the big IF...

Sometimes one programme says it all ( at least for a month..): BBC's Start the Week- Mon, 25 Nov 13

or if you read this in a year's time we will freely send you the podcast if on request.
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New York fundraiser the other night for journalist Jean Friedman-Rudovsky's new book Beneath Her Feet.  Sunday Telegraph article on the young girls caught in Sierra Leone's civil war.

Thank godness British TV isn't like THIS- you never hear Jon Snow or Jeremy Paxman or even Paul O'Grady or Graham Norton default to 'is this good or bad'. Maybe because the Brits always expect the worst and hope for the better and are blessed with the middle.

Banksy deemed more damaging than Banks!

Banksy captivates New York with guerrilla graffiti art blitz

Mayor Bloomberg on Wednesday said: "Graffiti does ruin people's property and it's a sign of decay and loss of control...Nobody is a bigger supporter of the arts than I am. I just think there are some places for art and some places where-no art." Doesn't the NYPD have far better things to do with its time than hunt for Mr. Banksy? Hmmm. One might also argue that GREED is a sign of decay and loss of control. No shortage of that in the last New York decade now was there? Not too many of THOSE were arrested were they?! Want help with a list of names as a reminder or perhaps even an eye-opener Mr Mayor? (Well that is ex-Mayor after the election on Nov5, 2013. But you do officially get to keep the title).

You kinda wished, though, that the anti-Goldman Sachs protesters outside Trump Tower (formerly the Gulf &Western building) were a little better dressed. One stopped at offering each $50 (actually you could do a nice job for $40- can I have the 'tenner' back please? ) to buy a new wardrobe at one of New York's plentiful thrift shops. And one also wanted to hand them each a copy of Steven G. Mandis' What Happened to Goldman Sachs. (good Mary Kissel review- sorry about the pay wall- but there are other reviews;) History is a little more complex than most wish to believe. 

JPMorgan Chase to settle for $13 billion allegations surrounding the quality of mortgage-backed securities sold in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. (Well-worth watching the Alan Greenspan interview on The Daily Show)

Getting so much better all the time....

and if you thought that there was only one Downing Street (and yes there is indeed another No.10-cheaper than renting in most accessible London boroughs) with problems, then read the right of Yoko Ono's NY apartment HERE. 

Oh: and did we recommend go see Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine!  Of course we did. You just weren't listening carefully enough. OK! It's maybe not that subtle, or that clever, or that anything - and that goes for the cinematography too. Let's be honest. But: I DEFY you to say it does not have heart in spades! And I defy you to claim who has done a better re-working of Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire in recent or ever memory? And if Cate Blanchett isn't nominated for an Academy Award for her role then I will publicly eat my $100 bill! (It is an open bar at that party now isn't it...? :) Let alone Sally Hawkins in her role (who knew but Woody Allen (and Mike Leigh) ...!...come on) And while we are on the subject of mass-debating the future of our planet go see Woody Allen's Whatever Works - a film that NO HUMAN critic seemed to like (Warner Brothers the Brit distributor relegated it to a tiny screening room at the press show- not worthy of the big man seats of the 'lush' theatre!- I feel echoes of Charlie Chaplin in Limelight)- Sony in the States were a bit more enthusiastic- come on. Ha, ha HE proved you wrong with Blue Jasmine!  Didn't have anything to do with the fact that:?  Whatever Works  refused to have a political or socially redeeming theme of any sort except- excuse me- perhaps; sometimes real life has a far happier ending than utter planetary bullshit!
(p.s.- NASA is back online. However, unconfirmed reports reveal how signals from a distant galaxy indicating a 'reaching out' were not reciprocated by us during the government shutdown. Most worrying thing about that report is that alien life forms use 'reaching out' in their vocabulary seeming only conversant with C21 CRM. And here we were expecting a 'twitter' in algorithm. Back to amoeba one and Walmarts of the cosmos. (p.p.s.- if you wrote 'reaching out' to a Brit they wouldn't know what you were talking about except perhaps assuming that you were another shyster after their tiny jug of pennies. So: not much difference in definition there really....)

Life as a capsicum in the Big Apple HERE.

