Unbelievable Unbearable London

a great synthesis of the great body of small partial truths

2011-12-30T10:07:00.000-08:00

world enough and time
Copyright 2009 Andrew Lucre (with obvious free sources)

Do we really? Ever. Want to be where we are? Always hankering for somewhere/something at least once removed? Isn't the Christmas/New Year season a time where we inhabit that limbo or libidiness of just once in a lifetime? Do we take what seems such an innocent step into the shallow tide only to fall flat on our face in the countenance of a higher something. Curtis in Take Shelter (UK distributed by The Works) is perhaps the Everyman of our civilisation. He doesn't want to say 'I told you so' in post-self congratulation, rather, 'I think it is so' in celebration of what it is to behold our planet. Such is the magnetic truth of Jeff Nichols' film (also a Sundance 2011 hit) that any cavils are out-anchored by such a dictum. Particularly in America where normality is projected as so much of a given. After Lars von Trier's typical laser dissection of family-hiss in the face of Melancholia and Earth's extinction in all its Medusa beautification, Another Earth (opener for this year's Raindance Film Fest and this year's Sundance Fest hit and on general release by Fox Searchlight, Dec 9) proved an elegaic tale of how otherness ain't necessarily so. While there are many similarities to the 1969 Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (where everything is an earth but in reverse) Another Earth is more akin to the Philip K. Dick world of how everyday mundanity strangely proves the thing itself.

Fox Searchlight are proving to be a frontrunner for studio indie product: who'd have thought they'd ever take on a film for US distribution such as Shame (the latest from artist Steve McQueen)- Momentum releases in the UK. Like all McQueen's work to say it is 'about' something reduces the work to that only. Shame isn't just about sex addiction. It reeks of people trapped and embrassing architecture both of high-rise and its low-rise people. Of predicaments that are as unruly as the elements. And you'd have thought that the story of We Were Here had been recounted before but no. Sentiment that far outways sentimentality.

Terence Davies' adaption of Rattigan's play The Deep Blue Sea is another case in point. Anyone who knows their Rattigan knows that he was truly a dramatist precursor of John Osbourne's 'kitchen-sink' drama (reference the recent Royal National Theatre revivals) and not merely a slate to be wiped clean. Davies' film is a ballet of looks, desires, felled emotions in silent corridors that outweigh any historical context. Davies pushes the use of extant music to its exteme cinematic ends in his films - no less here than with Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto. Any film director who can match that lithe intensity let alone dance with its music of time should surely be allowed carte blanche to create whatever they wish in the future.

It's an interesting double-bill with Anthony Kimmins' My Own Executioner (B/W,1947) that had a rare showing (all that's available is a scratchy VHS copy) at Andrea Sabbadini's bi-ennial 6th European Psychoanalytic Film Festival this November. Conference delegate opinions were divided about the effectiveness of Kimmins Hollywood tropes e.g music, the trad romantic storyline but few were left unfascinated by the film's rare exploration of the analyst's daily practice and sometime dilemma in treating patients. Migration, the theme of this year's conference, also divided delegates. Some thought that the festival should have focusssed more on literal pycho-geographical films rather than those more to do with border crossings within the mind such as My Own Executioner, Hotel Sahara (Bettina Haasen, Germany, 2009) or the stories of steam room men in Steam of Life (Joonas Berghall and Mika Hotakainen, Finland, 2010).

Yet Sabbadini's choices made for lively discussion and dissent foregrounding the important issue that the pain and trauma of displacement is relative only to the patient's own boundaries that may be even more destructive than anything literally geographic. How a film such as The Reverse (Borys Lankosz, Poland, 2009) couldn't obtain a wider release outside its native audience is tantamount to the fickle politics of world film distribution. It's use of poignancy and wit alleviating the burden of historical guilt crosses the divide of art-house and mainstream so very easily. And the denouement of mother/son reunification is a fascinating masochistic/sado-masochism. Should she have told her son who his father was really? Did she survive through denying her son knowledge? Is delaying the inevitable unearthing of history's walls preferable to its more immediate traumatic opposite? (One is reminded of one of this year's most provocative films Jim Loach's Oranges and Sunshine.) The festival opened with Charlie Chaplin's classic 1917 short The Immigrant and closed with Stefan Le Lay's 2009 short The Postcard about a seaside postcard come to life - its male figure falling (literally) for a girl on the opposite kiosk rack. Even with the transgression of boundaries a happy life is possible - and with the help of analysis it need not be just a sugar pill/rush alternative. A totally apposite way of ending the festival.

And if you fancied that paragraph:
Surviving Life -Jan Svankmajer
Ashes and Diamonds
Zelig
Hannah and Her Sisters
Midnight in Paris (out soon on DVD and Blu-ray)
and The Artist

Film and art aren't an escape from reality - in so many ways they ARE the reality. As actor Morgan Freeman said in a recent CNN interview, god resides in ourselves. In our actions. And it's sad that films are seen less and less in communal picture palace gatherings and so more often on a computer screen. The birth of cinema was a monadic epiphany - the one in many and the many in one as humans gathered to be personally awed and collectively challenged. Martin Scorsese's Hugo 3D (and the 3D is pin-point stunning) bear-hugs the beauty of cinema experience urging us to move on in our lives but not at the expense of forgetting and erasing the past. Adapted by John Logan from Brian Selznick’s 2007 illustrated childrens' book The Invention of Hugo Cabret it's about lost hearts and newfound happiness. And in that regard some may find it all just a wee unchallenging. Yet the film's innocence, grace and minutai of detail trick one into thinking you've seen more than you have. It isn't clever like Christopher Nolan or with the Jean-Pierre Jeunet's (Delicatessen) belligerent, bizarre joy. It is quite simply holding out a hand to feel the wind. Of dipping toes gingerly into the sea even though one senses there is no immediate danger. The film's biographical truth is Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley) an extraordinary chap who, inspired by the Lumière Brothers, unsuccessfully tried to buy a camera from them and instead made his own, made his own films, directing, acting, supervising the sets, hand colouring the negatives - 531 films between 1896 and 1914 . Only to see WWI and most of the celluloid melted down into heels for ladies' shoes (200 films survived). A more depressing tale just could not be told.
A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la Lune) made in 1902 was restored in colour for the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and the London Film Festival of this year screened before Roberto Rossellini's restored rarely seen 1952 comedy about morals, corruption and a magical camera that kills The Machine That Kills People.

And there's more than a sense at the end of the movie that the kids have have had a jolly good nourishing time but that the adults must close the book and get on with grown-up chores. It doesn't feel that this is inadvertent on Scorsese's part. One couldn't have hoped for better casting in Sacha Baron Cohen's dour railway station cop who relentlessly tries ridding the station of the pesky orphan kids. And one wonders whether his bitterness of life has only temporarily disappeared so scared both physically and mentally was he by a war. Kids will leave this film feeling rather smarter than their adults. Yet in that truth lies responsible on their part not to squander that youthful intelligence on manipulative techno frippery. Rather, to harness that observation for detail, their agility of thought, and not so much to create a better world but be cognoscent that they have that power first and foremost within themselves.
Pipilotti Rist's Eyeball Massage and George Condo at the Hayward Gallery (look out for the tiny surreal 'dolls house' twinkling the Internationale
and Gerhard Richter at the Tate Modern

With much the same message, Aardman, the wacky Wallace & Gromit animation Brit company, have teamed up with Sony for Arthur Christmas. It's a tour de force of technical wizardry and character detail that's unlikely to leave anyone disgruntled (except maybe an old fogey of a reindeer).

Make Someone Happy (Performed by Bill Nighy)
Arthur Christmas (Suite) - Harry Gregson Williams
Tony Bennett/Bill Evans - Make Someone Happy
vintage (that only youth will provide) 1963 Stevie Wonder:

Doris Day
Judy Garland performed live at the Russel Hotel in London, 29 November, 1964. Judy was appearing for her fan-club, and was accompanied by future husband Mark Herron at the event.
Barbra Streisand (2009).
and the version that inspired them:
And just because they were such an adorable pair of songwriters some Comden and Green: Comes once in a Lifetime from their musical Subways are for Sleeping- Judy Garland's version
Doris Day: Who Knows What Might Have Been recorded on Nov. 21, 1961
Mary Martin - Never Never Land fromPeter Pan)

it never is like a story

2011-11-03T03:09:00.000-07:00

Perhaps a clarification is needed. Far from criticising the annual BFI London Film Festival this blog has nothing but applause for its ability to muster 150 odd films into a coherent force of cinema appreciation. Having managed to see about 75% of those this year I can speak from experience. Yet like any large organisation factions will always form fostering single agendas. One I've heard verbalised over the years is "we're not interested in entertainment". All that can be voiced in response to that is, one man's poison is another man's socialism. To even think that the woes of a nation's people are galvanised around an 'art house' film is of course ridiculous. On a weekend they are off watching a Hollywood movie rather than seeing themselves cavort on screen and would be doing so even without the marketing strategies of a major studio. There are of course exceptions like Brazil's police corruption Elite Squad now in its sequel release.

That's not to say that the likes of Ken Loach exposing moral and political hypocrisy have had their day. By no means true. But I felt this year at the London Film Festival, and have always felt, that the Festival continues to survive and succeed not through offering an alternative cinematic politics, rather, by celebrating the diversity of cinema's possibilities: one man's 'entertainment' is another man's 'watching paint dry'.

Such musing congealed this week through watching 4 DVD re-issues of Francis Ford Coppola's work: The Outsiders (1983), The Conversation (1974), One from the Heart (1982) and Hammett (1982, directed by Wim Wenders at Coppola's Zoetrope Studios in California). And the irony of much good work born out of Hollywood is that it would only have had a life in the first place thanks to the independents in film production. A point often missed by Tinseltown's critics. Paramount, for example, only agreed to make The Conversation because of Coppola's The Godfather success - keeping him happy until he made Part 2. Warner Brothers turned down most of Coppola's early scripts such as American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) and cut roughly 22 minutes from The Outsiders in order to liven the pace and focus on one character - all restored in this DVD version from 2003. Yet it's those very two qualities that make The Outsiders what it is: a sweeping 'Gone With the Wind' story of three brothers. Not the childhood survival story of just one kid.

Opinions have always been divided about Coppola's work but undeniable is his love of cinema - paraded upon the big screen. I confess to have always been smitten with that parade. The Outsiders romantic theme (composed by Coppola's father Carmine and sung by Stevie Wonder) oughta seem smaltzy. But it fits the cinemascope camera work like a glove (Coppola, as always, trying new techniques in this movie such as split diopters). This isn't and was never meant to be like a Dardennes brothers movie of human 'reality' (for want of a better word). Coppola was begged to make a film of S.E. Hinton's 1967 novel by a school class in his local town of Fresno who even signed a petition. This was post Apocalypse Now and Coppola was working on a relatively low budget. And from an audition of around 1,000 unknowns, he and his casting director/producer Fred Roos launched the careers of Tom Cruise (pre Risky Business), Matt Dillon, Partick Swayze, Diane Lane, Emilio Estevez and Rob Lowe. The 2-disc DVD is loaded with extras including a commentary from Coppola and one from the 2003 cast reunion for the new cut. "After you everyone in my life was a bozo," laments Patrick Swayze of Coppola.

Listening to Coppola's commentary on The Conversation you see why such an accolade is heartfelt and not just shootin' some breeze. The DVD extras of Coppola's original script dictation tapes (to be typed up by his assistant) at a local cafe are just fascinating. This is all further enhanced by Walter Murch's separate commentary - being his first editing job and non-union he was credited with sound montage. For a general audience both commentaries will be intriguing. For the die hard cineastes Murch has some great editing and art direction tips, we learn that the first cut was 5 hours, that Haskell Wexler was originally DP but there was a falling out, and that Harry's dream sequence was supposed to end the film (Coppola's dictated ending was different again). Composer David Shire had hoped for a big orchestral score but it was Coppola who persuaded him to write the solo piano score (Shire reveals in his interview extra that it was this score that generated most of his work ever since): a score cleverly sound mixed by Murch as the film progresses.

No extras (alas) on One from the Heart and Hammett but what CINEMA. At one point you wish Coppola had just gone the whole hog and made the former a musical. But then you realise that's precisely the point: that it isn't. It is all real or rather sur-real. And wow, remember the great Raul Julia, looks to kill and a dancer/singer. And oh, Nastassja Kinsky as a lonely, errant circus performer. This IS about the ordinary lives of people struggling to be someplace else in their head. And who better to bring the tattered glitter of our imaginations to town than Tom Waits. "The most highly implausible thing I've ever seen in my life."

Pierre Thoretton's documentary on fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent L'Amour Fou may seem a strange segue. But what is different here is that Pierre Bergé's (his partner in business and love) reflections aren't simply a bio-pic of the man. The details of his art and antique collecting, his houses - the Normandy 'Proustian' dacha, the grand auction after his death, aren't just celebrations of dead objects. As Bergé put it they are like birds flying away to a new life rather than a coffin. And he creates an image of Yves Saint Laurent as a man in constant search of escape. His couture would take flight giving women "confidence and allowing them to assert themselves". He was 2 years ahead of the student occupation of the Odeon theater by creating ready to wear (prêt-à-porter) clothes reflecting the needs of the street. "He was never fooled by haute couture," notes Bergé. Like most artists, perhaps, he achieved in his art what he couldn't in life "an absolute purity...a kind of [musical] harmony...the more you simplify, the more you risk boring people". Screening at the ICA Nov 7 (DVD Nov 21).

So much of this year's BFI London Film Festival had films of escape, the road, of a past that would never be hence - the staples of cinema. What price fame in Miss Bala (general release, Oct 28) where a young Mexican girl, by accident, is caught up in a drug cartel war. She has no choice but to win the beauty pageant (rigged in her favour) and co-operate with the government coup. Perhaps a scenario not as far away from one's doorstep as we'd like to believe.

The protagonist in Americano (debut directed by Mathieu son of Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy) travels to Mexico in a strange search for his dead mother's friend. The strands wrap together maybe a little too neatly in pursuing Lola (some of life does!) but it's an inventive, stylised journey recommended worth the taking if or when it's ever released. Las Acacias (released by Verve, Dec 2) won director Pablo Giorgelli this year's prestigious Sutherland Award. Nothing happens on this lumber truck trek from Paraguay to Buenos Aires but of course we watch the man and his 'hitchhiker' with baby in lap. And by simply watching maybe we remember more about the world around us. Raindance offered attention holding parallel road trips either side of the Pacific in All That Remains while Spanish director Alberto Morais's 80 year old widower begins inhabiting his Spanish Civil war past on his road trip, The Waves (Las Olas) (LFF).

Still yet to be UK released is Julia Loktev's Day Night Day Night (2006) from last year's LFF. She obviously has a fan base here 'cause the Saturday matinee of her latest The Loneliest Planet (in one of the larger Vue cinemas) was 'technically' sold out and in reality certainly near that. If you hadn't read Loktev's festival catalogue entry, "how do you forgive someone that does not want to be forgiven?" you'd be asking similar questions anyway after seeing this film. It mirrors the intensity of Day Night Day Night but revolves around two hikers, their guide and a wilderness. Is HERE from American music video director Branden King any less focussed than Loktev as he follows two trekkers - a satellite mapper and a photographer to Armenia? An unfair comparison perhaps but an interesting one in discussing the power of cinema.

Brit debut Junkhearts falls far short of most of the aforementioned films -it did, however, earn Candese Reid Best Actress at this year's Fest Awards. Actor Dexter Fletcher's Wild Bill (LFF) was an extremely accurate depiction of a London ex-crim trying to go straight and be an initially reluctant single dad. It ain't a happy nor contrived ending. Sparks fly from the dialogue of gay themed Weekend (opening this week), and though it's well worn territory there's much that's sizzlingly fresh from the cast and director in early 'Godard-ian' mode Andrew Haigh. Or was it Rohmer? I'm not sure he was thinking of either;) Another Brit debut Broken Lines (from last year's LFF) has been out a month plus, so catch the DVD. Strong performances (including Paul Bettany against type as a beleaguered boxer) and a keen sense of screen sculpting from director Sallie Aprahamian.

Award for Best Brit feature at Raindance this year went to Ron Eyal and Eleanor Burke's Stranger Things. A grieving young Oona returns to her deceased mother's house striking up a rapport with the resident tramp. Many will find it more engaging than Junkhearts and Eyal and Burke are well on top of their actors and concept. Whether Johnny Daukes' Acts of Godfrey will ever get a release is anyone's guess! But it's one of the funniest, most original things to emerge in ages out of Brit cinema. Anyone remember Richard Jones' production of La Bête that played Broadway and the West End? Well Godfrey is all in rhyming verse as well - Simon Callow (narrator) must have fallen off his chair in amazement when this script hit his palate. Divine intervention, sales motivation, love and revenge meet Pam Ayres is the pitch. Believe it or not it works! American writer/director Andy Viner's sitcom/vampire/horror Dick Night was also clever fun and deserving of being seen more widely. Norwegians in Los Angeles Marie Kristiansen/Patrik Syversen have a great future given their DSLR feature Exteriors. Two struggling young actresses, two 'a-hole' boyfriends but the result is reminiscent of John Cassevetes.
At The Zabludowicz Collection is the first UK solo exhibition of US photographer/video artist Laurel Nakadate, and the way her photos soak in 'light' are quite compelling.

Across the pond in New York Jack Goes Boating (out this week in London) is Philip Seymour Hoffman's directing debut (also acting in most scenes) that will surely warm your heart. More than that? Well, does it need more than that is really the question? Based on Bob Glaudini's play (originally performed by Hoffman, John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega) the film easily out-runs most actor/director debuts. Or indeed directing debuts full stop. If we crave 'more than that' it boils down to the script that we've sorta heard before: ordinary people trying to make do with being ordinary. Is Jack not being able to cook or swim a-typical ordinary? In learning to do these things to get the attention of the girl stuck selling funerals Connie (Amy Ryan) extraordinary? Glaudini's play, for many tastes, may just get too stuck on being normal. Hoffman elevates these characters (including his own) to stalwarts in Manhattan's shifting neuroses. But there's an even stranger heart yearning to break loose in Hoffman's performance and we long to be pumped through those extra-ordinary arteries. We don't necessarily want to go Terry Gilliam waltzing in Grand Central (Fisher King) but we sure don't want to go back to driving the limo ourselves. It's not wrong to dream; only errant to delude ourselves that we are the king.
Charms and Miracles continues at the Wellcome Institute (Video interviews HERE). And I'm too late in mentioning Bill Fontana's sound sculpture for the Institute's front entrance. Sorry...but get a taste of it HERE. And you missed Audio Obscura - a new sound work by poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw conceived for the public spaces of St Pancras International. Wandering around with her stories in my ears was a great way of retreating from the nerves of heaving travelers. The result was creating a third narrative all of one's own.

And a new Picturehouse cinema has just opened in Hackney. Distributed by the same company, artist Miranda July's second feature The Future opens this week. Too whimsical? Insubstantial? It's Miranda July, she's predictably unpredictable. And quite possibly extraordinary? Jacques Deray's little seen La Piscine (The Swimming Pool) (1969) has received a very nice clean up (out on Blu-ray): Alain Delon and a tres jejeune Jane Birkin wandering around a Côte d'Azur pool scantily clad. But the co-script with Jean-Claude Carrière is quite a subtle satire on aspiration and the idle rich and becomes almost Brechtian when Michel Legrand's song Ask yourself why? chimes in over the soirée.

2011-10-31T02:48:00.000-07:00

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;)

2011-10-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-10-17T05:17:00.001-07:00

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

2011-10-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

"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...

to hold the sky in your hand, a moon, one star

2011-09-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

Not so much that this blog chooses 'a theme' for a posting rather that the world chooses its own similarities. Sort of nature vs nurture. Where does power lie? French philosopher Foucault wrote extensively in Discipline and Punish on disciplinary institutions and the "docile bodies" resulting from them. Power was at its most literal when one mid-morning last week electricity was cut to a section of the Jubilee line underground and 600 were forced to walk through tunnels. A familiar London tale over the past years.
Art on the Underground Acts of Kindness...goodness knows they need them down there.
A police presence to keep them ever so docile: citizens expected to cope or else. All will be fine by the Olympics Mayor Boris assures us. No doubt the chance for another photo opportunity with his band of merry Met Police officers. We have the power! Most of those rioters were wanton criminals anyway claimed Home Secretary Theresa May! Hmmm, George Orwell is alive and well.
Police are barely able to write says lawyer
A profile of the incoming Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe.
"Britain’s biggest artists are joining forces for a major new project entitled MINDFUL, an exhibition and arts festival at the Old Vic Tunnels (22 – 27 Sept). The project, initiated and curated by British artist and Mind Ambassador Stuart Semple in collaboration with creative directors of the Old Vic, will raise money for a new creative therapies fund within Mind, the leading mental health charity in England and Wales."
Toby Mott's 'riot' art

Nice photo too last week - Sarkozy and Cameron either side of of Libya's 'liberation'. Playing down the fact that the 'allies' had collaborated with Gaddafi regularly redacting terrorist suspects back to Libya.

Glamour of the Gods: Hollywood Portraits (National Portrait Gallery until Oct 23) may seem a rather old-fashioned 'easy option' exhibition for the NPG (organised by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art from the John Kobal Foundation). But there's something quite eerie and awesome seeing all these movie stars air-brushed to perfection. One thinks of Russell Brand snapping his wife Katy Perry without make-up as we peer at the more professional untouched negative of a Joan Crawford close-up. And so much more revealing and beautiful it is. The drawback of the show is that there's precious little about the techniques of each photographer's style. And the Crawford neg is the only photo 'unmasked'.
London's 'lost' film history is catalogued online
Future Cinema’s latest event

Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement is one of many an Academy show with an agenda. Monsieur Degas wasn't just an artist for the dance, he was a scientist of it studying it from every angle and when photography began to elucidate and isolate the science of movement Degas bought a camera too! Perhaps the most interesting idea with which one leaves this show is what would Degas have created had he been born a decade or two later painting well into the C20th? There's even a whole darkened room finale devoted to a brief glimpse of the man as a chutzpah filmmaker captures him walking down a Paris street. A few ballet photos of Degas survive and if you're not well versed in the history of motion picture movement you will be after this show. There was an impressionist side to late Degas as he experimented with light on his dancers. Would he have become more 'graphic' and 'colourised' like early Van Dongen? Or would he have simply retreated back to his old world in the face of the awesome new? We shall never know, but the Academy's show treats Degas as if he were in a Tate Modern retrospective (although obviously not as comprehensive). And we look more closely at what we thought we always knew.

Andrew Rossi's documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times covers familiar ground - survival of mainstream media in the age of an 'independent' internet - yet still gets one pondering the question as you exit and walk the streets. One young blogger (Brian Stelter - tvnewser.com) taken on by the NYT is half jokingly described by veteran scribe David Carr as "a robot assembled in the basement of the NYT to destroy me". I know the feeling Mr Carr;) - Russian dolls: I'm sure my colleagues say the same about me. Lucky for 'them' I don't blog on the day. Yet! Rossi's doco is fairly thorough and unbiased towards all his interviewees questioning "implied credibility" vs agenda and advocacy, and the 'aggregating' net outlets like Gawker that 'give people what they want'. Even the NYT follows the latter dictum often placing the same news story on its front page for the New York edition yet on an inside page for national circulation. That's where the film stops just when the debate starts becoming really interesting. Ironically as paper advertising revenues flounder, the advertising crux of giving or convincing people of 'what they really want' is fashioning the internet.
"According to US magazine Newsweek's latest cover story, Grimsville, UK, there are estates in the capital where kids keep cockroaches as pets. Is the city really that bad? ...the Grimsville, UK, cover is only on the international edition. The US Newsweek cover says "Let's Just Fix It!", in relation to a story on American self-reliance."

One invaluable tip for actors is that one can really only play the similarities of a character's traits to oneself rather than the differences. Director Jonathan Miller when working with Jack Lemmon on Long Day's Journey into Night believed that actors could only effectively play characters somehow 'related' to themselves. If one is to portray Hitler the question resides within one and not without. The will to power isn't some extra-terrestrial force. Or perhaps the intricately inventive Brit classic Quatermass and the Pit isn't that 'hokey' after all. (DVD re-released on both formats with the juicy extras available only on Blu-ray Oct 10)

Pablo Larraín's Post Mortem is a film (like his previous, equally idiosyncratic Tony Manero) that will be seen by the very few. A huge shame, for Larraín asks us to look at people. Or rather allows us the cinematic space to feel the human complexity of a political situation without ever overtly thrusting in our face. This is 1973 Santiago, Chile the eve of Pinochet's military coup against socialist president Salvador Allende. Alfredo Castro (star of Tony Manero) is a morgue attendant - while staying alive himself by doing more than just fantasize about his seedy cabaret showgirl neighbour Nancy (Antonia Zegers). Larraín's grainy 16mm camera observes quietly like a cockroach well-past humanity's final moments of ruthless, pragmatic survival.

The camera of Tomas Alfredson's cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is another quiet observer as in his previous vampire adaption Let The Right One In. Almost a pervert: "It’s all about what you don’t see, what’s outside the frame. You understand?" Alfredson is quoted as saying. Yet Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan's screenplay (originally Peter Morgan) of John le Carré's 1974 Cold War spy novel moves fast, almost to the point sometimes where you want to double-back a few steps. Yet the camera convinces you you've missed nothing, you might still spot something noone else has. Le Carré is quoted as feeling that Gary Oldman's chief Brit spy master is "a Smiley patiently waiting to explode" - one of the film's many faultlessly cast roles. It's not a pace/space regular cinema going audiences will be used to. Yet it couldn't be more a London/Brit film if it tried - as if walking down a deserted night-time street convinced that you'd seen the truth but not quite able to piece everything together. It continues gnawing away. A polar opposite to Fernando Meirelles' The Constant Gardener adaptation (his 360 opens the 55th BFI London Film Festival Oct 12). Perhaps.
Cameron was approached to spy for the KGB
The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman

The streets of New York have never looked like those of West Side Story (1961 - 50th anniversary - stunning, just stunning restored print of the Super Panavision 70 - Daniel L. Fapp's camera) before and since! Director Robert Wise (The Sound of Music) hadn't even directed a movie musical before. The choreographer Jerome Robbins is given co-directing credit, and many stories abound about all that. But it's what's up on screen at the end of the collaborative process that counts (though Marnie Nixon's credit for singing Maria (Natalie Wood) isn't). It's a cliche to speak of New York City's 'urban' beauty of decay but this classic film of the stage musical proves why they do and did speak and why the "the whole ever mother-lovin' street [s]" have lured all sorts of photographers to its inner depths. West Side Story is a film of sentiment rather than sentimentality (the stage show loosely based on the love that dares not speak its name from Romeo and Juliet). Elvis Presley was originally approached for the role of Tony. Fascinating idea to ponder. And it's hard to imagine any group of kids (even and especially today) that wouldn't be caught by the spell of this unique film. It's comment on policing is as ever true. Like the kids, they're not all rotten apples but it only takes one for the orchard to be felled. And Stephen Sondheim's lyrics should be a lesson even to every rapper let alone Leonard Bernstein's rhythms of the street.
Remember photographer Corinne Day from the 90s?

