Each Day, A Film
January 21st 2012 (Retrospective)
Except that this is the bit where the whole Retrospective thing falls down, because it's time to write about a film that I literally just got back from watching at the cinema.
And yes, it's a couple of months after the film's released, but the beautiful independent cinema a few towns over gets things a decent interval after the film is initially released, and, frankly, it's worth waiting for. Beautiful is a bit over-the-top - the waiting area is a little crowded, the bar staff are uniformly 18 (and, I suspect, get replaced as soon as they leave the sixth form and go to university), and the management are occasionally viewable as a little eccentric, but it's a lovely place, the 'normal' seats are what 'luxury' seats are in a high street cinema, and it has a fully stocked and licensed bar.
But enough about the cinema, you're saying; what about the film?
I honestly loved it. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Guy Ritchie fan - at least, a Guy Ritchie fan of his films I've watched, having avoided Swept Away - but with the Sherlock Holmes franchise he seems to have picked up the kind of confidence that only a large budget and a minimum of two big-name actors per film can provide, and instead of getting cocky with it Ritchie - plus some amazing visual effects supervisors - seem to have set about making something that looks, well, stunning at times and merely really pretty at others.
Yes, there are odd little tics - disposing of someone by giving them a unique strain of Tuberculosis while sitting next to them seems prone to failure or, at least, contagion, given that the BCG vaccination wasn't available until at least twenty to thirty years after the film was set, so why not just use poison? - and yes, Stephen Fry gets all kinds of non-revealing naked in the film, but for every tic there's a moment of beautiful visual effects to complement it.
And yes, I almost did write for every tic there's a tock there, but I thought better of it.
The main thing for me, though, is that I was thoroughly able to get into the film from start (although it felt like a slightly slow start, but that's not necessarily a bad thing) right up until the end.
One thing that bugs me about both the recent TV series and this film, though, is the Plot Immortality contract that almost feels a little insulting; we know the film / tv series is going to continue, so try as you might to make us think the main character is dead, dead, dead at one point, it's not going to stick, is it? So, writers, are you really expecting the audience to go oh wait! I was really surprised when he turned out to be standing in the graveyard / wearing a strange camoflage suit, that totally blindsided me!
The only think that I find more annoying, really, are villain suicides. Wait! My plan will fail unless I kill myself to stop you making me make it fail! BANG. Please, no more. Even throwing a smoke bomb, whipping your cape about you and running off in the confusion is preferable to a Se7en-induced plot-mandated villain suicide.
But let's get back to the matter at hand; there's one sequence that really stands out for me in A Game of Shadows, and maybe for everyone else, too; the forest sequence. It's a masterpiece of managing the flow and speed of time along with incorporating beautiful special effects and occasionally RunCam, i.e. that strange sensation when the viewer is supposedly running alongside someone with the loping gait that we all seem to have. It's kinetic, it's well-done, and it's the only time I've seen a giant artillery piece called "Little Hansel".
Anyway, it's a weekend night and, oh God, I'm writing again, so I should probably knock this on the head - but for now, it's nice to be only a week behind my self-imposed deadlines. Let's take a moment to enjoy that. Granted, in an hour and twenty minutes I'll be eight days behind, but hey, who doesn't love a challenge?
Saturday 28 January 2012
When I wake it's kaleidoscopic lime
Each Day, A Film
January 20th 2012 (Retrospective)
If there's been a certain nostalgic tone to these past updates, it's because I've been talking about films that - for whatever reason - I love, and because of that I've strayed from the original brief, which was to actually watch a film a day then write about it. However, circumstances have precluded this, although out of the recent updates I did actually watch Plunkett and Macleane, but apart from that the majority of these retrospectives have been films I've got mentally stored in a happy place.
While circumstances were precluding doing this exercise, though, I did actually go through and watch several films as a blast-from-the-past exercise, so I figure it's probably worth talking about them, mais non?
Alex Garland's The Beach was, for a while, a dip book for me - one of two, basically, where I could start reading at any point and feel comfortable, the other being Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It helped that for about three years after the film was released you could find a copy in any charity shop you went into, to the point where it became kind of a standing personal joke.
There was even a copy at an old workplace of mine, where people brought in their old books for the lunch area in case you wanted something to read, which was a little strange as it tended to stand out around all the Mills and Boon and Daphne Du Maurier - but it was kind of handy to have around.
In a couple of previous posts, I mentioned that the first quasi-independent access to a cinema I had was through a friend-of-the-family - you know the sort, where you've known each other your whole life but it's not exactly a friendship, more like an inescapable, occasionally annoying kinship. He was - and most likely is - a good, if slightly banal person (and if that sounds like a criticism, it isn't - if I was a more banal person, I'd most likely have a job and a 'normal life' instead of retroactively updating a film blog nobody reads) but, most importantly, he had a car.
It wasn't a great car. Hell, it wasn't even a good car, because he was a teenager, and I suspect the expectation was that he'd crash it, which, as far as I can tell, he didn't. But it was a car - in bold type no less, because it meant that, as long as I was on his good side, we could go and see films in an eastward town about half an hour away. As mentioned before, we got to see Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels when - shock and indeed horror - I was still a year underage, and a few other films as well, none of which particularly stick in the memory - except for The Beach.
Except that this can't be right, because the film came out in 2000, by which time I was in London and he was in Exeter. This, kids, is what we call a misformed or misplaced memory, and sadly enough it's not even drug-induced.
This is a slightly strange moment for me, fact fans, because my memory is telling me I've seen The Beach in the cinema, but it can't tell me where. It wasn't in the Eastward Town, because my friend had gone by then, and it wasn't in East London, because the only two films I saw during my time there were The World is Not Enough and A Clockwork Orange - along with a trip out to Docklands, for some reason, to see Man in the Moon. (That was another Friend-with-Car escapade, in case you were wondering. Before I could drive, friends-with-cars were all kinds of gods, frankly.)
So to backtrack; I must have seen the film at some point, and it's most likely it was while I was back at home and my friend was too, but I cannot place it, and if this is the start of early-onset-Alzheimers, folks, it's not pretty. So let's move on.