[ Oct 13]- is the truth always stranger than the fiction?:
Nine missing episodes of 1960s Doctor Who have been found at a TV station in Nigeria, including most of the classic story The Web of Fear.
Can we look forward to a Rembrandt in a Mongolian cave?  A Mozart minuet in a Mexican hacienda? Or in 2077 a rusty box of USB sticks with episodes of The Daily Show in the dusty throne room of Buckingham Palace? [p.s.- contrary to some popular opinion The Daily Show is not some Left-wing conspiracy. Remarkably balanced given the 'crazy' goings-on it has to cover] And who has a problem with THIS story from Tahoma High School in relation to civil liberties? We don't agree with the 'Confederates' view on this website but should displaying 'their' flag be treated any less a civil liberty? Is it an issue of bullying, intimidation, racism? Is it tantamount to displaying a representation of hate?

One of the funniest (though they wasn't much competition;) quotes of this year's New York Film Festival came from Steve Coogan after a screening of Alan Partridge: "The Bolsheviks had the right idea when it came to Royalty." I'm sure Coogan's remains will be in a Tibetan cave by 2077 so no need to panic Captain Mainwaring! Coogan was asked about his phone being hacked and the scandal. And the prospects of his film and his anti-hero/loser/'greedy git' character in America. He wasn't very optimistic given the probable response from the average 'Joe": "That guys a douche-bag why would I want to hang out with him? !"

p.p.s- re: the American govt shutdown- everyone bemoans the closure of The White House tours and free Cookies (hello The Butler) and hugging young otters in National Parks but HELLO! noBODY ever mentions the fact that we can't go online and see what NASA is doing! I guess that really is the last word on how this planet sees itself my fellow aliens...tant surprise! YES they speak French in outer space- where the fff French have you being livin' all these years. Under a cuuunnnnn mugeoning conveyer belt!

last woof standing

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I happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments (Pause.) The dog's moments.
― Samuel Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape 

However, can one ever silence an 'old dog' ? (Start the Week, Oct 4)
and who ever thought Alpha Papa would be called to The White House!
love me tender, love me sweet, all our dreams come true...

Ah, but for a Hollywood movie..

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, P.G., S.D. and an endless array of initials...............

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dogs do what they do as you do do so well...

Did the great and good get an enema the other night at Carnegie Hall in New York? Should the unions learn that terminology? Enemas don't really bare comparison though do they? having said that we just had a fascinating conversation with an a**hole from.....

btw:

Have any of Westminster's political parties actually read any Marx? Or did they just read the Wiki entry? Be careful what you wish for PM! We know everything...at 17 the world is one's oyster nesse dorma pas...and it just depends how much sand is in that hourglass. Are there any 'appropriate' jobs for those on benefits who you are trying to get back to work? Maybe you should start at the top and work you're way down. That's what we are doing. And it is not a very happy tale...

This site don't need luck it leaks talent. And IT has a tale to tell. And you are all really fucked if it is told to its fullest. Oh, I'm sorry is that not Steve Coogan enough? Indiewire wrote "we just wish it was less painful to watch" Did we mention that colleagues in NYFF industry/press screenings are stabbing each other for chewing popcorn too loudly? Sorry: those reports are unconfirmed and witnesses NYFF Fest Director Kent Jones and 'friend' Martin Scorsese (who he? after Shutter Island) are now resting comfortably after being intimidated by '5 year old' something Lincoln Center staff. Sorry what does NYT stand for?

nyt are debating Sunday's arts headline:
 

Full house for mediocre talent! Ex- New York Fest director refused entry to his own Festival.

Anything to do with Richard Peña being refused entry to a 9am screening of , sorry what was the name of your film ...?. Surely not. Not. 

Who? What? New York lives only for today. We gave up trying to figure out what London lived for. I guess London isn't JP Morgan Chase and Co's favorite restaurant on the planet anymore. Wanna feed somewhere else...?

ahh soylent green were art thou...in a goody bag no doubt very near YOU.

such honorable apro pos nohing at all at all woof

btw-----Does the Metropolitan Police still have a 'shoot' to kill policy? Any ideas Stephen Frears? Oh- I forgot to add: such honorable men (and now women). How could such a policy be (ever) possible? Boris Johnson? How could such a person as the honorable you become Mayor of London so said many. But you did to so much glee. Easy as riding a bike - isn't it 'gov'!? There is so much honor involved it's hard to get a ticket for the 'honorable' queue for the loo (that's 'shit hole' in American). I guess we s**t in our pants for hour. And then shake hands.

this link may 'wet your appetite' for what is to come and THIS.... a colliding 'something' near you
- at least it wasn't a tank rolling over a citizen of the state. Come on. That's so much worse. You get awards for filming that.
The Square (51st New York Film Festival). Go HERE for more from the New York Film Fest)

Sometimes—there's God—so quickly!