Much as with West Side Story's tomboy character Anybodys, writer/director Celine Sciamma (Water Lilies) Tomboy is a minutely directed and affecting (shot on the DSLR Canon 7D for €500,000) is a French film about a 10-year-old girl exploring male sexual acceptance. Using the wide cinema screen (2:35) is the slightly more traditional French love story
Mademoiselle Chambon . Perhaps its cinematic metaphor of life's building blocks, beginning with parents struggling to define French grammar's direct object, is at times a tad clunky. And we later see a Hammershoi art poster on the wall of Ms Chambon's apartment - house-builder Jean (Vincent Lindon)'s son's teacher and the object of his elicit affair. As with the lighting dialectics of Hammershoi's interiors, so too does director Stéphane Brizé unite and separate his characters on the wide-screen.

Minute detail is the key to Ben Turnbull's comic book collages currently on show at the
Eleven gallery (Photos HERE). And though not created to co-incide with the commemorations of 9/11 they are an strident comment on the nature of power, good vs evil. Strangely, so too, is the dance doco The Way of the Morris a quiet hit at the SXSW fest: "I think that Americans might just be the best audience. Morris dancing won't carry the stigma of embarrassment it does in the UK. They might be more able to relate to it through the universal human need to dance," said director (and actor) Tim Plester who follows his uncle's tour from North Oxfordshire to France. The Morrismen's links to tradition and WW1 (the 90th anniversary of their 'twin' French graves and why on earth one would want to continue them into the present are fully and rather touchingly explored by Plester.

Artist Joseph Kosuth more cerebrally prompts us to question our existence through the power of words and he's been doing so as far back as Chomsky and Marshall McLuhan. Not much use for the lovers in The Panic in Needle Park (1971) whose survival was pitched to the studio as a junky Romeo and Juliet. Second Sight DVD does as its name suggests as is rarely even wrong. The film's screenplay was written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, adapted from James Mills' book. Ten years on from West Side Story and much of New York City was little different. 'Needle Park' was the nickname of the heroin addicts hangout - a tiny traffic island near 72nd Street and Broadway (now totally gentrified). The studio (20th Century Fox) originally didn't want either Pacino or Kitty Winn (Best Actress, 1971 Cannes Fest). And it was in fact 20 minutes of uncut footage from this film that earned Pacino his role in Paramount's The Godfather. In many, many ways the film hasn't dated an iota. The unlikely coupling of the two leads is made totally plausible by Jerry Schatzberg's directing and that thing they call on-screen chemistry. There's an early screen appearance from Raúl Juliá, and Adam Holender's 'Polish school' verite cinematography is alone worth the price of admission along with the DVD interview extras.

Also from Second Sight DVD is Hal Ashby's (Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, Being There) final feature film 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) written by Oliver Stone. None of Ashby's trademark wacky, political surrealism here. But contrary to his critics, he proves he could still deliver a damn fine movie 2 years before his death. The performances from Jeff Bridges as a de-toxed LA cop, Rosanna Arquette as the hooker he's unwittingly embroiled with, and saves from drug smuggler Andy Garcia (classic 'smoking gun' Garcia) - these performances arrive on screen from well directed fine actors. Ashby never went out with a wimper. We could do with a DVD of Ashby's first feature from 1970, The Landlord (in CinemaScope). Someone?

Jeff Bridges again on top form (two years after Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show) in The Last American Hero (1973) - loosely based on Tom Wolfe's series of 1965 articles for Esquire magazine. "I know what it's like to wanna be somebody and I think if you daydream yourself into thinkin' you could whip the world single-handed you're going to end up with your arse in a sling," advises the the 'nowheresville' receptionist Marge (Valerie Perrine) to the Southern 'hicksville' NASCAR racing car wannabe 'Junior' Jackson (Bridges). Does 'Junior' sell out to the corporates or does he beat them at their own game and finally prove a warrior son to his 'bootlegging' dad (Art Lund)? Traditional fare this movie but with the stubborn, supple heart of a Country and Western song.
Jim Croce's I Got A Name from The Last American Hero

If bad boy Dane director Nicolas Winding Refn proves only one thing in Drive it's what all the Ryan Gosling fuss is all about. Drive could be dubbed 'neo-noir' - Refn and his cameraman Newton Thomas Sigel (The Usual Suspects and originally an artist) don't so much paint with Los Angeles light, they sculpt. In fact, they managed to shoot on that city's few rainy/grey hazed mornings. Maybe Refn watched some Jean-Pierre Melville. And maybe not. And you'll either be enveloped by Drive or bored by its pretense. But Refn is uneering in whatever it is that he's doing. Consummately. Even Irene (Carey Mulligan) seems to watch rather than partake in the LA chimeras passing through her life. Her lone, beautiful smile seeming to hold sway as if an anchor to the depths of that desert town. Gosling's 'driver' almost mute, inscrutable, his metal a poor carapace to the magnet of LA's 'Westward ho'. Except there's no West left to 'ho'. Only a 'Flying Dutchman' of temptation washed aground from New York and left forever to wander these parched seas. Until, like a child, we open our eyes to the cut-glass dawn.

In 2009, a tribute was held to honor the work of Hal Ashby hosted by director Cameron Crowe. Pearl Jam Twenty is Crowe's doco charting the rise and rise of the title's band for their 20th anniversary. It's not always clear who's who if you're not a fan already but for anyone interested in the history of rock and grunge music it's far from a disappointing 2 hours. There's even a BBC clip (when the band were at their height in the 90's) with the presenters saying that they'd never heard of them. THis was the time when the band bravely took Ticketmaster to Washington's Capitol Hill and the Dept of Justice claiming that the organistion should have been giving the band a share/control of the company's profits in lieu of their artistic copyright. What the band's fans saw in Pearl Jam was their very impetus: a sense of belonging, of feeling alienated from the prevailing culture, "the most dependably, unpredictable" band in Rock went one recent quote given that the band would try and make their live concerts as spontaneous as possible.
Trailer

It may seem a far cry from Pearl Jam to Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri (Special Jury Prize at Cannes, 1963 losing the Palme d'Or to The Leopard). Not so, when Japanese filmmakers at the time were at the vanguard of dissident expression in that country. Eureka DVD, as always, has great booklet notes: "[Ozu]'s characters ultimately accept that they are powerless to alter their circumstances. In contrast, Kobayashi’s characters risk their very existence by coming into conflict with the forces of injustice." Kobayashi': “In any era, I am critical of authoritarian power...in Harakiri it was feudalism. They pose the same moral conflict in terms of the struggle of the individual against society.” His previous film The Human Condition (1958–61) about WWII's Pacific War was “the culmination of human evil.” And The Thick-Walled Room "was shelved by Shochiku Ofuna for four years, as a result of its controversial suggestion that those responsible for Japanese wartime atrocities were not the minor, or “B” and “C,” war criminals but those at the top. Kobayashi had been indignant that, at the end of the war, many soldiers and low-ranking officers were punished cruelly, while many of those directly responsible for the crimes escaped censure." "Since I had come to the end of pursuing realism in film, this new mode of expression [the use of traditional aesthetics] delighted me,” notes Kobayashi. It's worth bearing in mind these quotes given that the film's not an easy watch (like say Eureka's Pigs and Battleships). Fantastic, piercing Tōru Takemitsu score too.

Westerns director John Ford is said by legend to have got his first break when the head of the studio was looking for a director: "try Jack Ford he yells loud". He learnt everything from his brother Francis and the best advice: "keep the audience glad it's seeing the picture" advice that nowadays is either overipened or undernourished. The 40 films Ford directed for Universal between 1917-1922 are considered lost (from 1920 he was on loan from Universal to Fox). The Iron Horse (1924) is a silent DW Griffith's style epic of America's first transcontinental railroad (inspired by Paramount's The Covered the year before). This 2-disc set has both the shorter European version and the uncut American one. THere's also the rather beautifully slightly surreal 30min doco from Tag Gallagher, Then Came a Dream. The film's heroine Madge Bellamy (Bela Lugosi's White Zombie -1932) spent the rest of her life in poverty before dying in 1990 and the publication of her autobiography, A Darling of the Twenties.

But if you want cheering up with a message then head for Tucker & Dale vs Evil, Pride and Prejudice meets Deliverance;) It's premise is just so simple you'll wish you went out and made a movie on it yourself. The violence, though quite graphic (it's comedy/horror), will have your 'mum' reminding you that she told you not to trust those college boys. Don't bother thinking whether Tucker and Dale would 'hit it off' outside the movie screen. Just have fun.

And another movie with a moral: Jurassic Park (1993) is back (a tie-in with the digitally remastered Oct 25 Blu-ray release) . And thank the lord, no 3D - it has enough embedded sensorama to scare the bejessus out of you. What a GREAT, GREAT movie. Even if you've seen it loads of times and know just what's coming e.g. the greedy fat bloke getting stung in the eyes in a tropical storm, it still doesn't spoil your pleasure of Spielberg's wondrous cinema. And how come his special effects look miles better than what most technicians nowadays produce at 100 times the cost? Shame, shame. The monologue given to Jurassic Park's creator - fellow director and actor Richard Attenborough's (again, a film unthinkable without his casting) is one of the greats of cinema. And a warning to us and the world, as were the novels of JP's author Michael Crichton. By all and every means dream. Every waking hour. The only principle that will ever unite us - a sense of wonder. But no fence in the entire universe will ever protect us from our own shadow.

"by comparison with the reality, my [blog] is as tame as a holiday postcard" (Le Carré with bracketed addition by Lucre)

Life nowadays is a funny something

2011-08-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

At the end of the day, we all live in different realities. Right? And if we haven't actually experienced something for ourselves, we will all inevitably have a different sense of the truth. No? The question keeps asking itself, why do we go to an art gallery, a film, a book reading? Is there really any human difference between those experiences and that of attending a sports event? Isn't it ultimately a search for belonging, for meaning in our lives? Prince Charles visited some of the sites decimated by the riots a fortnight ago and concluded that youths joined gangs for a sense of belonging. Often it's worthwhile to state the obvious. Tony Blair hit the front page of last week's Observer with his opinion piece on the riots concluding that these were isolated citizens in the minority of our good society and all that we needed to do was get back to his policies (promulgated as PM) of helping dysfunctional families.

But did Mr Blair see the real world either? The argument is a book in itself, of course. But Britain has always been a divided society. It tried (arguably succeeded) in leading the world in being a tolerant society. But for decades the money started running out to support the infrastructure for such noble ideals. New Labour created a new middle-class but ironically its result has been to out-price any new-coming house-buyers from any major town or city and create another set of under-classes. No-one could have foreseen last decade's multitude of financial debacles nor the Iraq War. Could New Labour have worked in an ideal world?

The roots of Britain's discontent lie far deeper than just dysfunctional families. Not all is lost of course and never will be (therein lies Blair's optimism and vindication) as many of America's inner-city interventions have proven. This year's Oscar winning In a Better World by Danish director Susanne Bier explores our notions of tolerance and forbearance. It's a confrontational yet life-affirming film, arguably a discourse rather than a vision for the world. The irony is that she may never have got it made (through Danish outfit Zentropa) if it weren't for the dystopian visions of Lars von Trier (his latest Melancholia opens end-Sept) who scorched an international reputation for that company. And who openly made fun of Bier (apologetically) at his Cannes press conference this year. He mentioned the Nazis and was banned from the festival. The Chapman brothers (at both White Cube spaces) eerily create an installation of life-size Nazis (like magnets that both repulse and attract) garnering them mostly praise (it really does need to be experienced). Go figure.

Von Trier's groundbreaking films are unlikely to ever win an Academy Award® (not that there aren't some very fine Academy Award® winning films). But films that win such awards will always tend to embrace the ground of life rather than break the turf. The concert film of Glee is a case in point. The stereotypes of this hit TV series are life-affirming to the minorities it champions. Who could possibly criticise that achievement? Just as the guy who blinked twice on YouTube and followed up with his confessionals went on to be one of the most widely viewed in the world. It's a sense of belonging.

But belonging can also be hewn out of dystopia as Athina Rachel Tsangari shows in her film Attenberg: “I don’t use psychology,” she has said. “I prefer biology or zoology. These are my tools." Marina's (Ariane Labed) father Spyros is dying of cancer and she forms a bond with Bella (Evangelia Randou). Together they watch Sir David Attenborough animal docs, dance, kiss and generally avoid any other human contact. As with last year's perversely provocative Greek film Dogtooth (same cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis) it is a meditation on the barriers between our inner selves and society. Are we any happier joining in the social mores of our race?

Another Dane, Lone Scherfig has helmed the film of David Nicholls's book One Day. College in Edinburgh almost unites Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturges) but life (we witness their same July 15 from 1988 to 2011) thence teases them apart. Scherfig's skill (cf An Education) is in getting up close and personal to find a character's truth. Her latest film is no exception. And many times we roll with this mirror to our nature. However, a novel allows us space to dream while a conventional film does not. Therein lies the film's failures not so much in the material.

If you've queued for hours one dreary, grey London summer morning in the vain hope of getting a ticket to see the bare-breasted torso of Jude Law in Anna Christie (the rest of the show's attributes are apparently first-rate too), try The Museum of Broken Relationships open til Sept 4: a sad, fascinating show touring from Zagreb, initiated by the Tristan Bates theatre, and spread over two Covent Garden spaces plus a few window nooks in surrounding shops. Objects with their attached 'broken stories' have been donated to the Museum by their owners and suspended in time like the volcanic aspic of Pompeii. Inspired or depressed you're certain never to walk alone with your scars after seeing this show.

Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar has spend much of his time living in another reality namely Madrid. His films find the truth of life in its melodrama, often multiple dramas within the same movie. The Skin I Live In has Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas who only seems to become more human the longer he works;) obsessed with his plastic surgery techniques. It's a far slower, more meditative, even more voyeuristic film than we're used to from Almodóvar. He creates skin that is both a metaphor for identity and a membrane for our tolerance of existence. He even seems to be toying with his viewer giving them both the entertainment they crave but also suggesting that our own inner life is far more disturbing and incisive than anything Almodóvar himself could conjure on the screen. Normally edgy 'politically aware' distributors Metrodome have savvily nabbed what could only be called Ming Dynasty soft-porn, 3D Sex & Zen-Extreme Ecstasy. Now's your chance if you've never seen a 3D nipple (and there are plenty to choose from here). Might even be a route into introducing teenage students into the semiotics of Umberto Eco and simulacra;) Or even the fine art of Chinese ceramics.

Sergei Paradjanov played with identity in The Colour Of Pomegranates, 1969 (a world 'classic' just out on DVD) outraging the censors by casting the same actress as both iconic C18th poet Sayat Nova and his seductress Anna-two halves of the same soul. He was imprisoned by the authorities who feared that he'd become a figurehead for young intellectual Ukranian nationalists. The film was commissioned for the 250th anniversary of Sayat Nova's birth - he wrote in 3 languages, viewed as a symbol of the brotherhood of the trans-Caucasus and promoted by central government as a path to united socialism. The original release was a travesty of the director's vision - and only by watching Levon Grigoryan's (Paradjanov's assistant) 2006 doco DVD extra can we gauge the full vision of the director's "poetic subtext of the everyday object". This Second Sight release is brimming with other extras such as Daniel Bird's specially commissioned doco The World is a Window and an audio commentary by one of the actors who was cast because of his authentic beard - though some phrases are a little hard to understand through his thick accent.
Legend Of the Suram Fortress DVD

A review at the time by Willy Haas of F.W. Murnau’s 1921 silent Schloß Vogelöd (Castle Vogelöd:The Revelation of a Secret) notes: "Murnau’s artistic tendency is to moderate strong gestures into others more noble and subtle. This makes him more successful than any other director in conveying intimate dialogue, the completely silent exchanges of the heart, as in the scene of the confession, where the emotion is expressed through the extraordinary tension of the bodies." The film is even more remarkable given that it was shot in only 16 days. A 30min DVD featurette shows how Murnau used sets to illuminate the character's emotions e.g. false perspective, inspired by the art of Käthe Kollwitz. Also from Eureka DVD is a very strange, rather slow Romanian tale Strigoi giving a sort of Ken Loach twist to the vampiric genre. And if you didn't know that Howard J. Ford & Jonathan Ford had over 100 commercials to their credit you'd be awestruck by the sheer technical brilliance of their zombies in Africa pic The Dead - a hit at London’s Frightfest. You don't have to give this film the 'sympathy' vote just 'cause you've heard all their trials and tribulations e.g. losing their leading man to malaria. What is lacking, though, is anything particularly new or inventive for the zombie genre. That said, you're never bored and the fact that you expect more to happen than it actually does is tantamount to the Ford brothers skill in the use of suspenseful cinema. There may indeed be a message trying to escape here but there isn't that extra twist to allow it to do so. Still, you'll happily buy a ticket for the Fords next adventure given this quality product.

Another award winning ad director turning to feature films is Ben Wheatley (whose debut last year Down Terrace divided critics). On the strength of that and his latest Kill List Wheatley's one of the few Brit directors alongside the likes of Shane Meadows who's idiosyncratic enough to deserve having their name above the title. There's a documentary edginess to the camerawork and to the way Wheatley allows us unto the lives of his characters. The 'hit man family' plot descriptions don't sound like much on paper. But when executed they're really quite spine-tingling and excitingly enigmatic. It's been a while since a Brit director had us on the edge of our seats (in Blair Witch vein) and if you prefer your violence suggested off-screen (like the Tarantino Reservoir Dogs ear slicing) then Wheatley's brand of entertainment is probably not up your street.

After In Bruges we all eagerly awaited Martin McDonagh's brother writer-director John Michael feature. The Guard's tone isn't quite as sure-footed and nimble as the former - think Tarantino on Valium in West Ireland after too many pints of Guinness. But it's still miles ahead of anyone else in the Isles attempting this sort of politically incorrect jibe, with every performance just a knock-out.

And you couldn't get further away from such shenanigans than Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth (2006, out on Eureka DVD) filmed in Lisbon's new high-rise public housing ghettos. But there you might be wrong, at least most certainly in terms of Costa's cinematic sensibility. Craig Keller's doco extra is a fascinating shambolic 2hours where Costa reminds us that 3sec of a John Ford western is equal to 3hours of some less illuminating contemporaries. "Art is not about anything else but reality...the things we see...not doing philosophy...space, form, I see certain lights...I'm not dealing with other things than this" "3 seconds in John Ford is 3,000 years. I defy any young video artist to tell his story in [one of those time frames] but he has to work very hard...it's Proust, it's Kafka, it lasts for centuries to tell just one second."

Costa has used as actors non-professional local inhabitants of Fontainhas, Lisbon to get as "faraway from the mechanisms of cinema" wanting his films to be " as rich as a Griffith or a Stroheim film (beautiful in another sense)...I never thought I could do that with a video camera [Costa began his career using traditional 35mm]...I thought it was a poor electronic way of doing some things, but..."
Criterion's Region 1 DVD release certainly beats Eureka's when it comes to the extras and its 4-disc box set

At the Royal Academy Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century puts many of the world's most famous photographers into their historical Hungarian context - André Kertész, László Moholy Nagy, Brassaï. And like Pedro Costa you start thinking about what is life and what is art and is/should there be any difference in the execution or the result? Costa's film's could be termed 'art-house' yet they aren't professing to be art. Nor are Lars von Trier's films - he remarked once about the pointlessness of showing a close-up of a fly crawling up the wall if all one is doing was creating an atmosphere for a film. Neither he nor Costa could be termed 'realist' - perhaps more akin to 'magical realism' though both may consider each other polar opposites. Moholy-Nagy's photos aren't angular just to be different and 'poetic' they are his way of showing us the reality. Munkácsi (who moved on to fashion photography) described his task as seeing "within a 1,000th of a second the things that indifferent people blindly pass by - this is the theory of photo reportage. And the things we see within this 1,000th of a second we should then photograph within the next 1,000 of a second - this is the practical side of photo reportage."
Compare this to the V&A's new show Signs of a Struggle.

Artist Ryan Gander's work has always seemed to get us asking what is it that we desire and how do we go about that journey. You arrive to Locked Room Scenario and an empty Hoxton warehouse with almost all the doors padlocked. There are signs of activity that you barely see or hear. If you're ultra-used to be inquisitive/skeptical/voyeuristic then this experience may prove somewhat disappointing. But as we know, though that is everyone's natural tendency most of us go to great lengths to keep such thoughts submissive. Gander suggests you should un-lock these inner feelings, take them home and nurture rather than suppress them. Another ArtAngel commission is 1395 Days without Red two almost identical films by artists Šejla Kamerić and Anri Sala (in collaboration with Ari Benjamin Meyers) using citizens of Sarajevo to reenact the days they were under sniper attack (1992-1996) whilst crossing street corners. Each film uses the same material but is angled somewhat differently. Spanish actress Mirabel Verdú hums the notes of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony rehearsed by the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra elsewhere in the city. Even if you've never lived through an experience such as Sarajevo, it's easy to identify with the very private act of trying to stay alive whilst focusing your mind on both the reality and the possibility of a different world.

Mike Figgis Royal Opera House weekend Just Tell the Truth
Vision Sound Music Festival Southbank Centre

mais il faut savoir

2011-08-13T01:37:00.000-07:00

London's burning and other regional cities followed suit. The impression, at least, our newspapers gave the world. Yet London's West End is perfectly normal, no more, no less than ever before-the same twittering bullshit, petit alliances, pretense of normality, total lack of privacy and absence of anything less than banal. This week's film releases seem as if history was already writ. You could feel tensions in the city's tentacles at least 5 years ago. But to have spoken its name would be to own up to a terrible truth of democracy. Once again, the Metropolitan police have shot dead a suspect. Not a regular occurrence but you only need one match with which to start a fire. The Brazilians were more level-headed after the Met Police shot dead one of their own (Mr. Menezes). But few ever wish to confront such a naked flame.
Angry Police We made decisions while politicians were on holiday
The Interrupters is released this week.

Did Amy Winehouse die from a broken heart and did anyone ever really keep an eye on that porcelain breath? Or were the seismic jolts from the police, from the press, from the nay-sayers just too much to bear in the end. Her fans were her solace. I joked to someone a few weeks before, that with her money she could've/should've moved to Malibu for a bit and bought that classic recording studio going for a song instead of splurging on her Camden pile. Like that other singer who'd recovered in Nashville. Probably that just wouldn't have been Amy. She now rests is peace and the world's non-conformists and dreamers will have an inextinguishable flame.
Nick Godwyn wrote a wonderfully honest tribute in the Saturday Review of The Times (July 30)

One Rio de Janeiro police officer Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) confronts the naked flame in Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (a sequel set 13 years after the 2007 original). The territory of this film may seem all too familiar - corrupt politicians in league with corrupt cops - fictional with "similarities to real events" (Brazilian audiences of 10 million in its first 9 weeks of release). But writer/director José Padilha gives faces and lives to these people, and though its an action film certainly on par with Hollywood, you leave the cinema wondering (if you hadn't already) just what your own government's "loathsome interests" hasn't been telling its people. Interestingly the film isn't attacking policing as such; rather the abuse of power. Moreover, Nascimento tries to impress upon his own teenage son how important it is to be ready to fight in order to be able to enjoy peace.

More abuse of power in Lee (Once Were Warriors) Tamahori's The Devil's Double - the story of Uday Hussein (one of Saddam's sons) and his body double Latif (Brit actor Dominic Cooper believably impressive as both). The director freely admits he was aiming at making a gangster pic with all the garishness of Scarface and "the obscene bad taste of wealth". The Tamahori choice to verge on savage satire works well though some may wish for more socio-political depth of field.

A wonderful surprise on Eureka DVD is Imamura Shôhei 's wide-screen B/W (beautifully restored print) Pigs and Battleships (Buta to gunkan, 1961) centering on a small Japanese fishing port transformed by the presence of a US naval base. Small-time yakuza (lead female Haruko [Yoshimura Jitsuko] contemptuously
calls them chinpira, meaning ‘punks’ or ‘would-be yakuza’) control the tiny town including pig breading. Haruko's boyfriend is the endearingly awkward Kinta - the yakuza's scapegoat. This gangster comedy (with an exciting painfully bitter-sweet finale) is certainly the equal in all respects of Hollywood product at the time (even a little reminiscent of Minnnelli's Some Came Running, 1958) ending. Imamura' "didn’t find the atmosphere of Shochiku [film studio] at all inspiring (least of all his stint as Ozu’s lowest assistant director) and needed little encouragement to jump ship to [the more commercial] Nikkatsu" notes Tony Raynes in the DVD booklet. Imamura's first feature Stolen Desire (Nusumareta yokujô, 1958) ,also on the DVD, exhibits the director's same comedic touch on a group of struggling travelling actors.

Another thoroughly enjoyable 'evening in' from Eureka (no sycophancy needed only justly deserved) is Jean Epstein's silent 1923 Cœur fidèle (Faithful Heart): "You might say it’s the least bad of my films," the director is quoted, "And, in fact, by dint of this desired, studied, concentrated banality, I made a rather strange film which possesses nothing of the melodrama beyond its surface appearance." If you knew nothing of Epstein or his film theories you'd watch this film and go WOW! that's not at all like a boring silent movie;) such is Epstein's modern movie-making skills. Epstein himself again (quoted from Eureka's DVD booklet):
"If you must say about a film that it has beautiful sets, I think it would be better not to speak about it at all; the film is bad. The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari [Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920] is the best example of the misuse of sets in cinema. Caligari represents a serious cinematographic malady: the hypertrophy of a subordinate feature accorded to what is an “accident” at the expense of the essential...shoddy expressionism ready-made for thirty francs.”
Henri Langlois' following text first appeared in Cahiers du cinéma, no. 24, June 1953:
"For everyone else, Cœur fidèle was a point of departure; for Epstein, it was only a point of arrival. He was through with the discoveries of our first avant-garde; he was eager to test himself on a simpler story, on a slower type of movement." Rapid editing technique had been almost perfected by Abel Gance in his La Roue (The Wheel, 1923) who at the Palais du Festival in Cannes 1953 paid tribute to Epstein the "extraordinary and unrecognised thinker and philosopher...and, like a true sorceror, he went so far as to penetrate the mysteries of the fringes of interference between images of the automaton strangling the inventor."

