This Celluloid Life

A top 10 of the film year

2012-02-26T21:36:00.000Z

Not being much of one for award ceremonies, I don't tend to pay too much attention to the Oscars, beyond casting an eye over the nominees and winners when I'm looking for something that I might want to watch. I do enjoy making a good list, though, and putting it in order of my personal preference. There are nine films up for Best Picture, so I wanted to make a list of nine films that came out this year that I would have nominated, but I didn't want to leave anything out, so a top ten it will have to be.

Some caveats: There are some films that I've not seen yet (e.g. A Separation) that I imagine could well alter the order of this list. I've not seen all of the actual nominations for Best Picture, either. I really want to see Hugo (although only at the cinema, and only in 3D if I can), but I have no interest in The Help or War Horse, for example.

Anyway, my list:

1. The Artist: An absolute joy. Not a terribly out-there choice, I know, but so what?

2. Senna: It's a crime that this hasn't been nominated for anything at all. Really good film, and I say that as someone who, try as I might, cannot get excited about Formula 1.

3. The Skin I Live In: I actually only saw this a couple of days ago, but I loved it, as enjoyable as any other Almodovar film I've seen.

4. Martha Marcy May Marlene: Where have they been hiding Elizabeth Olsen? She was great in this, as was John Hawkes who I'd seen the previous year in Winter's Bone, and I love the denouement.

5. Cave Of Forgotten Dreams: More top stuff from Herzog, who never disappoints. The only 3D film I've seen (so far) where it actually seemed as though it was 3D for good reason.

6. Midnight In Paris: Not vintage Allen by any means, but perhaps those days are over now. Enjoyable nevertheless, and Owen Wilson is good in the Woody role.

7. Shame: A difficult watch to say the least, but an affecting film that stays with you long past seeing it, somehow.

8. The Tree Of Life: Perhaps a little over-long, and I had some problems with it at the time, none of which I can really recall now. But in terms of its visuals alone I thought it was stunning. Best watched on the big screen, really.

9. We Need To Talk About Kevin: A rather troubling but well-made film. I've not read the book, but the praise for it makes me wonder whether I would've rated this as highly had I read it beforehand. A very good psychological thriller, anyway.

10. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: I've since seen a couple of episodes of the old television series of this, and intend to finish it at some point and re-watch this film when I have, though I watched this first and really enjoyed this for what it was.

Pingu does John Carpenter's THE THING.

2012-01-16T23:26:00.001Z

Those of you reading this may already seen this, but here is a rather disquieting video that I saw the other week, from a gentleman called Lee Hardcastle, who makes claymations that are not particularly suitable for children. Here, he has put together the Pingu (a children's television show, for the uninitiated) version of John Carpenter's The Thing. Not for the faint of heart.

Woody Allen season at the BFI

2012-01-04T12:13:00.000Z

The BFI are this month running Wise Cracks: The Comedies of Woody Allen, to which you must try to get along if you possibly can. I'm pleased to see that Hannah and Her Sisters, one of my favourites of his, is getting an extended run, as is Zelig, and his latest film Midnight in Paris. The others are getting a few screenings each, and I have listed the films being shown below with their times. I have starred the films I would particularly recommend going to see, but there is more information available on the BFI website.

Annie Hall*

6 Jan 18:30
13 Jan 20:45
14 Jan 18:30

Bananas

8 Jan 20:40

Broadway Danny Rose

7 Jan 18:40
9 Jan 18:20

Bullets Over Broadway

14 Jan 16:15
18 Jan 20:45
21 Jan 20:40

Celebrity

25 Jan 20:30
29 Jan 18:20

Crimes and Misdemeanors*

13 Jan 18:30
15 Jan 20:45
22 Jan 15:50

Deconstructing Harry

11 Jan 18:15
28 Jan 18:10

Everyone Says I Love You

15 Jan 18:30
20 Jan 18:20

Hannah and Her Sisters*

4 - 19 January

Husbands and Wives*

10 Jan 18:30
14 Jan 20:45
22 Jan 18:10

Love and Death*

7 Jan 16:00
12 Jan 18:30

Manhattan*

6 Jan 20:45
10 Jan 20:45
22 Jan 20:45

Manhattan Murder Mystery

12 Jan 20:40
16 Jan 18:20
17 Jan 20:30

Match Point

26 Jan 20:30
30 Jan 18:20

Melinda and Melinda

26 Jan 18:10
30 Jan 20:45

Midnight in Paris

27 January - 8 February

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

8 Jan 18:20

The Purple Rose of Cairo*

9 Jan 20:45
21 Jan 18:40

Sleeper

7 Jan 20:50
18 Jan 18:30

Sweet and Lowdown*

25 Jan 18:20
29 Jan 20:40

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

27 Jan 18:10
31 Jan 20:40

Zelig

4 - 19 January

Distant Voices, Still Lives / Taxi Driver / Manhattan / The Magnificent Ambersons

2012-01-04T11:48:00.000Z

It is a bit of a new years' resolution of mine to get back on the horse vis-a-vis watching more films, so to that end I thought I would put up a quick post about films I have watched, or re-watched, recently. Firstly, Distant Voices, Still Lives, which is part of an autobiographical trilogy of films directed by Terence Davies and set in his native Liverpool mid-way through the last century. It's regarded as something of a hidden gem of British cinema, and I liked it, overall: it was quite effectively bleak, and the late Pete Postlethwaite was good as the rather threatening patriarch, though the many scenes with characters breaking into impromptu song got on my nerves a little after a while, to the extent that I thought it got in the way of progressing the story a little.

I saw Taxi Driver, shown again by the Cornerhouse in Manchester as part of Play It Again. I had not watched it on some years, so to see it on the big screen was something of a treat, even though it hasn't been given a new print. It is surely a prime candidate to be given one, though there is something about the murkiness of the film stock, along with the masterful score of Bernard Herrmann, that compliments the mood of Martin Scorsese's malevolent masterpiece. I had also forgotten the ending, which I obviously won't give away here in case anyone reading this hasn't seen it, but it is about Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), an honourably discharged ex-marine who takes a job as a taxi driver in New York, purposely working long hours to combat his insomnia. Over the months during which the film is set, we see his mental health deteriorate as he becomes increasingly disenfranchised and alienated from the city around him, his increasingly violent urges propelling him to 'wash away the garbage and trash off the sidewalks'. I have a few more things to say about this film so I will perhaps explore them more fully in a future post.

Having recently seen Another Woman and Sleeper on DVD for the first time, over new year I re-watched what I personally consider to be Woody Allen's masterpiece, Manhattan. It is, as the opening narration suggests, a love letter to the city he loves, and made me wish that Woody would start setting his films there again. The BFI has just started showing a season of his comedies which will run to the end of this month, and they will be showing Manhattan in particular three times during January. If you live in London, or can get there, I can heartily recommend that you go and see it.

Finally, last night, I watched The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles' adaptation of the 1918 novel of the same name by Booth Tarkington, which is about the fall from grace of the Ambersons, an Indianapolis family who, at the beginning of the story, are in the upper echelons of society but over the course of the film George, the heir apparent of the Ambersons, finds himself on an inexorable downward spiral. On balance, I probably preferred Citizen Kane, which Welles had made the previous year, but still enjoyed it. For what is described as an epic, it isn't the longest of films (its duration is less than ninety minutes), and on reading about it this morning, I see that the finished film is much different to how Welles had originally intended. He lost control of the film to the stupid, RKO, and in between its initial preview and full release in 1942, a full hour of footage was removed in exchange for what I must admit at the time seemed like something of a tacked-on happy ending. Unfortunately, the scenes that were expunged from the film are now no longer in existence, so there is no hope of even a speculative directors' cut.

Video essay on chaos cinema

2011-08-22T23:40:00.000+01:00

via IndieWire, a very good video essay on 'chaos cinema' by Matthias Stork, which I recommend you watch.

