cruelest month of the year". Just as we hope Spring has sprung we plummet into the dreary depths of winter again. But for all intents and purposes we could be in mid-August at the moment! Why, though, when our city lives are always so crammed with people do we resemble seas of penguins in mating season when we enjoy what little time we have in the sun? Beaches chockafull of bodies, city parks bespoiled by the dubious qualities of our species' naked physical attributes, only infrequently spangled with specks of beauty? I guess our species isn't always blessed with inventive pleasurable escape.

The less pleasurable of London's escapes have been bike riders who thank the heavens that they didn't end up as one of the ghost bike memorials. Or the Jubilee line tube travellers who were stuck this week and had to walk home down the tracks. If only it weren't such a regular occurrence on the underground over the years we would all like to believe in Mayor Boris and that the 2010 Olympics will be all's well that end's well. Not sure how effective is transcendental meditation for us poor souls that have endured such slings and arrows.

South Bank's 60th birthday celebrations

Spare a thought for the polar bears,though, as their world melts away and we are allowed an out of season tan. Just to remind one, along comes a multi-award winning pic filmed entirely on location in the Russian arctic How I Ended This Summer about a student Pavel who joins an 'old hand' in a remote monitoring station. Being an intern will never be the same again in England now that the phrase 'being given a leg up the ladder' has become a 'Clegg up': referring to the Lib Dem Dep PM Nick Clegg (opposed to PM David Cameron's stance on helping friends) who was found out to have been given a 'Clegg up' himself by his dad to intern at a Finnish bank. Poor man even has a musical penned about him (BBC News). Let's hope it's as successful as little orphan Annie or the Cl'annie Witches of Chiswick. Almost forgot myself there such is the power of song: meanwhile, back in the art house...

Pavel is the sort of kid you ultimately wouldn't mind hanging around - still a prankster but basically good natured and potentially diligent. And Alexsei Popogrebsky's film is all to do with being and belonging- almost in the realm of Dostoyevsky but perhaps more Gogol at heart. And it's the sort of film you just wish Brit effort The Island had been: despite great Scottish cinematography and performances its bleakness becomes ever more ponderous and plodding. Indie fest award winning London located Forget Me Not goes diving into similar emotional depths but surfaces without gasping so desperately for air. Really impressive actor/director collaboration here. No laughs, though.

Farewell (UK distributed by The Works) plods a bit (then so does most truth) but given foreknowledge of this remarkable Soviet spy true story (most people these days will inevitably have armed themselves with one review or another) it would be hard not to reach the end and say, hmm glad I chose to see that. The Sunday Times (one now pays for access) recently ran a fascinating article (Reagan's favourite spy) on Christian Carion's film (based on Sergei Kostin's 1997 book Bonjour Farewell). "I wanted to make a true story...like [my] Merry Christmas [the WW1 unofficial truce in the trenches]...very quickly I understood that I would never know the whole truth. There are many different truths-the Russian truth, the French truth and the American truth." Great Russian actor/director Nikita Mikhalkov was to play the lead but Carion was refused permission to shoot such a film in Russia. Next choice (an unnamed famous Russian actor): his career was then apparently threatened by Soviet authorities if he portrayed such a traitor. Times ain't a changin' much in the West either - censorship is just of a more insidious variety. The film's final result is nonetheless quite intriguing.

Two well known film directors play the leads - Pierre (Guillaume Canet, last week's director of Little White Lies) is the French embassy conduit for Vetrov 'Farewell' (Bosnian director Emir Kusturica)'s stolen Russian intel of every American code/agent active from Spring 1981 to early 1982. President Reagan dubbed it "the greatest spy story of the 20th century". Willem Defoe is steely as the film's CIA denouement.
Amazon Crossing publishes the Sergei Kostin's source book.

