Last night of After Dark Extreme Scare – The Human Centipede - a Halloween tie in for the sequel to The Human Centipede2 (Full Sequence) film (7pm to late from October 31st). Featured sets recreating the horror of the film, including the evil Dr Heiter’s laboratory, clips from the film and audio as well as the main attraction - a live human centipede. Sure beats pumpkins;)

I am not offended that these creatures (that's the word)
Of my imagination seem to hold me in such light esteem,
Pay so little heed to me. It's part of a complicated
Flirtation routine...John Ashbery

It's a shame the general release of Ralph Fiennes' film of Shakespeare's Coriolanus (London Film Festival, LFF) doesn't co-incide with the opening this week of Anonymous for it would serve only the greater purpose of promulgating these Elizabethan plays rather than detracting from either film. Anonymous posits that Shakespeare the man didn't exist at all and was actually a pseudonym for the politically powerful Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans) - plays were deemed "the work of the devil" so he couldn't possibly use his own name. Director Roland Emmerich turned many a brow when this action/disaster movie director came on board to direct John Orloff's script. Turns out he does a damn fine job much to the chagrin of his detractors.

Does the film convince you of the case for 'anon'? Well, yes in so much as throughout history anyone seen to rock the establishment will be under scrutiny. And it takes not only a brave human writer but one that can withstand "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" to survive 'the powers that be'. Rare that an artist can cope with that and politics was no more rife than in the Elizabethan court. I digress for a minute to note that I have my own London Film Festival cross to bear, for politics is rife there as well. Festival PRs decreed that I couldn't film any of the Anonymous press conference with my little DSLR (the big boy dinosaur cameras were stabled at the back;). They also denied struggling filmmakers this privilege of independent publicity too: the ones who really needed it. At the George Clooney press conferences you couldn't move for a sea of iPhones, iPads and other filming devices. Hypocrisy can be the only word for PR censure of hand-held devices. In fairness, I am yet to receive comment in this regard from Anonymous's distributor Sony - one company that has always appeared more open than other studios to widening its appeal to independent debate.

You have what are essentially 3 (or arguably 4 festivals going on at the BFI London Film Festival)
1. the more 'socialist' orientated films that will always have minority audiences though through no fault of their quality;
2. This aesthetic in tandem with the BFI's (British Film Institute) remit to preserve and promulgate the history of cinema both new and archival;
3. The more mainstream films e.g. Anonymous and Coriolanus whose studio or mini-major distributors use the LFF to create a PR platform for their imminent release;
and 4. films both experimental and otherwise that defy these former categories and while probably in tune with the BFI aesthetic would rather exist outside that rubric e.g. Phil Solomon's American Falls (earlier work of his screened at the Tate Modern Thurs Oct 27 and a video interview with me to come) or Joseph Cedar's Cannes Fest award winning Footnote - the director quipped at the Q&A last night that even though he arrived for his screening in a marked Festival car, the red carpet was clearly not for him and he had to convince 6 people on the way that he was indeed a festival filmmaker! Out of the 80 odd films I've seen at the Fest Footnote would have to be at least in the top 5.

What all this has to do with the film Anonymous is fairly clear I think. Joseph Cedar is from Tel Aviv, not from the occupied territories or their allies. Friends in some cities can be thin on the ground. And his film is all to do with belonging, of not so much finding the truth insomuch as finding if not happiness then contentment between a father and son. That's where the war should begin, resolve and end - not in the wider realms Cedar seems to say. De Vere in Anonymous has everything he could desire and so too his sons. Yet he is allowed power without a voice. "You have no voice that's why I chose you," he barks to his surrogate purporting to be Shakespeare. De Vere's fatal flaw is not his vanity but his love of art and poetry and his belief that the world could be a different place. He pens Richard III to inspire a political revolt. Footnote questions not so much the notion of authenticity but how we as humans inevitably bend our ego towards an acknowledgement of our talents in the form of medals, prizes, disputed lands and ideals. Or in John Ford's world: if the legend becomes truth, print the legend. That's until a real historian like Simon Schama comes a-digging up the daffodils.
Grigori Kozintsev's often gutting and spellbinding Russian versions of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1964) and King Lear (1971) are B/W classics just out on DVD (wish Mr Bongo would hurry up with their new website -it's been months!). Kozintsev really does make the world a stage to behold our swelling scene.