"In The Senses Epstein explains that because stories do not exist in life, they have no place in cinema. The cinema is true; a story is false. [He] believed that narrative served only to strangle the drama and emotion in cinema, the proper place for narrative was the theatre and the novel, and it was within these forms that such devices should be dominant." Epstein believed in a film theory of photogénie. "I would describe as photogenic any aspect of things, beings or souls whose moral character is enhanced by filmic reproduction. And any aspect not enhanced by filmic reproduction is not photogenic, plays no part in the art of cinema...[ the camera grants] a semblance of life to the objects it defines.”"
As I first noted, you'd don't need to read the DVD booklet first to immediately appreciate all those qualities in Cœur fidèle. They just leap out at you from the screen e.g depth of field, the very unstagy acting, even the damp, depressing walls (wonderfully visible in the restored print) seem more like the work of a contemporary film art director not one from 1923. Quite simply, I was blown away by this DVD. And it's such a sad comment on our existence that Epstein's talents went so unrecognised during his lifetime.

A more familiar name is Alain Resnais whose Last Year at Marienbad (UK DVD), recently re-released, divided critics into either the still fascinated or still totally bored i.e. ponderous. In fact most of his oeuvre is of much the same divide. There was the failed, fascinating comic book musical I Want to Go Home (1989), the singular Stavisky with a rare Stephen Sondheim score, or his Providence (1977) with an amazing cast that included John Gielgud. And so many, many more films.

Just out on DVD are two early classics Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard) (1955), and Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). The latter, his 1st feature (with a Marguerite Duras script) is considered part of the ground-breaking 'modernist vein' in cinema and it would be intriguing to know what Epstein would have thought of this (he died in 1953) given the film's refusal to follow traditional narrative in its quest for "inconsolable memory". Night and Fog also divides opinion: a half hour film about the holocaust! It's distancing effect is almost Brechtian - the film gives you crucial facts but they barely scratch the surface, it elicits a gut-wrenching emotional response yet never allows such an indulgence. This is no Shoah (1985) nor was ever meant to be. Yet there are three lines of narration that leap out grabbing the viewer (and indeed is that one and the same as the listener?): “Is it in vain that we try to remember?”. "We pretend it only happened once." "At least they tried." (in reference to the Nazi's recycling of their victims' bodies and belongings) Resnais seems not so much to be making a documentary about the past but a film about the present and the future. How can one remember something that you've never experienced? Or indeed relate in any meaningful way except for platitudinous grief. Is the film not asking how can we possibly respect history (or even the future) if there's little chance of really understanding it from the remains of what we are proffered?
Hiroshima Mon Amour (Criterion DVD)
Night and Fog (Criterion DVD)

Chris Marker was an assistant on Night and Fog and has gone on to be one of the most discussed figures in avant-garde cinema and photography. “The Sorbonne [University] should be razed and Chris Marker put in its place,” wrote fellow French writer Henri Michaux. Optimum DVD releases his three important films: the 28min narration of still photos La jetée (1962), Level Five (1996) and Sans Soleil(1983): "I've been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me...small fragments of war enshrined in everyday life...the fragility of those moments suspended in time...memories whose only function of being to leave behind nothing but memories." His faux narrator travels to the locations of Hitchcok's Vertigo: "From this fake tower—the only thing that Hitchcock had added—he imagined Scotty as time's fool of love, finding it impossible to live with memory without falsifying it." So much has been written about Marker that it seems almost superfluous to the films themselves. If Godard is Brecht then for all its Marxist leanings, Marker is the melancholic romancer of Mouladji's song Un jour tu verras (One day you will see) that plays out the final credits of Level Five. Marker is all to do with projected futures that are predicated on a projected past, predicated on a projected present, projected on a forgotten future.

Sander Lee even wrote an essay for Senses of Cinema, Platonic Themes in Chris Marker’s La Jetée - "Like Plato’s philosopher, the protagonist in La Jetée cares more for his internal vision of the truth than for the objects and shadows coveted by most other people." In Sans Soleil the ill-fated Guinea-Bissau Carnation Revolution of 1974 is constantly referred to like an old refrain that holds hope for the future but with a bitter memory of past's reality: "And beneath each of these faces a memory. And in place of what we were told had been forged into a collective memory, a thousand memories of men who parade their personal laceration in the great wound of history." If you visit Chris Marker, you visit a world that is tragic, spontaneous, exhilarating, the nadir of human existence. But also by its very nature pragmatically romantic - or should that be the other way round right side up?

Brit director Duncan Jones follows his successful Moon with Source Code (just out on DVD) an absorbing and intriguing thriller predicated on the ideas of quantum physics - and it's much more fun not knowing too much about the film before watching it. Suffice to say the Jake Gyllenhaal's wounded Afghan war Black Hawk chopper pilot is manipulated by scientists to enter parallel time frames hoping that Chicago will be saved from annihilation. Even more absorbing because it's exactly where real life science is heading in understanding the curvature of time following in the footsteps of Einstein. And a film that'll stay rattling about in your head. Some good DVD extras too - 20min of a prof explaining all the film's science, cast interviews and an audio commentary from Mr. Jake, Duncan Jones and the screenwriter. The latter extra is interesting principally for showing just how a healthy collaborative process can lead to a film much more than the sum of a team's parts. Ego is blown out the window here (well, almost from Mr. Jake but then he's a lead actor so sorta excused;)

"There are some things in life that you just can't change [or words to that effect]"muses Freida Pinto in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Director Rupert Wyatt certainly proved that his debut The Escapist (also with Brian Cox) wasn't just a flash in the pan - everything in his latest is exciting yet restrained, informative yet never dull. (Weta Digital's [Avatar, Lord of the Rings] special effects are awesome, but it's a shame Patrick Doyle's music score isn't as fearsomely inventive as Jerry Goldsmith's original) The film's premise is one that initially makes one cringe. Not a remake of the original Planet of the Apes but almost a pre-quel/sequel. A drugs corp Gen-Sys is testing a virus on chimps that has proved restores brain tissue i.e. Alzheimer's cure=big bucks=corporate kudos. However, their chimp goes berserk and gets shot. No wonder, there's a hidden baby at stake. Back to Will Rodman's (James Franco) suburbia, and in a cardboard box arrives the baby chimp Caesar (later enacted by Andy Serkis). What transpires owes a lot to the true story of the baby chimp Nim - which James Marsh has doco assembled and is also released this week as Project Nim .

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is film studio entertainment but it's also quite a lot more than that reminding the general public of questions and implications surrounding the animal testing of drugs let alone the moral debate. And it reminds one of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park who didn't take long to work out that the electric fence was no longer operational. What is man actually controlling? Is he really in charge of his own destiny? Does man even know what he wants to be when he's grown up? If you've read the book or heard the story of Project Nim this doco will still captivate every human demographic, simply because Nim is so 'human'. And again, it begs debate on human freedom and incarceration, of how we want all people to be equal but could/will never be by their very nature. Much like his Man on Wire Marsh sculpts his documentary with music and artistically shot interviewees so the whole thing resembles 'a performance'. It is none the less for that and arguably none the better. But the reality of Nim is just so human it will break your heart (that's if you still have one).
And just in case you're not convinced of how powerful chimps can be: Chimp attack woman reveals her new face

Also arriving in a cardboard box (this time into a Manhattan pad) is one of the teeny blue creatures (originally a Belgian comic book) of The Smurfs. Akin to Enchanted, they're chased by an evil wizard out of their happy mythical village and stumble into a vortex that dumps everyone into Central Park. Now: though the special effects may not be quite as inventive as one might wish for, Rob Engle's 3D effects (Phil Méheux as cinematographer) is thankfully perfect (just as well as Sony are the frontrunners in promoting the stuff!) i.e. 3D doesn't have to be dark and the gradation of light and shade here is as good as standard 35mm cameras. While the mix of animation (the Smurfs) and live action isn't cringe-worthy either. What's more: an adaptation that could be so, so naff is actually bristling with wit and charm. It'd be hard for tiny tots and adults not to exit the cinema grinning from ear to ear. As for your teenagers, well, just hope that when you get back they're not burning down the family home or frying your computer hard-drive. You never know they might actually find the digital antiquity of Chris Marker's Level Five rather fascinating if you leave it playing. As for the politics...

Or they may just poke cathartic fun at you if the teenagers are taken along to Salt of Life (Gianni e le Donne). Gianni (played by the director himself Gianni Di Gregorio) lives in middle-class Rome retirement with his rarely seen wife, caretaker, and loving teenage daughter (stringy boyfriend in toe) with wrinkly charming tippling mum playing bridge (or is it poker) with her friends in leafy seclusion, not that she ever stops beckoning poor Gianni for favours. Teenagers might enjoy Gianni's antics of chasing after a mistress - and it's always endearing never seedy (not that we know of anyway!). He's still able to do a yoga 'downward dog' - though may have a bit more trouble lifting his leg. He even inadvertently experiences an LSD trip walking the dog (canine one). Is this the life that 'rounds our little sleep' asks the film? Is there ever any more than this? The film doesn't judge, doesn't probe, doesn't prod. Lucky are the ones who can fall gently asleep without the pain of existence weighing them down even before the first earthy sod hits the casket.

HAL dreamt of a chimp hiding his sock beneath a lily-pad before he fell asleep forever and a day...Cocoloco..coco.co.c________

2011-07-29T01:48:00.000-07:00

Celebrating the release of The Avengers: The Complete 50th Anniversary Collection (Optimum DVD) the Vintage Festival at Southbank Centre this weekend will be showing all of the episodes featuring Diana Rigg back to back in a specially 60s themed Gallery space at the BFI Southbank, curated by Vintage film creator Stephen Woolley. There's even a Diana Rigg Look-a-like Contest: "please present yourself in costume between 3pm and 5pm on any of the above days, and your photo and details will be taken and kept for the judging on Sunday evening at 5pm. You will then be notified by email if you have one The Avengers complete box-sets."

Another Brit classic out this week on DVD/Blu-ray is Whisky Galore! (1948) packed with 103min of extras as well as a highly informative audio commentary. If you're not a fan of looted shipwrecked whisky movies (even after seeing this one anew!) and even producer Michael Balcon wasn't, this release allows a quite fascinating insight into the film, the Scottish island of Barra, and historical context. And an essential addition to the library of anyone interested in British cinema. Though trained in documentaries (and with Roberto Rossellini) it was Alexander Mackendrick's first film and unusually for Ealing Studios shot on location. The head of Universal in the States was impressed enough at the time to give it a 'sleeper' release under the title Tight Little Island - due to the ban on drinks titles. On the disc there's a 1990 Channel Four doco interviewing those still alive to tell the movie's tale and the modern day salvage operation. And the audio commentary goes into much comparison of the characters' detail and that of 'Englishness' vs Scottishness of the time and the "elasticity of morality". Writer Philip Kemp (Lethal Innocence: Cinema of Alexander Mackendrick) is quoted as comparing The Wicker Man as almost a remake of Whisky Galore! - Captain Waggett (Basil Radford) of the English Home Guard being the outsider 'scapegoat'. Other comments note that Waggett epitomised the petty bureaucracy of the ration book under the then Labour government. In fact there's quite a contemporaneous tone to the whole show, n'est pas?

2011-07-20T04:02:00.000-07:00

I: what a much maligned word. The very essence of our existence and perpetual problems. (Phrases that any real writer would be sacked for using;) And without making the poor girl at the end of Life in a Day (who I've mentioned before) into a receptacle 'starlet' for the unbearable unbelievability of life, today for me (or rather yesterday by the time i post this from my dinosaur cave) was one of those days in flipside! (Hey: don't knock primordial til you've tried it - or indeed the use of parentheses). IIIII - get home (after spotting the only 8 people [velvet ilk] who converged on an alleyway after reading the 'let's have a London revolution' ad in Time Out (don't laugh - a couple of Hampstead New Labourites actually DID put an open house party ad in TO late 90s pre-Blair - and NO ONE spotted the decade to come??...) I avoided getting whacked over the head by the 'velvets' placating them with tales of Werner Herzog's revolutionary penguin who was really FOR REAL [in Encounters at the End of the World] after seeing we assume his/her boyfriend, yeah - what's not to like in cross-flipping gay penguins - the Emperor penguin wash up on a New Zealand beach the other week [in a menage a trois with Michael Barrymore I guess:)

Arrive home. The digital TV installers of tomorrow morning have left a card sayin' my digital connection won't take place til a week from hence. Who the hell do they think they are! We just take days off willy nilly to amuse ourselves like some bored housewife hoping (la vein helas) that the tradesperson will turn out to be Mr/Mrs/Ms G spot!!!! oh please - as many a critic in the 90's used to sigh, begging me to ghost write their reviews back in the 90's.

So: life in a day: 'cause u see I never wanted to get out of bed this morning but waking up early to the British summer of grey sky and drizzle- yeah: Tom Hanks loves the British weather too - so much so in fact he's signed up for my script about a Brit weather man who got fired for taking his TV gig too seriously and accurately (not to mention his tie and cardigan), then inherits a lighthouse, gets tortured by jealous left-wing yuppies who were gesumped from buying the lighthouse up the coast, and said weatherman takes revenge on Westminster - and 'cause he's the only guy with any revolutionary balls, the Brit public say 'what the heck' we'll get behind 'him' as our leader. Kate 'Duchess of whatever' whips her lot into line claiming (quite rightly) that she's the only one who knows how to catch the bus to Westminster and give even the semblance of cake, bread and circuses. (Harry's wearing a red nose at this point completely nonplussed). And NO Tom- there's not a part for Julia in this one (much as we still love her - mean Village Voice motherfffers...). What's not to like about Julia Roberts' smile?

Oh, life in a day: so: I did get to the 10.30am screening of Universal's Beginners and found The Standard's Derek Malcolm unusually full of joie de vivre rather than gloom after being on the jury of the Golden Apricot film festival in Armenia. You see - you just couldn't make up real life nomenclature! Nigel Andrews (film critic of the Financial Times) popped his head into the conversation just as we were taking about old age 'dropping dead' avoidance. And there across a crowded room was Metro's (the free morning commuter paper owned by The Standard) Larushka Ivan-Zadeh besporting her wonderful pregnancy - though the critics see so many horror movies it's hard not to hallucinate some inter-stellar thingamajit morphing out of her witty weekly wordswomb. Metrodome's The Violent Kind (written and directed by The Butcher Brothers...(I told you you'd never believe the really real) screened that afternoon with much of said 'transfiguration': hey if it works for a penguin.... Cheesy film- but yo: a mate was DP (that's camera guy for the lay folk) who always does a great job - e.g. the gorgeous sepia Medicine for the Melancholy that didn't even get laid in the UK after it's tiny London Film Fest appearance years ago. I know that feeling.

But then Dexter (director of Wild Bill screening next door) just couldn't resist my poker ability and rather than lose the thrippence he'd made in his career, promised me a part in his next film -that's after Robert Sheehan who as any actor worth his salt would, filled in the missing line from the Murdoch parliamentary grilling when Mr. M snr. looked totally perplexed at being asked why and who'd asked him through the back door of Downing Street....do I really need to spell out rear***). It got even more legal when Mr M snr. remembered that PM Brown also had offered him rear entry. ME - I haven't watched TV in years - so captivated by the new high tech of Plato's screening Cave I forsook Warner's Horrible Bosses and became mesmerised by the Murdoch father/son questioning by parliamentary reps. Now THAT whole argument is one to be saved for a later consideration. Suffice to say that THEY (in the broadest public sense) wanted a scapegoat and who better than the man himself THE mogul Mr M. But it sorta backed fired because though my front row (oft assuming) colleague came to the rather blunt conclusion that he was "arrogant", Mr Murdoch Snr. was rather endearing -in a way that one longed ex PM Tony Blair to be given his 'Medusa' delivery but just never could given the loud 'hissing'. Whether Mr M knew or not about the phone hacking we may or may never know as the police enquiry finds its rolling stone.

And there was something quite moving (rather than evasive) about the way a father wanted his son (James) to do proud the family name (oh shut up Elisabeth - here's a copy of Louis Althuseer to read;))- just as in Beginners where the son (Ewan McGregor) of Christopher Plummer's gay character tried to reconcile and piece together the complete inhibitions of his father's gay sexuality while he (the son) endearingly fumbles somewhat 'mumblecorishly' through his newfound relationship with the adorable kooky girl (Mélanie Laurent). (No implication here of Murdoch sexual similitude I stress;)) Though, Mr M Snr - people would pay good money to see you attempt an All That Jazz routine in a garishly coloured cravat alongside James Jnr being the 'straight' man;) They would! Piss off Simon Cowell that's MY idea, love....

And then, and then! LIFE IN A DAY gezooks! (I might have just got sloshed on vodka in bed if I hadn't arisen this morning): just as the Murdoch questioning was closing from the very impressive and attractive Conservative MP Lousie Mensch (again - I'm not making up these names,) Pow, Wham. Splat from left of TV screen, live feed cut! What just happened? Someone in the public gallery behind tried to whack Mr M!!! You're kidding! His wife Wendi instinctively with Jackie Chan DNA skills looked as if she whacked back the assailant. This is staged right? We're in The Truman Show - come on, we have to be! The Yahoo tweeter behind me says the assailant's name is Jonnie Marbles - now he's pulling my whatsie too! And he tried to whack with a plate of shaving cream?! No. no I really am hallucinating. I never really got up this morning, right - I've really been in an alcoholic stupor. No wait, I did get up. AHHHHH TRUTH where art thou?

Funny thing is, if this were Sky sports we'd have slo-mo action replay almost immediately with all the human points of contact graphically laid out so that even a kid of 5 would think he's the next best astro-pysicist understanding trajectory of shaving foam from the paucity of a human limb. But this was BBC News 24 so we had to wait 10 minutes for even a simple standard replay. Credit where credit is due Sky TV. Incredibile! My first live TV in years and I get this. There is a God after all...Mr Malick (well, Fox Searchlight did stump up the money on that experimental studio film The Tree of Life- again, credit where it's due). One MP closed the Murdoch proceedings by jovially noting that "your wife has a very good left hook," - but typical of politicians eternally confused as to which side of the chamber they inhabit, Mrs Wendi Deng actually used a 'right hook'.

Missed most of Rebekkah Brooks answers as I unexpectedly stayed on at the screening room to watch David Weissman and Bill Weber's doco We Were Here about the history of AIDS in San Francisco (not released in the UK until Nov 25). You'd think it'd been done before but, I don't remember so....And do caring people even remember that initially the gay and lesbian camps were very far from being synonymous, in fact quite the opposite. It's incredibly emotive and personally recollective but that in fact gives the film a pinpoint focus rather than something rather more diffuse. One of the most moving moments (that wouldn't be out of place in The Sun or even The News of The World) is when one man describes how some who'd lost loved ones couldn't even afford to buy flowers. And amidst all the day's bluster, political maneuvering, coaching and guile, a real world was emerging. I had really woken up this morning. All of us lie to some extent sometimes. To save someone, rather than to harm them. But when does an illegal act become welcomed in the public interest rather than becoming a hinderance? If everyone is now in the public eye, or in Mr. M Snr's words demanding the need for "transparency", what does the law mean? Aren't we all complicit in this 3-ring circus of life? As Mr. M Snr noted in his answers, the city with least political corruption in the world is Singapore because they pay their democratically elected politicians an unbribable wage.

The trouble with Britain is that some of the most important (arguably unskilled) jobs such as security guards and CCTV monitors have such derisory salaries no human in their right mind would turn down a tempting offer from the dark side. (Seeing a new print of Brit B/W classic The Lavender Hill Mob was such a treat this week. It really does look different on that big screen...) People don't think that their son or loved one might be killed walking along that collapsing ill-constructed bridge that they could really not be bothered properly attending to. Whereas in America they can't get away from that democratic thought. And ironically Mr M Snr who controls Fox News in the States today admitted that Britain was far more transparent in regards to freedom of the press than America.

A day full of fascinating insights and contradictions into our life on earth. The whole crux of capitalism and the free world is creating desire. Desire for something just out of our grasp and yet only just enough so that we think we can trick it into our orbit. Like the old comedian's slight of foot sketch of seemingly almost grabbing the ball or whatnot and yet kicking it at the same time. It's both a reality and yet an illusion. Over the years, Mr Murdoch has given the world what it thinks it desires in many markets but most particularly in Britain. So much so that this country's democratically elected political elite thinks that is exactly what it too desires in their collusion with the Murdoch press. But it's a movable yet stationary feast just like the greedy buccaneers in countless movie adventures who melt into stone after believing in the illusory table of bountiful sustenance. While Britain foolishly sold off ALL its viable assets to foreign lands over the decades, a plucky young Ozzie Mr Rupert Murdoch spotted an ailing paper that over the century had caused even a true socialist such as George Orwell to sink into his armchair with gleeful slaver and savor. The News of the World fed The Sun and vice versa. Murdoch moved onto greater conquests. Britain, alas did not.

And would the world be a better place if democratic newspapers and democracies treated their readers and constituents as if they were their own son and daughter? No direct Murdoch family reference intended (I really do stress), but Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear just wouldn't bullshit her father like his other siblings. For that act she was banished. And ultimately the wise (or foolish depending on one's viewpoint) old Lear who thought he'd done his best in life? He ended his life carrying his daughter's carcass in his arms. No, no, no, no! The fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves. Murdoch is being made out in many quarters to be in search of his childhood 'Rosebud' (Citizen Kane). The man can be no saint but is there any proof that he is actually really a sinner? And may I posit the very unfashionable view that just maybe, and very perversely, the man is actually giving readers their Rosebud rather than searching for his own.

When Murdoch referred to making proud his own newspaper man father in his closing remarks today, I was genuinely moved. No! Please don't lynch me for saying that. Moved in a way that made me hate former PM Tony Blair's spin even more - (unfair perhaps I know but...) though there's certainly skill involved in that. Most people one meets (both sides of the Atlantic) try to find an excuse for not doing something. That someone, something or other let them down in life. And I thought of my own father (also an Australian) who passed away earlier this year. He was no saint either. And often I hated his guts to be honest and in many ways still do. But am I dead? No. Did I become a drug addict? No. Did I become a failure? No. In a very perverse way do I still love him? Yes, undeniably. Very much so. And why? Because although he was as straight-laced as anyone else of his generation, my father entertained the possibility of life's impossible. And as unfashionable a view as it might be I believe Murdoch has offered people that same choice. The fact that they have ignored or been to ignorant to question that choice is not a blame to be dumped on his doorstep.

Who is guilty and of what in the phone hacking scandal is for the government/police investigation to possibly uncover. And it is far from insignificant. But why are most people incapable of interrogating an equally significant and far bigger question about their lives? If everyone's a celebrity then no one is! Murdoch's tabloids ruthlessly (and arguably cruelly as well as illegally) made money out of holding a mirror up to nature: we live in a democracy so any celebrification has to be both normal (down the pub like us) and abnormal (how do we ever get to afford that fashion look). The result is a bit akin to the film Back to the Future where matter cannot possibly occupy simultaneous temporal spaces else it logically destroys itself. Thus is the story of many in Murdoch's tabloids. Thus is the dilemma of our society.

The Big Picture (not a bad transliteration of the film's French title L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie) shows a man who thinks he knows what he wants to the extent of killing another and taking that identity whilst erasing his own by a faked death. The irony is that he is ultimately reborn by surrendering, or rather unwittingly creating yet another 'identity' for a total stranger. Many people never resurface from those waves. But he did. Maybe he had a 'Rosebud' or maybe not. But he stopped clinging to a past in which there was no hope in finding him a future. German director Alexander Kluge's films are all to do with that. Brit indie Treacle Jnr about the sadness of London streets also explores that catharsis. As doco director Molly Dineen has often pointed out in interviews the British don't have amnesia about the past it's that they so often just don't want to remember. But remembering isn't clinging. And it most certainly isn't about worshipping anything let alone in a refection. At least not unless one wants any chance of survival. Of waking up to another life in a day rather than forever trying to avoid it.

2011-07-15T05:12:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember the Commonwealth Institute towards Hammersmith on Kensington High Street and looming at the back of Holland Park? Does anyone remember the Commonwealth? Since the building closed its doors in 2002 it has been the home only mould and the ghosts of Melbury Road. As part of the InTRANSIT festival (4th year), dancers and musicians lead on audience through its spaces culminating in a dance performance (choreographer Dane Hurst) in the old auditorium to Harrison Birtwistle's Orpheus Elegies (only until Sunday). What newcomers to the building (and to such site-specific performance) is of course hard to tell. But for those of us who lived through a former decade of arts funding cuts, who survived another world only to be thrust into an equally dubious one currently, the experience at last night's preview was very strange and haunting. And it made one think of just how important are actual buildings in relation to the virtual world most people now inhabit.

As much as many would like everything in our daily lives to be controlled 'online' the Common Sounds: touching the void performances (presented by Fruit for the Apocalypse) are a reminder of our inner being. Of how we control ourselves in relation to others - many of the building's passage ways are very dimly lit and while safety precautions are adhered to, the show also seems to be asking us to be aware and take control of our own bodies; that political correctness and control in whatever form does not necessarily makes us happy. That we must find the light in the prevailing darkness. In the windmills of those of us who still have a mind to call our own.
Refreshing change from the hypocrisy of Westminster politics that's for sure...and the Metropolitan Rotton Apple Corps...

The Zoo of the new...