About Time

Nobody's Daughter Haewon (London Film Festival) (New York Film Festival)
 
The Last of the Unjust (London Film Festival) (New York Film Festival)

A Touch of Sin  (London Film Festival) (New York Film Festival)

At Berkeley  (London Film Festival) (New York Film Festival)

Like Father, Like Son  (London Film Festival) (New York Film Festival)

Norte, The End of History  (London Film Festival) (New York Film Festival)

The Missing Picture (London Film Festival) (New York Film Festival)
 

and provocative as ever, the Raindance Film Festival 2013 opens on Wednesday.

apropos ...nothing at all...at all

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"I am a dead man. You have your desire of me. What you have hunted me for is not my actions, but the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. For first men will disclaim their hearts and presently they will have no hearts. God help the people whose Statesmen walk your road."  "For Wales. Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?"

"What matters is not that it's true, but that I believe it; or no, not that I believe it, but that I believe it."
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

anda....

 if you thought the world was topsy-turvy (which of course many just couldn't imagine in New York)- though such a thought gives added resonance to....


Correction: August 30, 2013
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly to the prime minister of Ireland. Enda Kenny, the prime minister, is a man. The earlier version also misstated the name of the institution from which Mr. Heaney received a bachelor’s degree. It is Queen’s University of Belfast, not Queen’s College.

... I feel Pinta coming on (Jon Stewart)- is that an illegal act?

...memory

It's strange. Reading a review of Upstream Color I remembered what I'd written about it on Planet Lucre seeing it earlier in the year in New York. Only: what I remember writing wasn't there at all! No gremlins, just, strange memory. And it seemed very apt for that film and following Seamus Heaney to write something about that. I remembered writing something like: one sort of wishes the director had made more clear a Manchurian Candidate conspiracy idea that very clearly still (and forever more) has relevance today. But mollified that view by saying that was simply not what the director had wanted to make. Instead it is a very, VERY strange film. And if you are tired of American indy films that tick all the 'value' boxes 3 times over then THIS is a film you are very unlikely to see ever again. Or indeed that will tick ANY box whatsoever. The New Yorker review does an excellent job of exploring the Thoreau/Emerson/Hawthorne world that clearly influenced if not guided director Shane Carruth and has very sadly been watered down by educators into some pasturised/saccherine 'wholeness' intake for mass American consumption. Nature with a life-long expiration date.

Seamus Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013)

Act of Union

I

To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independant shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.

II

And I am still imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony,
The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
The act sprouted an obsinate fifth column
Whose stance is growing unilateral.
His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignmorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again

Seamus Heaney 

Desert Island Discs 1989


 

blue smoke of brittle leaves

Staring out to sea. The enormity. Calm even in storm? A far cry from Gatsby staring into the distant light of the past. A present sea washing away rot. Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life (Tate Britain). All those little figures in such a void. Was he painting emptiness or fullness? “People move about under chimney smoke, clustered or stranded or silhouetted, in their own little islands of space.” One of the most moving Lowry canvas, though, came up at auction a few years ago: a sparse view from shore out to sea. Which ever city we inhabit, then and now, aren’t we always caught between the bling and the blodge of the daily round ever searching for that still point in the turning world? If so, what so? Neither Baz Luhrman’s adaption of The Great Gatsby novel (with its embarrassing moments of 3D plasticity) nor Sophia Coppola’s re-tell rather than riff of The Bling Ring- bright young things of Los Angeles whose already full void thence overflowed with the overflow of celebrities from whose homes they stole designer gear- told us much about our ennui. Coppola’s film left you empty with the bounty of everything. Yet maybe that was exactly her point. Prison in American need be no set back to fulfilling your life. Busted for breaking into Watergate? No obstacle for some of its stars in doing ice-cream ads or selling real estate. A hard time we had of it seems not to enter conversations about the American dream. And yet are we talking about the same planet that bestows on us The Encyclopaedic Palace of this year’s Venice Biennale? Full of humans filling their lives to overflowing with imagination, practicality and dreams?