More family strife in Lynne Ramsay's much anticipated adaptation of Lionel Shriver's book We Need To Talk About Kevin (LFF and now on general release). Easy viewing this ain't but Ramsay and her production team create a world in every frame - the angle of light, the design on a costume, the textures of our lives. Is it all too much? Perhaps, but this is cinema aiming to really get under your skin so that you leave the cinema seeing the world a little or even a whole lot more. The 'social realist' Dardenne brothers offered The Kid with a Bike that has wowed every critic on every continent. And the end really is worth the wait. Seen in isolation this, of course, is a fine film choking with nuances. But as my brain wizzes through all the LFF films it doesn't seem to fall in the top 5. Perhaps Louise Wimmer (a first feature from Cyril Mennegun) does - a film whose subject would normally make me doubtful. A performance from little known French stage actress Corinne Masiero capturing magnificently the character's "insignificance in the eyes of others". I'm still asking myself why this film affected me more than most.

Should Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn have the last word this week? Perhaps not. But I wondered hard about what it would be like to be a youngster watching this awesomely executed motion-capture movie. Would I be inspired by that sense of cinematic wonder? Or would I have already been bludgeoned into submission by all the technology about me? Just to wonder about wonder was enough for me in a world that persists in keeping us in a box - albeit a very shiny one for some.

A colleague asked of me the other day, don't they all (the dozens of films I've seen at the London Film Festival) all blur into one? And in one sense yes, but rather in a good clear way so that one's final picture is minutely detailed. And all because every film (the many good ones) only help sign post you to the next. And with two actor directed 'political' features screening in the same week - Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus (opens Jan 20, UK) and George Clooney's The Ides of March (opens Oct 28, UK)- it does "give us pause" as Shakespeare said to consider the reality/the fiction/the fact/and the future nay, the past. Are we forever bound on a wheel of fire or is it that we been allowed pause to quench our thirst?

Actor/director Philip Seymour Hoffman hit the home run when he said at yesterday's press conference for Ides of March that acting for him was to "de-mystify what it is to be a human being". Some will no doubt say that the film in question is somewhat derivative not giving its audience a cleverer unseen take on the bandwagon for American Presidency. And that indeed may be true. But Clooney (no surprise playing the wannabe President) directs the adapted play with knife-like precision. It's a science/biology lesson: it doesn't immediately seem that exciting but the more one watches and questions the more you become Aristotle fleeing the boredom of Athens mediocrity and off dissecting frogs in some far off island lagoon. What is ego? What the hell am I voting for anyway? Is loyalty just some Darwinian fin that was a rather useless appendage or was it at the heart of the evolutionary chain?

Why Coriolanus has often been deemed a Shakespeare problem play I shall never know. Always it seemed rapier-like slicing through the thinly disguised pudgy flesh of false democratic ideals. It was never thus that the great general Coriolanus was arrogant/egotistical/belittling. He was a man who knew who he was, got on and did the things he believed in; didn't sit around enjoying being idly flattered by the masses great and small. Though Fiennes has updated the play its clarity of decimating the hypocrisy of democracy didn't really need it. What the adaptation does, though, is make palpably clear the hidden agendas of all the surrounding characters - James Nesbitt egging on 'the crowd' to fell Coriolanus' oak tree that his philandering thistle could never nor hope to be. Brian Cox's Whitehall honeybee buzzing from one conflict flower to the next yet none too fussy about successful pollination.

A more contemporary play about power and the people would be hard to find. As Seymour Hoffman said in the Ides press conference, there really aren't any heroes in life only flawed humans. Coriolanus' flaw isn't ego (which of course he has in spades like anyone else) it is his Hotspur temper. He denounces the populace as curs because he's sick and bloody tired of playing politics and having to be nice and 'play upon them like a flute'. He believes 'all that' should be left to his political underlings while he gets on with running the country. His underlings get him hot under the collar but have no one to put in his place. Very like protestors who want change but offer no alternatives.

People, alas, are fickle - not all but enough of them to weigh heavy on the heart of democratic realities and ideals. Coriolanus acknowledges the illusion and is smart enough to know that it's somewhat necessary: as long as he's required not to sing and dance. The Artist is a sad and wondrous film that is sort of a silent B/W grand opera (in that all - well most- opera is political in nature). Hollywood matinee idol George finds he's relegated to the potato patch with only his dog for company when the talkies arrive. His ultimate saviour is ironically the girl who serendipidously slipped under the red ropes dividing the people from their idols - George promulgating Peppy as a new starlet. The talkies embrace her though not George. The plotting is predicable but French director Michel Hazanavicius' comic execution is far from it. No surprise for anyone who saw that director's secret service spoofs OSS - every comic nuance handled like a racing car spinning hill-top curves.