I would have seen it later, on video, between 2000 and 2001 because the Friend from the previous Plunkett and Macleane entry had a killer video library, frankly. Unfortunately, the period between approximately May 2000 and August 2001 is pretty much a blur for me thanks to a combination of circumstance and other matters, so I can't say for sure what I did during that period other than avoid doing academic work and watch a lot of Angel, but I'm sure there were a lot of films, too, and The Beach could quite likely have been one of them.
One thing I do know; the film has a killer soundtrack. Yes, yes, I know that some of you savants out there are protesting the following song:
But even for All Saints, it's still a good song. Now, the Amazon Monetizer has disappeared from Blogger for me for no apparent reason, but I can only entice you with my wiles to go and have a look at the soundtrack here. Seriously, for the time it was so cool it practically had icicles hanging off the CD case, and even the songs with cheeky samples from the film work, somehow. Even twelve years on, I could happily listen to this soundtrack in full right now.
The film itself is not actually that bad - granted, the six point+ score in IMBD is fairly accurate - but if you're going to complain about anything, complain about the fact that the script turns Richard into a ravenous fuckbadger, who instead of having an unrequited crush on Francoise actually wins her away from winsome Etiénne before pissing it up the wall by sleeping with Tilda Swinton for no apparent reason. This is the Nicholas Cage Can't Possibly Be A Virgin school of thought at work, because who could resist the winning charms of Leonardo DiCaprio? Nobody, that's who, and that's why he's not a frustrated Englishman anymore, instead turning into a phosphorescence-stirring sexual dynamo.
And that's the thing; underlying the novel, from memory, was a healthy vein of psychosis, fostered by Richard's feeling of somehow having "missed" the Vietnam war, which the films - for the most part - made look so cool. In the film, Richard does eventually go fairly deep into psychosis territory, but only when Sal forces him to live in isolation then rips apart his relationship with Francois while he's out there on his own. Then there's a brief, cheeky video-game section, and then it all goes to shit very quickly.
There's kind of a moral to the proceedings herein; I'd love to say that it's If a holiday destination drives Robert Carlyle psychotic, best leave it alone, but it's more along the lines of a general motto about human society; if a group gets too big, even by, say, three members, then a split is more or less inevitable, and not a pretty one at that.
Not that beach life pre-Dicaprio and his French tagalongs is necessarily the most adorable thing ever, but we're not shown that; we only know that sensory overload and possibly underlying psychological issues drove Robert Carlyle - one of the original three settlers of the beach, along with Tilda Swinton and a relatively forgettable Australian -
- Played by a Norwegian who studied drama in South Africa, fact fans -
- who styled themselves with cartoon character names in an odd kind of rebirth. So after that, you have to ask yourself, how does this work? Three people could conceivably live on fish and the occasional bit of fruit, but as the camp started expanding, things started getting more difficult, and suddenly people are treating Sal like a leader and Bugs - well, like the leader's sexbuddy - and all of a sudden, you have a community, living under the constant shadow of a giant cannabis growing operation staffed by Thais with a nominal grasp of English but a firm grasp of weapons.
How could this possibly go wrong?
That's why I actually like the film more than it should really be liked; in a way, it's a DiCaprio vehicle and it was something for Danny Boyle to do, but at the same time it doesn't try to make out that this fantastic secret beach community is filled with anything other than humans - poor, fallible, cricket-misunderstanding humans, who don't know how to deal with shark attack victims or the incursive threat of the possibility of more people coming and turning their pleasant beachfront community into a commercial proposition, and it all comes to a climax when Sal is willing to kill to keep the community together, seemingly not realising that that killing will drive them all apart - even though they're already done, really, and ready for the raft.
Even if I can't remember exactly when I saw it for the first time, I made the time to watch it last week during Circumstances Intervening, and I still like the film even now.
But even more, I love the soundtrack.
January 20th 2012 (Retrospective)
If there's been a certain nostalgic tone to these past updates, it's because I've been talking about films that - for whatever reason - I love, and because of that I've strayed from the original brief, which was to actually watch a film a day then write about it. However, circumstances have precluded this, although out of the recent updates I did actually watch Plunkett and Macleane, but apart from that the majority of these retrospectives have been films I've got mentally stored in a happy place.
While circumstances were precluding doing this exercise, though, I did actually go through and watch several films as a blast-from-the-past exercise, so I figure it's probably worth talking about them, mais non?
Alex Garland's The Beach was, for a while, a dip book for me - one of two, basically, where I could start reading at any point and feel comfortable, the other being Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It helped that for about three years after the film was released you could find a copy in any charity shop you went into, to the point where it became kind of a standing personal joke.
There was even a copy at an old workplace of mine, where people brought in their old books for the lunch area in case you wanted something to read, which was a little strange as it tended to stand out around all the Mills and Boon and Daphne Du Maurier - but it was kind of handy to have around.
In a couple of previous posts, I mentioned that the first quasi-independent access to a cinema I had was through a friend-of-the-family - you know the sort, where you've known each other your whole life but it's not exactly a friendship, more like an inescapable, occasionally annoying kinship. He was - and most likely is - a good, if slightly banal person (and if that sounds like a criticism, it isn't - if I was a more banal person, I'd most likely have a job and a 'normal life' instead of retroactively updating a film blog nobody reads) but, most importantly, he had a car.
It wasn't a great car. Hell, it wasn't even a good car, because he was a teenager, and I suspect the expectation was that he'd crash it, which, as far as I can tell, he didn't. But it was a car - in bold type no less, because it meant that, as long as I was on his good side, we could go and see films in an eastward town about half an hour away. As mentioned before, we got to see Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels when - shock and indeed horror - I was still a year underage, and a few other films as well, none of which particularly stick in the memory - except for The Beach.
Except that this can't be right, because the film came out in 2000, by which time I was in London and he was in Exeter. This, kids, is what we call a misformed or misplaced memory, and sadly enough it's not even drug-induced.