"We are going outside the parameters of the so-called art world," said Ralph Rugoff (a San Francisco escapee to Britain) director of London’s Hayward Gallery. "We are going outside the parameters of the so-called outsider art world" speaking of The Alternative Guide to the Universe. Morton Bartlett’s eerie physiologically precise models of boys and girls seen both in Venice and at the Hayward indeed may not inspire the viewer to loftier human pursuits. But surely the craftsmanship should. The Museum of Everything (founded in 2009) fills Hayward's nifty little project space with the work of sculptor Nek Chand. The tutti museum (that sprouts in all sorts of metropoli) very aptly blooms a bee’s breath from the Venice Biennale Giardini, in what for normal daily life (and that includes the Biennale) is a garden center. And maybe, just possibly likely maybe, the world is proving Deleuze and his capitalist schism inaccurate. The interviewer of Sophia Coppola on BBC Radio 4’s The Film Programme(July 4) kept prompting her into a dialectic about “fine things”. Bling needs not be tat, not rip-off, not kitsch. It is Design. Ah, now there’s the rub.

Remember the scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s where they go to Tiffany’s and all she has/can afford to be monogrammed is the ring prize from a Cracker Jack snack packet? The employee doesn’t bat a hair on his lashes- no token of love is too lowly to have Tiffany’s bestow its craft upon it. And it’s a point very pertinent nowadays to luxury brands. A month ago, Gucci’s CEO was quizzed on TV about how the brand and its bricks and mortar stores is surviving in the age of internet. Whatever one may think critically of Jeremy Deller’s representation of Britain at the Venice Biennale the ethos of the show appears to be the nature, decline and disappearance of craftsmanship and how that schism of what made Britain great manifests itself. It’s a Roman river running deep beneath the pavilion where one can sip English tea upon a terrace almost in reach of the Doge’s sea. Deller doesn’t make his own banners but does that matter? He employs a craftsman. Does it matter he uses the portrait drawings of prisoners rather than his own? That the prisoners appear to be oft times highly skilled amateurs? Austria’s pavilion (with the sleek robust lines of designer Josef Hoffmann) has Mathias Poledna's 3-minute creation of a Disney-like movie animation Imitation of Life that uses all the tradition techniques and crafts people even down to the orchestral recording of the score. And some may wink cynically at Italy’s pavilion hand in glove with commercial design (they’ve almost second guessed you with what first appears to be a street performer rolling around outside in designer garbage bags -actually Rubelli with Marya Kazoun). Russia goes the 'whole hog' by exposing 'shekels' from heaven raining upon the female only pavilion admittance below, while the men are allowed to join their male colleague dispensing the wealth upstairs.
Video HERE of Ragnar Kjartansson´s S.S. Hangover

In Vice versa 5 artists collaborate with Italian textile houses Bevilacqua, Fortuny and Rubelli- the latter's first year back since the 30's when it collaborated with artists such as Umberto Bellotto, Guido Cadorin, Vittorio Zecchin and Gio Ponti. Much fascinates too in Glasstress (collaborating with the Wallace Collection and London College of Fashion)- Facebook. Ron Arad’s interview

Macedonia's site is off Biennale grid in the streets of cheap one-star hotels. More craft with Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva (who lives and works in Brighton) using pure woven silk, silkworm cocoons, albino rat skins, curtains of steel sheet and, subject to permissions, live rats (didn't see any on my visit). Romania chooses memory with performers acting out tableaux vivants of artists' work in each Venice Biennale over the years. Against the Biennale, Spirit of Utopia at London's Whitechapel Gallery seems almost anachronistic in its anarchic ideas of wealth distribution e.g Time/Bank and Superflex. Better still, contemplate the stolen gelt “slave labour and a world order on the edge of collapse” so writes the BBC for their Wagner fest at this year’s Proms. Die Walkure with Bryn Terfel, Tannhäuser and much more. Or for the really wealthy and adventurous all aboard for Bayreuth as they stage the rarely heard early operas. “Children, do something new!” Wagner self-loathingly wrote to Liszt in 1852 about this stage of his career.