Politician's lives are always to be on the knife-edge of the populace, not so for most entertainers. Arguably, so should be the former in a democracy. As Clooney's candidate confesses about the death penalty - if someone killed his family then he'd probably feel like doing similar to the perpetrator. But he would need to serve his time for that act of revenge he stresses. The awesome, sublime quality of Shakespeare's play is that ultimately Coriolanus' fatal flaw is his heart not his head. The people would never let him sit upon a hill. They wanted to bait the monster that lay dormant within themselves. And as in relationships they lost the only beautiful thing that simply dropped down dead. Life thankfully isn't like the movies (more of that debate to come...) and though George in The Artist never has a voice (or will he?) he retains his heart whilst allowing another to flourish. Who could argue with that? Not even Karl Marx!

Gus van Sant's Restless (LFF and on general release this week) - shot by Harris Savides in halcyon hues though with pin-prick accuracy - seems superficially a little old-fashioned. Rather than being lazy, though, van Sant seems to be invoking the origin of the Love Story terminal death cliche spinning a dormant web in which his teenage characters can round out their lives in a little sleep. You cry not because you're being manipulated but because so often life's beauty and crazy zest for a life outside the norm only ever comes to the fore and fruition in moments of tragedy. And photographer Andrew Dosunmu's debut about Senegalese in New York Restless City (last chance Fri at the Brixton Ritzy) avoids all the cliches conjuring a world between the cracks - immigrant lichen clinging and thriving creating a whole new sub-culture.

Peter Sasowsky interview now live and new photos.

the half-heard radio sings its song of sidewalks

"It's good not to accept the current reality as eternal and definitive," wrote surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel. What better quotation to get one through these days of so-called London normality. Tube disruption last week has been its worst in ages (and this week isn't shaping up any better) but Mayor Boris brought a smile to our faces - not through his policies - but through his image looming large on the posters for extra-marital dating agency Ashley Madison. All publicity is good publicity as 'they' say. And instead of the 'Boris bike' to ease our passage up those congested London streets we might consider the 'Boris bonk'. Or as the Mayor said recently about next year's sporting event, we're ready now!

Onwards and upwards...but a lucky few with any energy left after the city's strenuous pycho-somatic workout have/will be immersing their bods in one of the city's autumn film festivals or its art fairs and gallery openings. Why do all these films exist? Why do all these crazy people keep wanting to make movies when it's hard enough to keep body and soul alive these days? Is it simply maybe a capitalist system keeping both right and left just so happy? At the independent film fest Raindance (still ensconced in the intimate Apollo Cinema boudoir) box office receipts are up 40.3% on last year -as is much other cultural/entertainment activities in the city. One young filmmaker from Berlin asked me if London "knew about Raindance?" - a question slightly missing but illuminating the point that 'normal' people are indeed looking for a way out if not a way forward from their 'humdrum' existence. Josh Golding (author of the forthcoming Maverick Sreenwriting: A Manual for the Adventurous Screenwriter) gave a talk on how a filmmaker can enable audiences to "see the world as they've never seen it before": to think outside the box.

Each Raindance year, one 'shorts' filmmaker is awarded the chance to make the trailer for the following year's fest (this year it was Alex Brook Lynn who made last year's I am A Fat Cat). Next year will be Nicolangelo Gelormini (Reset) -a former assistant of Italian Paolo Sorrentino whose first film in America This Must Be the Place screens at this year's 55th BFI London Film Festival (Sean Penn in Oscar winning mode as a 'Goth' rock star on the road in search of his father's Nazi friend; America's nowhere 'architecture' in stunning cinematography). At the Raindance Awards party Gelormini made a plea to ignite the flames of Italian cinema - not just remembering its greatness and not to relegate that country's contribution to simply a thing of the past. And if after watching Martin Scorsese's 4 hour adventure in cinema My Voyage to Italy (out on DVD) he hasn't convinced you to watch every single movie he mentions in its entirety then nothing will. Rossellini's film of the title "was reviled when it was first released and only later championed by the French New Wave directors". And De Sica's Umberto D had the Italian culture minister Andreotti publish "an open letter in which he declared his opposition to neo-realism for washing dirty linen in public, [wanting] de Sica and his fellow filmmakers to be more optimistic." Plus ça change...
Ken Loach continues at the BFI