2011-07-08T01:36:00.001-07:00

Did you read of the pregnant woman having to walk the rail tracks escaping her trapped train only to be confronted by police officers to whom she had to justify her actions (along with other passengers)? And more allegations of The News of the World phone hacking. "Deplorable" said Mr. Murdoch, News International's proprietor. Too little too late? If other organisations are anything to go by, there may be a trickle down effect but often very little trickles up! (There is, of course, a lot of benefit of the doubt itself in that statement.) But when in the bigger picture will it all stop and when will it all get better?
BBC Radio 4 Profile of investigative reporter Nick Davies

This year's Cannes fest winner The Tree of Life was finally distributed by Fox Searchlight (a News Corporation stablemate). It's director Terrence Malick has been dubbed a maverick and one of the few directors in the world whose films are awaited with hushed awe among the critical fraternity. Having mentioned 'the law' in paragraph 1, most films this week indeed orbit that subject. Malick's film opens with a supertitle from the Book of Job "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?" - his female protagonist wife (Jessica Chastain) extolling the virtues of 'grace': "the only way to be happy is to love...do good to them...wonder, hope". Moreover, Malick seems to be embrassing the philosophy of Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace): the qualities of grace being such that they are immune to the laws of gravity. And while many will feel that Malick's use of space and cosmos imagery (a little akin to Kubrick's in 2001: A Space Odyssey - effects maestro Douglas Trumbull in fact worked on both films) is unnecessary and pretentious, the director's vision is indeed just that and one that he follows with utter surety. It brings to mind the clip in the YouTube Life in a Day in which a husband is reciting Walt Whitman poetry to his wife who juggles two babies yet only berates him for laziness and inconsequence.

And it's certainly arguable whether Malick ever succeeds in promulgating his vision of humanity to a 'broader church'. But in Malick's defence his story of a church going 50s Texas family (the stern father-Brad Pitt), juxtaposed to the eldest son (Sean Penn) now matured into the modern day metropolis as an architect, is all to do with gravity and where 'grace' might lie. The film jump cuts, lists, swerves, hovers while never quite touching anything long enough to fall. It's a film full of tender and cruel moments like our own memories that we simultaneously cherish and trash in frustration upon reflection. It's a film at one and the same time deeply religious and yet deeply critical of religion's hypocrisy. Much as what lead Simone Weil into her unique Christian philosophy. Above all it's a film about the duality of love and survival; of how we must simultaneously trust each quality whilst never succumbing to the gravitational pull of the other.

Yuya Ishii's Sawako Decides (trailer)is one of the few wonderful Japanese films that has managed to secure distribution outside its homeland (Dear Doctor from last year's London Film Festival remains unbefriended). Like many Japanese films it's all to do with family and how one copes with the contradictions of independence and attachment. Sawako (Hikari Mitsushima) ran off from her family's freshwater clam farm in the countryside, a boy towing her to Tokyo. She returns rather reluctantly 5 years hence with another - his daughter not hers in tow (her 5th boy and 5 jobs later) to see her dying father. The tree of this film is a very disgruntled one cursing the roots it placed in government promises of prosperity and confidence. 'Thoughtful, funny, uplifting' would be the poster tag for this film. But thankfully it's far more than just that trinity of salesmanship.

"I can't understand people who say that childhood is the happiest time of one's life." says the orphaned 8 year-old Ana (Ana Torrent), as an adult (Geraldine Chaplin). Carlos Saura's Raise Ravens (Cría Cuervos) (1976) has another adult desperately trying to make sense of what was. For Ana, remembering or re-assembling her childhood past (the last days of Franco's Spanish regime) is somewhat sado-masochistic. By filling the void of memory or rather lack of understanding Ana kids herself that she has made her life whole again. A sugar rush that forever dwindles into despair.

And if one had the choose of taking their enlightened teenager (indeed some are still allowed to thrive;) to see either Disney's Prom or Greg Araki's Kaboom? Disney can do 'edge' within it's happy realm but it's usually confined to animated characters. Any chance of another Enchanted anytime soon? A shame Prom's cheerleader couldn't end up with the cute geek who turned out to be gay (but not quite) but who had a friend who everyone thought was, you know, but wasn't (almost). Innuendo is possible in a G rating. The closest we get in Prom is the poking of a pencil. Still, great acting all round.

Araki wanted his film to "exist on its own terms and vibrate at its own anomalous frequency". His tale of American college freshmen (and women) is intimate, quirky and cool until in the final quarter angsty paranoid gloom prevails and he discovers his estranged Dad has become Mr. Doomsday. But maybe the young Smith (Thomas Dekker) is also attempting to fill that void of memory. Some great lines abound in Araki's script, though: "Dude, it's a vagina, not a bowl of spaghetti." Oh sweet mystery of youth I've found you...

Actor David Schwimmer (on the board of directors for the Rape Foundation in Santa Monica, California) explores the issues of teenage 'grooming' and sexual encounter with older men in Trust (Lionsgate is UK distributor). The 14 year old Annie (a totally believable Liana Liberato) strikes up an internet/text relationship with the much older Charlie (Chris Henry Coffey) and you can guess the rest. If it weren't for Liberato's deeply nuanced, affecting performance Schwimmer's film would probably not have the impact it does. And you do begin wondering about this when the director neatly sews everything up in a moralising end credit coda. It's politically ney morally incorrect for us to feel any empathy for Charlie but that's how Annie feels. What's interesting about the film is that for the mostpart Annie doesn't feel like a victim of Charlie more one of society's mores. The adults, meanwhile, attempt to impress upon you (and her) that such empathy is misplaced.

It's a script needing several more re-writes if one wants a film that lives up to what one senses are Schwimmer's more chiaroscuro intentions. We get it: Annie's Dad (Clive Owen) works for an ad company that of course markets sexily to teenagers etc etc. He becomes somewhat of an incensed vigilante even committing GBH at a netball game on someone who vaguely resembles a pedophile in a photo he's seen. He's, of course, instantly forgiven. Not bloody likely in America. Out for dinner and drinks his ad buddy innocently banters chat-up with the quite normal flirtatious 19 year old waitress and then sprouts sexual innuendo to his mate. We get it. What we don't get is what we experience from Liberato's performance as Annie.

Her trust in Dad snaps as she learns that her older brother's been told of the incident as they discuss his new girlfriend while enjoying an extended family dinner: she socks her disgust at that hypocrisy to the assembled. Scenes like this show Annie's strength rather than vulnerability. So why does Mr. Schwimmer feel the need to tow a moral line rather than trusting his material and performers - the latter are all so tremendous. Annie is done a disservice by a film that allows her to remain a victim. Would the investigating police really prejudice their case by showing Annie photos of other girls, prefaced by the info that their rape cases match the DNA of Charlie? Perhaps so. But the film results more in promulgating a law to help and condemn adult morality rather than offer any consolation to girls like Annie. Why does age of consent differ in different countries? Are girls of those ages any more/less vulnerable? Any more/less able to judge for themselves. Of course not. It isn't what this film is about but THIS seems to be the film Schwimmer really wanted to make. His direction of Liberato is just too full of care and compassion of a young human being to say otherwise. While the world chokes on the hypocrisy of agism, the law is like democracy: it's far from perfect but it's all we have to combat the darkness of its alternative.

The stylised comic-book-esque Super is another case in point. Should Frank 'the Crimson Bolt' (Rainn Wilson) and Libby 'Boltie' (Ellen Page) really be allowed to clean-up crime on our screens? Seemingly no subtlety to be found here only a helluva lot of fun from writer/director James Gunn. But he found a way to entertain whilst acknowledging the widespread moral rectitude debate in America - Gunn was influenced by reading William James' 1902 book The Varieties of Religious Experience. Ellen Page, as always, bounces around and out of that screen like a dog never ceasing to search for its ball.

The Devil's Rock mixes Nazi occult with the vampiric devil in a New Zealand three-hander (basically) set in the Channel Islands. It sounds dire but is surprisingly well done with few tricky camera moves or effects relying almost solely on the actors' ability to convince. You even get used to the Nazi sporting a Kiwi accent. What's not to like...

"Ignorance is never dead, it's even making progress" director Bertrand Tavernier said of his latest film The Princess of Montpensier (based on Madame de La Fayette's novel). This director's greatest skill has always been to get into the heart of his characters whether they be the police, a jazz musician, a school teacher or in this case the Princess Marie (Melanie Thierry) in 1562 France trying to assert her independence of heart and mind in a world dominated by male political power struggle. It's a film whose invisible orbit is of "realities we cannot see" and make sense of. Marie is uneducated and yet uncalculating. Ultimately, did she get the life she desired or has she fallen victim of it the film seems to ask? Some may prefer the period contemporaneous immediacy of Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard. Tavernier goes for precise detail such as the scrutinising of Marie's hymen blood on wedding night showing us that the moral and political absurdities of our modern world aren't very far at all from those of 1562.
Lots of Tavernier titles with commentaries from him e.g. L.626, L'Horloger de Saint Paul (The Watchmaker of St. Paul)

Bridesmaids needs no introduction after its enormous success all sides of the globe. So is it as good as...? Well, yes, pretty much, given that it's the sort of film outre comedienne Sarah Silverman outgrew in her mind years ago and one she could take her mum to without causing much offence (assuming her mum is a universal one;) And all the gags are funny because real life is the basis for their wicked wit. Even Brit's own Chris O'Dowd (from TV sitcom The IT Crowd) fits in perfectly - gentle nature, accent and all - as of all things a cop who falls for Annie (Kristen Wiig) after pulling over her car. And it's produced by Judd Apatow of Knocked Up fame etc.

Only one line rings slightly awkwardly when at the very end Annie jokes to the sky marshall she caused havoc with on a flight (all's now well and he's even invited to the party), "I put a gun in your carry-on". Now if Silverman delivered that line it would be funny. Here in Bridesmaids it seems to need an addition like 'joking' as ballast. And if there's a criticism of the film it would be that we should laugh through our tears for Annie rather than just with her. Not the fault of Wiig who always suggests that in her performance (and she's far less trouble, well not quite, and irritation than the sister in Mike Leigh's Another Year.) And what is nice about the film is that it never makes fun of one character or lifestyle ( e.g. Helen's perfectly manicured rich life and actions) over another. A touch of Hannah and Her Sisters wouldn't go astray, though.

Treasures of Heaven: Saints, relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe sounds dull. But in fact it would be even more interesting than it already is if the British Museum's show told us who, exactly, were these Catholic saints whose intriguing reliquaries to this day have devotees in their thousands. A 3 minute video reminding us of contemporary icons (as diverse as eg Princess Diana, Elvis Presley, Lenin) isn't a crowd pleasing afterthought in the last alcove either. Rather, its germane to the whole idea of the exhibition. Fragments of the dead that allow some of us to continue the struggle for our gift of life.
BBC Radio 3's Discovering Music explores the contemporaneity of Ockeghem's C15 Requiem Mass.
This week's The Choir is also worth a listen.
And of course the annual BBC Proms springs into action next Saturday.

BBC4's Troubadours: The Rise of the Singer Songwriter (also out on Universal DVD) is Morgan Neville's doco on the famed Los Angeles club of the title. "By 1970 the heart of 60s rock was going down...losing it's energy and needed time to take its breath...and this was when this singer/songwriter movement was at its most powerful" according to Robert Hilburn of the LA Times. Much of the doco centres on Carole King and James Taylor who returned to celebrate the club's 50th anniversary in 2007 and the 2010 reunion tour.
King: there was "a hunger for the intimacy, the personal thing that we did".
Jackson Browne: "the authenticity of somebody telling their own story was what people were interested in". Doug Weston's Troubadour club was also the start of Elton John's career amongst many, many others. Steve Martin: "It wasn't so much, 'I want to be an artist', it was that 'I want to make it' ...here's how you make it, 'to be an artist'." Neville's doco wisely focusses on how the music of the club germinated rather than the personal trials and tribulations (drugs and otherwise) of his interviewees though James Taylor is as candid as one could get in a chat filmed with Carole King. And though the subject of this musical era has been covered by others (e.g. the BBC series Hotel California that follows tonight's airing of Troubadours), as with all Neville's docos, the director always finds the personal stories that make the relatively unknown history spring to new life rather than melancholy.

In celebration of the re-release of The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) there will be specially arranged bike tours of historic cinematic sites (July 29-31).
For scooter enthusiasts there's always Tom Hanks pootling round LA in Larry Crowne - an idealised life perhaps but so is the one politicians wish us to live. Tom Hanks should know he gets to have dinner with them all;) Still, on its own terms, the film's not all that bad, come on. And why you may ask is Optimum releasing a film with so little 'edge' (Universal in the States): it's produced with its French owner Studio Canal.

A Separation sounds fairly plodding but one shouldn't be deterred by the storyline. In fact it's the very intricacies of the film's plot that make it more akin to a subtle low key police thriller than the social realism that also it is obviously. Equally, the fact that the film is set in Iran and is Muslim in nature in no way limits the film's resonance to a capital city like Berlin, Paris or London. It deservedly scooped this year's awards in Berlin with its writer/director Asghar Farhadi paying tribute to his imprisoned colleague director Jafar Panahi. Farhadi's film seems to ask what does the law mean to us as normal human beings? We may transgress it but not necessarily ourselves and vice versa. When does a white lie become rather more black and so on? Sony Classics picked up the film for US distribution and its easy to see why.

Marcel van Eeden's new show at Sprüth Magers Lee asks us to consider our relationship to historical narrative. Initially you wonder why that in 2011 the artist is presenting what looks like narrative fictions exclusively in pencil. Surely this is 80s/90s work before the internet truly went berserk in deconstructing our world order. You read the press release and are still a little mystified. You go back to the walls yet they seem odd - the placement of the drawings, the colour of the walls. This isn't even just a constructed fictional set of narratives. If one were to move a drawing you feel that it would leave a trace on the wall. When the artist himself explained, the sense of the show was indeed as simple and complex as one wondered. Every historical narrative is of course a construct. Only a fraction of the truth (if that) is ever present in the representation of any narrative e.g. if the government didn't tell us that then what else didn't/aren't they telling us? In theory the internet should be making us conform to such narratives less and yet the opposite seems to be happening. Plus ça change...

Last fortnight's film Potiche rather appositely opened this year's Transylvannia International Film Festival. For another week at the Romanian Cultural Institute is the exhibition In the Light of Utopia showcasing experimental art of the late 1960s from a group of Timisoara-based artists. The catalogue's opening paragraph: "The artists' individual searches sometimes lead them to the most dissimulated, labyrinthine spaces of a line of thought, which shunts the surrounding reality aside. The searches take them to the secret locations, jealously kept away from the outsiders' looks, wear the most daring concepts arise, bearing the mark of idealism. This line of thought, fed by inner phantasms, gives rise to chimeras or utopias, eclectic sets of dreams or goals, replacing the surrounding world. Chacun sa Chimère, Baudelaire used to write, pointing to the diversity of these phantasms, which can take a variety of arbitrary shapes measured against individual standards."

Liliana Mercioiu Popa's Elliptical Construction was made in response to Romania's 2001 election - simple grey boxes containing word actions, "nothing coherent and constructive...it doesn't matter what one says only how one wins their audience." It's an art work certainly equal to any in major museums and one's not quite sure whether it's allowable to kick or move the boxes around. Great piece for kids too. When Sean Penn looks up at those skyscrapers in The Tree of Life it reminds us (and probably him) of what it was to grow tall thence taller. We thought the world was unknowable it was so big and when we return to such a place we wonder at how on earth the world could possibly have tricked us. And how indeed it continues to do so.

...this dark ceiling without a star

2011-06-23T07:30:00.001-07:00

New reviews of:

Potiche

Incendies

Sparrow

Cutter's Way

The Halfway House DVD

The Messenger

Countdown to Zero

...sad, slight, useless things to calm the mad.

2011-06-17T04:59:00.000-07:00

Walter Black (Mel Gibson) is the recovering alcoholic, depressive, toy company CEO of the Jodie Foster directed The Beaver . The title refers to the Cockney accented animal 'ventriloquist' hand puppet through which Black relates to both his estranged wife (Foster) and kids and the outside world. Kyle Killen's script had been dancing the Hollywood rounds garnering 1st place on the 2008 Black List survey of best un-produced screenplays. Thankfully producer Steve Golin (Anonymous Content) decided to shoulder the risk. There are resonances of the Robin Williams' vehicle World's Greatest Dad whose anti-hero stops living the lie (for which he's been amply rewarded) and tells the penultimate truth about his dead son. And in many ways that film's script is far more astute than Killen's The Beaver.

Both celluloid dads appear on a network TV show - ostensibly inspiring the world to better love and understanding. Robin Williams' dad is practically pissing himself with constipated laughter though it's perceived by the audience and host as tears. Gibson's 'Beaver' dad is totally sincere in his breakfast TV spot as he self-performs open-heart surgery on his condition: "it's crazy pretending to be happy". Mel Gibson is one of those rare breed; both a fine actor and a movie star. (I was lucky enough to see him, as Biff, every night on stage pre-stardom, break his father's heart Willy Loman (Warren Mitchell) in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman). Gibson 'acts' too much in The Beaver. He doesn't inhabit that alternative world of quiet, noble, witless desperation that only a comedian like Robin Williams has visited. Once one has become a construct of the befuddled world and seen it (as if through the eyes of the Ridley Scott's Blade Runner android) there is no turning back. Some go on flailing revenge for something that they could never have been. Others only watch, refraining comment. Which lily pads of dreams will survive the surface tension of the pond? The Beaver is a wistful film about life wrestling on the river bank. But the Kyle Killen/Jodie Foster/Mel Gison Walter Black could have been a contender. He could have been Willy Loman.

When it was announced last year that Ridley and Tony Scott (together with Youtube) were seeking worldwide clip submissions for the feature length Life in a Day one thought this is either gonna be really naff or quite wonderful. 80,000 videos of July 24, 2010 daily life on the planet were submitted and director Kevin Macdonald alongside editor Joe Walker whittled it all down and added a music score by Harry Gregson-Williams. It's all a thoroughly engaging 90 minutes with a great end credit sequence. And not getting the penultimate clip that someone hastily taped a few minutes to the midnight deadline would have completely changed the impact of the entire film. Without 'spoiler alert' a girl mused whether all our daily lives are actually that interesting? And there are many moments in the film where, in retrospect, you feel more like a 'save the planet' campaign video had been thrust upon one rather than a reality check. There's little anger, violence, obscenity etc etc in the finished film to upset our sensibilities - surely not so in 80,000 videos! Life in a Day is an unashamedly life-affirming movie waving rather than wearing a sting in its tell-tale heart.

Many will find greater sustenance in Jean-Luc Godard's latest opus Film Socialisme (not released till July 8) shot on low-res video. The subtitles for the multi-lingual exchanges are simply a trinity of words and Godard terms the film "A symphony in three movements": THINGS SUCH AS, OUR EUROPE, OUR HUMANITIES. "Ideas separate us, dreams bring us together."

Matt Porterfield’s Putty Hill (at the ICA) is a psuedo-doco about family bereavement using non-professional actors (apart from singer Sky Ferreira) - the director stating “an interest in the world first and storytelling second”. Too often, though, one feels Porterfield's interest, rather than the world's existence. And in this regard, it's a far cry from the work of say Kevin Jerome Everson.
Whether the sexual boredom of marriage in Jonathan Newman's rather lame London set Swinging with the Finkels bears any resemblance to the bedroom antics of our fair city I wouldn't know - I think most of such-like prefer going out for a 'dog' don't they? American movie talent (in both senses of the word) Jerry Stiller (Seinfeld)/Mandy Moore share the screen with Brit TV talent (both senses) Martin Freeman/Angus Deayton. This blend results in rather obviously odorous joss sticks that get up your nose rather than more refined, sinuously fragranced incense getting the mood up. In that sense I guess it is quite representative of a London demographic;)

More stimulating is a new book launched yesterday at the Courtauld Institute Girls! Girls! Girls! in contemporary art (edited by Catherine Grant and Lori Waxman, Intellect Books) on the representation of girlhood in contemporary art photography. In short, why for so many years has the more explicit work (e.g 'panty photos') of girls/women by women been deemed exploitative? I'm reminded that Scotland Yard police a few years ago shut off the Tate Modern room of Richard Prince's 'teen Brooke Shields' photo whereas it had been publicly exhibited at major American galleries without any drama. Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge in the Courtauld gallery should ruffle fewer feathers;) Even fewer than Hugh Heffner's new Playboy Club in Mayfair? Straights fighting over the fig-leafs of gays? No wonder the dodo became extinct? I guess those birds just fluffed their lines too many times in the evolutionary cycle.

Not that you'd get to pick up much on the broadwalk of the South Bank except some driftwood and maybe used condoms along the beach at low tide. But, hey, they've really pulled out all the stops in pre-Olympic year to make this part of town sociable if not exactly exciting. The Eden Project has real grass and plants on what was a desolate concrete terrace now replete with bar; hidden away under the Royal Festival Hall is an exhibition of its conception and history; round the back of the 'bike sheds' you can snog your way through organic produce (and buy some decent incense). Or sit on the fake grass of the Royal National Theatre (they grew live stuff a few years ago courtesy of those grass sculptors whose names I always forget) and watch performances every day. A nice walk it is too past Oxo Wharf (where the inaugural Moving Image London fest takes temporary root during Frieze Art Fair Week later this year) and onto the Tate Modern.

Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape (on till Sept) is the artist's first major show in London since 1964. The Tate is plugging a political dimension to a life's work that has almost become its own ubiquitous wallpaper. But like all good retrospectives it's the trajectory from his earliest to late work that most fascinates in Miró. There's some early crap (sorry, adequate) Fauvist paintings but all those little childish spidery spirals are present even in the earliest 'landscape' paintings. Evolution is at work. An early sky at the top of a canvas bellows cylindrically. As the years progress, the spirals become tentacles, become tiny contemplative shoals in seas of massive colour.

There's certainly a repetitiveness to Miró's inspiration but always a movement towards something (so apt is the show's title). If you 'do' the last room first you think, here's a guy who's just run out of ideas and he's hurling buckets of paint at the canvas decades after Jackson Pollock. But go backwards, forwards, and back again and it's not like that at all. 'What happens to my little creatures if I throw paint at them?' the artist seems top ask. His Spanish contemporary Antoni Tàpies' accolade is so apposite (quoted in the Financial Times review): in his "infinite flux of nature...he showed us that we are all equal because we are all made from the stars themselves. He made the wretched see that they carried all the riches within themselves." But as we all know, especially in the wake of Spain's recent Socialist election slamming, equality doesn't necessarily lead to prosperity. Nor happiness.

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2011-06-17T04:53:00.000-07:00

Does law and order ever really make us happy either? French cop corruption pic Point Blank is far from the advocate for that ideal and makes recent Brit effort Blitz seem like tea at the Ritz in comparison. And a couple of French gendarmes emerge with soul if not humanity nor dignity in The Round-Up - a rather worthy though engaging (I wish I could say expose) of French complicity in the WW2 Holocaust. Do we really need that soundtrack music of Grieg and Debussy's Clair de Lune at the end to help us feel! Why anyone except filmmakers would want to sit through the loathsome bloodbath of Mother's Day is quite beyond me. But you can't fault the film's technical aspects nor the acting. One for die-hard Saw franchise fans. Zombie cult fest hit Stakeland is fun but tame in comparison and a rather dubious promo for the country of Maple Leaf freedom.

Those who survived the zombies fell for the safety of notional northern territorial syrup. And let's face it, governments will always try to convince us that we are safe and secure in their hands. Duck and cover and all will be well. The origins of the comic books upon which is based The Green Lantern movie are almost the same as the origins of this blog. Martin Nodell was waiting on the subway platform after a train delay and noticed the red and green lanterns of the signalmen. The rest was history: ALL-AMERICAN COMICS #16, July 1940.. There's a great film to be made of The Green Lantern but this Warners effort is far from that goal. One could smell fear of failure as they turned away journalists from the preview (Warners being a studio that has a reputation for being as welcoming as possible). I wasn't allowed a second cup of coffee but I did get into the screening.

Which is strange because Warner Brothers could only win both ways. No matter what the critics might think, people would pay their money if only out of curiosity. And given that the film follows the high production standards that Studio sets for itself punters could only wish that a sequel would be better. It could have been Warners' Avatar though James Cameron needn't be worried about gesumping his 3D. Unlike most other comics, The Green Lantern is full of ordinary mortal humans who are chosen to be tested for a seat with 'the gods'. Moreover, the comic's green elemental nature is choking with cinematic possibility - the female 'Erda' earth quality (femininity without tokenism being rare in comics) and the whole Gaia thing going on (the planet is you and you are the planet etc). There was even a gay character in Green Lantern #137 (June 2001).

None of these elements are present in Martin Campbell's film. After so much disappointed expectation on his own film adaption of the BBC TV series Edge of Darkness (again with Gaia themes) I guess he was given another shot. Though from the evidence of this film probably not again. The same goes for the muddled and muddy plot coherence and exposition. As for the possible exploration of the Wagner 'national socialist' (the lower case political) Ring Cycle (gods stealing the gold from the Rheinmaidens, forging a ring of power only for it to be their undoing and for it to be returned to the watery depths) I won't even go there. Nor did the film. The dying alien Abin Sur gave his ring to a crashed test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds): the new comic of 1960, a human who was "utterly honest and born without fear". More parallels with the Siegfried and theRing Cycle.

What the film has got going for it are the special effects which are hard to wear off. Even Hal's green muscular suit (designer Ngila Dickson) should make the comic's originators proud. (Based on the C16 anatomy drawings of Vesalius) - "a human body without the skin on". While Fox Studios latest X-Men got us closer to why kids (young and old) read comics in the first place, Warners' The Green Lantern carries us further away. Comics aren't so much an escape from life rather an affirmation that life does have meaning. That we have the power to change our destiny. The Green Lantern comics posit that the battle is never won by simply defeating another colour (e.g. yellow) but by recognising just how much of that colour is latent within us.

Artist Matthew Day Jackson continues at Hauser and Wirth. Essential to understanding the show is his lounge room at the back where he's created a TV show about the spectres of our body - ghosts and the nuclear test sites in the desert.
The Barbican has a retrospective of Czech animator Jan Švankmajer that's not to be missed.
Katsuhiro Otomo's classic 1988 Akira is re-released in an HD print next week and on Blu-ray.

And as an afterthought, wouldn't it be great if there were comic films incorporating the 'gods' itching to shoplift and covert mortal spoils or union troubles amongst The Green Lantern Corps where they can't agree on exactly what colour green represents the will. Possible tube strike in London on Monday - hold onto your tempers...

more tomorrow....