Addition:
I'm surprised more critics didn't come out against Hanna (Universal UK released). Not that it's a bad unengaging film by any means. Just a ropey one; maybe it was 'lefty' cred of Saoirse Ronan and director Joe Wright (Atonement) that pulled it through. But I simply didn't believe a single word of any of it! Wright has a great technical team and there are some stylish staged sequences plus well-judged intimate moments between Ronan's (never a dull actress) teen assassin and her new young hippy Sloane (girl)friend Sophie (Jessica Barden) on the road to Morocco. What a load of hokum, though, really. Still, they must all have had loads of fun making it. And life after all is short.

The BFI re-releases Eisenstein's classic Battleship Potemkin but will we get MoMA's current Dziga Vertov retrospective in the near future? Their Bertolucci retrospective made it across the Atlantic. Included (and now out on Mr Bongo DVD, Region 2) was Bertolucci's 1st feature The Grim Reaper (1962).

And I would go so far to say that it's probably more interesting than his better known 2nd feature Before the Revolution in that it shows us a Bertolucci that might have been. Closer to the true spirit of 'neo-relealism' - of beautiful creatures trapped on their wheel of life and yet perhaps not so if the waking dream suddenly jolts them into another sphere. In The Grim Reaper, the poet Bertolucci observes the varying truths around the murder of a prostitute - with the minutia detail of Robert Bresson. One of the best non-cineaste evaluations of Bertolucci's career appeared in The New York Times when MoMA gave a director retrospective. "[He] was asked in 1996 if he knew that artists always put themselves in their work, he responded by quoting an author he refused to identify: “We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” To my mind, as Bertolucci progressed he built an enormous cinematic church of contradictions. Hence my description of is work in my last post as 'baroque' -the more complex definition of that style.

The Grim Reaper was based on a Pasolini idea and makes interesting comparison to another Mr Bongo DVD by the latter director Mamma Roma (1962). After seeing this you sorta wish Pier Paolo Pasolini had just ditched his Vivaldi soundtrack and let Magnani's acting (Rossellini's Open City) and his own unique sensibility do the work for him. And yet: the soundtrack, rather than manipulating in Hollywood manner has the more Brechtian effect of objectifying the film's protagonists.
Criterion's 2-Disc DVD

Pasolini went to trial for vulgarity and obscenity in the La ricotta episode of the film RoGoPaG - Orson Welles as the satirised director (included on the Criterion DVD release). The other DVD (and it's a shame none have extras but that's reflected in the price) release of Mr Bongo's Italian trilogy is Ermanno Olmi's 2nd feature, the 1961 Il Posto - literally meaning the job, the place. The American title idealised as The Sound of Trumpets, denoted more more the irony of the American dream - never more true than nowadays- than the sublime introspection of Olmi's film (better known for The Tree of Wooden Clogs and The Legend of the Holy Drinker). Olmi said his purpose was "to portray the courage it takes to live through the colorless, gray days which are, in anyone's life, the majority... I should like to put across that everything — epic adventure, humor and feeling — is contained in the normal human condition."

Il Posto never features in the top 100 films list of the century (though it should). But there it is there sitting very quietly waiting for the cineaste's discovery. This is post-war Milan and Domenico (Sandro Panseri) applies for an office job meeting Antonietta (Loredana Detto, Olmi's wife) along the way. But she doesn't appear when we (nor Domenico) expect her to reappear. Again, there's all the observational detail of a Robert Bresson (clothes, objects, gestures) but we see it as a even more honest portrayal of life because everything is tinged with sad, humorous irony rather than maudlin mundanity. The detail and 'choreography' of Domenico's entrance and subsequent quiet enjoyment at the Working Mens' Club New Year's Eve party is just riveting and spellbinding. Can we look forward to an Olmi retro including all his TV docos and early shorts from someone, sometime soon? Facets Multimedia gave a 2-week Chicago tribute back in 2002 but there's not been much since. He's still working!- Rutger Hauer is in his latest Il villaggio di cartone. Criterion also released his I Fidanzati (1962)

For more individual voices of 'reality': Joanna Hogg's Archipelago Artificial Eye DVD May 9. And Kelly Reichardt's mid-West wagon train Meek's Cutoff recently in cinemas and out soon on DVD.