Most chaos cinema is indeed lazy, inexact and largely devoid of beauty or judgment. It’s an aesthetic configuration that refuses to engage viewers mentally and emotionally, instead aspiring to overwhelm, to overpower, to hypnotize viewers and plunge them into a passive state. The film does not seduce you into suspending disbelief. It bludgeons you until you give up.

Chaos Cinema Part 1 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.

Chaos Cinema Part 2 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.

The Tree Of Life (2010)

2011-08-21T19:25:00.000+01:00

I took in The Tree Of Life on holiday recently, having been wanting to see it ever since someone sent me the head-turning official trailer earlier in the year. I've long wanted to see some of Terrence Malick's earlier films, particularly Badlands and Days Of Heaven, and since he doesn't release things on a very regular basis I had been quite keen to catch this before it disappeared from the big screens in time for its release on DVD (in the United Kingdom, at least) at the end of October this year.

It is about a 1950s middle-American family, the O'Briens, and the loss of innocence of its oldest son Jack, played as a child by Hunter McCracken, and, somewhat superfluously in my opinion, as an adult by Sean Penn. We see the film primarily through Jack's memories, and as a result the narrative skips around a little bit between different points in his childhood, veering off track altogether at various points into the recesses of his subconscious.

The first thing to say is that I am glad I saw it in the cinema, because The Tree Of Life looks stunning. The previously-mentioned trailer is a good pointer to the visual style of the entire picture, and I suspect that even if you don't find the film itself to your taste, there is an awful lot to be said for its cinematography; to say that it is a feast for the eyes is an understatement in the extreme.

Unfortunately, the other reason that I was glad I saw it in the cinema was that otherwise I might have been tempted not to pay it my full attention, owing to the fact that it was probably about thirty or forty minutes longer than I felt it needed to be. An awful lot about it feels as though it is extraneous: the fantastical sequences of dinosaurs and the solar system, the whispering of characters between scenes about nature and grace, and almost all of the entire end sequence of the film featuring Sean Penn wandering around the desert, didn't particularly need to be there in my opinion. It is not that I particularly had any problem with Penn being in the film, just that it seemed pointless him being there if all we were going to see him do was wander around looking slightly ponderous.

Given this prevarication on things that didn't seem to serve the story much purpose at all, I found it strange that there was such little reference to anything that happened between Jack's childhood and his present situation of middle aged disenfranchisement. I suppose, though, that since it was obviously a deliberately made choice on Malick's part to use memory as a storytelling device in order to distort and obscure things from the audience, this is clearly something that we are expected to make up their own minds about.

There is, having said that, an awful lot to like about The Tree Of Life once you set all that fluff to one side. Particularly striking is Brad Pitt, who plays Jack's father, who until the credits roll is unnamed in the film as far as I can tell - as a few of its characters seemed to be - but whose performance dominates and intrigues. His mother (Jessica Chastain) is good, too, but the best thing about the film is story that is at its heart, which is that of Jack beginning to embark upon the very beginnings of adulthood.

Through various seemingly unconnected experiences we see the innocence of his childhood starting to become overwhelmed by the realities of life and the inherent danger, but also freedom, that this is starting to present to him. The Tree Of Life isn't a film I would recommend you see unreservedly, because I do think there are things that are wrong with it, but it is at least ambitious, and though it perhaps doesn't quite manage to achieve what it sets out to, this rites of passage story ultimately saves it from being little more than just a visual treat.

Rare Alfred Hitchcock film footage uncovered - BBC

2011-08-03T10:44:00.000+01:00

The first three reels of footage from the only known print of Alfred Hitchcock's first film, The White Shadow, has been found within the New Zealand film archive, according to the BBC:

David Sterritt, chairman of the National Society of Film Critics, called the find "one of the most significant developments in memory. These first three reels offer a priceless opportunity to study his visual and narrative ideas when they were first taking shape," he added. The film archive described the movie as "a wild, atmospheric melodrama". The family of New Zealand projectionist and film collector Jack Murtagh sent the highly flammable prints to the organisation for safe keeping after his death in 1989. It is not known where the remaining three reels are and no other copy is thought to exist. The footage will be preserved at Park Road Post Production in Wellington.

Little is known about The White Shadow, but it was a silent film made in 1923 and starred Betty Compson as two sisters, one of which was good, the other evil. It was based on a novel by Michael Moreton called Children Of Chance.

The early works of Mike Leigh: Nuts In May + Kiss Of Death

2011-07-17T23:57:00.000+01:00

Here's a post I've been writing for some time: not that you can tell from the quality of the writing, but the combination of other commitments and being taken over by a virulent strain of procrastination have slowed things down a little bit as far as posting things up on the blog goes. Speaking of films made for television, as I was in my previous post a little while ago ago with Duel, I watched two more a couple of weeks ago, which were very different to Steven Spielberg's film but made at roughly the same time. Both are films that Mike Leigh made early on in his career, both were BBC 'plays for today' first shown in the 1970s, and both are, at their heart, about social outcasts. Since seeing and rather enjoying Another Year a few months ago, I'd decided to rent all of Mike Leigh's films, and these were the first two that came through my letter box, so I thought I'd write about them.

The first, Nuts In May, is about a fairly right-on couple away on holiday in Dorset. But Keith (played by Roger Sloman in his first role) and Candice Marie (Alison Steadman, who I almost didn't recognise at first... as it turns out, I'd previously seen her in her portrayal of the quite appalling Beverly from Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party later in that same year) soon run into problems in their search of the perfect week away in rural England, thanks in no small part to Keith's distinct lack of social skills. When a university student pitches up next to them, it soon becomes obvious how jealous Keith is of Candice Marie's interest in him, and flies off the handle without much in the way of provocation when she suggests soliciting his opinion on some trifling matter or another. And then when another couple, the rowdy Finger and Honky, arrive, Keith's intolerance of others brings things to a head.

In a sense, it's hard to imagine anyone of completely sound mind wanting to spend an awful lot of time with Keith, outside of those who themselves are socially awkward to some degree. Though they are, to the untrained eye, a couple, Candice Marie acts about twenty years younger than she actually is, and does not appear to have a particularly healthy relationship with him. They certainly don't seem to be married to one another - she is quick to threaten to not come away on a trip with him again unless he apologises to a neighbour he has just argued with - and I don't remember seeing them kiss at any point. What with Keith's high-mindedness and Candice Marie's child-like nature, they seem less like partners and more like a father and daughter.

The second of his films that I saw, Kiss of Death, made the following year, takes place in a more suburban setting, and is about Trevor (David Threlfall), a taciturn undertakers' assistant who is shaken when he sees an incident of cot death. Like Keith, he seems a little at odds with his environment, though deals with it in an entirely different manner: he is younger, more introverted than the over-confident Keith, and his apparent inability to say what he wants sees his love life faltering. The slightly brash but willing Linda, with whom he has been set up by his friend Ronnie (but really by Ronnie's girlfriend Sandra, who can't stand having him tag along on their dates for much longer) but for whom he is completely wrong, spends most of the film trying to persuade him to pursue her, with varying degrees of success. His nerves, though, generally get the better of him.

I think my problem with Kiss Of Death lies with the performance of the central protagonist: I was just not terribly convinced that Threlfall's performance, in particular the way he displayed nerves, was up to very much. I thought the character of Keith in Nuts In May meanwhile was terrific, both in terms of how it was realised and performed by Roger Sloman. I am not sure who is at fault here, but blame could perhaps lie less at the door of Threlfall than it does at Leigh's: perhaps it was the fact that Keith was a demonstrably more extrovert character, while in comparison Trevor was all awkward pauses and blank stares. Though it is true that Keith is more absurd, perhaps there was more for a skilled actor, as Sloman undoubtedly is, to get the teeth into than there is with Trevor.