This is a slightly strange moment for me, fact fans, because my memory is telling me I've seen The Beach in the cinema, but it can't tell me where. It wasn't in the Eastward Town, because my friend had gone by then, and it wasn't in East London, because the only two films I saw during my time there were The World is Not Enough and A Clockwork Orange - along with a trip out to Docklands, for some reason, to see Man in the Moon. (That was another Friend-with-Car escapade, in case you were wondering. Before I could drive, friends-with-cars were all kinds of gods, frankly.)
So to backtrack; I must have seen the film at some point, and it's most likely it was while I was back at home and my friend was too, but I cannot place it, and if this is the start of early-onset-Alzheimers, folks, it's not pretty. So let's move on.
I would have seen it later, on video, between 2000 and 2001 because the Friend from the previous Plunkett and Macleane entry had a killer video library, frankly. Unfortunately, the period between approximately May 2000 and August 2001 is pretty much a blur for me thanks to a combination of circumstance and other matters, so I can't say for sure what I did during that period other than avoid doing academic work and watch a lot of Angel, but I'm sure there were a lot of films, too, and The Beach could quite likely have been one of them.
One thing I do know; the film has a killer soundtrack. Yes, yes, I know that some of you savants out there are protesting the following song:
But even for All Saints, it's still a good song. Now, the Amazon Monetizer has disappeared from Blogger for me for no apparent reason, but I can only entice you with my wiles to go and have a look at the soundtrack here. Seriously, for the time it was so cool it practically had icicles hanging off the CD case, and even the songs with cheeky samples from the film work, somehow. Even twelve years on, I could happily listen to this soundtrack in full right now.
The film itself is not actually that bad - granted, the six point+ score in IMBD is fairly accurate - but if you're going to complain about anything, complain about the fact that the script turns Richard into a ravenous fuckbadger, who instead of having an unrequited crush on Francoise actually wins her away from winsome Etiénne before pissing it up the wall by sleeping with Tilda Swinton for no apparent reason. This is the Nicholas Cage Can't Possibly Be A Virgin school of thought at work, because who could resist the winning charms of Leonardo DiCaprio? Nobody, that's who, and that's why he's not a frustrated Englishman anymore, instead turning into a phosphorescence-stirring sexual dynamo.
And that's the thing; underlying the novel, from memory, was a healthy vein of psychosis, fostered by Richard's feeling of somehow having "missed" the Vietnam war, which the films - for the most part - made look so cool. In the film, Richard does eventually go fairly deep into psychosis territory, but only when Sal forces him to live in isolation then rips apart his relationship with Francois while he's out there on his own. Then there's a brief, cheeky video-game section, and then it all goes to shit very quickly.
There's kind of a moral to the proceedings herein; I'd love to say that it's If a holiday destination drives Robert Carlyle psychotic, best leave it alone, but it's more along the lines of a general motto about human society; if a group gets too big, even by, say, three members, then a split is more or less inevitable, and not a pretty one at that.
Not that beach life pre-Dicaprio and his French tagalongs is necessarily the most adorable thing ever, but we're not shown that; we only know that sensory overload and possibly underlying psychological issues drove Robert Carlyle - one of the original three settlers of the beach, along with Tilda Swinton and a relatively forgettable Australian -
- Played by a Norwegian who studied drama in South Africa, fact fans -
- who styled themselves with cartoon character names in an odd kind of rebirth. So after that, you have to ask yourself, how does this work? Three people could conceivably live on fish and the occasional bit of fruit, but as the camp started expanding, things started getting more difficult, and suddenly people are treating Sal like a leader and Bugs - well, like the leader's sexbuddy - and all of a sudden, you have a community, living under the constant shadow of a giant cannabis growing operation staffed by Thais with a nominal grasp of English but a firm grasp of weapons.
How could this possibly go wrong?
That's why I actually like the film more than it should really be liked; in a way, it's a DiCaprio vehicle and it was something for Danny Boyle to do, but at the same time it doesn't try to make out that this fantastic secret beach community is filled with anything other than humans - poor, fallible, cricket-misunderstanding humans, who don't know how to deal with shark attack victims or the incursive threat of the possibility of more people coming and turning their pleasant beachfront community into a commercial proposition, and it all comes to a climax when Sal is willing to kill to keep the community together, seemingly not realising that that killing will drive them all apart - even though they're already done, really, and ready for the raft.
Even if I can't remember exactly when I saw it for the first time, I made the time to watch it last week during Circumstances Intervening, and I still like the film even now.
But even more, I love the soundtrack.
Here she comes like a brand new day
Each Day, A Film:
January 19th 2012 (Retrospective)
When I first saw The Bourne Identity, a message would scroll across the screen every twenty or so minutes to remind me that it was the property of Universal Pictures Limited, and was not to be sold on.
That was one of the fun inventions PR companies had in the dying days of video; when sending out a screener tape to journalists, include a rolling subtitle, otherwise unscrupulous people might -*gasp*- copy it and sell it on.
I'm not that unscrupulous, and to be honest I was so taken by what was going on in the film that I barely even noticed.
Nowadays, people chat about how The Bourne Identity revolutionised spy filmmaking, taking away the clunk and the special effects and the camp and making something more streamlined and more realist out of it. While this is true, and it's also to be applauded - I'm more likely to rewatch the Bourne trilogy than, say, recent Bond films - it wasn't so much that that entranced me initially - it was the lack of pandering to the audience.
Pandering is not a bad thing - if you have a complicated setup, you need to find a way of explaining it without thrusting it in the audience's face and waggling it about. If you want an example of this problem, you could do no worse than to watch the poker games in Casino Royale; whenever play is taking place, Mathis has to explain what's going on for the members of the audience who don't speak poker. It's not too blatant, but it does get annoying, because while the poker game is high-stakes and could potentially fund a cinematic terrorist organisation for years to come directly out of Britain's pockets, a poker game is difficult to make tense when it comes to cinema.
The Bourne Identity doesn't have any issue with fishing the main character out of the sea with a laser pointer embedded in his soft tissue and no explanation whatsoever at the start of the film.
Plus, it has Walton Goggins. But let's skip past that point for now.
It's difficult to put a finger on precisely what was so impressive about the film at the time, when I was watching it on a TV-video combi in an L-shaped student room by a canal, but if I had to try now I'd like to put it down to a resolute lack of slow-motion sequences.