Hollywood studio/indie insurance convention comedy Cedar Rapids may take quite a few liberties with the actualite but the comedic detail (much of which isn't very far from the tree of truth) of these performers does keep a smile on one's face throughout Miguel Arteta's film.
There's quite a lot of fun cheesy humour in Marvel Comic's gods and mortals Thor. Director Kenneth Branagh elevates this material to Shakespearean clarity if not levity (though the 3D looks rather than unintentionally dark).

Back to the art house and Arrow DVD, known for its 'edgier' releases, has launched a new venture of dual format (DVD/Blu-ray) classic films with newly commissioned audio commentaries, introductions etc. Henri Georges Clouzot's 1954 chiller Les Diaboliques has little in common with the predominant French New Wave. And while Susan Hayward's commentary is probably more for the students of cinema it's authoritative observations never wear one's patience. Makes a good shelf-mate for Criterion's (Region 1) DVD. Enthusiast, teacher and film historian Ginette Vincendeau gives a fairly all-encompassing lengthy introduction (30 min). She even points out that one of the young boys grew up to be French icon Johnny Hallyday. Also in Arrow's series is Bicycle Thieves (1948) an Rififi (some extras are only available on Blu-ray).

This month the cinemas are awash with some great documentaries as well.....

more tomorrow
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MONDAY (3.15pm)


Sweetgrass by award winning directors Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor ( Made in the U.S.A.,1990) follows the last Montana sheep herders. There's no voice-over explanation, and while that can often frustrate in doco films, it doesn't seem to matter here as it's the very primal inner world that speaks to us in seeing these images.

Not a documentary but with immense detail is Tracker described as "a cowboy film set in New Zealand" by producer David Burns. And while the film doesn't interrogate the protagonists psychological tracks to the depths of some films it's an incredibly good yarn to watch. You could imagine a studio throwing loadsamoney if its stars were 'A list'. Not that Ray Winstone doesn't already inhabit that firmament. Up there with his best roles is the portrayal of South African Boer War farmer Arjan van Dieman who after losing everything starts afresh in New Zealand, 1903. The Brit soldiers there have to be initially reminded that the war is over and Arjan's tracking skills become utilised when a soldier is killed by Maori seafarer Kereama (Temuera Morrison).

Upside Down could easily have been just another music industry doco. But producer/director Danny O'Connor has made sure there is very little 'fat' - every shot of the film has information rather than fill in this Brit indie success story of Creation Records. And there are so many 'extractable' quotes (Oasis' Noel Gallagher et al) that one can only say see the film yourself. It acts as a cautionary tale of music industry survival too, and though most of the participants did drugs, the effects of this lifestyle are never glamourised. It addresses head-on the conundrum of many indie ventures - the bigger one gets the more people one needs to keep the wheels turning hence more the chance of several cogs going off the rails. If Creation's creator Alan McGee's health hadn't declined would the label had managed survival into this millenium? The irony being that with the onslaught of the internet download it probably could have.(DVD/Blu-ray out May 9)

The same predicament came to light whilst attending the World Photography Festival this year. Staged in Cannes the past few years, London's Somerset House was this year's new home. Like many film fests it had a principal sponsor Sony (host of the Awards) while the bulk of the festival is funded/organised by the World Photography Organisation. iStockPhoto took over the building's first floor- a 'melting pot' for mostly aspirant professionals. Now iStockPhoto has the appearance of independence whilst being a wholly owned subsidiary of Getty Images (itself seen as 'left' of corporates such as Sony). Your independence is worth corporate bucks! As one speaker in the talks noted: if you sell your photos, you can either receive more (up to 70%) of the smaller macro market, or a little (10-15%) of the larger micro market. And as with all film based fests, a river of die-hard politics ran still-deep beneath. The digital v. analogue debate: comically described by Tim Clinch in his story of asking a friend 'Boris' whether he liked Stalin (i.e.digital). After many cavernous twists, turns,locks and stairs that could easily have been the bowls of Somerset House, Boris whispered, 'Yes'. "The love that dare not speak its name."