Though I did like Kiss Of Death, and it is one of Mike Leigh's personal favourites of the films he has made - apparently because some elements of its story are drawn from his own experiences - I am not sure I entirely share his enthusiasm for it. Or at least, I don't think I'd hold it in such high regard in comparison to the other films of his that I've seen. Judging by what I've seen so far, you would be hard-pressed, in my opinion, to find a Mike Leigh film that wasn't very good, and I'd be lying if I said that it isn't deserving of praise on its own merits.

For example, the scenes between Trevor and Linda are particularly enjoyable and generally believable, as are some of the exchanges between Trevor and Sandra, two people who quite blatantly on different wavelengths. I particularly liked the scene towards the end of the film when Linda asks him to kiss her, too, but in general I much preferred Nuts In May, which, though it predates it, seems much more well-honed and put together.

John Carpenter's The Thing / Duel / Jaws

2011-06-22T00:41:00.000+01:00

A couple of notes on things I've seen recently: I watched John Carpenter's The Thing over the weekend at the repeated insistence of a friend of mine, and I found it to be a very watchable if slightly silly cult classic about an Antarctic research station overtaken by a parasitic life-form capable of imitating perfectly any being with which it comes into contact. It was, at various points, fairly gripping stuff, and though it was occasionally fairly ludicrous and probably hasn't aged terribly well, I didn't feel it detracted too much from the overriding tension of the narrative. I suppose it is, on its surface, classic B-movie fayre, but the mis-trust that the unexplainably monstrous force permeating the research station sows (amongst not only the characters, but the audience) was what really intrigued me. It can be picked up for a fairly reasonable price from your DVD retailer of choice, should you be just as intrigued.

I also saw Jaws a couple of weeks ago for the first time, and wondered immediately why I'd waited so long to give it a try. Perhaps growing up and becoming interested in film after Steven Spielberg had released things like Jurassic Park, made me feel less interested in his output as a director, I'm not sure. Anyway, in a lot of respects, Jaws is quite similar - and indeed owes quite a debt - to Spielberg's first film, Duel, which I saw last summer having had it recommended to me more than a few times. It is a film that was initially made for television a few years before, in 1971, and having seen it, I went out and bought Jaws, a film for which it was of course an important pre-cursor.

Every time I mention Duel to someone, they usually ask me how it's spelt and then tell me that they've never heard of it before, but once I have elaborated on the plot a little bit, it usually rings a few bells, as it may do for you now: it is about a traveling salesman (David Mann, played by Dennis Weaver) who, for almost the entire duration of the film, is pursued relentlessly across the California desert by the malevolent driver of a large tanker truck. At no point in the film is the driver seen by the viewer, and this is a very deliberate choice, a highly effective device to elicit in the audience what I suppose is the fear of the unknown. It is as though to set eyes upon the driver is to understand in some way, to have it explained why he would idly toy with another man's life. But with him out of site, it is impossible for Mann or the audience to rationalise or explain his evil. The truck is all the viewer sees, and its grotty and imposing presence serves give it the air of something almost as monstrously threatening as the shark that terrorises Amity Island.

It was originally only 75 minutes long, a duration considered too short for a theatrical release, so they went back and shot a few extra scenes in order to give it a running time of around ninety minutes. I've seen both versions now, and while I prefer the original - I suppose it could be argued that the extended version has the occasional scene that doesn't necessarily need to be there - it would've been unfortunate had it not been possible to put it out in the cinema, depriving what is a very good film of an audience. As far as I know, only the extended version is available to buy on DVD (in the UK, at least), but the original version is available to watch on YouTube.

Jaws, meanwhile, is slicker - it won an Oscar for its film editing in the year of its release - more polished, and certainly more fleshed-out in comparison with its cinematic older sibling, with a running time of almost two hours. It was probably the first of the bona fide summer blockbusters, and is still considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. Its story concerns the chief of police (Roy Scheider) of a fictional New England beach resort who tries to warn - unsuccessfully at first, thanks to the uppity paranoia of town officials - of the threat posed by a shark in its waters. Eventually, he and two cohorts pursue the shark and attempt to kill it. Though the setting and the characters in Jaws are different, the basic tenets - in Spielberg's words, the attack by a leviathan on everyman - are the same, and the shark plays the same role, that of the unreasoning beast, in this film that the tank truck played in Duel.

In subsequent interviews discussing the two films, Spielberg has said that he believes that they are closely connected, and indeed that they share a sort of 'kinship' with one another. As if to underline this, and by way of tribute to the film that gave him his break, he used a sound effect at the end of Jaws that he also used at the conclusion of Duel, the context of which I will not reveal in case you haven't seen one or both of the films.

Anyway, both of these films can be purchased with change left over from a ten pound note should you be inclined to check them out, or if you have already seen them and wish to add them to your collection. If you only get one of them, I'd say Jaws was the one to get, but Duel is not without its plus points, and acts as a significant portent of what was to follow four years later.

Classics of Russian cinema available online.

2011-06-05T18:58:00.001+01:00

Apologies for the lack of posts just recently. I will be getting back to writing in here more regularly soon, but in the meantime I just wanted to point you in the direction of something I've just been linked to via Twitter, a fantastic resource called Mosfilm Cinema, which is an online archive of 142 Russian films. They are all available to stream online for free and they each have English subtitles. You are also given the opportunity to download the films, which attracts a small fee per film.

REVIEW: Another Year (2010)

2011-05-29T01:00:00.000+01:00

Another Year, Mike Leigh's twenty-third feature, is about Gerri, a counsellor played by Ruth Sheen, whose performance I particularly enjoyed, and her husband Tom (Jim Broadbent). They are, one assumes, a couple of years away from retirement, but met at university and are still as happy today as perhaps they ever were. Its story is told in four parts, the film splitting itself between spring, summer, autumn, and then winter, and it follows the two of them and their somewhat dysfunctional friends and extended family over the course of twelve months, Gerri's skittish work colleague and friend Mary (Lesley Manville) providing much of the story's forward thrust.

Mary is a lonely forty-something single woman who is attracted to Gerri and Tom's son Joe, who at the beginning of the year is also single. She spends a lot of the first part of the film pursuing him, shrugging off the unwanted affections of Tom's equally lonely friend Ken. Now, while it is true to say that Joe doesn't entirely disabuse her of the notion that something could happen between them, he doesn't go after her either, and although he perhaps could have done more to fob her off, he probably doesn't feel as though he needs to. Not, that is, until Mary makes her feelings abundantly clear one day upon being confronted with Joe's new girlfriend Katie. Her behaviour upon realising that she is not the object of Joe's affections leads Gerri to cut off contact with her, and sets up the denouement of the film.

Some critics who have written about this film since its release last year have said that Mary is unfairly done to here, and to a certain extent I agree, though not entirely. It did not stop me liking Gerri, who is naturally going to side with her son over a work colleague. I suppose it ultimately comes down to whether you thought Mary's behaviour was tolerable or not, and I don't think the way she made Joe's girlfriend feel meant that she could be absolved of all blame. This is not to say that her character deserves to be in the isolated and unhappy state that she is as the film approaches its end, but to say that this is down to Gerri seems a little unreasonable to me.

In any case, I thought Another Year was a fantastic film. Generally speaking the performances are excellent, and though Jim Broadbent very occasionally managed to get on my nerves, his character was harmless enough. Imelda Staunton has a cameo right at the beginning as Janet, a patient of Gerri's, and her performance is still on my mind a few weeks after having seen it in spite of the fact she is only on the screen for a couple of minutes. When I first saw this film I knew next to nothing about it, and I had hoped that she would be the focus of the narrative, and so I was disappointed when we didn't see her again: it felt as though there was at least another film in exploring her character.

As turns out, she is just there to introduce us to Gerri, the portrayal of whom was, in fairness, another of the film's plus points. I don't expect that it would've been terribly difficult for Janet's character to play a larger role in another take on the film, the contrast between her troubles and the ostensibly idyllic home life of Gerri could have been an intriguing path to go down, but perhaps Leigh is to be applauded for leaving the audience wanting more and deciding not to take what might have been the obvious choice.