Case in point; in Paris, when Jason and Marie are just wandering around the alleged apartment, and all seems quiet and creepy, without any warning a machine-gun toting operative swings through a window and a fight ensues. Now, imagine if Zack Snyder directed the same scene; imagine if ramping had come in just before the glass broke, and each fragment could be seen slowly dropping as the machine gun was raised and the bullets came out in a concussive burst of flame slowly, one-by-one-by-one and then suddenly time speeds up again --
Cool, no?
Not in this case. The fight scene that follows is quick, deadly, and brutal, and basically serves to show how "real" ultra-conditioned, perfectly trained human weapons would fight; trying to find gaps in each other's defenses, using any weapons to hand - including a bic biro, which in a Bond film would inevitably lead to "the pen is mightier than the sword" jokes - and then, suddenly, assassin suicide.
And this is only a mid-point in the film.
This kind of amazed me at the time, because it was well-done; no gadgets, no amazingly large weapons, no quips, no silliness, no camp. Just someone fighting to find out who they are before government operatives shoot them through the head. Shady government operatives, to boot.
Plus Clive Owen.
Now let's be honest, Clive Owen is an interesting case, because post The Croupier, things changed in a large way; supporting role in Bourne followed by Hollywood success but, crucially, he was never the groomed replacement for Bond people thought he was. If you're like me, you can picture Clive Owen as a Dalton-esque, cruel Bond, just right for the post-Pierce Brosnan camp of Die Another Day; a return to first principles.
Instead, we got King Arthur, Shoot-Em-Up, The International... The list kind of goes on.
And Bond was re-invented to be more down-to-earth and, frankly, more Bourne-a-like.
But for a while - before the third film, but after the second, arguably - the Bourne films were an entirely new proposition. That proposition was basically "One Man being Fucked With by Shadowy Government Agencies". Literally; without his memory, Jason Bourne became everyman, albeit an amnesiac everyman trained to be the perfect spy, in a perpetual state of identity confusion, not wanting to be who he was trained to be.
I'm babbling a little, I freely admit, but at the time The Bourne Identity was one of the most amazing films I'd seen in a while, even with the Universal message occasionally popping up at the bottom of the screen. It was the opposite of almost every spy film of the recent years up to that point; quiet when others were loud, humble when others were brash, and it wasn't afraid to just go with the general flow when it was necessary. Witness a Shotgun versus Sniper Rifle battle:
Granted, the "Movieclips" brand cuts that clip annoyingly short, but you get the picture. In HD, no less.
Another thing; the series isn't afraid of continuity; the third film makes some wonderful references to the first, which I'll talk about at another time.
The main thing is, though, that after the second film, it was established that Bourne has a Theme. And that theme? Well, it's this. So now you know.
January 19th 2012 (Retrospective)
When I first saw The Bourne Identity, a message would scroll across the screen every twenty or so minutes to remind me that it was the property of Universal Pictures Limited, and was not to be sold on.
That was one of the fun inventions PR companies had in the dying days of video; when sending out a screener tape to journalists, include a rolling subtitle, otherwise unscrupulous people might -*gasp*- copy it and sell it on.
I'm not that unscrupulous, and to be honest I was so taken by what was going on in the film that I barely even noticed.
Nowadays, people chat about how The Bourne Identity revolutionised spy filmmaking, taking away the clunk and the special effects and the camp and making something more streamlined and more realist out of it. While this is true, and it's also to be applauded - I'm more likely to rewatch the Bourne trilogy than, say, recent Bond films - it wasn't so much that that entranced me initially - it was the lack of pandering to the audience.
Pandering is not a bad thing - if you have a complicated setup, you need to find a way of explaining it without thrusting it in the audience's face and waggling it about. If you want an example of this problem, you could do no worse than to watch the poker games in Casino Royale; whenever play is taking place, Mathis has to explain what's going on for the members of the audience who don't speak poker. It's not too blatant, but it does get annoying, because while the poker game is high-stakes and could potentially fund a cinematic terrorist organisation for years to come directly out of Britain's pockets, a poker game is difficult to make tense when it comes to cinema.
The Bourne Identity doesn't have any issue with fishing the main character out of the sea with a laser pointer embedded in his soft tissue and no explanation whatsoever at the start of the film.
Plus, it has Walton Goggins. But let's skip past that point for now.
It's difficult to put a finger on precisely what was so impressive about the film at the time, when I was watching it on a TV-video combi in an L-shaped student room by a canal, but if I had to try now I'd like to put it down to a resolute lack of slow-motion sequences.
Case in point; in Paris, when Jason and Marie are just wandering around the alleged apartment, and all seems quiet and creepy, without any warning a machine-gun toting operative swings through a window and a fight ensues. Now, imagine if Zack Snyder directed the same scene; imagine if ramping had come in just before the glass broke, and each fragment could be seen slowly dropping as the machine gun was raised and the bullets came out in a concussive burst of flame slowly, one-by-one-by-one and then suddenly time speeds up again --
Cool, no?
Not in this case. The fight scene that follows is quick, deadly, and brutal, and basically serves to show how "real" ultra-conditioned, perfectly trained human weapons would fight; trying to find gaps in each other's defenses, using any weapons to hand - including a bic biro, which in a Bond film would inevitably lead to "the pen is mightier than the sword" jokes - and then, suddenly, assassin suicide.
And this is only a mid-point in the film.
This kind of amazed me at the time, because it was well-done; no gadgets, no amazingly large weapons, no quips, no silliness, no camp. Just someone fighting to find out who they are before government operatives shoot them through the head. Shady government operatives, to boot.
Plus Clive Owen.
Now let's be honest, Clive Owen is an interesting case, because post The Croupier, things changed in a large way; supporting role in Bourne followed by Hollywood success but, crucially, he was never the groomed replacement for Bond people thought he was. If you're like me, you can picture Clive Owen as a Dalton-esque, cruel Bond, just right for the post-Pierce Brosnan camp of Die Another Day; a return to first principles.
Instead, we got King Arthur, Shoot-Em-Up, The International... The list kind of goes on.