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2011-06-17T04:49:00.000-07:00

Also showing at the Barbican is Francois Ozon's romantic socialist 'musical' Potiche- set in 1977 (adapted from the 70s play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy). Ozon deserves an entire article to describe his idiosyncratic cinematic style that always has seemed to divide critics. But it'd be hard for anyone not to succumb to the charms of Potiche ('trophy wife' colloquial in French). Suzanne (Catherine Deneuve) was the catch for Robert (Fabrice Luchini) who ruthlessly took charge of the umbrella factory his new wife had inherited from her father. Union troubles are now afoot reducing Robert to a sick bed yet allowing Suzanne (formerly only the "Queen of kitchen appliances" in Robert's eyes) to flower as a trouble-shooting honey-bee. She buzzes over to an old-flame who just happens to be the town's Communist mayor Babin (Gérard Depardieu) and all becomes well again (no pollination required just the batting of wings). With the current problems of European socialism (let alone the old Communists hanging in there for dear life) it's an incredibly apposite film. "These days the personal is political" says one character, and Ozon's great skill is never allowing his subject matter to be trivialised by his flamboyant cine-style. Rather it is elevated from the mundane weary path to a plateau of human happiness.

Incendies directed by one of Canada's most respected directors Denis Villeneuve was also based on a play (Wajdi Mouawad). This long winding tale of two twins who must retrace their family past returning to the Lebanon after reading their mother's will could so easily have run itself down into a bog over 131 minutes - and the "17 different factions with alliances and betrayals of a baffling complexity for neophytes," said Villeneuve who makes no attempt to elucidate those details. What the film does is hit you in the chest slamming one against the wall in helpless rage and anger leaving us to quietly contemplate the importance of our actions in the world. Ostensibly the twins' mother is presented as a martyr. But is she really any more noble than anyone else fighting their cause asks the film? If anything, it is the nurse who delivered and saved the babies who deserves nobility. At times one almost fears that the music score of Grégoire Hetzel even singing 'Mensch' might swamp the film but Villeneuve and his team have created such a 'Guernica' canvas no element seems out of place nor out of time.

Hong Kong director Johnnie To with Sparrow "wanted to make a light-hearted musical" in the vein of Jacques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg. "[I even chose] a French composer [so it wasn't] a typical Johnnie To macho film." Mr.To's company Milkyway is a shining example showing that indyfilmmaking can indeed make money and give one independence. To isn't simply an 'action movie' director: "a man who knows how to use a gun does not shoot in a haphazard way. Each shot must make sense. Each bullet is important. Thanks to this attitude my gunmen are similiar to the swoerdsmen of the past," he explains on the 1hour feature included in this special 3-DVD box set that includes a soundtrack disc and interviews with all his actors.

Ivan Passer's 1981 Cutter's Way is re-released in a new digital print as part of the BFI's Jeff Bridges season. You can read all about the film's distribution trials and tribulations on the web and for many cineastes it's on their Top 10 list. Based on a novel, the film's laconic tone is similar to Chinatown. "The routine grind drives me to drink. Tragedy I take straight," says Alex Cutter, a Vietnam War amputee vet who finds renewed vigour in mounting a 'Don Quixote' quest to reveal Santa Barbara's richest man as the murderer of a teenage girl. What film buffs treasure in this film is probably it's lack of any genre self-conciousness -it seems to meander like a river but its tide can be leathal as is the beauty of its many placid coves. Jack Nitzsche (of the Rolling Stones Performance soundtrack) provides a glass harmonica, zither, strings score that is a collectors' item. These days you'd have to go independent to make a film that anywhere near approaches the subtlety in every aspect of Cutter's Way.

Optimum continue the battle to keep DVD alive (many of the titles you'd happily see in the cinema again if only they ever were shown). This month sees 3 Blu-ray only war titles: Ice Cold in Alex (1958), The Cruel Sea (1953), and Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron (1977) chock full of new extras (nearly 100 minutes).

On DVD are 2 Anna Wong Ealing Classics and long awaited The Halfway House (1944). The latter is from director Basil Dearden who had before this only solo-helmed The Bells Go Down (1943). The highly respected film critic David Thomson has never been an aficionado and is accurately quoted in Wiki: "[Dearden's] films are decent, empty, and plodding and his association with Michael Relph is a fair representative of the British preference for bureaucratic cinema. It stands for the underlining of obvious meaning". Oh dear. Dearden's high point was Victim (1961) with Dirk Bogard - one of the first Brit films that openly discussed homosexuality. On the surface there's nothing particularly revelatory about The Halfway House and one could hardly deem it 'a classic'. It's hard not to write about this film without spoiling the plot (though it's soon fairly obvious what's afoot). In a nut-shell, this time-warped tiny pub (everything is a year behind) in the Welsh valleys functions as an aide-memoir for its guests: could we have lead our lives differently or were we always fated? And in retrospect it's a far cry from the jingoistic Brit cinema of its time. Interesting comparison with the directorial effort of The Halfway House's producer Calvalcanti Went the Day Well? (out July 25 on both formats), based on a Graham Greene short story. Excellent extra is the audio featurette BBC Radio 3's The Essay - British Cinema of the 1940s.

A year can be an eternity in wartime. In The Messenger gruff U.S. military's Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) and his underling Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) have the job of notifying next of kin after an Iraq combat death. Director/co-writer Oren Moverman had amazing tutelage on this script - Sydney Pollack, Roger Michel; and even Ben Affleck was set to direct. Thankfully, there's very little that's 'Hollywood' about this film and certainly nothing sentimental. It has laughs, too, but they are hard won. Why a studio didn't release the film even without an 'Affleck' name is also cause for concern about the health of our cinema. It was nabbed by UK distributor The Works (as was World's Greatest Dad).
The BBC's 3-hour film The Fallen is a must see also.

Countdown to Zero is so obvious a documentary you kick yourself for not making it on your own. And so obvious you think surely someone else must have made an equivalent over the years. This potted history of the nuclear bomb directed by Lucy Walker- its ownership, manufacture, deployment and proliferation- owes its existence to producer Lawrence Bender (The Inconvenient Truth and Tarantino's Inglourious Bastards) -he accessed most of the key interviewees. The footage from these is quite staggering; the archive footage all too painfully familiar e.g. newsreel of the first UK nuclear test in 1952 bringing 'peace to a troubled world'. See this doco and your eyes will just roll out of their sockets in disbelief.

more tomorrow....

Kaboom

Prom

Raise Ravens (Cría Cuervos)

Honey 2

Bridesmaids

===========

2011-06-02T06:58:00.000-07:00

It's getting harder and harder to know what to say about London. And perhaps many would deem this blog to say very little about the current state of the nation's capital. But probably the only thing worth living for in this city is the culture - and London certainly has that. As does this blog;) We look forward to certain cultural/architectural assets of the 2012 Olympics - the floating barge sounds great in that rather dead space (though not for those in the know of London space) across from the Tate. But the city's daily grind growls on with no let up from transport woes and other dilemmas. The city appears clinically obsessed with tweeting, twotting, twatting and all manner of trivia and irrelevancies. No-one can do anything, say anything, think anything without some idiot reaching for an electronic device. The same morons who continue their pretense of 'socialism' whilst itching to have the celebrity (albeit synthetic) of another and of course who are just as avaricious as those they mock.

I feel akin to the Brazilians who extolled racing car champion Ayrton Senna in Asif Kapadia's documentary as "the only good thing about Brazil". David Beckham fulfilled that role for England. But it's not a happy state of affairs for arts organisations who received funding cuts. Yet that problem is a far more complicated one than just 'agitprop'. Britain has a welfare state that no longer has the funds to support that ideal. Yet to scrap the ideal would mean betraying some of the only true voices left of Brit humanity.

Senna would probably just be an interesting motor racing doco if it weren't for Senna's extraordinary tales. The film's crux is Senna losing out on a Formula 1 championship because of ludicrous regulations that essentially meant that he had to drive backwards against the prevailing cars out of a 'siding'. The extraordinary tale is sealed by his death in 1994 and the subsequent rules that resulted in mechanical checks and not a fatality since. For Brazil the wonderful ruthless reality truly was 'there but for the grace of God go I'.

I intended to write at length about Danish director Lars von Trier's comments at last week's Cannes Film Fest so perplexed was I about how his comments could possibly be deemed anti-Semitic at all (he was made persona non grata by the festival chiefs). I was even more dismayed when many of my critical film fraternity colleagues (normally rapacious in devouring such things) hadn't even bothered to watch the 35min press conference in its entirety. But in fairness, I doubt anyone in London's streets would have the foggiest idea of what the debacle was all about. Von Trier's film Melancholia doesn't open here until late-Summer so perhaps I'll wait to air my arguments until then. I'm not 'hedging' my bets, I know who my winners are [sic]. Maybe Lars even will grant me an interview.

Suffice to say that the only comment 'thread' on the net that bore any resemblance to what I saw and heard of the press conference was: Zachary says on May 20, 2011 at 2:17pm. I'll quote in its entirety:
No one who’s seen Bruno Ganz play Hitler in Downfall can deny feeling sympathy for the man. But what I think is key: This situation with Lars cannot be adequately judged in black and white. Refn’s remark and Cannes’ decision to declare him persona non grata—they’re calculated and precise in a way that Lars is not (in either his work or in his public performances). His work notoriously navigates gray areas. He prods, he explores, he feels out a subject. In this way, he expels the concept of black and white. The world we live in, which moves at high speeds and allows us limited time to give thought or care to any one event or idea, detests what cannot be explained in a sentence. Sound bytes have become three words in quotes: “I’m A Nazi.” The press and much of the public will not tolerate the time or care it takes to consider the complexities of any given situation. So Cannes responds in a way that there can be no doubt of their stance; as does Refn, as do some others. They understand how they will be perceived. They know not to include a single false word. They know not to meander in their response to Lars’ comments. Get to the point, is the point. And look good.
Lars doesn’t operate this way. Those who are seeking to understand why he would say these things, are finding the human inside him. Those who are reading the headlines and watching the three-minute clip, and posting Facebook statuses about him being an “asshat,” well… They believe the person is the sound byte, the sound byte is the person. And that, to me, is tragic. Bravo Zachery!

So: back to, ah-hum, liberal London (lots of latent ancien German aestheticism over here Lars). Last week I raced over and up the Royal Academy stairs to try and catch the tail-end of the Richard Long opening at Haunch of Venison- making a joke about being sure I was too late. One of the bevy of young male-blooded invigilators (the females tend to be more chilled out in my experience) stood in his ad hoc line and commanded that I had to leave - "it's either us or the police". Whoa...I hate to imagine the result of pleading artistic license before them. I can just imagine our young friend in an August Sander photo brandishing a stick and dreaming of a more ordered way of life for the C20th. I guess he'll stick me with a 'twot' instead.
Giuseppe Penone is downstairs.

Wim Wenders' photos preceded Richard Long in the same space and Wenders' Pina doco preceded Dancing Dreams in the cinemas. A hard act to follow. But this doco charting the rehearsal process of Pina Bausch's dance piece Kontakhof with a bunch of local teenagers is almost more moving than the Wenders. Not really fair as Wenders' 3D film is in a different realm altogether. And although Bausch used fully trained classical dancers in her company these untrained teenagers exhibited the very soul of this choreographer's work - why should we ever dance?

Vogue editor Carol Woolton and students of Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art have the right idea of making friends, rather than smashing the windows of the Bond Street jewelers - cajoling them into using their designs to complement their window displays. (Part of UK Vogue’s ‘Street Lights’ initiative). Holition’s interactive window display at Garrard (who supplied the Royal Wedding ring - one very similar is in the window).
The motorbike smash and grab window raids of designer stores continue.

Is Blitz a 'fair cop' on London's policing methods? It opened the week of an Irish bomb scare in the Mall. And reading the newspaper headlines one couldn't help but feel skeptical about whether the story we were being told was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Or rather, the fear that nowadays one is rather alone in such skepticism. Blitz (adapted Ken Gruen's novel) isn't a bad film at all which isn't to say it isn't quite a good one oftentimes. Brant (Jason Statham, mean and gritty as ever) is a cop that gets the job done by not always playing by the rules. A cop killer (Aidan Gillen, forever smirking as if straight out of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange) is rampaging. Brant despises most of his superiors but not the new bloke (Paddy Considine's gay designer-pad sincerity). The film's denouement may be politically incorrect but it makes a refreshing change from the boringly obvious police swarming street maneuvers the day after government increased policing newspaper headlines. Give a few days and alas it's all back to old business.

10 Vyner Street hosts a very brave exhibition by Greek artist Xenofon Kavvadias displaying manuals of various terrorist organisations. All the books have cleared exhibition permissions from the Metropolitan Police etc. to the extent that many reside in a an enclosed room where photography is strictly forbidden. It's the boldness, simplicity and clinical nature of this gallery show that most impresses and awes. Perhaps far more so than any photograph of an actual victim or perpetrator ever could.
Audio of Geoffrey Robinson QC's opening speech on the website (downloadable podcast)

Down the road at Wilkinson Gallery is something far less perturbing. Upstairs a 45 year-old tortoise from London Zoo has his own penthouse suite replete with room service and sunbed (it's a different local tortoise for each new city). Shimabuku's art is deceptively simple and pays off with close attention.

"Liberty is about our rights to question everything." - Ai Weiwei's (the imprisoned Chinese artist and he of the Tate Modern's ill-fated painted porcelain sunflower seeds) So Sorry (2010) referenced "the thousands of apologies expressed recently by governments, industries, and financial corporations worldwide in an effort to make up for tragedies and wrongdoings – though often withhout shouldering the consequences or the desire to acknowledge let alone repair." By comparison the Lisson Gallery's show is a rather sedate affair. Exquisitely crafted objects and a video installation. Even Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads in the Somerset House courtyard seems to yearn for a full circle of centrifugal force rather then just half a one. These are copies of the C18 heads ransacked by British and French troops from Beijing's Old Summer Palace in 1860.
"Without freedom of speech there is no modern world, just a barbaric one."- Ai Weiwei

Whitechapel Gallery has a retrospective of Paul Graham's photos - many of 80s/90s deprived Britain. Over at his Soho gallery Anthony Reynolds has Graham's incredibly simple and captivating photos of enlarged film stock emulsions that appear to be world in themselves.

Apocalypse Now has been re-issued in cinemas preceding Optimum's 3-disc Blu-ray release. In the Whitechapel's cinema "Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. LÍís split-screen film simultaneously shows clips of Charlie Sheen in Platoon and his father, Martin Sheen, in Apocalypse Now. Sheen junior watches his father deal with the posttraumatic syndrome of the Vietnam War and illustrates the complexities of family relationships, the repetition of war and history, and the emphasis on masculinity in Hollywood."

Philip-Lorca diCorcia at Spruth Magers Lee simply aligns little Polaroids on a continuous ledge around the gallery. At the opening he likened them to the old dye-transfer processing that gave them a simultaneity of both distance and immediacy. Another American artist Matthew Day Jackson's Everything Leads to Another at Hauser & Wirth is a fun show replete with his own designer lounge and televisual entertainment. "In my work there is no past. History is a part of everything. Everything leads to another. As the sum of history moves out in 360 degrees from its center ñ which does not exist ñ it envelops the present. Perhaps you could say I am interested in moments of sublime beauty which carry their counterpart, otherwise known as terror, so closely that it is difficult to delineate one from the other."

But Day Jackson does have a sense of humour. Standing beside him at the opening with his Axis Mundi - a huge life-size sculpture re-purposing the cockpit of a B29 - I asked if it was in working order and could "get us out of here". "Absolutely!" "Do we need to take the coloured skeleton that resides in the rear cockpit," I asked. "No, we can get rid of him." Such is the ruthless pragmatism of the art world;)

Superficially, Kutlag Ataman's new video work of Istanbul street beggars at Thomas Dane may seem condescending. But the longer one gazes the more disturbing and mesmeric these scenes become. Everything is not what it seems. Literally because many beggars are 'rehearsed' in their manipulative, theatrical gestures by their 'pimps'. Ataman's feature length film Journey to the Moon is also worth seeking out on DVD.

Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern's Mammuth starring Gérard Depardieu as a depressed motor-biker abattoir worker is according to its directors "a ﬁlm that is funny and moving. Funny because we’re confronting a “socially disabled” man with a modern society that is beyond his reach. Moving for the same reason. A bit like a mammoth in a world of foxes. Who ﬂails away in the face of a multitude much sharper and livelier than he." As I wrote after last year's London film Festival it is quite simply melancholically and movingly bonkers. Their dark comedy Louise-Michel was also recently released by Axiom. If the Dardennes brothers films just that bit too 'real' for you then Mammuth may suffice knocking one sideways and inside-out.

For some horror, Spanish Julia's Eyes won't disappoint though it takes a while to get gripping. And Angels of Evil on the life of real life 70s/80s Sicilian habitual crim Renato Vallanzasca (Kim Rossi Stuart), though predictable, is all round very impressive filmmaking.

Quieter and subtler as you'd expect is Tom McCarthy's 3rd feature Win Win with Paul Giamatti as a New Jersey lawyer who opportunistically takes on the $1,500 a month legal guardianship of an Alzheimer's client. As in life, the script (Joe Tiboni and McCarthy) isn't at all as clear cut as that, though few are the lucky ones in suburban life for whom things work out as reasonably as they do for these characters. Acutely cast actors such as these do, however, restore one's faith in a life full of promise if not devoid of pain.

===================

2011-06-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

This bio-pic of Vidal Sassoon doesn't begin promisingly with its gushing B/W accolades comparing the London hair stylist to the Messiah and Einstein. But gradually one does become fascinated by the story of this man's single-minded tenacity to succeed. A Jewish East End kid, at 14 he got on his bike during the WW2 Blitz and worked his way up through the ranks. "1954-1963 were the most exciting years but with many lonely downtimes". Sassoon is credited with a revolution in hair styling "a whole different look in shape". His new glass windowed salon "looked like a modern art gallery...people [being seen] having their hair done was a revolution". As you'd expect there's little comparison to other hairstylists or comments that are any less than gushing in this doco. But it is an inspirational story nonetheless and not without compromises. He even had to take elocution lessons in order to lose his broad East End accent to seem acceptable to posh clients. "If you go out on a limb...[what] can't be done...the root of who you are, the gut...in whatever field, my sense is that you will surprise yourself."

Sassoon was fascinated with the geometry of cutting hair. Popping into Alan Cristea's gallery and seeing Michael Craig Martin's work will also inspire in this regard. His geometry is quite staggering in its freshness even though much of the work dates back many decades. He's also curated some of the rooms at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition including a room of academicians' work that in his own words "is a singularity" that never seems to stop moving such is the resonant interraction of the chosen works. Even a large Per Kirkeby painting in Room 3 that you'd think would never work alongside such disparate other painters' work only serves to enhance both itself and the rest of the room. The Summer Exhibition hasn't had great press in recent years (and I haven't seen the shows to compare) but the breadth and detail of each room each curated by an established artist this year is a fascinating insight into what it is to be an artist rather than just a cramped free for all for lesser known artists to sell their work.

At Eleven Fine Art Daisy de Villeneuve shows her well-known designs as part of a Pop Art show alongside Peter Blake and Natasha Law (Jude's sister). Daisy's father Justin (like Sassoon from a poor family background) is credited as having launched Twiggy, convincing her to cut her shoulder length hair into the icon we recognise today. "Everybody kept telling me I couldn't do this or that, but I just went ahead and it worked out O.K.," Justin is quoted as saying. He, however, vetoed changing Twiggy's working-class accent.

Keira Knightley in Last Night seems to be trying to shrug off her image as a big budget Hollywood actress and show she can be edgy and improvisaional. You will either empathise with this film's guilt ridden relationship scenario or be bored to tears by its solipsism. I hasten to add I'm of the former camp because the script rings true as a bell. Thankfully nobody in the film 'acts' they are just being. And while these characters are quite possibly among the most boring individuals on the planet that doesn't mean the actors are thus. First time director Massy Tadjedin encourages Sam Worthington (Avatar) to just be rather than act. And he turns out to be the most boring but dependable bloke in Manhattan. And so on and so on. On board are also some of the cinema's greatest technical talents, Susan Morse (editor) and Ann Roth (costumes).

Third Star is the sort of film that gets attention at the Raindance Film Fest and if lucky enough resurfaces possibly grabbing a distribution deal in the big bad real world. It's a film loaded with talent but equally with longeurs. Oliver Schmitz's Life Above All is based on Allan Stratton's best-selling Chanda's Secrets. It's subject matter is an AIDS rumour ruining the family of a small African village. While it may sound worthy it transcends politicisation and becomes an engrossing tale of humans trying to survive prejudice. Everything in this film is exemplary -and what a performance from first-time actress Khomotso Manyaka as Chanda.
For director Xavier Dolan, "The only truth is love beyond reason," quoting playwright Alfred de Musset. Heartbeats will irritate the life out of some viewers with Dolan's 'trademark' choreographed camera style and willful colour palette right down to a tangerine sweater. "You never look at me from where I see you," another de Musset quotation. Dolan's direction sees everything; arguably too much so. But like his character who observes that "Koltès [a renowned contemporary French dramatist] keeps you in shape", Dolan dances his characters into the corners of their desires as Koltès sculpted words to be batted across the theatrical space.

Re-released is the painstakingly restored print of Herbert Ponting's 1924 doco The Great White Silence accompanying Scott on his voyage to Antarctica. Last year Getty Images showed Ponting's stills that have remained mesmeric to this day.

Le Quattro Volte is also elemental. Director Michelangelo Frammartino: "It urges the viewer to seek out the invisible connection which breathes life into everything that surrounds us." The film is both as 'arty' as it sounds and as cleansingly beautiful to refresh our belief in existence.

Ic-cream__

2011-05-12T07:17:00.000-07:00

Last night, BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves discussed Verso's new book Winstanley: A Common Treasury, "one of the first true socialists" noted Labour politician Tony Benn. Winstanley's idea of the "perfect person unto themselves" must probably resonate through every discussion of worthy artistic endeavour. And it most certainly is the bedrock of this week's film releases.

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's 4th feature A Screaming Man is cinema one is very unlikely to forget. And though set against the background of Chad's civil war, its rivers of human predicament run far deeper than disintegrating geographic environs. Adam is a 50ish ex-champ swimmer who retains his pride by being pool attendant at a luxury hotel. A new company broom sweeps clean and he is relegated to front gate keeper and worse, his own son is promoted to his pool job. Adam is both proud and resentful. What transpires is the most devastating act of war: the one we inflict upon ourselves and hence those around us. There is no-one else to blame; only the silence deafens.

Red Hill is an Australian movie that dares to champion aboriginal landrights whilst being a commercially viable product in its own right. Director (and everything else) Patrick Hughes has previously helmed award winning shorts and A-list commercials. This his first feature is so assured it's only a stone's throw from Hollywood's tried and tested rocky outcrops. Young 'rookie' cop Shane wafts from the big smoke into the country town rattle-snake lair of police lifers. Cue the murdering Jimmie who's escaped prison and is on the rampage. But his past meets the eye unflinchingly and is more than - as father-to-be Shane uncovers almost to his cost.

Though Hughes' direction uses every cliche of the Hollywood arsenal to great effect it's his pacing and restraint that marks Hughes as having an enormous cinematic future. One wishes Brit first feature Attack the Block had the same promise and in fairness that more Brit features had even half as much pizazz as it itself has. Whereas Red Hill's cinematography (Tim Hudson) is always subtle and unobtrusive, Attack the Block looks expert though rather laboured (Tom Townend). And one's never quite sure what tone director Joe Cornish is aiming for. Is it harking back to the sociological sci-fi 50s/60s school of the political 'other' or is it comedy trying to keep a straight face about social exclusion as the black hairy aliens with silvery glowing fangs leap about devouring both black and white council estate inmates? The white girl, mugged by the black teen 'hoodies', having now joined forces with her attackers. But the dialogue rings true even if the whole is never more than the sum of its parts. And the 'aliens' really aren't as naff as they sound despite their resemblance to gigantic wooly slippers.

Fire in Babylon is the untold documentary story of the West Indian cricketing greats. No need to be a fan to thoroughly enjoy this one.

A hit a last year's Cannes Director's Fortnight, Katell Quillévéré's first feature Love Like Poison (Un Poison violent- referring to Serge Gainsbourg's song) marks her out as an exciting new force majeure on the French cinema scene - casting and directing her teenage actors (newcomers) with consummate skill and never a mélodie of mawkish condescension. Quillévéré walks in the steps of Maurice Pialat (she acknowledges Cavalier's Thérèse) but is sure to stealthily tread her own path. Astute use of music,too, with a cover of Radiohead's Creep as the playout.

Take Me Home Tonight shows the American adults who've never seemed able to move beyond kidulthood. And it's nigh impossible to find one halfway good review of this film. So far be it from my destiny to add to the critical fraternity of cheese appreciation, but to my nose, the film's perfumes were redolent of sweet nostalgia. Or as the Portuguese say, saudade: a longing for something you know not quite is what. It's the summer of 1988 and Matt Franklin (Topher Grace) having failed to fulfill the American dreams of his LAPD dad opted for the video store clerk. In breezes aspirant financier Tori Fredreking (Teresa Palmer), unbeknownst to her she was Matt's high school crush. Not letting on that he works there (now a Goldman Sachs man) she invites him to a school reunion party.

Judd Apatow territory this thankfully isn't (nothing wrong with that country of old young men I hasten to add). Reviews of the film have either felt that its historical view is jaundiced or rather unfairly, were disappointed with its lack of American capitalism critique. But Matt Franklin seems to be the ultimate absurd Richard Linklater slacker, nay soothsayer of Western civilisation's decline. He has an incredible head for figures that pulls him through, and the wool over the eyes, of the Beverly Hills party banker host - where they've all ended up later in the evening. Matt is the only one of his buddies/budettes who hasn't aspired. And as with the recent Arthur, I defy anyone to prove that the film's characters don't still exist. In spades! Matt Franklin could make a good President; he listens but with an uncanny ability to filter out all the deafening white noise. And just because he flannels with the best of them doesn't mean he's inept at tailoring an argument. Certainly no worse than...

Emilio Estevez's The Way doesn't plumb our depths either to quite the extent some would prefer. But it's the porous spiritual nature of Tom's (Martin Sheen) Camino de Santiago walk (with his three companions) that ushers us the audience into a Stendhal Syndrome state of collapsing under the awe of thought and beauty. Tom makes the trek as an epitaph to his son who died without finishing the Pyrenees-Spain voyage. And of course the film resonates with the Estevez-Sheen family trials and tribulations itself. There are some creaky politically correct moments such as when Tom's backpack gets nicked by a teen gypsy and the kid's father reacts as if inviting the European Union for breakfast. But for the mostpart the film's 'much ado about nothing and yet much about everything as we wrestle with that centrifuge denying us our still point in the turning world.

Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) hasn't dated a jot. Newly restored by the director, its luminescence of the human condition speaks for the world and yet couldn't have resonated from anywhere else but New York City. Bernard Herrmann's score with its quinine saxophone lullaby has been discussed ad infinitum and rarely bettered by his composing peers. De Niro's cab driver Travis doesn't do drugs though desperately craves something to numb the pain of existence. The greatness that is finally thrust upon him is ironically what cures this sick ignoble beast. "If the legend becomes truth...

...The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Photography Copyright Andrew Lucre 2011

Additiions to last post...

2011-05-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

Additions:

Water for Elephants
Flying Monsters 3D
Hanna

uccellacci e uccellini

2011-04-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

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
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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).

2011-04-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-04-07T03:18:00.001-07:00

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

the final finding of the ear,

2011-04-04T05:03:00.000-07:00

"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

2011-03-26T04:18:00.000-07:00

A few mentions before the events evaporate:
last day of the celebrations at Kings Place of renowned Swiss composer, oboist, conductor Heinz Holliger.
He's interviewed on BBC Radio 3's In Tune. (Last 3 days to listen)
BBC Four televised the Royal Opera House production based on the life of the young American Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith.(10 days left on iPlayer)
The BBC's under fire for the level of background music on its primetime Wonders of the Universe

The 9th KINOTEKA Polish Film Festival just got under way. One of the highlights is on general release next friday: Jerzy Skolimowski's powerful opus of survival Essential Killing.

And the 25th BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival opens March 31.

not even the rain.....

2011-03-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

Whiling time away the other day with a colleague, he opined that Woody Allen's latest film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (released by Warners in the UK and France but not even on their website..) was lazy. To which I instantaneously mused that it felt more interesting than that though the characters did seem to inhabit different films. "Every human being represents a world," according to Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni whose two early films Le Amiche (The Girlfriends) and La signora senza camelie (The Lady Without Camelias) are co-incidentally out on Eureka DVD next week (indie director Joe Swanberg shoots the interview extras). Mr. Allen's most recent opus didn't send the Americans critics falling over themselves with praise either when it opened there last year. But Antonioni's Le Amiche did back in 1955, its virtues extolled by no lesser mortals than Village Voice critics Jonas Mekas and Andrew Sarris though the film was mostly dismissed in Europe. It was re-released June 2010 at New York's Film Forum to rave notices.

Cinephile earthlings would have to have been incarcerated under a rock not to know that Woody Allen's mentors were Ingmar Bergman and the likes of Antonioni. Now whether Mr. Allen meant You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger to be his Bergmanesque hommage to modern London he doesn't say. If he did then unconciously he's created a film far more akin to Antonioni 'alienation' than Bergman's acceptance of love and death. Best to start with Mr. Allen's own words about the film: "That's how people get through life: by constantly denying reality, constantly buying into allusions of artistic immortality. of meaning to the universe, an afterlife, all kinds of illusions...Even if you could find a pill that makes you live forever, that forever is still a finite number, because nothing is forever. It's all sound and fury, and in the end it means nothing." Given that, filmmaking for Allen "is a distraction that has its own little challenges and consequently keeps the mind off morbid thoughts."

It was no 'accident' or 'mistake' therefore that the characters in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger seem to live in different movies i.e. their own. Just as Cesare Pavese's (writer of Le Amiche's source novella Among Women Only) writer friend Italo Calvino critised Antonioni for, in Village Voice critic Jim Hoberman's words, "his lack of Pavesean subtlety"; so too could some level the same at Woody Allen as compared to Bergman. Yet anyone who knows London as compared to Manhattan will realise that though Londoners may think they inhabit different worlds most New Yorkers, however, secretly know it is one and the same for everyone- no matter how many fundraising Galas they attend to massage their tax return or assuage their immortal soul. That's where Mr. Allen's film is as incredibly astute as say Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters - You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is not nearly so funny nor as enjoyable but then, nor is London compared to Manhattan in that sense.

Antonioni's pre-Le Amiche film was a series of interviews as part of Love in the City- Attempted Suicide. And both films of Antonioni and Mr.Allen open with a failed suicide. Indeed, Pavese's last diary entry before committing suicide himself was, “No more words, only a gesture”. Antonioni's characters want independence from their fellow humans while simultaneous not being able to live without them. Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti) is an artist of sorts supported by his girlfriend Mariella ; as is in the writer Roy (Josh Brolin) by Sally (Naomi Watts) in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. The shopclerk Clara (Lucia Bosé) in Antonioni's La signora senza camelie [The Lady Without Camelias] (1953) is dissatisfied with simply being a movie star wanting to be at least considered capable of being a 'dramatic' actress. Maybe she is given the right chances or maybe she just isn't. As are the characters in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger - not so much failures more just potential victims of life's cruel illusions with politics not amounting to a hill of beans at the end of the day because all we have as mortals is that dwindling hill of beanstalk progeny.

After the inner emotional machinations of The Illusionist one was hoping for more of the same in director Neil Burger's latest Limitless. Though lacking in that particular quality, the chemically induced plotline does race around in very vervy fashion if not much else. Whatever wonder pills Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is taking, they certainly allow him to see through the hill of beans, up the other side of the mountain and beyond. Leslie Dixon's (The Thomas Crown Affair) script plays cool as in Thomas Crown while never plummetting the emotional payoff beyond that cliff face.

Le Amiche's Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) returns to Turin having deserted her working class niche and ascending to a couture assistant in Rome. Her affair with workman Carlo (Ettore Manni) defines no political agenda (Antonioni's background was one of wealth) yet she is one of the few survivors of the 'middle-class' milieu by the end of the film. Or is she? Should Woody Allen's denouement elderly couple in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger be criticised for their life of illusion? Who's to say that their shared belief in the weegee board afterlife isn't blissful belief rather than ignoble ignorance?

Chalet Girl aspires to be Brit flic rags to riches Cineplex hit. And it's nigh hard to be disappointed in the results of such ambition from director Phil Trait (you was persona non gratis admitting a soft spot for his Sandra Bullock vehicle All About Steve). Most certainly Chalet Girl is one of those films where you ponder: if it weren't for the captivating female lead would this all just all be hokum? Kim (Felicity Jones) - is fast food check out girl turned posh Austrian ski chalet hospitalitess. All thanks to a co-worker's tipoff and Kim's desultory silver service skills thumping her into right place, right time mode. Needless to say, the poshettes of piste are immediately horrified then somewhat bemused at the waif's arrival on the slopes.

If you didn't already know that Felicity Jones was established as a rising Brit star then after seeing this film you'd grab that list by the scruff of the neck and plonk her name very near the top. Easy to see why out of all possible competition American director Julie Taymor chose her to be Miranda in the rather problematic (as compared to say Derek Jarman's magical) version of Shakespeare's TheTempest. Established Brit comedian Bill Bailey is a straight dramatic foil as Kim's single parent dad William in Chalet Girl. And Kim's almost penultimate dawn mountainous monologue on the death of her mum could go so so gooey but it's largely to her credit that it rises heavenwards. It's a film of illusions, with as a criticism, perhaps just too happiness rounding out 'our little sleep' at the end. But again, who's to say it couldn't all happen? Surrounded by a great supporting cast Felicity Jones makes us believe not so much that this life's all for 'real'; rather that belief in yourself is all "we know and need to know" and is the only thing stopping it all from being just a bitch. Are we just flaccid fated creatures or do we have free will: The Adjustment Bureau is on general release and won't disappoint.

This need to know is what propels Ken Loach's Route Irish. Liverpudlian friend Frankie of private security contractor Fergus (a riveting performance from relative newcomer Mark Womack) has been killed on the route between Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone. Fergus is a mongrel mix of bloodhound/rottweiler/and pooch. There's more than meets the eye to the official explanations he's being dished out and he means to see it through to the bitter blinding end. A director such as Ken Loach should know better than to contrast images of carnage over the emotive traditional music played in concert by Southern Kurdistan musician Talib Rasool. Or perhaps Loach is being far cleverer than that. Is that device not the trope of war we are always offered? Early on, Frankie's widow says about the war deaths "if it came on the telly I'd just turn it off" . The question is not do we really need another film about Iraq? Rather, how do we go on living without more films like Route Irish provoking debate? Fergus sort of tries convincing himself he's different (and quite and of course is possibly) from everyone else. Loach's ending is far more complex than to be simply seen as one of revenge for Fergus' character. We are all bound on that Shakespearean wheel of fire like it or not. Loach's greatness as a director is holding that mirror up to our nature's whatever upbringing and asking, would/could one have been any different knowing what you knew?

Archipelago (a gem at last year's 54th BFI London Film Festival) proves director Joanna Hogg, on just the strength of two features, to be Britain's great hope for the survival of European cinema. One could say her style resembles such and such, or so and so. Really, though, hers is the other side of the Woody Allen coin of 'Englishness'. Hogg: "Facts don't necessarily lead to truth. I was ambivalent around whether I had the right to portray people close to me, and in the end I decided to base all the characters around myself so I wouldn't hurt anyone. What I feel I've ended up with is a rather unflattering self-portrait, in which I've created a kind of internal family that bears no relation to my family of origin...a close-up doesn't necessarily mean intimacy."

As in Chalet Girl friction of class distinctions ignites self-questioning. Edward (Tom Hiddleston) forms not so much a bond as an unconsummated therapy with the rented house's cook Rose (a real life caterer and the first film for non-actress Amy Lloyd). His family have gathered (in reality on the strange Gulf Stream tropic of Tresco off the coast of Penzance) as a send off for this ex city banker's new life as AIDS health educator in Africa. Edward genuinely thinks he'll be able to 'make a difference' to the world. And no doubt he could in some way great or small. The question director Joanna Hogg asks us, though, is how much of a difference will Edward ever make to himself? In a Eugene O'Neill moment late in the film Edward confesses to his mother's painting teacher Christopher that maybe he should instead become a writer. It's one of many scenes in this film reeking of flayed human u-turns; it's victims desperately seeking sign-posting for what will ever only be simply their own reflection in the rear-view mirror.

I'm still plowing or is it gliding through Eureka's Late Mizoguchi - Eight Films 1951-1956 boxed set. So maybe they'll be an addition to this posting if the forces of darkness don't overtake my passion.

Wasn't sent a preview DVD for the brave cinematic adaption of Haruki Murakami's 1987 novel Norwegian Wood. Sounds intriguing, though. Also missed what 'they're' saying is 'the best British comedy in years Submarine.

The very silly but very fun Irish comedy Zonad played the Tribeca Fest NYC last year but only just makes it to DVD (director's commentary) without UK theatrical. Also at last year's Tribeca and out on DVD is a more celebrated The Arbor. Or put spine-tingling hairs on your significant other's body parts with the BFI re-release of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955)-it even inspired Hitchcock. The 2009 doco on the director's unfinished Inferno is enthralling for any cineaste. But the doco Gasland (DVD) showing drinking water of Americans turning not into wine but flammable gas is even more horrific.

'Nor has your loyal blogger been well enough to haunt the London galleries (not a cop out but unfortunate truth) though I hope to catch these:

John Stezaker at the Whitechapel Gallery (closing today...yikes)
Douglas Gordan at Gagosian
Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World (British Museum)
Watteau: The Drawings at the Royal Academy as well as the survey of Modern British sculpture.
The British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet continues at Hayward Gallery. If you missed Christian Marclay's The Clock at the White Cube last year now's your chance. Movie segments that feature the time are edited into a 24 video that tells the time minute for minute. if it's not art then it's certainly a 'can't go wrong' date movie.

As for real life in London: it continues to be just too unbelievable and no doubt quietly unbearable for some. Read the newspapers online if you dare! I gave you a good education in reality navigation, non? OK, I can't resist the temptation. What do the 2012 Olympics and penguins have in common? You do know there's now a secret colony of our waddling friends called the Herzguins (inspired by director Werner Herzog's doco Encounters at the End of the World. He goes 3D into the French Chauvet caves for Cave of Forgotton Dreams.

2011-02-22T11:05:00.000-08:00

Rail firm admits track failings at Potters Bar
I think this article speaks for itself and I'm constantly appalled and can find no humour at attempts of whitewashing 'accident' enquiries in this country. Pray tell me why highly 'Mossad' trained Metropolitan Police marksmen (equipped with special special 'hollow point' dum-dum-style bullets that intentionally kill instantly at high velocity hitting the victim but not coming out the other side), needed to fire seven hollow tip bullets into Jean Charles de Menezes' head and one into his neck. Three other bullets missing - when they were in close proximity? Nobody ever wants to accept the blame for anything in this country. And if they do it's only as a last resort at the end of a long protracted legal battle.
And ummm, the UK government wants to sell its stake in a company that makes enriched uranium for nuclear power, to help fund the new green investment bank, which is being set up to invest in low-carbon technology.Hmmm.
Oh, and un-checked anti-social behaviour in social housing just gets better and better. I know where that last laugh is gonna fall.

But let's think about the Oscars and watch the scathing reality of Winter's Bone (just out on DVD), or watch our economic woes Inside Job in which everyone (especially in the UK, hello Ireland), thoroughly bought into and was ruthlessly exploited by the unregulated capitalist infrastructure. Or the underbelly of Melbourne, Australia in Animal Kingdom. And Oscar ninjas have refused Banksy an animal disguise (nominated in the Best Doco section for Exit Through the Gift Shop). Or Brazilian garbage pickers in Lucy Walker's doco Waste Land on artist Vik Muniz who creates art out of them.

Heartening to know that protesters were inspired by my last photo and found their 15 minutes of Warhol fame at Sothebys. Better to enjoy the 'ride' perhaps and not think the logic through of that one to its painfully disillusioning end. Perhaps not so painful if you're rich, though. Any one who says money doesn't buy one happiness...

And if you've never met a 14 year old girl packing a shotgun that you'd remotely trust then meet her Oscar nominated performance inTrue Grit. And resist the temptation after the film to shoot your nasty neighbours, or the government nor..??

So the world turns and so more films get made and so the same people feel good about seeing them. But a few lone voices in the wilderness will be left to tell the aliens how life really passed on this planet. Even if they are a farting genius like Paul.
Would Paul cast a spell on Transport for London who rejected one of the original marketing posters of animal penises from the Natural History Museum?

If the extra-terrestrials had any sense they'd be reading Allen Ginsberg's Howl, mesmerised by John Giorno's incantation that life never gets any better.
Unless you're in a musical.

Ask yourself why?

2011-02-21T02:09:00.000-08:00

new videos HERE for:
Son of Babylon
Never Let Me Go

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-02-01T12:16:00.000-08:00

Let's hope I never REALLY start having to tell even a remote version of the truth from the Bodhi Tree. Now that would be more than just embarrassing. Nest pas? Il Presidente....;;;;) Hope the Brighton Rock premiere is going well tonight in London. My memories of the original with Richard Attenborough (also an Oscar worthy performance in Séance are just too vivid in my memory...
Out Feb 28 is Optimum's digitally restored DVD with extras: Interview with Rowan Joffe / 1954 NFT interview with Richard Attenborough and John Bouting.

God bless.
Andrew

PS and let's hope that my film is never so helplessly bad that it needs a recommendation from the London's Daily Star film critic Alan Frank at the top of the poster. Investigation anyone?
Oh, and Dominion Housing Association still harbours the worst anti-social neighbours one could ever imagine.

The Black Swan press conference VIDEO HERE

2011-02-01T03:28:00.000-08:00

The great British[sic...born in NYC] film composer and arranger John Barry has just died (Jan 30). Released by Network DVD (Region 2) in 2006 was Séance on a Wet Afternoon - arguably Barry's first 'proper' film score (US DVD without extras). Directed by Bryan Forbes in 1962, the DVD has a fascinating audio commentary (when nowadays many are just downright perfunctory) by Forbes and his actress wife from the same film Nanette Newman. "When Derek [York] my editor and I had finished it I was absolutely convinced it was a turkey and would be a failure and I didn't even stay for the first night in England...I had no confidence in it at all." It proved an enormous success in the States and Forbes relates the story of how famed American bandleader Artie Shaw bought the American rights, made a fortune and subsequently lost it all. Forbes can claim to have discovered John Barry having asked him to do something small for The L-Shaped Room. "He was very diffident, very thin and as Michael Caine said you wouldn't believe he had [a breathe or a note] in him." Seance broke all the rules at the time and was one of the Britain's first cinema verite on location films (there were even laws prohibiting tripods on the pavement).

"I asked him [John Barry] to be involved all the way through the film [and we went onto to collaborate that way] on The Wrong Box(1966) (Optimum DVD), King Rat, and Deadfall.(1968) He was a consummate professional, John. The best I ever worked with. [He wrote for Seance ] an inspired sequenced on violins for the kidnapping sequence of the child in the Rolls Royce going from side to side and screaming. You never hear a scream. Those are John Barry's violins, there's no sound with the child at all." The score sounds as if Barry had been composing film music for years.

Another ingenious John Barry Oscar winning score was The Lion in Winter (available back in 2001 on Momentum DVD with director Anthony Harvey's [a former actor and editor] fascinating audio commentary): "...what was so extraordinary about John was that if there was a piece of music that doesn't quite work, you can talk to him about it [he conducts his own scores]and he'll re-write it in 2 minutes and give you something quite different...while you're in the middle of the session, and give you a different sound. Wonderful for the director to have that."

Joseph Losey's Boom! is worth checking out as well.

nor youth nor age custom stale...

2011-02-01T03:25:00.000-08:00

Recently there appeared a well-respected American critic's musings on why we go to the cinema at all. It coincided with a somewhat existential crises of why write this bloody blog at all. For many people nowadays a blog is no more than one of many marketing tools in their web presence armory. For others it's the most cherished internet trait of direct political action. For some it's a rather practical, though oft hypocritical, path to being 'properly published'. For a die-hard, intrepid few it's a place to make sense of things; a cri de coeur to others that they are not alone in such thoughts and though we may seem a little or wholly weird to the 'norm' world we just know we ain't crazy; that safety resides in such knowledge - "better a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy".

So should arts coverage and 'real life' be counterpointed in the modality of this blog? You would think that newspapers and their web equivalents these days do a perfectly good job in offering the reader a choice of life's coverage: from politics to breast implants, the best houseplants to the worst nannies - business and pleasure (pure and soiled). In London, most commuters will read the free sheet Metro on their way to work, the now free sheet Evening Standard on their return with perhaps snippets from their chosen 'quality broadsheet' during what free time remains of the commute and rest of the day-never enough newsprint on hand to cover the weekly delays due to signal failure. At weekends - given the economic slump- it's probably down to one of the bulging Saturday or Sunday editions. Others will choose the 'tabloids'. Is such routine really that different anywhere else in the world? The internet now offers specialty subjects for everyone's tastes at their fingertips.

Isn't arts/film reviewing exactly the same? Most inclined people barely get to one art show a month or even one movie? Would three DVDs per month be a good guesstimate? As one shrewd multi-national news organisation knows, TV was, still is and will always be the future.
Sky Atlantic on Brit TV launches its cable chocolate box of HBO goodies this week with the Scorsese directed first ep of Broadwalk Empire. Reviewed on BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves along with That’s Offensive! Criticism, Identity, Respect

Politics left well aside:(). Go to all the review sites and there 'they' all are in their neat little boxes ready for you to choose a 'reliable' source of cultural/entertainment recommendation. All publicity pushing towards that all-important release week thence it's onto the next best thing without looking back - until far from the 'Medusa' with the 'best of' end of year round-ups. Did anyone really care what jibes Mr Gervais (as host of last month's Golden Globes Awards) lobbed at the Hollywood elite?

As reported here last summer, when the host announced at an outdoor (London's Somerset House) screening of Swedish vampire flic Let the Right One In that a Hollywood remake was afoot, 1000's of attendees hissed and booed. Recently on BBC 4, one guest commentator on Sunday morning's papers accused (in the context of Ricky Gervais' remarks) Americans of being "earnest" allowing themselves to float in their "bubbles of happiness and sycophancy".
Independent on Sunday - what makes Brit humour (written I believe by Tim Lott - can't find the bloody link so find it yourself if you're THAT interested-I don't get paid for it ;)

More interesting about the Gervais 'debacle' was the question of whether in fact he was funny at all? Stephen Fry at one BAFTAs ceremony took the tact and role of headmaster chastising, cajouling and encouraging his celebrity pupils. The jokes of Jonathan Ross as host in other years sunk without trace hopefully along with his scriptwriter. Gervais rose to fame from his TV series The Office (remade for American TV) about the painful mundanities of British office life with Gervais as the office 'Mr.Jolly' (but in reality with all the pain of failed comedian Archie Rice in John Osborne's play The Entertainer). And comedy only ever succeeds if it's based in a truth that others can relate to.

American sociologist Erving Goffman wrote of how we try to re-establish face after the loss of it, "remedial interchanges" (e.g. bumping into a lamppost i.e. that wasn't really me that was an 'abnormal' me, very rare that that happens, if at all to me). That in fact we are normal people. But the the painfully funny fact that made The Office so resonant was that most people don't want to be normal: rather they want to be A+ normal, or even super-normal without ever severing the arteries of normality's apron-strings. In that regard, peoples of the world don't seem to differ much in that sense of being and belonging. Of loss and triumph.

The King's Speech hasn't much to do with the reality of royalty but is a such a darn good compellingly told story we don't question whether or not the stuttering King (Colin Firth) was really cured through the expletives usage suggested by his voice therapist (Geoffrey Rush). Just as most people really don't care that the modest lodgings in which this was filmed has been regularly used by its well-connected owner for £100 a head sex parties.
Hyperion have just issued Hindemith's Trauermusik (Lawrence Power, viola) written for the death of the previous King, George V.

The success of British tabloids in particular is based around that fact that people want to read about celebrity sinners not saints- hence the ongoing 'phone hacking scandal' while anyone with any 'nouse' knew that such practice was far more commonplace than initially admitted. Even better if they were a saint that erred into sin, bounced back into sainthood and then fell off the altar again. The British have a very skeptical (to put it politely) view of success - that it somehow will always diminish quality and rigour - that the roots of one's tree will be forever forsaken. And it's precisely what the British hate about the Americans - that they only celebrate success never failure. Which of course is total bullshit as many a savvy American ex-goalbird will know forsaking confinement and entering the bank laughing with TV interview contracts under their arm, a ghostwrite book deal and possible sale of film rights.

It's often certainly true of Brit humour that it's successfully more self-deprecating than that of the Americans. If one's to succeed in the States you can't suddenly arrive out of nowhere with no ink in your pen and no stationary as back up. Gervais' celebrity jibes were personal in an industry that's rather impersonal- in an industry where being the most talented has no guarantee of success attached. Like it or not, celebrities mirror the real world. They don't create it. People want to dress like them, smell like them, eat like them. And what most people crave (often clandestinely) is an affordable equivalent. What was disappointing about Gervais' Golden Globes 'act' was not so much the jokes themselves but that this umbilical bridge was never broached.

For example, if Robert Downey Jr.'s career was based on nothing more than being a rather talentless, errant glamour boy then Gervais' joke about him being better known from goal and rehab might have cracked a smile. But the truth is that he was and still is better known as one of the most talented actors (in the true sense of the word) in Hollywood. There could have been comedy there if Gervais had somehow linked that to the horrific statistics of how many people get locked away for quite minor crimes (a privatised system whose vested interests lie in finding people guilty not innocent) and the fortune (dubious and deserved) of those entering minor celebrification after release.

Conviction is an amazing true story of a sister so determined and convinced of her brother's innocence that she studied law to become his attorney and track down evidence that with the latter day use of DNA testing would prove his innocence. There's little to fault this film except that the truth is more amazing than the film fact-ion. Does an audience identify more or less than they would with a documentary on the subject because they are able to project onto these actors a multitude of other personal crises?

Olivier Assayas, director of Carlos (best miniseries or motion picture made for television at this year's Golden Globes)relates in a DVD interview extra how a friend of his likened the film portrayal of this terrorist to that of a rock star. As with all Assayas' films Carlos makes an argument in defense of people rather than politics - all the more intriguing given that only the bare facts are known about this terrorist's life and connections.

The highly accomplished remake of rape revenge pic I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi's 1978 original is out on Anchor Bay Blu-ray) elicits disgust but is too far a cry from Assayas territory to be considered as anything more than a nasty genre flic and pales in comparison to the nauseating all too easily true horror of Eden Lake.

If you didn't know that Deadly Crossing was an American TV episode (Southern Justice) re-fashioned as a feature you'd soon suspect as one commercial break 'flash' frame zoom close-up came hot on the heels of another. And though it's not a DVD to die for, Steven Seagal's idiosyncratic Elijah Kane (chief of a Seattle undercover police unit) is remarkably believable with an excellent supporting cast. It too easily sinks without a trace simply because TV has been awash with quality product such as this for years. For a real New Year change, try Optimum's boxed sets of Brit TV series The Avengers and you'll be amazed at the ingenious story lines not to mention its women's lib protagonist getting a march on Southern Justice by about 50 years!

Do the cops get a fair deal in actor Ben Affleck's rivetting The Town, now out on DVD? Also out is Brit sleeper Crying with Laughter (Britfilms) first seen at last year's Raindance Fest and twice nominated 2011 Oscar Winter's Bone and also from Artificial Eye, Peepli Live one of the few films in recent years that could even dare be mentioned in the same breath as Satyajit Ray.

Brit undercover police were in the news last month when environmental campaign op 'Flash' hit the headlines. Nice to know the taxpayer was footing the bill for his undercover lifestyle - hence the name activists gave him. And police will be wearing baseball caps in future (no kidding!) to indicate they are in non-confrontational mode as more demonstrations are organised by the Education Activist Network and the national Campaign Against Fees and Cuts.
Oh, and Pension pots and the taxpayer Nice to know that auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's are making record profits and that London's West End is doing similarly well.

Those who believe that American grass will never be greener can cite the doco Gasland in their defense as American water could never be more undrinkable - so polluted with natural gas from adjacent wells that tap water and streams catch fire when touched with a flame. So used are Brits to hearing of tepid enquiries into government/commercial/police misdemeanors that seeing the live footage of 'no comment' gas chief execs charcoal grilled by the US Senate will blow them away.

America is also a country that relentlessly forces one to believe that pharmaceutical drugs will remedy life's ailments. Love and Other Drugs UK released before Christmas and Barney's Version are similar in that both seem to offer more than they actually deliver in how we cope with life - the radical distinction being that the latter is an adaption of a Canadian writer Mordecai Richler and the former quintessentially 'Stars and Stripes'.