What became more and more apparent as the days of talks etc continued was that the battle was not so much being fought between the various technologies and means of production and distribution but between one's own abilities and one's conscience. Veteran Bruce Davidson (whose own show continues just off the main foyer) quipped that you don't have to travel to the Congo to take photos. "Look in the Yellow Pages and you'll find something to photograph". Chairman of the Awards Francis Hodgson noted about the Awards exhibition that its curatorship acted as "a filtering system" for photos that "don't have very much in common...pictures looking at each other across the space...ways of making sense of the world that isn't chaotic...it slows people down" rather than our normal half second of viewing "the noisy plethora outside of photos...a joie de vivre". Hodgson continued: "the body itself has become an article of public activity...little moments of some kind of peace and those moments can be photographed too."
Some fun photos HEREof the models on hand for the 'would be' paparazzi;)

One seminar discussed how we should/could embrace new ways of monetising photography- cross-media versus trans-media creating a "mosaic'" with advertising rather than a battle. The use of iPad apps. Another seminar moderated by editors of the magazine Black and White Photography noted that photos from famous names sat quite happily on their pages next to not well known ones. Tim Clinch: "We are all in danger of forgetting 'the picture'. Is it a good picture, is all we should be asking?" Bruce Davidson at the same seminar: if the photos are "close to my heart, they challenge reality...I see in colour but I feel in Black and White. All my photos are in colour!" And if all that wasn't enough there were interview/work presentations by Steve Pyke and Tom Stoddart.
Bruce Davidson also has a show a Chris Beetles

At Haunch of Venison the great German film director Wim Wenders shows mostly large scale photos of places generally de-peopled. The question is are they really about absence or is it more a question of fullness? PHOTOS HERE of the opening.

Wenders' latest film Pina isn't an elegy to the recently passed choreographer Pina Bausch, rather it is a celebration of an on-going spirit. The question for her was not what to dance but what made us dance at all in the first place. As with photography, what is the relationship of my inner emotions to the external world? And because of dance and the theatre's spatiality, it's one of the most exciting uses of 3D you're likely to see.

If you've never thought yourself interested in Irish dancing or have got somewhat bored with hearing Michael Flatley and the Riverdance name, then Jig directed by Sue Bourne (Channel 4’s harrowing 9/11 'The Falling Man') will most probably change your mind. The technicalities aren't covered (training and adjudication), and while this doco does share the bed of other human interest competition docs, the competitors stories win through in the end- there are schools from New York to Moscow.

TT3D: Closer to the Edge is the Isle of Man motorcycle competition in 3D- a format that initially seems quite exciting for this. But it remains a doco for enthusiasts only because us novices aren't told about what makes a champion bike, why this course is the toughest in the world etc etc. The uninitiated might start with George Formby's comedy of 1936 No Limit out on Optimum DVD.
And anyone who hasn't become aware of Molly Dineen's work over the years is really missing out on life, so hot foot to the BFI filmstore.
Abel is also worth catching on DVD.

For something more 'racy' many reviewers have noted that Luc Besson's Adèle Blanc Sec isn't bad but isn't a French Indiana Jones. The original French sources are fairly impressive on their own though:
Second Sight DVD has: Louis Feuillade's 1915 silent 7.5 hour Les Vampires and Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep

For other persuasions the once banned, seminal, very graphic Taxi Zum Klo (1982) has been re-released and re-mastered. Makes the recent ousting of gay pub kissers in Soho look like a scene from Annie ;) Peccadillo have the Italian Loose Cannons out on DVD.

My Dog Tulip is the first hand drawn/painted animated feature using computer technology (it took 3 years). Based on Brit author J.R. Ackerley's memoir of his 16-years with Tulip his Alsatian bitch, it's heartfelt simplicity often resembles the scant figures of painter L.S Lowry. And, of course, one could always read the film as an allegory of the preceding paragraph without any offense to anyone.