And Bond was re-invented to be more down-to-earth and, frankly, more Bourne-a-like.
But for a while - before the third film, but after the second, arguably - the Bourne films were an entirely new proposition. That proposition was basically "One Man being Fucked With by Shadowy Government Agencies". Literally; without his memory, Jason Bourne became everyman, albeit an amnesiac everyman trained to be the perfect spy, in a perpetual state of identity confusion, not wanting to be who he was trained to be.
I'm babbling a little, I freely admit, but at the time The Bourne Identity was one of the most amazing films I'd seen in a while, even with the Universal message occasionally popping up at the bottom of the screen. It was the opposite of almost every spy film of the recent years up to that point; quiet when others were loud, humble when others were brash, and it wasn't afraid to just go with the general flow when it was necessary. Witness a Shotgun versus Sniper Rifle battle:
Granted, the "Movieclips" brand cuts that clip annoyingly short, but you get the picture. In HD, no less.
Another thing; the series isn't afraid of continuity; the third film makes some wonderful references to the first, which I'll talk about at another time.
The main thing is, though, that after the second film, it was established that Bourne has a Theme. And that theme? Well, it's this. So now you know.
Bury it, I won't let you Bury It
Each Day, A Film:
January 18th 2012 (Retrospective)
Staying on the nostalgia trip, I'm going to stick with the one other film I can remember seeing at the old, small and beautiful Odeon; Blade.
Now, when you were a teenager in the town I lived in, access to a car meant asking a parent or knowing a friend who had one. One of my friends had a car, but tended to travel east to a giant leisure complex that happened to have a cinema there; an abiding memory is of being stopped by the police on the way back from there in a tiny, beige Austen Metro not because my friend was driving badly - he was too anal to drive badly - but because, frankly, we were teenagers, and it was a fair bet one of us was drunk, or taking drugs, or otherwise doing something nefarious.
Which we weren't, because, frankly, we were boring teenagers in that sense. But it was still funny.
The only time I got to go west to the Odeon was with a girl who, at the time, I had a crush on - although, again, I was seventeen, so - and a friend of hers who everyone seemed to assume was gay even though he was, frankly, just very shy.
Somehow, I ended up convincing them - and she was crushing, I believe, on him, although it could just have been that weird kind of extended teenage friendship that looks a lot like love - but generally it was a slightly strange atmosphere. So at the cinema, they wandered off a couple of rows behind me, and I sat down, with one crucial advantage.
I knew Blade was a vampire.
This knowledge came from teenage years spent reading comics and misplacedly watching Spider-Man cartoons, but I knew it in my heart; Blade was a vampire film, about a vampire hunter.
To them, Blade was a guy with a sword on the poster.
Now add in the fact that she was slightly tipsy, or at least pretending to be slightly tipsy - which makes me wonder how we got there in the first place, because I'm assuming the other guy drove, but he has a relatively small impact on my memory cache so he was sober, I suspect - and the fact that, in the first ten minutes, Blade signals its intentions by having a human in a disco full of vampires (with music played by Orbital, fact fans) which then, via judicious sprinklers, turns into a literal bloodbath - meant that two of the three of us were feeling queasy and neither one was me.
Again, like Starship Troopers, it felt like validation; that films were being made for audiences of people like me (and random people expecting an action film rather than an explosion in a jam factory), and that films were being made based on comic books that weren't Batman Forever.
And yes, I know that it is popular to hate on Batman Forever, but there's a reason for that.
But Blade is a weird proposition all of itself; it's part Mafia-film, part Kung-Fu, part Comic-Book, part Vampire, all rolled into one. It was almost a more supernatural film on top of that; check out the original ending:
Instead, they had the good sense to discard this in favour of swordplay - not that having Stephen Dorff saying "After I'm done with you? I'm going to fuck the whole human race" isn't a line worth keeping, because it's a keeper, all right - it's just... Well... More Jam isn't necessarily a good thing. Especially when your climactic scene is strawberry jam being beaten by blueberry jam.
I loved Blade; my fellow viewers probably didn't, so much, but at the time, I didn't care. It was like receiving a message that people like me were actually out there, a message which I hadn't really received before, in those heady pre-internet, pre-Disinfo, pre-Barbelith days.
Now, in these heady post-internet, post-Disinfo, post-Barbelith days, I don't feel so alone anymore, but in some ways, I almost wish I did, because now all the film industry does is take books that you could be mocked for liking fifteen years ago and turn them into mass-market films. But you can't always get what you want, after all, and even when you do, they say you should be careful what you wish for. Clichés, I know, but they're only clichés because they get used so often...
January 18th 2012 (Retrospective)
Staying on the nostalgia trip, I'm going to stick with the one other film I can remember seeing at the old, small and beautiful Odeon; Blade.
Now, when you were a teenager in the town I lived in, access to a car meant asking a parent or knowing a friend who had one. One of my friends had a car, but tended to travel east to a giant leisure complex that happened to have a cinema there; an abiding memory is of being stopped by the police on the way back from there in a tiny, beige Austen Metro not because my friend was driving badly - he was too anal to drive badly - but because, frankly, we were teenagers, and it was a fair bet one of us was drunk, or taking drugs, or otherwise doing something nefarious.
Which we weren't, because, frankly, we were boring teenagers in that sense. But it was still funny.
The only time I got to go west to the Odeon was with a girl who, at the time, I had a crush on - although, again, I was seventeen, so - and a friend of hers who everyone seemed to assume was gay even though he was, frankly, just very shy.
Somehow, I ended up convincing them - and she was crushing, I believe, on him, although it could just have been that weird kind of extended teenage friendship that looks a lot like love - but generally it was a slightly strange atmosphere. So at the cinema, they wandered off a couple of rows behind me, and I sat down, with one crucial advantage.
I knew Blade was a vampire.
This knowledge came from teenage years spent reading comics and misplacedly watching Spider-Man cartoons, but I knew it in my heart; Blade was a vampire film, about a vampire hunter.
To them, Blade was a guy with a sword on the poster.