And ultimately, this film doesn't do the obvious, for all that a lot of it, like many of Mike Leigh's films, concerns the banal aspects of everyday life. It is believable without being imbued with an off-puttingly gritty realism, and it is sad in parts, too, but aside from the final part of the final part of the film, there is a lightness of touch here that for the most part stops things descending too far into melancholy.

Watch Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons online

2011-05-01T20:04:00.000+01:00

The BBC is celebrating the 70th anniversary of Citizen Kane. If you live in the UK, they have made the Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane available to watch for free on iPlayer. It will be online until 10th May. His period drama, The Magnificent Ambersons, has also been made available to watch until 7th May.

On Tuesday, there will be an evening of programmes on BBC FOUR accompanying another showing of Citizen Kane, including a documentary about Welles' exile in Europe and the repeat of a two-hour Arena documentary profiling the legendary director, both of which should hopefully be available to watch via the iPlayer as well at some point on Wednesday.

Will Ferrell talks about Anchorman II

2011-04-30T21:40:00.001+01:00

Will Ferrell has spoken of his disappointment and bewilderment at the strange decision of Paramount Pictures to turn down the opportunity to release a sequel to the 2004 film Anchorman, according to The Huffington Post. Here's what he had to say:

"We were going to do almost a reverse, almost like how the Marx brothers used to do," he said. "We were going to do a Broadway musical and then have a film come out after the stage show. Everyone we tell the idea loves it, except for the studio that owns the rights. Ball's in their courts, but they're being idiots... it's a little peculiar. On the one hand, [we were] being begged to do a sequel for such a long time, and then we finally came up with a concept that we liked, we talked to all the guys, and everyone was up for it. And then to get the reaction we got, yeah, it's slightly puzzling to us."

Alan Partridge film back on

2011-04-27T18:46:00.002+01:00

There has been an Alan Partridge film mooted on and off for the best part of the last ten years, but Steve Coogan has revealed at the Tribeca film festival that he is currently writing the script for it with Peter Baynham and Armando Iannucci. "We left it behind for a while, but we came back to it because we got a few ideas," he said. "We're writing it right now, going to shoot it next year. Don't know who will direct it."

When it was talked about a couple of years ago, there were reports that it was going to be filmed and set, at least in part, in America. It would appear that this is no longer the case, and that it will be filmed in Norwich instead, which is something I'm quite pleased about. I felt that a weak aspect of In The Loop, another Armando Iannucci production, were the parts set overseas. I would rather film adaptations of television shows try not to deviate too much from what made them good in the first place. Some time ago, Armando said on Twitter 'that we've now agreed a story for the film. It's NOT Alan goes to America. [We] don't see Alan, for example, getting Simon Cowell's spot on American Idol and going over there. That's too good for Alan. Alan's future is always brighter in his head than it is in the real world."

In the meantime, those of you wanting your fill of Partridge who haven't yet caught the online episodes that started to be put online in November last year, there are twelve of them in total, and they are all available to view on YouTube here. Here's a particular favourite of mine:

REVIEW: Up In The Air (2009)

2011-04-27T16:40:00.001+01:00

Up In The Air stars George Clooney as slick 'corporate downsizing expert' and motivational speaker Ryan Bingham, whose job it is to fire people whose employers are too cowardly to do it themselves. At the start of the film, Bingham finds his jet-setting way of life, and his pursuit of as many air miles as he can get his hands on, placed under threat by a young and idealist go-getter Natalie Keener (played by Anna Kendrick). She has devised a system whereby it will no longer be necessary to fly to companies around the country to tell unsuspecting employees that they are no longer required, and that they should instead deliver the bad news via a videoconferencing programme. Fearing that such a move would result in making a painful process even more impersonal, Bingham is opposed to the idea, and when he raises his hackles about this and Natalie's inexperience, he is instructed by his boss to allow Keener to accompany him around the country to see how he does his job.

There are deeper reasons for Ryan's concern, too, however, not least that he has grown accustomed to having nowhere in particular to hang his hat, preferring instead a transient lifestyle with nothing to tie him down. Keener, who half way through the film breaks up with her (unseen) partner whom she had planned on marrying, cannot understand Ryan's allergy to commitment, nor comprehend why he would not want to get married or have children, particularly in light of the fact that he has just met Alex (Vera Farmiga), a woman with a similar outlook on life - both in terms of their attitudes to relationships and a vaguely depressing obsession with accruing corporate loyalty cards. In the background to all of this is a supplementary storyline concerning his sister Julie, who is about to get married to a man, Jim, who like Natalie, does not get Ryan's commitment-phobic attitude to life.

Now, I had a couple of problems with this, and with the film in general. When Jim suddenly gets cold feet on the eve of the wedding, Ryan is required to step in and convince him that 'everybody needs a co-pilot.' I know that Ryan is supposed to be a motivational speaker, but it didn't ring true to me that he should be able to convince him so easily that marriage is a good idea, particularly since Jim knows what Ryan really thinks. It is almost as though this storyline is purely there as a trigger, to make Ryan realise whether or not he ought to consider making a more meaningful commitment to Alex, a decision on which the whole film hinges.

My other problem with it was that I thought the characters in the film were kind of selfish and I had a hard time liking any of them very much, particularly Clooney, who makes money out of telling people they're fired and is quite happy doing so as long as it's on his terms. I appreciate he is also wrestling with more profound issues than just this, but his worries about being bound by what is becoming an office job seem easily solved by the fact that he has managed to accumulated so many air miles: being stuck in the same place shouldn't really be too much of a problem.

I also felt uneasy that the woman who jumped off a bridge after Natalie told her she was fired was only given a passing mention. It did result in Natalie resigning, but she was soon in the pay of another prestigious job thanks in no small part to a glowing letter of recommendation from Ryan. Intended or not, I came away with a feeling that this was supposed to resolve the situation somehow, when it doesn't really do anything of the sort, and I found it odd that we didn't get to see an ounce of soul-searching on Natalie's part in light of the news of the woman's death. Though there was obviously very little any of the characters could do about this happening to someone they don't really know, I would've appreciated a little more exploration of this side of the profession and the effect it has, but the film seemed to stop short of giving it to us.

By the end of the film I was a little surprised that it was deemed good enough to be nominated for Best Picture at the 2009 Oscars, but this is not to say that the film itself is entirely without merit. The script is generally good, and pretty sharp in places. George Clooney is one of Hollywood's good guys, too, and he is smooth in the role of Bingham. In general, though, I think I was expecting a little more than I got: it seems a bit lightweight, while the characters are a little too shallow for my liking (Kendrick's character in particular seeming a little under-developed), and it doesn't quite delve into the issues in the way that I hoped it might. I know it's really just a romantic comedy drama, but I felt that it had the potential to be something a little more substantial.

My Kid Could Paint That (2007): Available to watch online

2011-04-15T23:01:00.000+01:00

I like to keep an eye on BBC iPlayer for films and documentaries that might be of interest to people who stumble on this blog. Not much has come up recently, but here, available until Wednesday of next week, is My Kid Could Paint That, a documentary from 2007 about an apparent child prodigy who apparently paints abstract modern art. As the film unfolds, however, it casts doubt on whether her parents' claims as to her genius are genuine. Well worth watching, but only viewable here if you reside in the UK. If you're in the US, I recommend checking to see if it's available to view via Netflix Watch Instantly.

Sidney Lumet (1924-2011)

2011-04-09T21:50:00.000+01:00

I was sad to hear it announced this afternoon that Sidney Lumet, the acclaimed veteran director, had died at the age of eighty-six of the cancer lymphoma at his home in Manhattan. Amongst countless other films that he made, he directed 12 Angry Men, Network, and my personal favourite of his, Dog Day Afternoon. For all three of these, along with 1982's The Verdict, he received Oscar nominations for Best Director. Though [and perhaps because] he was unsuccessful each time, at the age of eighty he was given a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for his many [over fifty, at the time] years in film making. He then went on to make his final film, the highly-regarded Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, which was released in 2007.