Cornelia Parker according to Frith Street Gallery “turns her attention to facets of the city streets that are usually overlooked, from the cracks in the pavement and accidental spills, to discarded pieces of wood, transforming them into evocative and highly charged images and objects.” If you like this check out Richard Wentworth’s sculpture and photography. Artifice of Paradise - Louise Thomas at Bischoff/Weiss: "Waterfalls, lazy rivers, and spas create an illusion of temporal tranquility upon backgrounds of modernist architecture sinking into Jurassic nostalgia. The paintings convey the cosmopolitan dream of escape mixed with the uncanny as they critique the mechanical structures of contemporary tourism, leisure, and entertainment industries."

One of the Biennale’s Romanian tableaux was Koons’ 1990 sex scene with La Cicciolina, porn star and his then wife. And one of the most provocative and interesting shows in recent memory about ‘what are fine things’ came from the unlikely candidate Koons. Or some might say the most obvious frontrunner. Frankfurt’s august Liebieghaus - 5,000 years of antiquities from Ancient Egypt to Neoclassicism- was juxtaposed in every room with Koons’ sculptures. With the result that you started asking yourself just what is great art? Just because it’s antique ain't necessarily mean it’s not kitsch? A re-release of Werner Herzog’s 1974 The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser may be an eye-opener to those who’ve never seen this classic. The German title is much more evocative and accurate: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Everyman for himself and God against all). Nature/nurture: can one learn what are ‘fine things’? Watching Ruben Ostlund’s politically incorrect Play (UK released by Soda Pictures July 12) may make you lose that heart. And John Huth (who’s working on the Higgs Boson particle project)’s book The Lost Art of Finding the Way may give you hope. Psycho Nacirema, James Franco’s art installation (Pace Gallery) made with the Scottish video artist Douglas Gordon “ isn't supposed to be a homage” to Hitchcock’s film says Franco: “one man's imaginary life”. Director Nicolas Roeg’s book The World is Ever Changing is published by Faber on 17 July (the iPad edition July 16)

Food for thought as we change planetary gear…

Cockles and mussels

                                                                                        Copyright 2013 Andrew Lucre

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals. – Susan Sontag

There’s also a Sontag quote about the reductiveness of art interpretation. And the same could be said for much film criticism. But the heart of film comment skipped a beat when reading Jim Hoberman (formerly Village Voice critic) discuss/review Zero Dark Thirty in The Guardian. When a critic creates something larger than just a whipping or caressing of words it’s cause for celebration. Hoberman’s was more a meditation on film’s journey. When young CIA op Maya (Jessica Chastain) arrives at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan she denies requesting the job – more a ‘gun for hire’. Hoberman likens Maya’s final victorious moments returning home alone in the cargo hold of a transport to that of Ishmael/ Ahab and Moby Dick.

At what cost?

It’s a question essential asked by Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills (Artificial Eye) – an Orthodox Romanian convent takes under wing the girlfriend of one of its female devotees. Based on fictional novels based on a true story.
BBC’s Start the Week (March 15)
David Cannadine’s new book The Undivided Past: History Beyond Our Differences (April 9)  Aleksandar Hemon’s The Book of My Lives 

Do we, however, prefer true stories to a world of make believe? Michael Haneke deservedly won many American awards including an Oscar for his Amour. But in the eyes of many cinephiles it was more a lifetime achievement award for his edgier, provocative work- 1994 - 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance way, way before any Sandy Hook massacre. In a year without Haneke, Denmark’s A Royal Affair might just have stood a chance: the extraordinary (and unknown to most outside Denmark) true story of King Christian VII allowing tutor Johann Friedrich Struensee to influence and get his Royal consent to widespread social reforms. Of course, that came at a high price for everyone concerned.
On Metrodome DVD/Blu-ray. Out on Magnolia Blu-ray March 25 in the States

Actress/director Sarah Polley inveigles her friends and family to tell the story of discovering her biological father in her latest pic Stories We Tell showing in New York at New Directors/New Films. The extremely convincing Super-8 film we see is actually that of actors an an actress playing her mother (Wim Wenders is thanked in the credits – did he give technical advise for this?). Cleverly (for both her public face and her art), Polley never really lets her audience know how she feels about it all. (Released May 17 in the States, and UK released June 28 by new distributor Curzon Film World- Curzon owns Artificial Eye)- The Guardian review
A retrospective of Gerard Byrne’s work continues at the Whitechapel.

Click HERE for more on New Directors/New Films and other moments….

abide with me...

                                           w..h..e..r..e..