Now add in the fact that she was slightly tipsy, or at least pretending to be slightly tipsy - which makes me wonder how we got there in the first place, because I'm assuming the other guy drove, but he has a relatively small impact on my memory cache so he was sober, I suspect - and the fact that, in the first ten minutes, Blade signals its intentions by having a human in a disco full of vampires (with music played by Orbital, fact fans) which then, via judicious sprinklers, turns into a literal bloodbath - meant that two of the three of us were feeling queasy and neither one was me.
Again, like Starship Troopers, it felt like validation; that films were being made for audiences of people like me (and random people expecting an action film rather than an explosion in a jam factory), and that films were being made based on comic books that weren't Batman Forever.
And yes, I know that it is popular to hate on Batman Forever, but there's a reason for that.
But Blade is a weird proposition all of itself; it's part Mafia-film, part Kung-Fu, part Comic-Book, part Vampire, all rolled into one. It was almost a more supernatural film on top of that; check out the original ending:
Instead, they had the good sense to discard this in favour of swordplay - not that having Stephen Dorff saying "After I'm done with you? I'm going to fuck the whole human race" isn't a line worth keeping, because it's a keeper, all right - it's just... Well... More Jam isn't necessarily a good thing. Especially when your climactic scene is strawberry jam being beaten by blueberry jam.
I loved Blade; my fellow viewers probably didn't, so much, but at the time, I didn't care. It was like receiving a message that people like me were actually out there, a message which I hadn't really received before, in those heady pre-internet, pre-Disinfo, pre-Barbelith days.
Now, in these heady post-internet, post-Disinfo, post-Barbelith days, I don't feel so alone anymore, but in some ways, I almost wish I did, because now all the film industry does is take books that you could be mocked for liking fifteen years ago and turn them into mass-market films. But you can't always get what you want, after all, and even when you do, they say you should be careful what you wish for. Clichés, I know, but they're only clichés because they get used so often...
There is no monopoly on common sense on either side of the political fence
Each Day, A Film:
January 17th 2011 (Retrospective)
I've seen Starship Troopers twice in my life, to my knowledge.
In the town where I used to live, there wasn't a cinema - you had to go either one town west or one town east, and the one to the east closed in the mid-eighties, so unless you wanted to journey three further towns east, it was west all the way, baby.
I know that makes things sound like I lived in a tiny one-street no-horse tinpot town, but it's true; back in the day when video was king, Going To The Cinema was still a viable alternative. Maybe not so much anymore, what with streaming, DVDs being cheaper than cheap, and torrenting - indeed, one of my tutors maintains that the cinema release is now completely irrelevant in economic terms as anything other than a promotional campaign for the DVD - but back then, it was actually easier to see a film at the cinema.
As long as you had transport, of course.
So when I saw Starship Troopers for the first time at the tender age of approximately sixteen, I had to go west with a parent to a small Odeon cinema which felt a lot like a converted theatre even though it was probably always a cinema. It was kind of a beautiful building; there was a small staircase up to the entrance hall, where there was an old-fashioned ticket booth and a small concession stand, and that's probably why it had to die; it was too pretty. There were two small screens downstairs and one larger auditorium upstairs. It was, for want of a better word, nice.
As I say, this is probably why Odeon had to close it and re-open at a different site ten minutes walk away that allowed them to have nine or so screens and an entire lobby devoted to concessions, because, as the suspicion goes, cinemas take a higher percentage on popcorn than they do on actual ticket sales.
I don't remember the auditorium as being particularly full - the 1990s weren't a great time to be a science fiction fan, at least in my memory - but it didn't matter; to my sixteen-year-old self Starship Troopers was a validation that I was part of an audience for that kind of film. Plus, there was a fair amount of female nudity in it, so hey, sold. What? I was in my teens. Sue me.
Because of that, however, I didn't really notice the commentary on the prospect of a militarised fascist state "operating under conditions of perpetual war" (thank you, Grant Morrison). It was all just special effects - which still seem to hold up to this day, to my mind - and young, pretty people running around shooting things, and, yes, occasional nudity.
The second time I saw the film was a little more niche, although I still didn't really view it as anything other than a twisted army recruitment video; having been to a gig at ULU in Russell Square with a fellow student journalist (a cheap way of getting into things for free, if that's not a tautology) I was invited back to Hainault to 'chill', which involved watching Starship Troopers at something like three in the morning on a beanbag and passing out occasionally.
As an interesting side note, the gig was curiously high-powered, although the bands were just starting out; Muse were promoting their first album on a tour supported by Soulwax (now 2 Many DJs, I believe) and Crashland, who remain forever Crashland, having released one album and then disappearing into the ether, leaving me with no lasting memories of their sound but instead a drumstick that I use as a door wedge to this day.
Muse were pretty amazing, although at the time the complicated riffs on Sunburn and Muscle Museum had to be stripped down to be played live, something which my early-twenties self found slightly funny. I'm sure they're better at it now.
So we watched the film - very quietly - then watched some of the oddly over-sexualised deleted scenes - and then I believe I must have waited for my compatriot to fall asleep before leaving to find the train station and getting the train back west to East London. Complicated, I know, but that's Hainault for you. The compatriot in question went on to attempt a career at music journalism before going into PR, in case you were wondering.
Let's flip back to a flippant comment earlier, though, about Grant Morrison, because at the time I saw the film the first time round I was also reading - in trades to begin with, then in single issues - The Invisibles, a comic Morrison intended as a "Hyper-Sigil" to create more Invisibles, which always struck me as a bit of bastard irony; the series is - in part, at least - about resisting mind control and the forces that want to take over our lives and our fates, and to combat this, Morrison created a spell that would... Take over the lives and fates of the readers by turning them into their own countercultural warriors.
Or maybe it's all a cosmic joke.
Anyway, in the second volume of the series, there's a sequence devoted entirely to a character called Mason Lang, a monstrously-rich supposedly countercultural warrior who supplies and supports the quasi-terrorist activities of the central characters, although they're starting to question this. But at one point, Mason gives a nice little one-side-of-a-telephone conversation speech about Starship Troopers without explicitly naming it, and to my teenage self, this was another confirmation that even famous comics writers were watching the same films as I was at the time, which was a little mind-blowing.