Addition:
A Polish cognoscent elephant, whatever next? Well, while Water for Elephants is somewhat traditional period fare, director Francis Lawrence (I am Legend) and his screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (based on Sara Gruen's 2006 bestseller) expertly craft this good ole Hollywood yarn. Unemployed young-blood Jacob (Robert Pattinson, Twilight) joins the circus train of hard-bitten impresario August (Christoph Waltz) and becomes his great hope when it transpires stubborn elephant Tai (Rosie) responds to Jacob's commands only in Polish. Love interest, of course, is August's wife and showgirl Marlena (Reese Witherspoon). No surprises but lovely story this and no animals were harmed in the making of it.

For those who've been fed up to the teeth with the drawbacks of civilisation's digital technical advancement, you, me (and kids especially) will find hope in David Attenborough's Flying Monsters 3D. What happened to the flying pterosaurs of 220 million years ago? This is great stuff: the little and big creatures emerge out of their archeological bones and fly again. If we must have 3D TV then this kinda stuff should be written into its social remit.

And forget comparisons to the Dudley Moore original, the Russell Brand Arthur is just silly fun although with somewhat more than just a paperheart. Can the normal Naomi (the wonderful former Indie film Greta Gerwig) ever find happiness with the irresponsibly rich Arthur (Brand)? OK, the wooing scene in Grand Central Station is a 'steal'/'hommage' from Terry Gillliam's The Fisher King but generally it's not as deplorable as many would have it. And you can't say ALL of it's characters can't be found in Manhattan life. Worth checking out alone for Uta Briesewitz's gorgeous shallow focus cinematography (she shot some of The Wire).

And a couple more flics for your consideration, worship or derision at the weekend:

Remember an American indie director called David Gordon Green who gave us the very sober George Washington many moons ago? Well perhaps just to prove that he 'has a life' outside the arthouse he's concocted another, well, umm, piece of crap, Your Highness. But it's such very silly completely waste of time crap that it's hard to dislike. In this mystical, medieval romp everyone's named Thadeous, Madeous, Cadeous or the such-like (made up the last two myself) and there's a vulgarity uttered every five minutes. The film's US distributors Universal have been making a name for themselves recently in being very, umm, liberal minded (cf the recent Paul). As a large dollop of crap the film's pungency takes a while to spread and when it does drifts willy nilly as the wind. All the actors be-sport themselves stupidly enough: Toby Jones' Julie is underused, Rasmus Hardiker's servant Courtney a consistently funny straight man, Natalie Portman looks ravishing but it's petite Zooey Deschanel as Belladonna who almost gets ravished - notice at the end when (presumably still under the spell to bespoil her flesh) she's fingering the studs on one of the knights' armour. Consummate professionals one and all...

The much discusssed Cold Weather from American indi director Aaron Katz (Quiet City) possesses a far subtler wit than our previous film while not quite earning its enigmatic detective thriller ending. Little White Lies director Guillaume Canet (of the hit Tell No One) wanted to make a French The Big Chill (1984). Whether he succeeded in that comparison you'll have to decide yourself. And though it's stretching things at almost two and half hours the performances and 'tone' are consistently of the highest order. And the title's pay-off could equally apply to the denizens of Hampstead or the Hamptons.

And Peter Bogdanovich's classic Oscar nominated/winning The Last Picture Show (1971) tale of 50s Texan youth has been restored to its former B/W glory. No glamour to be found here, only the fading thwarted glory of our existence; or rather the frustrating inability of some to see and reach beyond the flickering shadows in our caves of false security. A film that every generation of teenager ought to see. Can they still be lured into a cinema by the bare-breasted gals in B/W?

Oh - and as I post this two major tube lines are suspended at rush hour. I'd be here 'til midnight if I listed all the ocurrances this month...