Writing these posts is a little like watching the films/DVD/art herein mentioned. Who will watch these, where will they wash up? Is it all worth it anyway seeing hundreds of films a year when one instead could be writing a screenplay , a novel, reading the complete works of a,b,c or d, travelling the world, or just helping other people. Maybe simply living life.  I’ve said before that I hate end of year ‘best of’ lists. But this year such a task became a purely selfish assessment of whether or not I’d wasted my year in seeing just too many images on those screens and not enough time on life itself. Though unlike many of my colleagues there was almost as much art tossing around in the visceral cauldron. And also unlike many of my colleagues I regularly go out with a camera and fascinate myself with capturing images. A past-time that again is very open to question these days with such a plethora of digital imagery. Yet with that plethora you’d assume the images had become more informative, more savvy. That somehow you’d plug the USB stick into your brain and the world would be seen with new eyes. But alas, no. People seem to see less clearly and ever more needy of mucking in with the aggregated image or news story. When I started taking celebrity/line-up ‘step and repeat’ photos that weren’t the norm, PRs often eyed me with strangeness. Why would you want to do that? Just as nobody is really interested anymore in a review that doesn’t appear in the week of a cultural product’s release. And it all became somewhat worrying. 

Hurricane Sandy hit. Then 2 months later the Sandy Hook massacre. A colleague offered (well, was asked) his opinion of this Flight review (NYFF world premiere) and he warned of conflating the artifice of film with real-life. A few weeks ago this article popped on my radar in Senses of Cinema. And one BBC radio reporter noted that the hundreds of journalists and their vans that had descended upon the little hamlet of Sandy Hook were probably more likely statistically to cause a fatality than any lone gunman.  A forensic psychologist on CNN vehemently reminded us that statistically you were also more likely to be struck by lightning than be mowen down by an errant gunman. A BBC radio Front Row report (Fri Dec 28) on British actors working in America was illuminating in making one aware of just how scared and therefore reluctant  were Americans  of a presentation of self that would be anything less than heroic, humane, good-natured and giving.  Well those in the States who support gun-ownership do so for the very reason that they believe many of their fellow citizens may not possess those noble qualities and may forcibly infringe their civil liberties of health, wealth and happiness. And they have a very strong point. What’s also interesting is that when credible interviewees from the somewhat Right mention in passing of the 2^nd Amendment protecting their rights to stand up to government if necessary, no interviewees (not even Piers Morgan on CNN) took up that point. And, again, it’s a view shared by many, many Americans. They consider that right democratic, and one that is enshrined in the constitution. 

It’s ironic that one of the year’s best films (and that’s a Planet Lucre year whose calendar probably owes more to the Mayans;) is Tarantino’s Django Unchained (UK released Jan 18)- a film that from beginning to end is redolent with gun violence. But as in the Westerns, Tarantino does very well with just a normal shooter rather than an assault weapon. OK it would be historically inaccurate to do so but you get the point. (Remember all the Reservoir Dogs ear dismemberment hoo-ha, when everything was suggested and you saw nothing?) Tarantino took an ear out of Hitchcock’s freezer of fear. Well-worth seeing the stellar cast lead by Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren in Hitchcock(UK released Feb 8) Hitch knew his audience and finally after all these years American TV networks have caught onto this (tired of having all the ratings stolen away by cable’s serial killer successes).

Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher does well without a semi-automatic: initially brute Reacher force, then of necessity a hand gun, then out of circumstance an assault rifle to kill the oodles of bad guys. But the Über bad guy Zek (the film director Werner Herzog) is dispatched with just one bullet. As in the final moment of This Must Be the Place. (One couldn’t help thinking that Herzog’s deadpan delivery would be so great for all the litany of possible side-effects warnings after TV drug ads.) Now where am I going with this argument- as if it wasn’t already obvious.

Quentin Tarantino: my inspiration for Django Unchained

It’s interesting that Jack Reacher’s author, the pseudonymous Lee Child, noted in an interview that it’s often the most meticulously research reality (i.e the counterfeiting of money in one novel) that readers deemed ‘unreal’. Reacher is a hero because he is an outsider. Is John Wayne in The Searchers a vigilante or a freedom fighter? If Reacher becomes a film franchise it’ll be interesting to see if Tom Cruise is able/will shift-shape his image from an out and out hero to the champion outsider. That’s where TV has moved to: no longer good guys defeating the bad guys but investigating what makes the bad guys tick). Willy Nelson (a supporter of gun control) in a recent CNN interview with Piers Morgan stated that he supported gun control but believed in hitting back if he were hit. A sentiment that arguably made Let the Right One In such a success. You start poking sticks down my borrow what do you expect will emerge? 