Lumet made most of his films in New York, reluctant as he was to engage too much with Hollywood, and it is perhaps for this reason that he was not as well-known as some of the other stellar names in American cinema, but in actual fact he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as directors like Scorsese, as his influence has arguably been felt just as keenly. One example of this is the prophetic Network, a salient warning about the corrupt and divisive nature of the news media - watch the I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more scene and juxtapose it with the output of a certain Glenn Beck, and see if you disagree - and quite possibly the best film about the media that has ever been made.

Anyway, Roger Ebert has written a good piece in memory of his life and work, and you can read it here.

The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams

2011-04-03T23:01:00.000+01:00

I went to see Werner Herzog's terrific new film The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams a week or so back, one of the many screenings to which was attached a Q&A session via a satellite feed at the film's conclusion. As it happens, Manchester Odeon didn't show the Q&A - technical problems, they said, although I rather suspect they just forgot. Anyway, we did at least get to see the film itself, which, to coin the well-worn phrase, was worth the price of admission alone.

The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams is a documentary about the Chauvet cave, which is situated in the south of France. The cave is normally hermetically sealed off from the public, but Herzog had been given special permission by the French government to film in there, provided that he adhered to strict instructions while he was inside: he and his film crew of three were not allowed to veer from the metal walkway at any point, were told they would not be allowed to touch anything, and were only allowed to stay inside for short periods of time because of the quantities of radon in the cave's rarefied atmosphere.

On its walls were drawings - mostly of horses, it seems, but other animals too - which dated back to between 30,000 and 35,000 years ago and which, to him, represented 'the awakening of the modern human soul'. It is the first, and seeing as he is a noted sceptic of the format, probably the last film he will make in 3D, but some of the artwork was quite stunning, I thought, and thoroughly justified the decision to film it in the way that they did.

There's an excellent interview with Werner Herzog in the April issue of Sight And Sound, but they have also made it available to read on their website and you can read it here. In it, he talks about the film, how it relates to the history of man, and his thoughts on 3D in general and why he doesn't think it will not be adopted in favour of 2D in the way that colour was, for example, in favour of black and white.

Here, anyway, is the trailer. It's still being shown at the Manchester Odeon for the next week, as well as the Odeon at Covent Garden in London, so I would encourage you to try and go along and see it if you can:

Review: Animal Kingdom (2010)

2011-03-22T00:51:00.000Z

For many, their experience of seeing the denizens of Melbourne on a television screen starts and ends with programmes like Neighbours, where the sun always shines and a happy ending is almost always within easy reach. As a city, though, Melbourne has gained a somewhat notorious (if slightly unfair) reputation for its crime rate over the years, so it is refreshing to see Animal Kingdom, a film from a whole different order altogether that not only attempts to shine a light on a different aspect of the city, but manages to do so very well.

Based loosely upon the events surrounding the Walsh Street police shootings that took place in South Yarra in the late eighties, Animal Kingdom is about a dysfunctional and disintegrating Melbourne crime family who are unable to reconcile the fact that its best days may be behind them. It tells its story to us through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Joshua 'J' Cody (James Frecheville), whose mother dies from a heroine overdose at the beginning of the film.

Unsure of what to do next and seemingly with nowhere else to go, he contacts his grandmother Janine (played by the chilling Jacki Weaver), who takes him in to live with her and his uncles, a lairy band of brothers who rob banks for a living. Weaver's excellent turn as Janine (just as good as that of Ben Mendelsohn as the extremely unnerving Andrew 'Pope' Cody) is disquieting to say the least, her motherly charm and affection a fairly thin veneer hiding the ruthlessness below. When she tells J that she and his mother had not spoken for years because of a disagreement as to the precise rules of a card game, you can be almost certain that there was a little bit more to it than that.

Meanwhile, the head of the armed robbery squad and leader of the investigation which is attempting to close in on the Cody brothers, Detective Senior Sergeant Nathan Leckie (played by the impressive Guy Pearce, speaking of Neighbours), sees the young and impressionable J as a potential chink in the armour of the family, ripe for flipping and using to turn the family over to justice. J becomes a man in the middle, and most of the film's narrative is based around the police and the family trying to pull him in their respective directions so that he might serve their interests. J, though, has his own ideas on which way he should go, and it isn't quite what either of them expects.

If I do have one criticism of this film, despite the fact that he has been praised in some quarters, it is that I felt James Frecheville gives a bit of a one-note performance as J. Perhaps it is appropriate given the character he plays, but I just felt that something was missing from it. Having said that, the compelling nature of the film's narrative and the excellent performances from everyone else involved means that it doesn't matter too much, and in general it must be said that this film is a breath of fresh air, the best thing to come out of Australia in recent times, and possibly the best thing I have seen so far this year.

Review: Ten Canoes (2006)

2011-03-14T21:06:00.000Z

The recipient of the Un Certain Regarde special jury prize at the 2006 Cannes film festival, Ten Canoes shows us a parable of Aborigine life set hundreds of years before colonial settlement in the Arnhem Land Region, part of Australia's Northern Territories. Directed by the Dutch film maker Rolf de Heer, the film is the result of a collaboration between him and the Aboriginal community who appear in the film. It is one of the first films to show these communities on their own terms rather than going down that well-trodden path of showing them in the context of what their 'place' should be in the country under colonial rule.

The film is about a young hunter gatherer called Dayindi (played by Jamie Gulpilil), who covets the third and youngest wife of his older brother, Minygululu. In an attempt to stop his brother from trying to steal his wife from him and to teach him of the dangers of jealousy, over the course of a few days as they hunt alone, Minygululu tells Dayindi the ancient story of a young man who also has designs on his brother's wife and who, by the story's conclusion, has reason for regret, causing Dayindi to think twice about what he wishes for.

But satisfying though the ending is, the real beauty of Ten Canoes is not so much the way it ends as the way in which that ending is reached, its 'story within a story' told slowly and deliberately, growing and expanding as though it were a tree. It is a good story, too, and to quote the narrator David Gulpilil, 'a good story must have a proper telling'.

I thought this was an excellent film about a people, the history of whom I have shamefully little knowledge. It somehow manages to be a paean to traditional storytelling while at the same time remaining truly unique and original. I initially found it difficult to get used to the slow pacing of its narrative, but it has a hypnotic quality about it that I soon found hard to resist. It looks great, too, and apart from the fact that it is excellently shot, I particularly liked the way the scenes in the present day are shot in black and white, while the scenes set centuries earlier are in colour.

Drip-fed to the viewer through Gulpilil's words and the impressive visuals of the award-winning cinematographer Ian Jones, Ten Canoes shows its story the respect it deserves: this is a film that celebrates the well-told tale - the art of which I sometimes think, at least in terms of films, is too often forgotten - as well as being a study of how effective these tales can be at teaching us values and morals.

DVD REVIEW: The Social Network (12)

2011-03-10T02:02:00.000Z

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Finally I see The Social Network, and I am a tad underwhelmed by it. Well. Perhaps that isn't strictly fair: I liked it more than I had expected to when I first heard its premise, the fact that I don't particularly like Facebook - in spite of an incessant need to see if anyone has 'liked' my latest status update in the last few minutes - putting me off from wanting to see it. The fact that Sight & Sound had it down as their film of the month last autumn when it came out over here left me feeling puzzled and tempted to question their judgement, but the plaudits and award nominations that were subsequently bestowed upon it piqued my interest, to the point that I was actively looking forward to watching it by the time I finally settled down to it a few days ago.