Addition: Rio (3D) review below
Armadillo
A Small Act

the final finding of the ear,

"The dream of a suitable political work of art is in fact the dream of disrupting the relationship between the visible, the sayable, and the thinkable without having to use the terms of a message as a vehicle."
Jacques Rancière: The Aesthetics of Politics (2006)

The above quote is used by the White Cube gallery as a preface to their group show New Order opening this Thursday that shares "a focus on the transformation of social or ideological structures that shape experience, and in different ways [exploring] existing communal, political and physical constructs of the everyday."

These days, London (and other English cities) are rife with protests, both student and otherwise, against the current government cuts in education, arts and local council funding - going to the extreme of last week's violence in the environs of the West End's Piccadilly. However, there's an irritating sense of déjà vu about it all for many reasons. This latest clash of class could be seen shimmering on the streets as far back as 2004, though no one wanted to admit it. Just as no one (at least not of the acceptable Labour left) wanted to admit that a mountain of debt lay dormant (like some creature from a horror movie) swept beneath the nation's magic carpet. Students 'maxed' out their credit cards, parents and would be ones wangled mortgages that would normally have been out of reach and the nation jollied itself along pretending that it wasn't in any way responsible for Prime Minister Blair's Iraq War.

[Addition]: Exiting a screening of Armadillo was a strange, numbing experience for this viewer: the most curious quality of this doco made about Danish forces stationed in Afghanistan. It's a little akin to Italian writer Umberto Eco's 'waxworks' essay in Travels in Hyperreality: we are so used to seeing the representation of something that when we actually see it for real we are, if not disappointed, then perplexed at our experience. The detail in this film is indeed frightening but then some may find that experience hard to inhabit. Hopefully I'm in the minority. But then knowledge is power. Worth considering Mr.Picasso again as to whether art really is the lie that makes us realise the truth.
Does the same problem apply with Jennifer Arnold's Kenyan doco A Small Act? One can almost hear We Are the World - the Africa 1985 anthem- in our mind's eye as we watch.

Students publish shoplifting guide
Ministers shelve proposal for free internet in libraries

In Self-Design and Aesthetic Responsibility, an essay for e-flux (and used in his Frieze talk some years ago), Boris Groys writes:
"the predominant mood [within the art system] appears to almost perpetually shift back and forth between hopes to intervene in the world beyond art and disappointment (even despair) due to the impossibility of achieving such a goal...Art can in fact enter the political sphere and, indeed, art already has entered it many times in the twentieth century. The problem is not art’s incapacity to become truly political. The problem is that today’s political sphere has already become aestheticized. When art becomes political, it is forced to make the unpleasant discovery that politics has already become art—that politics has already situated itself in the aesthetic field...The machine of media coverage does not need any individual artistic intervention or artistic decision in order to be put into motion...The contemporary politician no longer needs an artist to gain fame or inscribe himself within popular consciousness."
The student occupation of the Slade art school cited Groys in their recent manifesto.

This week also sees a BFI retrospective of Bernardo Bertolucci including his second feature made at the age of 22, Before the Revolution. MoMA in New York had theirs last year. The film opened in Paris in January 1968 before the famed student riots of that spring. And though the film has been championed by notable film critics such as Jonathan Rosenbaum, it seems more interesting for its zeitgeist rather than avant-garde cinematic techniques as compared say to the 'indiness' of John Cassavetes' debut feature Shadows (1960).

Bertolucci has confessed that the film was about “my own inability to be a Marxist, being a bourgeois”. And Bertolucci's greatness as a director seems to reside more in the baroque qualities of his later films counterpointing the personal and political that in any avant-gardism. The very personal nature of Before the Revolution makes it fascinating nonetheless. "Protesting in the square won't do anymore," says one of his protagonists. "My bourgeois future is in my bourgeois past," declares the troubled Fabrizio.
Mr Bongo DVD releases his directorial debut The Grim Reaper (April 25)

Another Communist, Spanish director Luis Buñuel, has work from his Mexican period out on Mr Bongo DVD (Facets DVD issued Region 0 of both in 2007). Susana (a remake of Alexander Korda's 1929 The Squall) was released in 1951 (made the same year as the more famous Cannes Fest winner Los olvidados) and could easily have been made by a 'B' movie Hollywood director using a starlet. It's similiar to Pasolini's Theorum (1968-the same year as Bertolucci's The Conformist) in that the voluptuous devilish figure (Rosita Quintana) arrives out of nowhere and ends up seducing the bourgeois family on the ranch. In 1972 Buñuel would make his more famous Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie).