In epic doco mode lately, Scorsese's 3.5 hour George Harrison: Living in the Material World is also just released on DVD. Does it need to be so long? Well it's certainly not boring and the first 90min is taken up, inevitably, with Harrison's time with The Beatles. What one ultimately walks away with above all from this documentary, though, is just how hard it is to survive the fame others project upon you. All the Pranayamas in the world couldn't save George Harrison from himself. But Paul and Ringo live on, and there are some very fascinating and funny if maybe not quite soul-revealing footage. Arguably, George Harrison's fans (and of course those of The Beatles) felt they were seeing the world through a different lens through listening to their idols. Another doco worth seeking out is Lawrence of Belgravia (London Film Festival, LFF hereafter) charting the trials and tribulations of this 'underdog' musician. (reviews embargoed until Oct 22)

That 'different lens' is this year's 'motto' for the Raindance Fest too. And as in previous year's many of the greatest delights of this festival lay in documentaries that may have trouble seeing the light of a projection screen for some time. This year's Award winner How to start a Revolution documented Gene Sharp and his 'velvet' non-violent revolutionary guide book From Dictatorship to Democracy. Some of his methods of undermining the symbols and pillars of power can be seen in action in The Green Wave (cinemas now)- Iran's bloggers' promulgation of the rigged presidential elections on June 12th, 2009. Where My heart Beats (Raindance) proved that a very personal rather than objective documentary can still pack an effective political punch. The same goes for The Boy Mir and Hell and Back Again (both on general release) - the latter documenting an American marine wounded in Afghanistan and returned to his hometown. There's no attempt by the filmmakers to allow their gun/kill-loving subject likability in any way - just a man doing his job. And whereas filmmakers previously had to choose between beauty of the image and getting the documentary facts, the latest DSLR's and video empower one with both. Richard Jobson's highly stylised The Somnambulists plays at the LFF (reviews embargoed until Oct 14)

Against the facts, the drama of immigrant Iraqis in London on the eve of the Allied invasion Mesocafe can fall somewhat flat. But first feature Raindance course graduate Ja'far 'Abd al-Hamid has a real command of actors and can write lines that stick out a mile for their incisiveness into the human political dilemma. Why did he shoot on Super 16 rather than digi, though?

Inevitably, many of the most memorable features and documentaries of both Raindance and the LFF are all to do with outsiders and society's escapees. The doco Darwin (LFF) is a fascinating, funny and poignant glimpse of the 35 lives in this tiny, off-grid Californian town. SXSW Fest hit Dragonslayer (LFF) is more an acquired indie taste getting up close and personal to sometime skateboarder Josh and his new girlfriend. As vérité as it may be, its the sort of doco that could just as easily be a fiction rather than us watching it fight for its documentary corner. Phoebe Hart, born half male/half female, picks up a camera and tells her fascinating story in Orchids-My Intersex Adventure (Raindance). Another Ozzie, rock journalist Lilian Roxon, who hung out with 70s legends was profiled in Mother of Rock: Lilian Roxon (Raindance). And the Japanese Matsuo Ohno who sound engineered all those weird Astro Boy 60s effects is found sprightly as ever producing the annual play at a disabled people's home - The Echo of Astro Boy's Footsteps (Raindance): "If he stopped experimenting he'd have no reason to live," notes a former colleague. But equally, "his tendency to move on means he doesn't develop."

Peter Sasowsky's Heaven + Earth + Joe Davis (Raindance) on this extraordinary artist/scientist was inspiring, riveting and ultimately a depressing comment on how our society prefers R&D ideas that can be brought to fruition ASAP rather than broadening the minds of our planet. Joe Davis did finally end up with a post at Harvard- unpaid! (Video interview)

As an alternative to the art fair domination of Frieze, Ed Winkleman has brought his Moving Image video festival from New York to London's Oxo Barge House (just near the Tate) this weekend. On Saturday, October 15, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, in collaboration with Film Co Lab, Moving Image will present Bring Your Own Beamer(or BYOB). Each artist will choose the work to be exhibited and bring his or her own projection apparatus. It's a managable fest to get around too with famous and not so names. Probably unfair to single out any particular artists. But you won't be disappointed.


to be continued...