The Social Network isn't bad. It probably wasn't worth tipping for an Oscar win for Best Picture as I did in my previous post on this blog - purely because of the good reviews I'd read about it and nothing else - but it still wasn't bad. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it's very watchable. It is in one sense about the founding of Facebook in 2004 but in another it is about Zuckerberg himself, and his inherent need to be accepted, by the girl who dumps him at the start of the film, by the Harvard final club that rejects him, and by everyone on campus. It is when Facebook starts making the possibility of success much further afield a very real prospect that his head starts to be turned by Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) and problems with his co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) begin to surface.

The film never commits itself to a truth, showing different sides of an embittered dispute over rightful owner of Facebook's intellectual property. It appears to use a good deal of dramatic license to tell each side of the story, which has lead to criticisms of its accuracy, but which I accept on the grounds that we'll perhaps never know the real truth about this story. Jesse Eisenberg is quite good at playing complete or even mild douchebags, and although whether Zuckerberg actually is as much of one in real life is disputed, he puts in a good performance. Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor's score is excellent, too.

The principal problem with The Social Network for me, though, is probably with the script. Although it is well-written and contains many of the usual Sorkin hallmarks, it gets a bit too cute in the way that really used to rub me up the wrong way on The West Wing. In lots of other movies, of course, this probably wouldn't be so much of a problem, but it's so dialogue heavy that it became one for me. I knew these people were intelligent, and I get that the script ought to be snappy, but I just didn't really believe anyone talked like that. At least he has foregone all of the God-Bless-America stuff that used to make me clack my tongue in irritation whenever I caught The West Wing on television. And who knows, perhaps Zuckerberg does talk in that highly convoluted manner, I must be honest and say I've never listened to him talk on any subject. To be honest, though, I got a bit bored of Sorkin's writing style a while ago to forgive its contrived implausibilities quite so easily and give the benefit of the doubt.

But considering The Social Network is a film that relies so much on words, looking at computer screens and typing, the fact that it relies so little on action doesn't stop it being fairly compulsive viewing. Ultimately I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would six months ago, but I felt that it didn't quite live up to the expectations I'd managed to build up for it in the time since. This probably isn't the film's fault, though.

(3.5/5)

*

The DVD is out now as a 2-disc collector's edition only.

Special features

Disc 1:

* Audio Commentary with Director David Fincher
* Audio Commentary with Writer Aaron Sorkin, Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence

Disc 2:

* How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook? - Four-Part Feature-Length Documentary on the Making of the Film, from the Script to the Screenplay to Casting to Production
* Featurette: Angus Wall, Kirk Baxter and Ren Klyce on Post - Editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter and Sound Designer Ren Klyce Discuss Editing the Film and the Different Layers They Created Using Different Takes, Angles and Sound Effects
* Featurette: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and David Fincher on the Score - David Fincher, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Discuss the Process of Creating the Score
* Featurette: Jeff Cronenweth and David Fincher on the Visuals - David Fincher and DP Jeff Cornenweth Discuss Creating the Look for the Film
* Featurette: Swarmatron - Atticus Rose Explains the Swarmatron Sound Machine Used to Create Parts of the Score
* Featurette: In the Hall of the Mountain King: Music Exploration - Multi-Angle Music Exploration which Allows Viewers to Watch the Same Scene Four Different Ways with Different Layers of Music
* Ruby Skye VIP Room: Multi-Angle Scene Breakdown

An Oscars mini-preview

2011-02-27T23:46:00.000Z

The 2011 Oscars are almost upon us, then. My favourite of the films I've seen that are up for Best Picture this time around, by a small margin, is probably True Grit - a review of which I will post up on this blog in the next couple of days, I hope - although I don't think it will win after No Country For Old Men so deservedly and emphatically won a few years ago. Instead I rather suspect it is between Inception, which I didn't rate quite as highly as a lot of other people seemed to, and The Social Network, with The King's Speech an outside chance. I'd expect it to be between Jesse Eisenberg and Colin Firth for best actor, and I should imagine Natalie Portman will take best actress, with Jennifer Lawrence an outside bet. I'm also hopeful that Hailee Steinfeld, who has for some reason only been nominated as a supporting actress - because of her age? - is successful, but we shall see. Toy Story 3, if only because there hasn't been the opportunity to award it to the previous two films, is certain to win for Best Animated Feature.

For all those that are still undecided of what they would like the outcome to be, at least as far as the Best Picture award goes, The Guardian has provided a handy interactive guide for all of the films up for that particular award, with interviews, reviews, video and audio for each of them. Here's Philip French explaining why he thinks True Grit should win:

Bass Notes: The film posters of Saul Bass

2011-02-20T15:18:00.000Z

Apologies for not posting anything for a couple of weeks. I'll be posting a couple of reviews up of things I've seen recently, but for the time being I wanted to mention an exhibition of old film posters designed by Saul Bass, which caught my eye yesterday and which is on until next month at the Kemistry Gallery in Shoreditch.

No graphic designer has made a greater impact on the world of film than Saul Bass. This exhibition brings together a collection of his film posters, film titles and film festival posters from the Lloyd Northover donation to the British Film Institute. The BFI’s Poster Archive has kindly loaned the exhibits to make this show possible.

Saul Bass’s work is instantly recognisable for its directness, its simplicity and the way it makes its meaning felt. Breaking all conventions in the 1950s and 60s, Bass virtually invented film titles as we know them today, and he was the first to synthesize movies into compelling trademark images.

In a period when graphic imagery can be so easily manipulated electronically, Bass reminds us that a strong idea is always at the heart of a great design. His work, as reflected in this exhibition, is as refreshing today as ever.

The Guardian has a slideshow of ten of the exhibition's posters, which were provided by the BFI, and you can see that here.

Arrested Development film to be shot and released 'this year'

2011-02-05T09:23:00.000Z

Finally, the news I have been waiting the best part of five years to hear: Mitch Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development, has confirmed that he is writing the script for a film version of the television show, and that he wants to have it out in cinemas by the end of the year.

Like many of the better television shows to come over to this country from America, it spent most of its airtime here hidden away at unsociable hours on BBC Two where no one could get at it before being pinched by a digital channel (see also: Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm and, initially, The Wire). As a result, it has built up little more than a cult following over here, but it is without doubt one of the funniest and most inventive television shows I've ever seen. And in one sense, I'm excited at the prospect of this film because apart from getting to spend another couple of hours in the company of the myopic and self-absorbed Bluth family, I hope that it'll bring the programme to a wider audience, but on the other hand, I quite like that there aren't an awful lot of people who know what it is, much less like it: it feels like a secret I don't want to give away to too many people.

I'll be interested to see what they do with the film and how different it will be from the television show, though. Each of its episodes were never much more than twenty minutes in length, and were so fast moving densely packed - to the extent that if you went out of the room for thirty seconds, you would have to rewind it to understand properly just what was going on - so I do wonder how it well it will make the transition to, as it were, the longer form of the game.

Here is the interview in which Mitch Hurwitz talks about the film:

John Barry (1933 - 2011)

2011-01-31T13:12:00.000Z

The British film composer John Barry has died in New York at the age of 77 from a heart attack. I can't say I've ever really been a big fan of the James Bond films, but his themes left an indelible impression. He won five and was nominated for a further two Academy Awards for his work between the late 1960s and the early 1990s. I've always particularly liked the theme he composed for John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy.

Review: Black Swan (2010)

2011-01-31T01:07:00.001Z

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In the psychological thriller Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky's sixth feature, Natalie Portman gives a convincing and deservedly Oscar-nominated performance as the delicate Nina Sayers, picked to replace the retiring Beth (Winona Ryder) for the lead role in a production of Swan Lake. It has been nominated for and has won a copious number of awards, and has garnered five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. On the face of it, Black Swan is the story of Nina's struggle to overcome her own perfectionist inclinations that inhibit her from giving an authentic performance as the black swan. What it becomes, though, is an unrelenting psychodrama that gets more and more ridiculous with each scene, showing as it does so through the eyes of Portman's character, Nina experiencing a mental breakdown.