In Buñuel's El bruto(The Brute,1953) the gender tables are turned as a slaughterhouse worker (asked to evict his employer's tenants) kills a man and is seduced by the landlord's wife (Katy Jurado). Both Buñuel melodramas could easily have been made in 50's Hollywood with their subversive political undertones and it would be interesting at some point to have a boxed set of all the director's oft-neglected work of this period. Optimum issued the director's greatest hits boxed set as far back as 2005.

Another film that's taken forever to receive a UK DVD release is Cassavetes' Minnie & Moskowitz (1971) (the 2000 Region 1 Anchor Bay DVD had audio commentary by Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel. This release is film only). The politics and loneliness of class have rarely been played out so acutely and so acidly as in this film. Minnie Moore (Gena Rowlands) is a 40ish, divorced, LA County Museum curator who begins a tempestuous relationship with charismatic drifter Seymour Moskowitz (Seymour Cassel). In a way, it pretty much says everything inherent in Bertolucci's Before the Revolution - only with sublime, gritty graceful urbane new frontier amusement.

A recent LA film is Matthew Bissonnette's impressive 'shaggy-dog' road movie Passenger Side with writer Michael Brown (Adam Scott) chauffeuring his estranged brother Tobey (Joel Bissonnette) around Los Angeles for the day. The 'shaggy dog' turns out to be quite well groomed by its director. As is the 'mixed tape' soundtrack by music supervisor Mac McCaughan (of indie rockers Superchunk).

But for something seriously weird and cinematically wondrous the prize must go to directors Gustave de Kervern and Benoît Delépine for Louise-Michel (winner of a Special Jury Prize at Sundance). Their latest and equally bizarre Mammuth is also released by Axiom on June 3. Yolande Moreau (Séraphine) is Louise who after downsizing pools the resources of her fellow textile workers hiring someone (Michel) to bump off their boss. You'll either love these French directors or be left scratching your head wondering what it's all about. One thing's for sure: there ain't nothing else like it in cine-land at the moment.
Axiom also released Ballast - a fine directorial debut by an American indi (Lance Hammer) that's taken ages to cross the Atlantic (2008 London Film Festival).

Rubber was far quicker off the mark after mixed reviews at Cannes this year. Directed (and almost everything else) by Quentin Dupieux its star is a black rubber car tyre and if nothing more, the film is a great showreel for the stills camera that also does knockout video - the Canon 5D Mark II. But it's a film so full of witty invention (albeit begged, borrowed and stolen from Hollywood) you'd be churlish not to exit the cinema grinning from ear to ear. It should team up with that Australian existential short that won in Cannes a few years back about the car and the traffic lights in the middle of desert nowhere.

Hop will prove a fun Easter treat for the kids while not outstaying its welcome with the adults either. Perhaps not quite as fun, though, as Andy Riley's The Book of Bunny Suicides: Little Fluffy Rabbits Who Just Don't Want to Live Any More (2003)
Megamind is out on DVD

[Addition]: Nor should adults (and even 'ratty' teenagers dragooned into helping their baby brothers and sisters) get too bored sitting through Rio (3D) - Twentieth Century Fox's Easter offering. No live action in this thrilling animation only pic from the Blue Sky Ice Age movie series team. And the 3D isn't much to speak of. But there's a lot of witty (albeit often corny) lines given to the chipper-ing birds who finally escape their nasty human captors' cages; helped by a slobbering bulldog Luiz "messed up [man]" and hindered by a pack of minxing marauding marmosets and the treacherous Oz cockatoo Nigel. A great kids' film for introducing them to the animals of the forest and the concepts of wildlife preservation. Can't wait to hear a kid commenting that the romantic duo of bickering blue macaws, Blu bred in Minnesota domesticity and who never learnt to fly, and Jewel in the bad-ass Brazilian wild are just like their Mum and Dad arguing at home. And what the film's exec music producer/legend Sergio Mendes doesn't know about Brazilian sounds of any species probably isn't worth knowing.