Love and Other Drugs is set back in the days when Prozac first hit the market. One of many poignantly funny scenes has a hobo returning to the dumpster from which he foraged boxes of Prozac asking the salesman for more - he suddenly got himself a job. The ever watchable Ann Hathaway plays the drug rep's (Jake Gyllenhaal)(artist/Parkinson's Disease suffering girlfriend. Barney's Version is highly satiric of the well-to-do classes in their Montreal mansions 'on the hill' that could just as easily be breeding upon the Manhattan isle. Paul Giamatti deservedly won a Best Actor Golden Globe for his shambolic, alcoholic, aging haplessly in love through the decades (Oscar nominated for Best Make Up) chancer, Barney Panofsky. For those not having read the 1997 source novel, Barney's Version seems redolent with Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's novella themes (1958) (1961 - re-released in the beautifully restored print,Paramount 2005 with producer audio commentary) as part of a BFI Audrey Hepburn retrospective.

Barney's director Richard Lewis, having nursed a passion over many years for adapting the novel, finally convinced producer Robert Lantos that he was the one to direct. Crucially he dispensed with the book's narrator as did George Axelrod in his Oscar-nominated screenplay for Breakfast at Tiffany's. Holly Golightly (Hepburn) on her ex-husband Doc to Joe the bartender:
He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you end let yourself love a wild thing. You'll just end up looking at the sky.

Barney is very similar to Doc only that he's never made up his mind whether he's the tamer or the tamed in his relationships to women. Invariably he falls for the latter. "You wear your heart on your sleeve and it looks disgusting," one says to him. And there are many things in the film that just don't ring true. But it's precisely the heart on the sleeve that does resound; in the same way that what most of us secretly want is to meet a Holly Golightly, prank about the streets of New York, and have a cheap 'Crackerjack' ring engraved for her at Tiffany's. Barney is a thoughtful, resourceful and probably talented chap who ends up running Totally Useless Productions - a TV company living up to its nomenclature. In the same way, the aspiring writer Paul (George Peppard), originally Breakfast at Tiffany's narrator, is an Upper East Side kept man (by a married female socialite) living downstairs from Holly. Having written nothing since his acclaimed book of short stories, Holly's gift to him after their first meeting is typewriter ribbon for the ribbonless, heartless machine on his desk.

Barney always believed that his errant, vivant friend Boogie (Scott Speedman) would/could write something of note whereas he habitually convinced himself deep down that he never was somehow worthy of that honour. At his wedding to the 'Second Mrs. P'- (Minnie Driver) a Jewish heiress, he falls head-over-heels in love at first sight with Miriam (Rosamund Pike) sending her roses every week but never allowed by her to meet again until finally the ink dries on his divorce papers and she acquiesces to a lunch date. There's a halcyon reverie of Grand Central Station's 'ballroom' scene from Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King to the courtship. Only Barney is drunk as a skunk, vomits everywhere, leaving Miriam awaiting by his side until he awakes. Producer Robert Lantos believes that Richler's novel "hides its heart under a mask of irreverence and political incorrectness...at a time when the western world, and especially where I live, has sheepishly flocked towards a dictatorship of the politically correct, making [this] movie seems a necessity."
Giamatti interviewed on Radio 4's The Film Programme

Canadian pianist Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould also 'bucked the system' - a troubled hypochondriac genius who in later years fell prey to cocktails of anti-depressants. Much footage in this documentary has never been seen even by affectionados. Skewed rather more towards the man than the musician (as the title states, though of course they were inseparable) the doco nonetheless is engaging and insightful. Abandoning the concert platform he became a recluse in the recording studio and was one of the first musicians to try and create a true aural surround sound experience. There was a fascinating BBC Radio 4 doco some years back exploring his 'sound plays' for radio. And of course the acclaimed fiction film 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould.
Abel is an impressive art house film - parenting a kid whose way ahead of his age proves almost devastating for this Mexican mother. An edgier simplicity than It's Kind of a Funny Story? Neds is actor turned director Peter Mullan's take on his Scottish childhood.

And how and what do we remember of relationships asks the justly acclaimed Blue Valentine - a film crafted over 12 years by director Derek Cianfrance. There's been little 'bad press' about Darren Aronofsky's melodramatic ballet world Black Swan and its director undoubtably knows exactly what he's doing. But if you know your Dario Argento horror, it's hard not to suppress thoughts of Suspiria whilst watching this. Amer (now out on DVD) is in Italian horror gallo style with a cinemagraphic palette even more ravishing than a bunch of vampires devouring Turkish Delight chocolate in a commercial. Temptation is a digitally shot more than slightly cheasy Brit indi vampire flic - with Lesbian, or is it just female-bonding undertones. The DVD also includes the 'to watch' talented director Catherine Taylor's first short The Drowners shot by the same cinematographer Carolina Costa. Definitely one for the teenagers or twentysomethings trying to regain their youth.

Disney is also trying not to loose its apron strings to Walt's original 2D drawn animation wonderment. Tangled, from the Pixar team, is certainly no WALL-E nor does it pretend to be. It's a good old-fashioned Disney yarn with modern day 'attitude'. And though most viewers won't share nor understand the animators ecstatic orgasmic delight over animating Rapunzel's hair they can't but be moved when the lantern wafts out of the screen and over our heads in the lovers' nocturnal boating escape/romance duet. The animators quite craftily leaving the 3D aspect relatively alone until that moment. And Rapunzel's friend Pascal - a silent chameleon who sings with his face couldn't be better PR for the species. If that's all a bit passe for hip new century parents perhaps they can treat themselves to the funny irreverence of the Meet the Parenmts: Little Fockers latest installment.

Back in the 'art house', The Portuguese Nun, an acquired taste from precision Portuguese director Eugene Green (2009 London Film Festival) finally gets its London release. Axiom will release Ballast from that festival this March, and in June the quirky, wistfully bonkers Mammuth with Gérard Depardieu from last year's LFF.
The Antonioni Project from Amsterdam's reknown theatre troupe Toneelgroep plays Feb 1-5 at the Barbican.
Radio 4's Brief Encounters-a World View of Cinema
And John Pilger's The War You Don't See is still required viewing as the Chilcot Enquiry trundles on. Since the invasion of Iraq more than 300 jouranlaists have been killed more than in any other war - Pilger's film is a tribute to them.

sisters of faith and chance

2010-12-13T09:17:00.000-08:00

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture! - Robert Browning

With metropolis London (ney our world) awash with fear, loathing, apathy, greed and provocation (the mercenary 'stirrers' amid the genuine, committed London student rioters et al together with Uncle Tom Cobbly in the background), The Tourist comes as a blessed relief. Most interestingly, the film's central conceit of Roman god Janus' two-headed personality is probably how most people feel (toujours but especially pre-XMas). They/we want the glamour but equally the normality. And the simultaneous presence of both just doesn't square that circle.
Disturbing doco for our times Catfish opens this week. Are people ever what they seem let alone on the internet?

In America, things assume the veneer of clarity: you either aspire and succeed or you don't and live vicariously through the dreams of others. In Britain, you are forced to pretend that aspiration is all just for show and you'd much rather be having a pint drowning your sorrows down the local pub with the 'boys' or 'gals'. Bull S**!!!! The Tourist is a 'Thomas Crown Affair' flic: how do glamourous 'porcupines' mate? - Very carefully. Angelina Jolie (as Brit Interpol agent Elise Clifton Ward) is the female James Bond 'bucking' the system and yet enjoying every minute of 'acting' in an 'Audrey Hepburn' movie: innocent, swan-like grace under fire, her eyes never rippled through paddling too hard- only melting across the screen as if a mermaid's ice-cube amid Mediterranean swelter. In sasses seemingly mid-America Mr. Normal Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp) who proves anything but.

So why would Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (of The Lives of Others- 2006) choose to be directing (and adapting [alongside other illustrious scribing talents as Christopher McQuarrie - The Usual Suspects , and Julian Fellowes - Gosford Park]) this supposed cineaste candy-floss? The Lives of Others explored 'surviving' under the former Communist East German surveillance regime. "I wanted this to be a thriller that was simply a fun time at the movies," said producer Graham King. (Great acting 'cameos' too from Timothy Dalton (as the deus ex machina Chief Inspector Jones) and Steven Berkoff (as the ruthless villain Reginald Shaw) - all seductively lensed by John Seale.) Well, the producers got a bit more than he bargained for as The Tourist seems to suggest in a world that post 9/11 and post the collapse of world banking has 'no still point' in poet T.S. Eliot's 'turning world'. What does one pretend when everything proved the pretense one knew it always was? When almost everyone looks over the shoulder of the next poor sod wondering if they have an answer to the problem thence one can steal. Perhaps it's allowing The Tourist more 'benefit of the doubt' acuity that it deserves. Yet, I think not. Costume designer Colleen Attwood combined old and new world costumes - Alberta Ferretti for the extras at the Gala Venetian ball (each gown hand-tailored as were Jolie's clothes), Inspector John Acheson (Paul Bettany) wears an Oswald Boating-designed tuxedo.

Wandering around the GSK Contemporary – Aware: Art Fashion Identity (photos HERE, video soon...) located in the 'back-end' of London's Royal Academy of Arts, the show asks us to consider fashion's relationship with normal human desire and the means of production-the affordability of haute couture albeit 'high street'. Whether the ideal ever meets the reality is perhaps the mute point. Up the corner in Cork Street is a commercial gallery showcasing Dali - an artist who never ceases to amaze as both a creative genius and precursor of advertising's cult of personality connivance. Anyone who finds themselves in Atlanta this Christmas might do well popping into a Dali show highly recommended by The New York Times.

So pissed off was one made feel this month I even considered mounting my own WikiLeaks arts site to even up the odds. But: I mean, should we let kids know that Santa Claus exists only as an advertising gimmick? Let alone....Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is a surprise Finnish hit that while masquerading as slyly subversive is really just another take on mean old Uncle Scooge. The Richard 'Donnie Darko' Kelly Claus on barbiturates albeit with happy ending.

Oz journalist John Pilger's The War You Don't See is released the week we consider whether the Julian 'WikiLeaks' Assange's of this world are for good or ill. Remember Daniel Ellsberg who in late 1969 - with the assistance of his former RAND Corporation colleague Anthony Russo photocopied classified Pentagon documents relating to the Vietnam War and released them to The New York Times? Does seeing 'truth' promulgated - something we always somewhat suspected - ever change the reality of events? If we stared the 'truth' in the face would we only ever believe it if we actually saw it in the newspaper or on TV? In Enemies of the People journalist Thet Sambath allows Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Brother No 2 (Nuon Chea) - someone he's known for many years and become fond of- to tell his story of the Killing Fields: "They and all the killers like them must be part of the process of reconciliation if [a] country is to move forward," says Sambeth. Not all viewers will agree with that somewhat 'passive' notion but even initiating a dialectic with 'the other' can be a huge step forward.

This year's Cannes Film Fest Grand Jury Prize winner (and France's 2011 Oscar contender) Of Gods and Men (director Xavier Beauvois) shows eight North African monks holding out against Islamic Fundamentalist bloodshed in the 1990s. The trajectory of them from shaking the hand of such enemies through to the eve of their possible slaughter whilst drinking communion wine to an LP of Tchaikovsky ballet music traverses another cinematic plane entirely. The returned Brit soldiers of In Our Name (though with much talent here to recommend) lack the French film's subtlety and grace often only proffering us with questionably cloudy moral codes.

Possession is cult 70s Polish cinema (in English) from "the cinema of moral concern...the ethical problems of people living in Communist Poland" explains writer/director Daniel Bird's doco (filmed for the German DVD release co-inciding with the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall). Often mistaken simply as a horror film, the film's director Andrzej Zulawski notes in an extremely candid rather disturbing interview: "evil in Communist reality, evil for us...had a very material face, you could pinpoint it...the layers of fiction, lying, [in the system] this ideology which is the contrary of its realisation...But then how come that it visits this young woman who is not evil as it visits us all. Do we nurture it in us or is it from outside and plunging into us and changing us? That would be a question."

American screenwriter Frederic Tuton spent a day visiting East Berlin "I came in as a Leftist and I came out as a moderate...a line, a line, a line and then you'd see a hole in the wall of a building, and they were waiting for an ice cream cone. One scoop: it took your heart away...It's a profoundly beautiful film and has stayed ever so...for a new audience they will be kind of amazed...I have a suspicion that certain emotions are so archetypal and so profound in our natures that they stay with us...my god, all these years and [the film] hasn't staled?...[the monster] is something that loves her in the strangest, abhorrent way in the way that she wants to be loved. I think that as a metaphor is so interesting: our loneliness can create something that nurtures our love...that somehow in our most despairing, abject pain, loneliness - somewhere, somehow is a creation of something that comforts us...She cultivated in a small flat...something unimaginable, beyond all systems, beyond the grey street and red flags." A leading Polish film critic advised Zuwalski NOT to show the monster as such. But Zuwalski and his producer (Marie-Laure Reyre) saw the first Alien movie in New York and immediately knew that they wanted Giger for their project. Unavailable, he suggested contacting Carlo Rambaldi. The DVD extras on this disc are really worth one's time.

Fresh from My Brilliant Career, Australian actress Judy Davis wasn't available but Sam Neill was. Bruno Nuytton was the director's first choice as cinematographer as [he claims] was Isabelle Adjani as actress (Zuwalski didn't know Bruno was married to her) - and though Adjani had initially declined, in 3 days was persuaded by Nuytton to agree the role. She "had a terrible reputation at the time...a strong temperament and can easily be impossible...I was blacklisted in Poland and she in France" said Zuwalski. The 1981 Cannes Film Fest was a very Polish festival with Wadja's Man of Iron (about the explosion of 'Solidarity') ultimately winning the coveted award: "it was important that this film won...but I know that 40 years later I would rather see Possession than Man of Iron," reflects Zuwalski but Isabelle Adjani won best actress for his film, "at that time the [French] Left and Possession didn't click for them, which is a pity. I don't think they really understood what the hell it was about."

For those searching for an alternative DVD Christmas this is the release for you:
Zuwalski's Facebook site, and the visionary uncompleted sci-fi epic On the Silver Globe (Polish website)

The altogether more tamed Monsters I missed because of the tube strike and though not having had the chance to see it on general release is by all accounts well worth a 'gander'. Writer-director Colm McCarthy's debut social realist occult feature Outcast is set in the dreary council estates of Edinburgh's Lothian and though often rough and ready is far more full of promise and invention than most Brit releases, let alone of simply its genre.

A Serbian Film has been much hyped as controversial due to its cuts from the BBFC censorship board. As an academic consideration of film censorship it proves quite interesting but it pales not even in comparison to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom as transgressive cinema. A Serbian Film's slasher/porn premise is that subjugation to power makes one do horrendous acts. That's as may be. But the film isn't very incisive psychologically, nor brazenly, blackly 'Communist' comedic, nor even penetrates the depths of ethnic cleansing. A frustrating missed opportunity here when most independent/foreign films disappear without even a whisper these days. And why the distributors couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't/didn't exploit the film's product placement of a leading American bourbon is also bemusing.

The final film of this year's 54th BFI London Film Festival was Andrei Ujica's 3 hour The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu - given an extra screening due to the initial print being bereft of subtitles. (A spokes-person for the Romanian Cultural Institute said that the titles ended up on a film at the Spanish Embassy - humour in Communist vein indeed.) In description - 3hours of archival footage with never any voice/over to explain Ceauşescu's whereabouts - it all sounds as dreary as watching Soviet paint peel. Yet much of the footage had never been shown in Romania (let alone abroad) and what becomes fascinating is just how much resonance such an 'ideologue' leader has for his Western counterparts both then and now.

One scene films Ceauşescu addressing his 'cabinet' in a state room - true national socialist manner: how 'we' must maximise our agricultural assets etc etc - heads suddenly bowing in disgrace and embarrassment. The scary bit being that instead of appearing as a figure of fun and derision he so often emerges as an exemplar for the future. No need to cite contemporary or present political parallels there.
From East to West: A Portrait of Romanian Diaspora by photographer Raul Stef shows (extra)ordinary lives of some exemplary people at the London embassy.

Hungarian Hollywood exile Ernst Lubitsch's classic The Shop Around the Corner (1940) is re-released this week and proves fascinating in comparison to his early silent Lubitsch in Berlin: Fairy-Tales, Melodramas and Sex Comedies - Eureka's (region-free) Masters of Cinema Series (smartly packaged box set with essays on each sleeve cover rather than Eureka's usual booklet). All restored by the F.W. Murnau Foundation back in 2000 (first available on Kino DVD in the States and sold separately):

Ich möchte kein Mann sein (I Don't Want to Be a Man) - 1918 - featuring Ossi (played by his first muse Ossi Oswalda)
Die Bergkatze (known in English as The Mountain-Lion or The Wildcat) - (1921) - with its experimental framing masques for the picture. And
Die Puppe (1919)
Die Austernprinzessin (1919)
Anna Boleyn (1920)
Sumurun (1920)

You'd think there'd be more docos on Lubitsch around but Robert Fischer's 110min Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin proves a rarity:
Director Tom Tykwer extolls the virtues of Lubitsch's optimism: "[they] smile about the insanity that rains down on us. That's why those films have a medicinal effect. It's why they leave you with a certain addiction, because they don't blur your sight. They focus on conditions, and they force you to take a mild-mannered air and a sense of gentleness, and a positive attitude to stand up and say, 'I won't despair no matter what'."

The Criterion Collection issued Lubitsch Musicals and Trouble in Paradise
Critic/historian David Thompson on The Shop Around the Corner: "Though it all works out finally, a mystery is left, and a fear of how easily good people can miss their chances".
Was Lubitsch as ground-breaking as Billy Wilder was in his pushing of film boundaries e.g. the Hayes Code? Or indeed Preston Sturges? Or was he (as Chaplin) asking us simply asking us to smile as our hearts are breaking?

Boudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu sauvé des eaux) is Jean Renoir's 1932 B/W French film (remade by maverick Paul Mazursky in 1986 as Down and Out in Beverly Hills). In his essay for the Criterion DVD, Christopher Faulkner cites Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life and "spatial stories as those that make “sentences and -itineraries” out of the places that they “traverse and organize,” that they “select and link” together...Both Lestingois [who rescues the tramp] Boudu know their world, their city, very differently. One observes it, one acts in it. One is an eye at rest, the other a body in motion. One is static, sedentary; the other mobile, a pedestrian. One is rational, reflective, bound to time; the other impulsive, corporeal, a creature of space. One is forever stable, at home; the other forever displaced, in public. This is the phenomenology of their separate ways of being in the world. There is a sense that Boudu exteriorizes something that is in Lestingois himself, that the bookseller has summoned him up from the dark reaches of the personal and social unconscious. Boudu is everything at the center of the self and within society that has been discarded, ignored, or repressed...he does allow those who engage with him to imagine how they might politicize the individual as well as the social body through a willingness to recognize and negotiate their limits. The political geography of the self in social space has to be a somatic geography."

For Colored Girls is Tyler Perry's film of Ntozake Shange's acclaimed 1974 Obie-winning stage play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf
- originally 20 prose-poems performed by a cast of seven women and punctuated by dance and music. A classic of its time - a bare stage with every women assigned her own color of the rainbow. But Perry, rather than trusting his source material or creating a contemporary echoing cave, tries to make what is impalpable conspicuously just so. Wonderful talent here throughout including an oft under-used Thandie Newton brightly shying and shining as Tangie. It is wonderful to see Ntozake Shange revived yet so disappointing that she's not nurtured and allowed to shine brighter than a 1000 stars into the C21st.

On Tour may garner a fan club due to the presence of burlesque star Dirty Martini but the fiction rather pales agin the doco facts and female empowerment of Too Much Pussy (screened at this year's Raindance Fest.)
Burlesque opens next Friday. Will it gather a camp cult following?

The infrequently UK distributed Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek's Loose Cannons (Mine Vaganti) is receiving a justly deserved Christmas push from uber indie Peccadillo Pictures. There's so much heart and soul in this pic that nitpicking would seem rather churlish.

Artist turned filmmaker Julian Schnabel's Miral (Pathe UK) certainly has 'heart' if rather lacking in cinematic umph. It's based on Rula Jebreal's 2004 novel about an East Jerusalem orphanage/school, the Arab Children's Home (1948 to 1994): "There's no space for imagination in he Middle East. You can only tell what you've seen through your own eyes. Every day this place makes you decide who you are and what you have to do. It's something that's imposed on you," wrote Jebreal.

Ben Uhri Gallery has just acquired George Grosz's magnetic watercolour Interrogation (1936) - painted whilst exiled in New York. Equally well worth the visit are self-portraits from Maria Fidelis Girls Convent School in Camden, Wanstead High School and Acland Burghley Secondary School in Tufnell Park painted in response to their visit by holocaust survivor, Eva Kugler and artist Heather Libson. Without their labels, you'd swear some of these were executed by far more celebrated artists.

Dreamworks' Megamind has a striking resemblance to Despicable Me in that both are entertaining tricksters while neither really appeal to the intellect nor the foetus instinct. If one had a choose Megamind might probably win given that it's more slapstick than slap-happy: a film that adults will kick themselves for enjoying whilst praying that their kids won't hold them to ransom afterwards.

Meanwhile, a different kettle of fishies altogether: in 1950 when the first C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia was published in England, reviewers were luke warm echoing beliefs at the time that "stories should help children to understand and relate to real life, that they should not encourage them to indulge in fantasies, and that fairy stories, if for any children at all, should only be for the very young," noted Lewis' friend and biographer George Sayer. Though Lewis admired Tolkein (The Lord of the Rings) the latter "thought that it was a terrible mistake to put them [real people] together in Narnia, a single imaginative country". The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader isn't helped much by its (3D) but there's much to admire rather than marvel in Fox's attempt to save the initial Disney 'franchise' from dissolving.

Digory Kirke in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tells the young heroes that their sister's claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth. C.S Lewis' notion of 'Universal Morality' or the 'deep magic' is thus elucidated by the writer:
"These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in."

The resonances of C.S. Lewis' Christianity hover far beyond a particular religious affiliation. "There is a magic deeper still the Witch does not know", "defeat the darkness in yourself", "don't run from who you are". In an age when social networking sites and reality TV continually commercially exploit everyone's need for the mirroring of desire and self, the world of Narnia offers a rare realm of self-knowledge and empowerment. Hopefully, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair will yet be released late 2011-2012.

Sofia Coppola's 2010 Venice Fest prize winning Somewhere proves it was not mere nepotism on the part of Jury head (and ex-lover of Sofia) Quentin Tarantino. Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is movie star single-parent of the utterly beguiling 11 year-old Cleo (Elle Fanning). There's little hint of a Jim Jarmusch/Wim Wenders slightly world askew here. The somewhat eerie magic is simply the reality: Cleo's castigating stare at Johnny across the breakfast table as his one-night stand amiably shares their 5-star hotel table. The terrifying fact that there is no wizard anymore simply the poor limping fiend of market capitalism. Simply the wondrous optimism of the child Cleo. "You'll be fine," mundanely assures Johnny's ex-wife over the phone as he sits drunkenly morose after Cleo's departed for summer camp. One day maybe he won't be just fine. But what can/could anyone do? Santa Claus always comes but he never was there. Pixar's Toy Story struck at the heart of what it was to be human: the toys are REAL, the DREAMS were real for ever and a day. Make believe is something that will never vanish - the priceless commodity. Growing up was the importance of 9 and a HALF, of 5 and almost 6, of all of 3 quarters: fractions that make us whole whilst also offering an escape route into the future.

dog and nothing but a dog, black, white or other,
empty-handed messenger, because there is no
mystery
except the thread which from our hands
leads round the far side of things, round the collar of the landscape
and up the sleeve of a star.
The root of the matter is not
in the matter itself
dog and nothing but a dog,
with your eyes gazing into
the sweet shell of terror,
stay, you are so fair.
Verweile doch, du bist
so schön

And Faust feels he loves the dog with a love
whose essence is hopelessness just as
hopelessness has its essence in love,
knows what he should do but cannot,
not having a bandage
nor
a veterinary's licence
nor
the right to redress the acts of omnibues
The root of the matter is not
in the matter itself and often
not
in our hands

Miroslav Holub

do that voodoo that you do so well

2010-11-26T06:34:00.000-08:00

"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

As more university students riot in London over Conservative government grant funding cuts (some linking arms in fact to protect not damage police vans against 'rogue' anarchist protestors) the Metropolitan Police warned that "the game had changed" and that Britain entered a new era of protest. Waiting for Superman - the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim (of the Al Gore doco An Inconvenient Truth) is released in the UK this week. It doesn't have the 'bluster' of a Michael Moore doco and is all the better for it as the footage speaks for itself. And what graphics there are prove both witty and downright depressing, highlighting the lack of education in American schools. Latest Washington D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee has one of those faces that seems to naturally consistently smile - though probably not to the extent of ameliorating the enemies she's made in shaking up the existing system and closing down ill-functioning schools. Teachers can gain tenure in two years "as long as you keep breathing" (the quote is not hers) and thereafter is impossible to fire them. There's much cause for optimism, though, in the many schemes that are now opting out of the old ways.

Without that education, the role models for most kids moving into adulthood are those of the other films released this week - all focussing on violence and endurance. Not that the latter quality is necessarily negative only that unless one has an all round education the quality that is most likely to emerge and be misconstrued is 'gung ho' not endurance.

When Denzel Washington's Frank Barnes (stalwart engineer) leaps from the roof of one railcar to the next in Unstoppable , he's not doing it for the helicopter news teams, or to prove his masculinity. It's a calculated risk in order to stop the driverless, out of control freight train (based on actual events of 2001). Which begs the question are intelligence and education necessary for bravery?

Kids nowadays are too often given the impression that 'street savvy' is more useful than education. The characters in Tony Scott's film (scripted by Mark Bomback) rather uninterestingly divide into the hard working man versus the out-of touch corporates. Thrilling and (as you'd expect) expertly crafted, everything in the film suggests depth and detail without really delivering. We know no better than to accept the freight train physics on offer (wouldn't it be great to have a DVD interview extra with technical details of the actual event and interviews with long-serving engineers?) And though in a Hollywood pic you kinda expect denouement cut-ways to crowds cheering on the heroes, it does the suspense of Scott's direction somewhat of a disservice. Andrei Konchalovsky's Runaway Train became a metaphor for the juggernaut of human existence - its characters psychological throttling each other in the engine cabin. Tony Scott's train could have been a meditation on man and the machine in an age when the cogs have barely the finance to be oiled let alone managed. The irony of Unstoppable is that it stops while the inertia of its heroes is taken solely for granted.