As she begins her descent into paranoid madness, Nina becomes increasingly unreliable as a narrator, her hallucinations and dreams constantly throwing the audience off course. We are left to question the accuracy of Nina's perception of the world: in particular the true motives of the manipulative Lily (her rival for the lead role, played by Mila Kunis) and her director Thomas (the excellent Vincent Cassell), and the exact nature of her splenetic relationship with her mother (who I almost didn't recognise as Barbara Hershey, in spite of me having enjoyed her performance in Hannah And Her Sisters almost thirty years previously), which imbue the film with shades of Mommie Dearest. This, though, is Mommie Dearest with the volume turned right up, its plot unfolding in such a frenzied manner that mirrors Nina's downward spiral and which leaves the viewer run ragged and gasping for air by the time the credits roll.

This is, I must confess, the first Aronofsky film I have seen - although this is not by design: I am keen to watch 2008's The Wrestler - and brilliant though it was, I don't know that I want to see it again in spite of it being quite an enthralling introduction to his oeuvre. Though there is nothing terribly subtle about the film's themes, I found myself getting simultaneously swept away and horrified by it. But by no means is this paint-by-numbers stuff: Black Swan's story has a density to it that has had armchair critics such as myself spouting myriad theories as to the meanings behind certain scenes and lines of dialogue. Though I will not posit any of those here, I will say that I was left exhausted and a little traumatised at its conclusion, feeling in fairly urgent need of a drink and a lie down on exiting the cinema. It is a film well worth watching, albeit with the caveat that I recommend you brace yourself for a tough ride beforehand.

Blue Valentine (2010)

2011-01-18T19:37:00.000Z

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Premiering a year ago at 2010's Sundance Film Festival, and having since been released to some critical acclaim, Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine examines the opposite ends of a relationship between Dean, a musician and artist whose day job is as a removals man, and Cindy, a medical student whose curmudgeonly father disapproves of their courtship. They are played by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams respectively, who both also helped to produce the film, and perhaps it shows in their performances, particularly in the scenes that show their marriage seemingly heading towards its denouement, are startlingly real.

As its story develops, the film shifts back and forth between their relationship's relatively carefree beginnings and its, at times, corrosively painful conclusion, a storytelling device that serves to lend the film a lightness of touch on one hand, and a palpable sense of unease on the other. These transitions are sometimes jarring, but they are intended to be: the viewer is taken without warning from a time when love is first blossoming to a time when it has slowly begun to rot and die, and then dragged straight back again. In the time that has passed since their first chance meeting, Dean has got a job painting houses for a living and has acquired a burgeoning alcohol problem. Cindy, meanwhile, has given birth to a daughter, has a job at the local hospital, and is frustrated at what she sees as Dean's unwillingness to realise his potential, and at the apparent impossibility of having a conversation with her husband without it degenerating into argument.

The seven or eight years that separate these two points in time, and with it the explanation for how and why they are falling apart at the seams both individually and as a couple are completely ignored by the film, leaving the audience to guess at how the fault lines might have first appeared. Perhaps the cause of their travails, though, unlikely to be down to just one thing in any case, is less pertinent than both the toll their problems have taken upon them, and the stark contrast between what was then and what is now.

I liked this film a lot: I liked it for Gosling's performance, for the music of Grizzly Bear that permeates many of its scenes, and for the fact that it was made, to quote Gosling himself, as a reaction to films featuring actors who seem to be carved out of marble and made in the image of Gods. This, he says, is a film made in the image of man that embraces the flaws of characters who are attempting to hold themselves to an idea of perfection that really only exists in Hollywood.

BAFTA film award nominations announced

2011-01-18T08:55:00.000Z

We are truly in the midst of awards season now, and BAFTA have announced the nominations for their film awards. You can watch it here.

The King's Speech (2010)

2011-01-17T19:14:00.000Z

I've long been a fan of Colin Firth in spite of the sometimes, at best, questionable choices he has made when it comes to the films in which he has decided to appear, most notably the slew of romantic comedies in the early part of the last decade. His presence on screen does, however, always seem to hoist the quality of a film up above that which it might otherwise have been, and every so often, he appears in something in which he is not the sole redeeming feature. One such example was 2009's A Single Man, and one could argue that last night's Golden Globe win, for best actor in a motion picture drama, was partly to make up for him not winning in the same category last time around for Tom Ford's film, although it would be slightly churlish to suggest that his performance in The King's Speech on its own does not justify his victory.

The film tells the story of the period between the dying embers of the reign of George V (Michael Gambon), and the outbreak of World War II almost four years after his death. During this period, George VI (Firth) attempts to get help to cure his stammer at the insistence of his wife Elizabeth - played by Helena Bonham Carter, whom I have now forgiven for irritating me beyond belief as the Red Queen in Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland last year - partly to cure an impediment that has plagued him since childhood and partly in recognition of the possibility that he might one day be King. Lionel Logue is her choice to cure what ails him, an unconventional Australian speech therapist played by the excellent Geoffrey Rush. As the story of the occasionally faltering working relationship between Rush's idiosyncratic behaviour and Firth's stiff upper lip unfolds, we see George VI's brother Edward abdicating the throne to marry Wallis Simpson nearly a year after their father's death. At this point George's fears are realised and he must take to the throne, a prospect that terrifies him.

What follows is not perfect or necessarily completely historically accurate: there is a touch of chest-thumping patriotism right at the end that would have felt less out of place were this a film about an American president rather than a man at the head of the British monarchy, and the portrayal of Churchill's relationship with George VI is not necessarily the same in the film as it was in reality, but these are relatively minor criticisms. The combination of Firth's fantastic performance, his chemistry with Rush, and the tightly-written script in particular has unashamedly uplifting results, allowing it to pole-vault quite gracefully over the debate on the relevance of the Royal Family. Whatever anyone's thoughts on that subject, this is a fine British film, a testament to the enthralling power of oratory at its best, and one for which Colin Firth richly deserves a Golden Globe, and possibly an Oscar nomination too.

Disney at the BFI.

2011-01-08T00:14:00.001Z

A couple of BFI-related snippets that I came across today. First that they are about to embark upon a year-long Disney retrospective, during which they show a film from the fifty-strong Disney canon each weekend, starting with the new film Tangled on 16th January, and then working their way through the rest in chronological order, beginning with Snow White And The Seven Dwarves on 23rd January. Danny Leigh in The Guardian, though, argues that the Disney's inferior output has caused it to be overshadowed somewhat by Pixar and Ghibli in recent years, in spite of the fact that Pixar is a subsidiary of Disney, and that the Studio Ghibli films have been part-funded and distributed by them for many a year now.

Second is that on the BFI Twitter feed this evening was a link to what it calls a 'beautiful and absorbing repository of "festival-quality" short films to watch online.' I have only watched one of them so far, a short animation called Runaway, but I rather liked it, and you can watch it below:

Of Gods And Men (2010)

2011-01-06T21:02:00.001Z

A new year, then, and with it a new resolve to update this blog more regularly. The most impressive thing I have seen recently was just before Christmas, Xavier Beauvois' French drama Of Gods And Men (Des hommes et des dieux), which, actually, is possibly one of the best things I have seen over the past twelve months. It tells the true story of a group of Cistercian monks who look after a largely Muslim community in Algeria and who must decide whether to continue to do so in the face of the threat posed by a group of Islamic fundamentalists. Ultimately the monks die in mysterious circumstances, but this is not what the film focuses upon, as the producer of the film, Etienne Comar, told the BBC last year: "When it happened, as a nation, France was shocked. Ten years later in 2006, the same questions resurfaced. Why did it happen? Why did they die? I decided, as a movie, that rather than portray their death, it was more interesting to show them living. There is no answer to their deaths."