[After today’s (Thurs) aborted school shooting in California, a mention should be made of this year’s Bully – the clue is in the title - and distributor Harvey Weinstein fought hard to change the film’s ratingso that the kids the age of those in the film could see it in cinemas. If the modern day American equivalent of ‘hitting back’ is the ability to shoot everyone in sight either meditated or not then something obviously has to be done. But again, what do you say to a bullied kid whose complaints have been largely ignored for years? Gun control is a far bigger issue than just controlling the sale of guns whatever calibre. To at least live some sort of life the lawyer of kids who do kill will plead some sort of mental health issue. But most of such kids were likely to be perfectly normal until bullying drove them berserk.  Many people, myself included, feel very strongly about this issue. Killing is not the solution but how does a parent let alone the child deal with the apathy and political correctness of councillors, school governors etc? Bullying can totally change a child’s personality, sometimes irrevocably. No pills or potions will attack the source of that problem.]

 

America is a very, very strange place. I imagine that’s what Werner Herzog loves and in equal measure loathes about it. His performance in Jack Reacher is chillingly real. Yet most folk going to see that film at the multi-plex won’t have a clue who is he! Yet think of who could’ve been more quietly chilling in that villainous role and you think not even Herzog’s own maverick actor Klaus Kinski would have bettered him. Is it that Herzog the man and the filmmaker isn’t afraid to confront reality, evil, the outsider? When does the outsider become a psychopath? The problem is surely that almost every film actor villain deep down is seeking for some redemption for his character. The point, surely, is that those characters are past the point of sympathy. We may empathise but not forgive. Yet this remains a very fine line because normal humans and the law want justice to be seen as done. The reason hundreds of news crews gather at an atrocity is that people want to see the reality. Of course the reality has been and gone in a few seconds and is way past. As was the culprit- dead or alive.

Jack Reacher review

Skyfall (that just passed the $1 billion box office hurdle ) is an interesting case in point. MoMA in New York recently had a Bond retrospective (they’ve collected the films over years).

Daniel Craig’s Bond wasn’t the first 007 to meet a villain for whom the audience not only empathised but with embarrassed reluctance also somewhat sympathised. The terrorist as freedom fighter. Dangerous ground. But then so that should be in a Bond movie. Otherwise we simply stop believing the story and let go its hand. Pierce Brosnan in The World is Not Enough had female villainess  Elektra (Sophie Marceau). Moreover, M (Judi Dench) was also seduced and taken in by Elektra’s vulnerable wiles. 

A further step ney a leap is taken in Skyfall. Here Bond became sacrificed to his job taking M’s bullet and only narrowly escaping death. Thereafter he lies low in debauchery contemplating a world that he tried and almost believed was enough. Only to spring back into action like some pre-programmed op when London MI6 HQ is bombed. He could have become like Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye- a ‘OO’ agent fucked over by the system and deciding that it was time for him to do the fucking over. We meet another Alec in Skyfall, Silva (Javier bardem ) who many years ago was M’s best agent in the Far East. And the whole scenario becomes deeply Freudian/Oedipal in that he tries and almost succeeds killing his father (the State) and fully succeeds in marrying his mother (M) in a consummated death.  To say it is one of the best Bond scripts ever is a very difficult claim to juggle. But it’s a claim that surely deserves the making. And it’s a very hard franchise act to follow. For no longer are Bond villains purely evil and dismissible as never ‘of our kind dear’. The new Bond villain is very much of ‘our kind’, almost kith and kin. We are suddenly embroiled in a torturous reality. No longer an artifice. Bond is brought back to his childhood home Skyfall. The audience questions what is a lived life. What would happen if you discovered that the nice Iraqi man next door - one legged, his innocent family massacred by stray American bombs - was a terrorist? After the Blair/Bush Iraq war few British Foreign Office officials see the world ever the same again. The death of Ambassador Chris Stephens in Benghazi seems more like a movie than Argo! That of course was that film’s  true ironic story of ironies using a fake movie to free real hostages. And CIA agents squirm shaking their heads with ‘I didn’t sign up for this’? But then Skyfall is just a movie. But then, great movies are never just movies. They ought to be capable of life-changing experiences. Otherwise ‘what is the bloody point of it all’ (as M might say)?