These things matter, when you're a teenager.
So I need, really, to see Starship Troopers again, really, to see if it holds up to my memories, and to see if in the post-desert-war times the allegories still hold up.
One last story; after a while, there was a direct-to-dvd sequel, imaginatively titled Starship Troopers 2. (Well, there was the subtitle, Hero of the Federation, but let's skip past that.) Starship Troopers 2 was not lusted after by cinema-goers of the world, so it went straight to DVD, where I ended up fixating on it a little because it sounded so bad. You may remember from earlier postings that a close friend and I have a thing for bad movies, although they have to be good-enough-to-be-bad-enough, as they can't just be shite. So I dutifully ordered the film on DVD via Play.com, and we watched it, and I was too drunk to actually remember anything about it, and so it's stayed in my DVD wallet ever since, languishing, waiting for a second, non-inebriated watch.
Maybe that day will come soon.
January 17th 2011 (Retrospective)
I've seen Starship Troopers twice in my life, to my knowledge.
In the town where I used to live, there wasn't a cinema - you had to go either one town west or one town east, and the one to the east closed in the mid-eighties, so unless you wanted to journey three further towns east, it was west all the way, baby.
I know that makes things sound like I lived in a tiny one-street no-horse tinpot town, but it's true; back in the day when video was king, Going To The Cinema was still a viable alternative. Maybe not so much anymore, what with streaming, DVDs being cheaper than cheap, and torrenting - indeed, one of my tutors maintains that the cinema release is now completely irrelevant in economic terms as anything other than a promotional campaign for the DVD - but back then, it was actually easier to see a film at the cinema.
As long as you had transport, of course.
So when I saw Starship Troopers for the first time at the tender age of approximately sixteen, I had to go west with a parent to a small Odeon cinema which felt a lot like a converted theatre even though it was probably always a cinema. It was kind of a beautiful building; there was a small staircase up to the entrance hall, where there was an old-fashioned ticket booth and a small concession stand, and that's probably why it had to die; it was too pretty. There were two small screens downstairs and one larger auditorium upstairs. It was, for want of a better word, nice.
As I say, this is probably why Odeon had to close it and re-open at a different site ten minutes walk away that allowed them to have nine or so screens and an entire lobby devoted to concessions, because, as the suspicion goes, cinemas take a higher percentage on popcorn than they do on actual ticket sales.
I don't remember the auditorium as being particularly full - the 1990s weren't a great time to be a science fiction fan, at least in my memory - but it didn't matter; to my sixteen-year-old self Starship Troopers was a validation that I was part of an audience for that kind of film. Plus, there was a fair amount of female nudity in it, so hey, sold. What? I was in my teens. Sue me.
Because of that, however, I didn't really notice the commentary on the prospect of a militarised fascist state "operating under conditions of perpetual war" (thank you, Grant Morrison). It was all just special effects - which still seem to hold up to this day, to my mind - and young, pretty people running around shooting things, and, yes, occasional nudity.
The second time I saw the film was a little more niche, although I still didn't really view it as anything other than a twisted army recruitment video; having been to a gig at ULU in Russell Square with a fellow student journalist (a cheap way of getting into things for free, if that's not a tautology) I was invited back to Hainault to 'chill', which involved watching Starship Troopers at something like three in the morning on a beanbag and passing out occasionally.
As an interesting side note, the gig was curiously high-powered, although the bands were just starting out; Muse were promoting their first album on a tour supported by Soulwax (now 2 Many DJs, I believe) and Crashland, who remain forever Crashland, having released one album and then disappearing into the ether, leaving me with no lasting memories of their sound but instead a drumstick that I use as a door wedge to this day.
Muse were pretty amazing, although at the time the complicated riffs on Sunburn and Muscle Museum had to be stripped down to be played live, something which my early-twenties self found slightly funny. I'm sure they're better at it now.
So we watched the film - very quietly - then watched some of the oddly over-sexualised deleted scenes - and then I believe I must have waited for my compatriot to fall asleep before leaving to find the train station and getting the train back west to East London. Complicated, I know, but that's Hainault for you. The compatriot in question went on to attempt a career at music journalism before going into PR, in case you were wondering.
Let's flip back to a flippant comment earlier, though, about Grant Morrison, because at the time I saw the film the first time round I was also reading - in trades to begin with, then in single issues - The Invisibles, a comic Morrison intended as a "Hyper-Sigil" to create more Invisibles, which always struck me as a bit of bastard irony; the series is - in part, at least - about resisting mind control and the forces that want to take over our lives and our fates, and to combat this, Morrison created a spell that would... Take over the lives and fates of the readers by turning them into their own countercultural warriors.
Or maybe it's all a cosmic joke.
Anyway, in the second volume of the series, there's a sequence devoted entirely to a character called Mason Lang, a monstrously-rich supposedly countercultural warrior who supplies and supports the quasi-terrorist activities of the central characters, although they're starting to question this. But at one point, Mason gives a nice little one-side-of-a-telephone conversation speech about Starship Troopers without explicitly naming it, and to my teenage self, this was another confirmation that even famous comics writers were watching the same films as I was at the time, which was a little mind-blowing.
These things matter, when you're a teenager.
So I need, really, to see Starship Troopers again, really, to see if it holds up to my memories, and to see if in the post-desert-war times the allegories still hold up.
One last story; after a while, there was a direct-to-dvd sequel, imaginatively titled Starship Troopers 2. (Well, there was the subtitle, Hero of the Federation, but let's skip past that.) Starship Troopers 2 was not lusted after by cinema-goers of the world, so it went straight to DVD, where I ended up fixating on it a little because it sounded so bad. You may remember from earlier postings that a close friend and I have a thing for bad movies, although they have to be good-enough-to-be-bad-enough, as they can't just be shite. So I dutifully ordered the film on DVD via Play.com, and we watched it, and I was too drunk to actually remember anything about it, and so it's stayed in my DVD wallet ever since, languishing, waiting for a second, non-inebriated watch.
Maybe that day will come soon.