Back in more serious mode is the directorial debut of Ken Loach's son Jim - Oranges and Sunshine based on the true story of British kids who were deported to Australia (as late as 1972) from their institutions with hopes of a better life - hence the film's title. Emily Watson plays Margaret Humphries, the Nottingham social worker who wrote the book of her uncovered story having gone to Oz in search of the truth. Australian household acting name David Wenham (infamous for his bare bum in that nation's TV series SeaChange in the late 90's) plays Len - the only adult Margaret meets suspicious of her motives in delving and digging into their childhood past. With this character Loach's film (written by Rona Monro) resonates with far more about Australian-ness than simply the story itself. Australia (much like America) is a new land that while presenting a brave, united front hasn't always been honest about its divisive past.

And its the character of Len that acts as a wedge to unleash Margaret's boulder of blame into a safer haven rather than creating an avalanche. Many of the adults tell Margaret of their abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers in the outback. Len, however, while not necessarily proud of what occurred, is proud of his survival and the sun-drenched life-style he now enjoys in Australia. And what would have been simply a well rounded, insightful, well acted directorial debut from Jim Loach becomes something much more than that. Until meeting Len, Margaret has only been seeing the past. Len forces her to see a future despite it being predicated upon a dubious history. Moreover, the seams of Margaret's family life back in the UK have almost started unravelling because of her new found obsession with somebody else's past in a distant land - the film's dialectic is almost Brechtian and the moral complexity a resilient chip off his father's old block.
Ken Loach's 1969 Kes is out on Criterion DVD in the States (April 18)
A Day In The Life - Four Portraits Of Post-war Britain is out on BFI Blu-ray.
Sofia Coppola's Somewhere is out on DVD

Nick Hamm's Killing Bono (based on music journo Neil McCormick's memoir) is a much more light-hearted affair while maintaining a dig at Ireland's love/hate relationship with the need for international recognition. Two brothers Neil and Ivan McCormick are still struggling to get gigs while their school friends have become the globe trotting sensation U2. It's a film that so easily could sink into an Irish bog but to everyone's credit it's not only good entertainment but one with a waspish sting in its title tail. Ben Barnes successfully transcends his pretty boy acting status as Neil McCormick and there's a wonderful, ascerbic final performance from Pete Postlethwaite (who died recently of cancer). Kieran McGuigan's (The Other Boleyn Girl) cinematography is also ravishing.

For a rather goulish, gory dig at Japanese family life Sion Sono's Cold Fish never disappoints (in similar vein to his Exte: Hair Extensions (2007)
The Sci-Fi Fest have a Royal Wedding All-Nighter (Thurs April 28) on the eve of the wedding at 11.30pm and featuring some classic B/W pics: The Corpse Vanishes, Bride of the Monster with Bela Lugosi, Bride of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, Bride of the Gorilla with Lon Chaney Jnr and finally I Married a Witch with Veronica Lake. Bucks Fizz on arrival. There's also an Easter Sunday parade from BFI Southbank to London Film Museum (24th April) and a tie-in with Camden's nightclub KOKO for the after-party. And the British Silent Film Festival is upon us. Silent film DVD specialists in the States Flicker Alley have coming up George Schnéevoigt's 1929 Laila and though not strictly intended as a silent film, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno on Blu-ray (April 18)

Bill Woodrow's sculptures (at Waddingtons) have that wonderful sense of having clambered organically out of their material as if nurtured and watered for years. Art that appears so effortless and easy to grasp while belying its incredible eye and skill.

Robert Tear died last week: not only one of Britain's finest singers but also a wonderful teacher as any who'd attended his masterclasses would attest to. Obits in The Guardian, The Independent.

Show us not the aim without the way