Private eye Harry Caul in Coppola’s The Conversation knows that he’s onto something. And he’s right. Just wrong in where the something lies. He is a consummate professional at pin-pointing the audio in a surveiled conversation. But he is hopeless at twigging that the girl seducing him wants only the tapes not his broken life story. He will always be unable to think laterally and realise that the world is wheels within wheels and that one family member may be loyal to the live long day while another can both love eternally but be as fickle as a nickel freeing itself from a coat pocket. The interesting thing about Tom Cruise movies is that although he projects a hero emerging unscathed one always feels that at heart he is an actor (not just a movie star celebrity) and that he wants the audience to feel that his character has been scathed. Therein lies the problem. 

In the novels Reacher is a sort of superhero albeit a human outsider. And one can project whatever frailties or not upon him as a reader. Some will see reality as fiction and others not. In a film one wants either a semblance of reality or unattainable reality. But not both. In that sense Cruise is perfect for Reacher. We know he’ll never die whatever happens. But for Lee Child’s character to exude humanity on screen (a necessity of the outsider rather than just plain psychopath into which Herzog’s character has evolved- never fearing death with no sympathy nor empathy of others as arguably with the villain Bain in The Dark Knight Rises), we need to believe that Cruise can be broken as Daniel Craig’s Bond was in Skyfall. Child’s novels may read more Mission Impossible but on screen they can really only exist as mission possible. And if Cruise continues surrounding himself with actors such as Herzog and Robert Duvall he may have a chance. Because a character like Reacher is the sum not only of his own parts but those of the good and evil tug-o-war- neither of which Reacher wants or desires, unlike James Bond. 

America now more than ever is the perfect example of French philosopher Deleuze’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia. There’s very little way out. Certainly not for those who gullibly (but understandably) believed that the system would look after them. But perhaps there is hope and all the talk of the ‘fiscal cliff’ is awakening us and maybe more people will consider whether it matters a damn whether one is seen at the best restaurants, with the latest fashions, in the best part of town. But the schism in the system remains. It’s not in the best interests of credit card companies for the small print in customer contracts to become larger. The system wants you to spend not save. The system wants you to aspire and be happy not frugal and content. And now AIG (insurance giant $182 billion bailed out by the American taxpayer) wants to sue the government for a bad interest deal! Shouldn’t the shareholders be suing AIG’s management if they want a case? Who said America isn’t unbelievable, ney unbearable?! The white fiscal cliffs of Capitol Hill? There’s even talk of using a treasury loophole whereby the President can decree a commemorative coin minted to whatever denomination- say, $1 trillion- deposit it back in the treasury and solve the debt crisis. Are we really back to the good old reality days of Bond movies where a ‘Dr. Evil’ poisons all the gold in Fort Knox to control the world? Do you think ordinary people could find a loophole to print commemorative money to pretend they weren’t in debt and buy more houses and things? Oh wait- the banks, brokers companies and their customers already sorta did that for a decade or more hence the entire global meltdown. (Arguably;)!

Polanski’s Chinatown is re-released this week as is Repulsion.

A doco on the Swiss arrest of Polanski Odd Man Out screened at last year’s NYFF. Whose crime is greater? Polanski’s or that justice systems can be used to broker more favourable terms for international banks not willing to divulge all the looting of their ‘Dr. Evils’? The ultimatum in greed of course was Wagner’s Ring Cycle- gold stolen from the Rhine maidens is ultimately returned after it causes nothing but destruction on its journey. The doco Wagner’s Dream (last year’s Tribeca Fest) lovingly detailed the trials and tribulations of the Met Opera’s new Robert Lepage production (the most expensive staging in its history). Filmmaker Susan Froemke did, however, neglect to tell us why the much discussed and lauded video imagery was indeed so important. Nonetheless, seeing this staging live was quite amazing. But then it’s a fairly indestructible 20 odd hours of opera. The ever enterprising FrankfurtOper also had a new production, that at a fraction of the Met’s cost, was damn impressive both musically and visually. Not the same experience as seeing this opera cycle live but both productions are issued on DVD for your comparison should you so accept the mission. A compromise might be the Met Opera's HD Live broadcast in cinemas throughout the world.

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