It would've been easy in lazier directorial hands for a film like this to have lurched into more preachy territory, but just as the monks make no issue of the religious persuasion of the people they care for, the film refrains admirably from trying to convert its audience, concentrating instead on the monks and the moral dilemma with which they have been presented. And its beauty, I found, was that for a film that tells its story through scenes of quiet contemplation, it is completely gripping at times, and its ending in particular is incredibly moving.

It won the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival last year, beaten to the Palme d'Or by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's slow-burning Thai drama Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which I wanted to like but found myself feeling underwhelmed by. Of Gods And Men has, though, been submitted as France's entry for Best Foreign Film at this year's Oscars, which I hope it wins. There is no word just yet on when it will be coming out on DVD just yet, but I expect it should be some time during the spring.

The 30-day film meme: Day 01: The best movie you saw during the last year.

2010-12-15T21:46:00.000Z

I have come across a meme of thirty film-related questions which you are required to answer over a period of thirty days, and I thought to get into the habit of writing in here more often, I would post my responses to the questions here. The first question has to do with the best film I have seen this year. I immediately thought of Psycho, which I finally saw for the first time in the spring, and which I remember being quite effusive about at the time. It is rightly regarded as a classic, and I have since picked it up on DVD and will watch it again at some point. Were there a question on this meme about my favourite film trailer, I would have no hesitation in picking it, worth watching for the way that Hitchcock teases you with details of, while at the same time giving nothing away about, the sinister plot.

I think, though, that the best film I've seen over the past year was probably Still Walking, a Japanese drama set over the course of a couple of days, about a family reuniting to observe the anniversary of the death of the family's oldest son, Junpei. Slow-paced but never frustrating, it does with subtlety what its Hollywood counterpart would attempt to do with a sledgehammer, teasing out the character's thoughts and feelings while never resorting to the lazy option of characters flying off the handle at one another in an effort to advance the plot. This is how family life really is for a lot of people, I imagine, things slowly burbling away below the surface without worries and conflicts ever being properly resolved, or at least not over the course of a single weekend. I found it really refreshing, and it made me want to go and see Ozu's Tokyo Story, a classic of Japanese cinema with which it has been favourably compared, and which has just been re-released this year. It is out on DVD now and I intend to pick it up at some point, having watched it on the big screen when it was shown at Manchester's Cornerhouse over the summer just gone.

Anyway, here is the trailer for Still Walking, which gives a good sense of the tone of the film and is, let's face it, really quite nice:

BFI Fills The Void.

2010-11-29T19:46:00.000Z

Some good news, on the face of it at least: The Guardian reports today that following the announcement in July that the UK Film Council was to be abolished, the British Film Institute will step in to fill the gap that its closure has left, describing the move as 'a merger in all but name.' Labour had, it says, considered merging the two bodies before the election in May this year:

It will be responsible not only for heritage and education, but for helping the production, exhibition and distribution of new British films. The BFI immediately announced a rise in the money available for new films in the coming year from £15m to £18m, made possible by the cut in overhead costs because of the film council's abolition.

Those lamenting the UKFC's passing in the summer described the Council as the glue that held the UK film industry together, and I for one was not in favour of its extinction at the time. It remains to be seen whether the BFI will be successful in its enhanced role, though, and I am yet to be convinced that this is good news for the BFI itself. The culture minister Ed Vaizey said the BFI would have to "change fundamentally to be more able to realise an exciting vision of a coherent, joined-up film industry". Which is fine, but I wait to hear what this actually means for the Institute in reality.

Winter's Bone

2010-10-07T18:18:00.000+01:00

The Ozark mountains, a vast, rugged group of plateaus in North America that covers substantial parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, is the setting for Winter’s Bone. It appears to be one of the only films set in the region to cut through the crude Beverley Hillbillie stereotype superimposed on its denizens, and does so in such a stark manner that the viewer is left shifting uncomfortably in their seat.

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and recognised with awards at the Berlin Film Festival, it was written and directed by Debra Granik and adapted from the 2006 novel by Daniel Woodrell, who also wrote Woe To Live On which was adapted and released as the film Ride With The Devil (1999). The occasionally unforgiving terrain mirrors the jagged edges of this slow-burning thriller in which Ree (played by the remarkable Jennifer Lawrence), a teenage girl who protects and nurtures her two young siblings on behalf of her unwell mother, must locate her mysteriously absent father who is involved in the local drug trade and is due in court. He has put the house up as a bond in case he doesn’t show, and her search, which if unsuccessful would result in her and her improvised and impoverished family unit losing their home, puts her into contact with the more undesirable elements of her community, their ‘help and advice’ always undercut by the threat of potential violence lingering somewhere in the background. There is little of it actually seen on screen, but the possibility of it is palpable, unpleasant and undiminished thoughout its one-hundred minute running time.

Winter's Bone is a terrific film. Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role of the fearless and determined Ree is a highlight, particularly for a scene in which she attempts in vain to try and give her family a new home and some money by trying to sign up for the army. The exchange in which she has it explained to her that it would be impossible to do without the help of her parents is flecked with sadness. Honourable mention should also go to Dale Dickey, who gives a disquieting performance as the menacing Merab, who at first by vague threat and then by sheer brute force tries to prevent Ree from discovering the truth about where her father is. Ultimately all Ree can rely on is a little good fortune: the landscape is harsh and unforgiving, and without the self-sufficiency she teaches to her young siblings - 'Don't ask for what ought to be offered', she tells them - it is impossible to survive, an unspoken rule that applies too when contending with the only people who know the whereabouts of her nowhere-to-be-seen father.

Let The Right One In remake is 'astonishingly good'

2010-09-25T10:48:00.000+01:00

According to Dangerous Minds, the soon-to-be released (5th November in the UK) Hollywood remake of Let The Right One In is 'astonishingly good', a film that 'not only honors the original but may have actually surpassed it as a work of art.' I remain to be convinced, but the trailer does look reasonable at least:

My Son, My Son... + Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.

2010-09-24T21:57:00.001+01:00

When I went to see Werner Herzog's take on Bad Lieutenant earlier this year, a film that I initially disliked before softening towards and subsequently quite enjoying it, I came away thinking how much it resembled something David Lynch might have made. In actual fact, he postponed work on My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done in order to complete that film, and since My Son is produced by Lynch himself, perhaps it's no surprise that Bad Lieutenant had such a Lynchian quality to it, although obviously Herzog has a distinct directorial eye of his own. My Son is based, admittedly quite loosely, on the true story of a San Diego man, named in the film as Brad McCullum, who stabbed his mother to death with an antique sword. The murder is committed at the start of the film, and the story behind how and why it took place is gradually drip-fed to us through anecdotal evidence gleaned by Willem Dafoe's Detective Havenhurst from Brad's friend Lee, played by Udo Kier, and his fiancee Ingrid, played by Chloë Sevigny. Of them all, though, I particularly enjoyed Grace Zabriskie as Brad's mother, who was in Lynch's seminal Twin Peaks, but who I remember more immediately playing George Costanza's potential mother-in-law on Seinfeld.

It's the first thing I've seen in which David Lynch has had a hand since Inland Empire, a film that I initially disliked and have kept on disliking ever since. Some critics lapped it up as a piece of intense weirdness typical of Lynch, but I just didn't see what all the fuss was about, and by the end of the film had come to actively detest it. In contrast I found this film, though it seems to have been less well-received by critics, more to my taste: it is darkly amusing, an awful lot more accessible, and much less infuriatingly indulgent. It is also half the length. For all that I feel I can let David Lynch off now for how much I did not get along with Inland Empire though, this is after all directed by Herzog, and I have enjoyed one or two of his documentaries recently. A couple of weeks ago, I was also shown a short film about him called Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, in which he makes good on a promise to eat his own shoe if Errol Morris ever completed the film Gates Of Heaven. It does not appear to be available on DVD in the United Kingdom, but here are some clips from YouTube:

This is a test.

2010-09-15T22:33:00.000+01:00

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