Riffing on F Scott Fitzgerald's "there are no second acts in American lives", Jason Massot's doco Road to Las Vegas is immediately arresting showing an Alaskan 5-kid Afro-American family arriving in Las Vegas penniless (living out of their car) and 4 years later, after trials and tribulations, surviving with a roof over their heads thanks to "metal girl" breadwinner Vanessa on a wage of $22 per hour when the average is $5. What you don't get,though, is more of a sense of that time or a real sense of place. One longs to hear similar stories and see more moments such as when husband Maurice discovers a bird's nest in the woods - entering an existential world rather than seeming sentimental.
Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis with its newly discovered footage is a highly recommended DVD Christmas gift (if only to then borrow it from the friend you just gave it too;)

George Clooney's sniper in The American (much anticipated from director Anton Corbijn, Control) hopped off the train of life long ago. "I don't think God's very interested in me" says Clooney 'the photographer' to Abruzzo local priest (Paolo Bonacelli) (of the tiny village Castel del Monte) who's befriended him. This mountainous region east of Rome is a world away from even such a small metropolis. Respected critic Roger Ebert felt it harked back to European cinema, "Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon's in Le Samourai ( Jean-Pierre Melville). ["Bourne meets Antonioni!" is not a marketer's dream tagline"] quipped NYC's Village Voice.

Well, it's a film beautiful to behold - think minimalist Bond movie (Martin Ruhe's cinematography) yet akin to Unstoppable it entices the viewer with detail when the bigger picture isn't really there. Wim Wenders and Bertolucci spring to mind and one is somewhat disappointed. The psychological momentum is all thanks to Clooney's skill at brooding (plus Corbijn's in eliciting those qualities) and the gorgeous girls with guile- Italian prostitute Clara (Violante Placido) and his fellow sniper Mathilde (Thekla Reuten): a very seductive Euro-cine film without classic dialectic qualities. And though the girl you've been sleeping with cinematically wasn't quite a Clara, it won't put you off trying to find one. Whether she'll be the deadliest of the species only time will tell. Very subtle music score by German singer-songwriter Herbert Grönemeyer.

The film grossed $13.1 million opening US weekend ahead of Machete $11.4 million.
In many myths and folk tales, a hero is a man or woman (the latter often called a heroine), traditionally the protagonist of a story, legend or saga, who commonly possesses abilities or character far greater than that of a typical person, which enable him or her to perform some truly extraordinary, beneficial deed (a "heroic deed") for which he or she is famous. These powers are sometimes not only of the body but also of the mind. Heroes are typically opposed by villains. He is a man distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength. I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. - Bob Dylan

If Robert Rodriguez's Machete (Danny Trejo in the lead) crossed just one more Hollywood border trope it might even be up there in the art house league alongside video artist Tracey Moffat - so consummate is Rodriguez's film craft (director/writer/producer/editor). If you don't enjoy female bitching empowerment/male blood and guts bonding then it's probably not quite your cup of tequila tea. Those left, will grin and chortle as hypocritical Texas senator (repub/dem) McLaughlin (De Niro) hops about, thinks he's home free then gets machine gunned and electrocuted. Or Lindsay Lohan as kidnapped web nympho/daughter April of duplicitous businessman Booth (Jeff Fahey). Or Steven Seagal on webcam till he emerges in the final showdown dressed like the local bar's Chairman Mao lookalike winner. Then there's Cheech Marin as the uber broad church Padre.....what's not to lik...

Gregory Crewdson's new show at the White Cube (West End) Sanctuary shows B/W photos of the long derelict overgrown backlots of Cinecittà studios, Rome. Fascinating photos but are they 'art'?

Mayor Gallery in London has an intriguing show of Christine Keeler images, Daily Mail, The Independent

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2010 returns to its original ICA home after decades exiled elsewhere. There's much to ponder here (at least 75%) that could easily be the work of a future famous Mr/Ms X/Y. Has anyone been so humorously obvious as Greta Alfaro (In Ictu Oculi) and filmed live vultures devouring a dinner table ;)? New Contemporaries video artist Laure Prouvost shows Charlie(Nov 26) - she seems to be following in the footsteps of Godard whose latest, Film Socialisme, is as intriguing as he always was in piecing together our fragmented existence (released around May, 2011 by New Wave) .

Into Eternity (ICA until Nov 28) is an elegiac yet sobering meditation on nuclear waste disposal. Nobody really knows the future...
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's (of Uncle Boonmee) Syndromes and a Century also plays the ICA (Dec 4/8) as well as some Tarkovsky and other gems...

If George Clooney's Clara's not your type then feisty Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) will definitely give you a workout. If you weren't overwhelmingly gripped by Part II of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy The Girl Who Played With Fire, final installment The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest plays better - perhaps because it works better as a self-contained thriller. Directed by Daniel Alfredson, 'the Section' is a rogue outfit of psychiatrists, politicians, lawyers, still operating after 30 years, whose sole aim is protecting Soviet defector Zalachenko (who raped his daughter Salander hence her mental hospital incarceration to keep her mouth shut). It's great for the Swedes to have a world-wide hit on their hands - all those great unheralded actors getting showcased and the rest of the production team etc etc. And though it's all little more than a very slickly produced thriller, the fact remains that 'Sections' still probably exist in every world democracy. David Fincher is to remake Dragon Tattoo for Hollywood.

Great French theatre/opera director turned cineaste Patrice Chéreau gets a DVD release of an early film (usually only ever seen on TV at 3am) Flesh of the Orchid - (screenplay by Chéreau and another French cinema legend, Jean-Claude Carrière) based on James Hadley Chase’s 1948 psychological thriller. Is Charlotte Rampling’s Claire another victim of society's repressions or a victim of her own making?

Hanif Kureishi had his short story Intimacy adapted by Chéreau: "Patrice seemed interested in the power of impersonal sexuality, in passion without relationship, in the way people can be narcissistically fascinated by one another's bodies and their own sexual pleasure, while keeping away strong feeling and emotional complexity....Patrice and I talked about keeping the camera close to the bodies; not over-lighting them, or making them look pornographically enticing or idealized…The point is to look at how difficult sex is, how terrifying, and what a darkness and obscenity our pleasures can be." Chéreau's Persécution (from last year's London Film Festival) still has no UK release planned. Plus ca change...
Small DVD outfit Bluebell Films also release actress Jane Birkin's Boxes - that reeks of the mid-70's or 80's but is in fact 2007. An illustrious cast conjure the ghosts of Anna's (Birkin) past. Not for all tastes this film.

Peter Blake has witty current work at Waddington's that most certainly helps one see the world differently outside the gallery: Homage 10x5: Blake's Artists
Maya Hewitt's modest nocturne is at Bischoff/Weiss.

Opening today at the BFI Gallery is The Yvonne Rainer Project (VIDEO interview here) - one of America's most groundbreaking choreographers. Showing for the first time in Europe is her provocative 2002 installation After Many a Summer Dies the swan: Hybrid. Associated film programme.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.- Umberto Eco

[ADDITION to last post]

Another impressive 1st writer/director feature from Axiom is Kyle Patrick Alvarez' Easier With Practice (based on a Davy Rothbart short story) following two brothers, Davy (The Hurt Locker's Brian Geraghty) an unpublished writer who drags his sibling along (Kel O'Neill) on his 4 month gig across middle America. Easier to believe than it seems, Davy falls 'in love' for an anonymous caller with whom he regularly starts having phone sex. Alvarez won the Someone to Watch award at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards as well as his film (one of the first shot on the digital RED camera) being nominated for Best First Feature.

, , , , ,

2010-11-22T01:38:00.000-08:00

"To maintain this fabric of absolute normality requires powerful repressive forces"- JG Ballard

Talk about soul-searching! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (the final-ever Part 2 is next Summer) is positively European in its sensibility with cinematographer Eduardo Serra extracting the essences of the wand-wielding trio of teenagers and those of the English landscape to alchemically expose mendaciousness. Early in the plot Harry must drink a potion proffering replicas of himself so as to escape possible harm. Thereon, the pace creeps ever more darkly and slowly to the cliff-hanger ending while along the way almost suspending into existential elevation in scenes such as the Forest of Dean (actually filmed in Burnham Beeches) where Hermione's (Emma Watson) parents used to take her.

It's interesting to compare the gently erotic scenes of the latest Harry Potter with those of the 2D animation Chico and Rita where the drawing of artist/designer brothers Javier Mariscal and Tono Errando enter a sensual, erotic realm far more than live action full frontal ever could (not of course that there's any of that in Harry Potter - all gently blurred). While it takes a while to gather steam, Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, Calle 54) directs this 40s/50s Havana/New York jazz lost/found love story so that the animated lines gently envelop you like those of a melismatic Bolero duet (soundtrack is by Cuban great Bebo Valdés). Chico (Emar Xor Ona) is a piano player and Rita (Limara Meneses) a singer.

This year's Cannes Fest Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives gets quietly seductive too. But then so has most work of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Having twice viewed it I'm in a very miniscule minority that aren't raving about it. And that I stress is a very personal opinion. Only because the director's earlier work casts spells from the very, very ordinariness of everyday life whereas his latest film concerns extraordinariness and the transmigration of souls. The Uncle is suffering from kidney failure and one night at dinner the ghost of his deceased wife appears. Thereon, is a journey to the heart of the soul that many viewers will find totally transfixing.
A surprising hit of the week (nay month) is Brazilian writer/director Heitor Dhalia's Adrift, also gorgeously photographed (Ricardo Della Rosa), but always to embody the performances of father (Vincent Cassel), cheated upon wife (Deborah Bloch) and confused, frustrated teenage daughter (Laura Neiva) - a stunning acting debut as the entire film centres around her performance.

Ashley Horner's brilliant love (this year's NYC Tribeca Film Fest and Edinburgh) is quite a lot more than just sweltering summer sex in a Northern England garage with en suite fields. Noon (Nancy Trotter Landry) is a taxidermist and boyfriend Manchester (unemployed) takes sexually explicit photos of her. Accidentally leaving some on a pub table, a stranger inveigles him into showing them in a city gallery. While not a revelatory film it's an extremely assured one. Another Brit director who may well conjure something quietly amazing in the future.
Clio Barnard's award winning The Arbor about the short life of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar (using real interviews lip-synched by actors) continues screening across the country.

Mammoth, on the other hand, the first English language opus by provocative Swede Lukas Moodyson is somewhat of a disappointment relative to his usual fare. New York games guru Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal), hugs his wife (Michelle Williams) and daughter (sparky, adorable Sophie Nyweide) before hopping over to seal a deal in Thailand. His 'spiritual' journey is paralleled by Gloria (his Filipino nanny) and her own 2 sons back home. While the film is hugely 'atmospheric' and seductive (more great cinematography - Marcel Zyskind) it's never more than the sum of its well crafted parts.

Leap Year is the 1st feature of Michael Rowe (and winner of this year's Cannes Fest Camera d'Or - Juan Manuel Sepulveda) set in the shabby Mexico City apartment of Laura Lopez (Monica del Carmen). Over 29 days her many one-night stands and 'rough sex' empower her rather than the opposite. In description the film may sound like many others but it's the singularity of vision, of seeing this woman practically 'body build' her psyche in her lonely space without a directorial recourse to cinematic stunts. One for those who like Catherine Breillat's films.
[ADDITION at end of latest post]

Another impressive 1st feature is Marc Dugain's An Ordinary Execution (adapting/directing in French from his own novel) shot entirely hand-held with a great cast of André Dussolier as Stalin and Marina Hands (Lady Chatterley) as the doctor who is summoned to 'cure' him using her 'laying on of hands' energy after the dictator has purged all Jewish doctors in 1952. She's forced to abandon her husband and forbade to speak of the consultations so as not to "pander to the people's propensity for the irrational". There's not a whiff of 'period' film or star-turn bio-pic performance to be found here. And though one could never feel sympathy with Stalin, the film is a fascinating meditation on the pain of others and the self-reflecting nature of cure. "Nature is beautiful- a pity it is so contradictory," says Stalin gazing out onto the lake at his Georgian dacha - truly believing that perfect order will result in the perfect State. "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

Re-released in cinemas for its 50th anniversary Peeping Tom and out on Blu-ray today (par excellance commentary by film historian Ian Christie from the standard DVD). We'll never know whether the film would have gained an audience at the time by promulgating the damning reviews of disgust on a poster saving director Michael Powell's career from future oblivion. But he never worked again after this masterpiece of cinematic psychological trauma- a man whose childhood torments him into filming the death of his victims. It's become somewhat of a benchmark in considering films 'of its kind' and censorship's boundaries.

Pang Ho-Cheung's Dream Home is ghastly, gruesome stuff - almost as if Ken Loach had dreamed of a social realist horror/slasher pic. Wanting to remain living with her childhood view of the water, the ever increasing Hong Kong property prices keep thwarting Cheng's (Josie Ho) ambitions even though she works two jobs. "A cut throat film about the cut-throat property market" goes the poster's tag line. What humour there is blackly assured as is the film's overall tone. (Trailer)

It makes Let Me In (the remake of last year's Swedish cult vampire hit Let the Right One In) seem like Sunday brunch with the Addams Family. If you're a fan of the original (and I only recently saw it again in the big screen) it's hard to suspend the Swedish version whilst watching this, so closely does the American version follow the original's narrative. It's a bit like the book of the movie syndrome - the two could never be the same but if seeing the movie makes someone curious enough to seek out the original then all the better for the world.

We Are What We Are (Somos Lo Que Hay) (Mexican writer/director Jorge Michael Grau 1st feature) is an impressive debut (chosen for this year's New York Film Fest) without really being sure exactly where to go with its 'social realist' vampiric material.

Not something that could ever be said of Mike Leigh and his latest Another Year. And though it may all be a touch predictable for Leigh devotees, there are very few directors in the world (let alone Britain) who can generate performances that amount to psychological fragments so powerful that while they are geographically specific also symbolise a broader human sociology. Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are nice, intelligent, hard-working middle-class folk as is their son Joe. When Leigh was trying to work out a 'look' for the film his regular cameraman Dick Pope presented him with four options - hence the story's four seasons was born (great tree poster). Into their lives keeps popping Gerri's work friend Mary (Lesley Manville) who's treated like her 'sister' and sadly for her almost behaves as if she is. This film will linger in the minds of many viewers. The contradictory beauty of the world.

Patrick Keiller's Robinson in Ruins is his character's (from previous films) fictional journey around Oxfordshire - documentary footage narrated by Vanessa Redgrave's very apt gentle manly timbre. Robinson's quest to preserve the earth by communicating the world's blunders to higher non-human intelligences. It's as if Monty Pythonite turned TV doco world traveller Michael Palin was on quinine musing of man's misadventures.
And some fascinating rarely seen short public service films by director John Krish in A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War Britain - a book and DVD also available. Do foreigners know that London once had trams -The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953). Kids and teenagers even these days would find Our School(1962) both funny and educational - one of the kids is so charismatically 'mouthy' that you'd have expected him to become an actor. While I Think They Call Him John (1964) is a moving portrait of a man coping on his own after his wife's deceased. It could have been made yesterday.
Aristotle's Lagoon (a repeat on BBC4) tells the little known story of the philosopher's biological investigations on the island of Lesvos. Many of them proved absolutely spot on.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.” William Blake, 1790

...to airy nothing....

2010-11-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

You'd think one would end up being jaded and disillusioned about film's future after watching 75 pics of the 54th BFI London Film Festival (LFF for short) in just one month. Surprisingly and hearteningly, though, such a mad endeavour only increases curiosity about the world and the power of film to structure our ever more increasing fragmented existence. Some of these films will be mentioned in more depth in this post, while others may take a while longer. But the oft asked cliche question of 'did you see anything outstanding' can only fairly be answered by noting that each in the following list had at least a special something if not considerably more 'somewheres', while one inevitably missed seeing some other notables:

A Screaming Man (Un Homme qui crie)
A Brighter Summer Day
Amigo
Another Year (just UK released)
The Arbor (just UK released)
Archipelago
At Ellen's Age
Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu, The
Autumn
Carancho
Cold Weather
Dear Doctor
Double Tide
Father
Film Socialisme
Fire in Babylon
Guilty Pleasures
Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires)
Howl (UK release-Feb 25)
It’s Kind of a Funny Story (UK release-Mrch 11)
King's Speech, The (UK release- Jan 7)
Le Quattro Volte
Leap Year (UK release-Nov 26)

Loose Cannons (UK release- Dec 10)
Mammuth
Mars
Meek's Cutoff
Microphone
Miral
Mysteries of Lisbon

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (UK release-Dec 3)
Robinson in Ruins (just UK released)
The Sleeping Beauty
Somewhere (UK release-Dec 10)
Special Treatment
Spork
Super Brother
(Svankmajer's) Surviving Life

The Taqwacores
Treacle Jr
Two Gates of Sleep

Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives (just UK released)
Vapor Trail (Clark)
Waste Land
What I Love the Most (Lo que mas Quiero)
Willam S. Burroughs: A Man Within
Winter Vacation

My month's viewing began with the film that opened this year's New York Film Festival, The Social Network - and there wasn't much in NYFF that wasn't in the LFF with the notable exceptions of:

Post Mortem (Pablo Larraín -Tony Manero)
Old Cats
Tuesday, After Christmas
Black Venus (Abdellatif Kechiche -The Secret of the Grain)
and an Oliveira re-issue The Strange Case of Angelica but the LFF had Rite of Spring from 1963.

Like it or not, social networking site Facebook has defined a human generation and perhaps even one to follow. So can director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's film even attempt to excavate such a contemporary site? It doesn't seem that they even intended it do so (though many hoped it might attempt this feat). There are not psychological artifacts here
to be unearthed. What it does try to do (succesfully or not) is to argue that there is always an archeological fragment in our past (youthful or otherwise) that defines us forever and a day. In Mark Zuckerberg's (Jesse Eisenberg) life case it was a girl. There's even a quote from English writer John Milton, “creation myths need a devil”.
One is equally mindful of the quote (not in the film) from LP Hartley's The Go-Between, "the past is another country: they do things differently there". And the film asks not so much do we all inevitably sell our soul to our own devil. Rather, as if being a museum curator do we at one and the same time relish the thought of finding new fragments with which to piece together an antiquity while simultaneously dread the thought that our assumptions about those initial shards of light may prove totally wrong.

The pych-cinematic musing is mine but the original argument belongs to Dr Peter Stewart (Reader in Classical Art and its Heritage, and Acting Dean of The Courtauld Institute of Art) who lectured on this the other evening (at some time in the future the audio will be available on their website). It's probably easier simply to quote from the Courtauld's precis:
"All art history involves inherent tensions between the materiality of the works of art – their rootedness in time and space – and the mobility of the ideas and imagery that they embody. The tension is all the more striking in the study of ancient art. On the one hand, classical art history, with its traditional dependence on archaeology, deals with perishable, intractable objects dug up in particular places. On the other hand, it has always been concerned with the intangible spread of Graeco-Roman styles and iconography, with abstract typologies, material and visual cultures and how they transcend material constraints. This lecture explores some of the forms of material resistance which have filtered our experience of ancient art, including the accidents of archaeological survival. But such limitations affect not only the objects that we study, but also the processes of studying them. Our construction of the past, the books and articles we read and write, the photographs we reproduce or view, the dissemination of ideas on paper or on the web... These too have their hidden material constraints."

The British Museum's Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead has just opened (photos HERE) as has the Wellcome Institute's High Society
(Video interviews and photos HERE)

Dr Stewart spoke of ideas facing resistance "moving nimbly in mysterious ways" and quoted Steve Jones who when writing about Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species cited a peer reviewer at the time who, going to great lengths to find something constructive to say, concluded that the book would make a very good "manual for pigeon breeders".

Jean Becker’s previous film Conversations With My Gardener was delightful, soulful and unassuming. So too is his latest My Afternoons with Marguerite (La Tête en Friche) in which Gérard Depardieu's beafy Germain dons the cloak of gregariousness at the local bar but rather more enjoys hanging out with pigeons by the park bench each of which he's named. Nonagenarian Margueritte (Gisèle Casadesus) arrives one day and over the course of many visits reads him Albert Camus' novel of existential absurdity La Peste (The Plague). "Life makes promises it can't keep," she says but her offering of 'reality' is the gift to Germain of a dictionary "on this earth we are all couriers...with a dictionary you travel from word to word". As in The Singer, Depardieu's almost illiterate 50 going on 60 Germain is 'paired' with a lovely young lass. But it's never mawkish: simply somewhat sad, rather gentle and ultimately life enhancing for all of us and the three characters.

Fezeka’s Voice is uplifting too. For 12-years choirmaster Phumi Tsewu has been teaching the children at Fezeka High School in Gugulethu, Capetown, South Africa both traditional and Western classical music. Several even dream of becoming opera stars. Director Holly Lubbock documents their preparations and journey to last year's Salisbury International Arts Festival. There's perhaps a little too much background 'doco' music and maybe a touch too much sentiment. But the strength of the story and its individuals is overwhelmingly powerful and full of life's details - how two of the teenagers suddenly find themselves with 'surrogate' mums. How one boy is amazed that older people in this part of England mow their own lawns and do their own chores- unthinkable for him in South Africa where you'd pay someone and he's shown how to eat rhubarb straight from the garden. Produced by Ciel Productions and All Living Things, one can't help but believe that in this doco, however shattered and scattered the lives have been for some of these teenagers, there is hope in uniting at least some of the pieces to form new lives. Or as Phumi Tsewu says close to tears, the achievement of lifting these kids out of the impossible "mire" that they found themselves in.

Photos HERE from the LFF press conference for Africa United.

In the Courtauld's public temporary space, are Cézanne's Card Players of the 1890's, two from the permanent collection alongside those purloined from around the world's galleries. Of course, the 'fragments' of sketches and unfinished oils aren't really what the Courtauld's director Dr. Peter was lecturing about. However, so often a famous painting is only ever seen in its 'iconic' status never in context with those similar in earlier periods or from the same time. Moreover, none of the paintings on show here have an exact year of execution only circa (c.) and even then often c. within a period of 2-4 years. A long time in an artist's life and development. Interesting too is the fact that the artist didn't just rely on pencil strokes to outline the figures often using a brush to paint lines. And then reinforcing them to create a contour - very untypical of C19 practice when most artists disguised all traces of lines. Much like the tiny specks that Canaletto used to conjure the light of dawn, the small striking thick patches of Cézanne colour up close magically merge as one moves away from the painting. Talks and events throughout the run of this show before traveling to the Metropolitan Museum in New York (Feb 7-May 8, 2011)
Don't miss the extraordinary visceral, whirling, whaling Untitled (Crouching Figures) c.1952 of Francis Bacon (temporarily on loan from his Estate) in the next room alongside Daumier's Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that Bacon "thought to be amongst the greatest paintings in the world..."

Hollywood is perhaps no where near equivalent to a blockbuster museum show where most if not all the objects on display have the same marketing push as a suchlike studio movie but as we painfully know oftentimes far surpass in artistic merit. Aftershock(China's 2011 Academy Awards entry) directed by Feng Xiaogang (based on a novel by Zhang Ling) uses Hollywood cliches rather than tropes as an act of remembrance for the victims of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that killed almost a quarter of the city's population. "It's not that I don't remember, it's that I can never forget," says the daughter Fang Deeng (Zhang Jingchu) who's adopted by a couple of Red Army soldiers but who her parents believe is dead (they had a moral choose whether to save her or her brother). It's powerful (thanks to the acting), affecting but melodramatic storytelling. And one wishes for more of the bleak and oblique new Chinese cinema of Winter Vacation (LFF) or dramatised arguments akin to those posed in Draquila-Italy Trembles(LFF): Sabina Guzzanti's doco on the wake of corruption in the aftermath of Italy's 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. Corruption is rife everywhere in the world, and of course, particularly Italy. But would new housing projects have had even a chance if it weren't for political clout? There's the rub. There's captivating footage also from the seismologists. Could there be any city in the world that would evacuate their citizens on even the firm likelihood of an earthquake, circa??? No economy would justify that economically even 10 years ago let alone now. There's the mortal coil.

Closing tomorrow (Saturday Nov 13), artist Christian Marclay at White Cube (West End) has created one of the most extraordinarily simple, immediate and resonant video installations one's likely to see, The Clock. Every minute of the 24-hour clock has a synchronous segment of movie footage delineating that particular minute i.e. a watch reads 2.43, a character says 9.54 etc. Not every single frame tells the time, but you can set your watch by the sequences. It's the work's universal simplicity that allows it to resonate with dialectics of editing, traditional narrative character development, montage etc. For example, would simply looping the final scene in Aftershock - a lone man cycling past the walls of names erected in memory of the earthquake victims - have deeper emotional resonance than its traditional narrative film of 135 minutes? Moreover, does the 'excess' (24 hours of it) of Marclay's work have more or less the same impact as sitting only through a few hours of it?

Just closed but running concurrent with the London Film Festival (how many of those in the 'traditional' cinemas ventured in?) was Julian Rosefeldt's American Night (2009). A slick, funny, five-screen projection (anamorphic 16mm transferred to HD) that used the Western genre and its iconography (directed actors not existing footage) to deconstruct the myth of America's founding.

American Lewis Klahr's shoestring montage animations using old comic books Prolix Satori (and a workshop run on Oct 21) were a quiet hit of the London Film Festival. (AUDIO of the Q&A HERE soon...)

Veteran Czech animator Jan Svankmaeyer appears on screen in the opening of his Surviving Life explaining that due to economic restraints he's used mostly animated cut-out photographs to tell his funny psychoanalytic story.
Sharon Lockhart's Double Tide is composed of segments though the film seems utterly seamless in time and space. We watch a Maine clamdigger at work during the low tides of dawn and dusk.

more tomorrow including.........

Patrick Keiller's Robinson in Ruins

A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War Britain by director John Krish

Film Ist from last year's LFF screens at the ICA with a Q&A (Nov 19) with the director (Nov 17 (part1) and Nov 19 (part2))

The 54th BFI London Film Festival

2010-10-14T09:57:00.000-07:00

The 54th BFI London Film Festival has descended upon us. Photos of Never Let Me Go (you are cordially reminded that all photos on this website - and those in future - are Copyright 2010 Andrew Lucre unless otherwise attributed)

One would need the heart of a rock not to hear the silence of this film's stones.
Opening in the UK early next year.