Friday 27 January 2012
Je ne sais, ne sais, ne said pas pourquoi
Each Day, A Film:
January 16th 2012 (Retrospective)
I'll be brutally and totally honest; when I saw Dog Soldiers on the rack at HMV, I had no idea what it was.
This used to be part of my m.o., to be frank; buying films because they looked cool. But, as the previous entry advertised, this is another nostalgia trip for me, so if you're looking for interesting cricitisms or witticisms, well, you may or may not be in luck.
After I graduated from the first time on the degree merry-go-round, I had no real idea what to do except that I had a burning passion for film - I still do, it's just tempered - and a burning need to pay off my student overdraft before the Royal Bank of Scotland attempted to cripple me.
Fun fact; the Royal Bank of Scotland did attempt to cripple me, several times, by immediately converting a student bank account into a normal one without that pesky "graduate" bank account stage in between, which meant they tried to charge me full interest repeatedly and sent many, many threatening letters, to which I replied in kind, along with making many phone calls. Then I found a job, and I paid them off as soon as humanly possible, even taking a day off to visit the London branch in person to close my account as soon as it was paid off, because they were that difficult to deal with. For years afterwards if I was in London and passed that particular branch I'd - pettily, yes - flash them the Vs and wish them ill.
At the same time, Barclays were lovely to deal with. So if there's a lesson here, it could allegedly be said to not deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland. Legally, that's not what I'm saying, of course, but you might want to take it on as a thought.
Before I found a job, though, I had two abiding passions; computer games and movies. The first was a finely-honed art, the second an indolent dillettante of an interest that I had yet to develop. So one day, having moved home, I found myself with a little money, a lot of depression over the fact that I didn't have (a) a job and (b) more money, and ended up buying both Command and Conquer: Generals and Dog Soldiers.
Sidebar; Generals is a game with singularly the worst taste in humour I've played in a long while, especially if you play as the Global Liberation Army. I have no idea how they got away with some of the unit sounds they used, except that it was still early doors in the Iraq / Afghanistan conflicts and people still had a fairly broadminded sense of humour. Answers on a postcard, though, please.
Now, when I first watched Dog Soldiers I didn't do it justice; I watched it on a computer monitor, while I was doing something else, often in the tiny little Windows Media Player minimised window, for those who remember that. I still loved it, and must have rewatched it at another point.
Then I took it to a friend who still lived in London near my alma mater, with whom I share a love of films of negligible or debatable quality, and we watched it after a few beers one evening, and my love for it blossomed then, because even more so than Plunkett and Macleane, Dog Soldiers is arguably the perfectScottish British film. Seriously; you have Sean Pertwee - genre staple, much to his chagrin, now, I bet - playing off against Liam Cunningham, a small unit of extremely lovable but ultimately disposable squaddies, Emma Cleasby from Byker Grove - who wikipedia reliably informs me went on to be in F, which is all kinds of amazing - and, oh yes, the werewolves.
And the fire, because, frankly, fire is almost a separate character in its entirety in the film; if it's not flares, it's sheds full of gas cylinders being blown up, molotov cocktails being thrown, or hairspray-can flamethrowers.
From a filmmakers point of view, it's also quite interesting, because once you get those tricky exterior shots out of the way at the beginning - including a night shoot, always dicey - the rest of the film fundamentally takes place at a single location, albeit occasionally stepping outside of the house for the occasional set-piece. So you have claustrophobia inside, and werewolves outside, and pretty pretty fire every now and then.
Then last year one of the courses at university actually added Dog Soldiers to their film list - the year after I took the course, of course, the bastards - and I ended up going to see it then on the basic principle that I couldn't not.
Low-budget but well-done horror is an interesting niche, because low-budget badly-done horror attracts its' own fans, and high-budget well-or-badly-done horrow attracts its' own fans, but if you have the temerity to do well on a low budget, then you succeed as much as you fail - the fans of the bad will point out the bad, the fans of the good will only see any bad you happened to leave in through trial, error or necessity - and people who don't like horror movies, well, they won't even care, so screw them.
But Dog Soldiers happily does amazing things with a low budget, and for that I have to salute them. I can only ask that you - having seen the film - do the same.
Here's another sidebar; the British trailers (not the Quotes trailer which I assume is for the American market, and I can only apologise if I'm wrong) are modelled more or less exactly on real adverts for Army / TA recruitment at the time the film was made, which I think is all kinds of amazing - although it's a shame the same isn't true in reverse, because more people might have signed up for the army if they thought they could fight werewolves. Certainly, sales of silver rings and accessories might have gone up - and then, wouldn't today's wintry economy be in better shape?
January 16th 2012 (Retrospective)
I'll be brutally and totally honest; when I saw Dog Soldiers on the rack at HMV, I had no idea what it was.
This used to be part of my m.o., to be frank; buying films because they looked cool. But, as the previous entry advertised, this is another nostalgia trip for me, so if you're looking for interesting cricitisms or witticisms, well, you may or may not be in luck.
After I graduated from the first time on the degree merry-go-round, I had no real idea what to do except that I had a burning passion for film - I still do, it's just tempered - and a burning need to pay off my student overdraft before the Royal Bank of Scotland attempted to cripple me.
Fun fact; the Royal Bank of Scotland did attempt to cripple me, several times, by immediately converting a student bank account into a normal one without that pesky "graduate" bank account stage in between, which meant they tried to charge me full interest repeatedly and sent many, many threatening letters, to which I replied in kind, along with making many phone calls. Then I found a job, and I paid them off as soon as humanly possible, even taking a day off to visit the London branch in person to close my account as soon as it was paid off, because they were that difficult to deal with. For years afterwards if I was in London and passed that particular branch I'd - pettily, yes - flash them the Vs and wish them ill.
At the same time, Barclays were lovely to deal with. So if there's a lesson here, it could allegedly be said to not deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland. Legally, that's not what I'm saying, of course, but you might want to take it on as a thought.
Before I found a job, though, I had two abiding passions; computer games and movies. The first was a finely-honed art, the second an indolent dillettante of an interest that I had yet to develop. So one day, having moved home, I found myself with a little money, a lot of depression over the fact that I didn't have (a) a job and (b) more money, and ended up buying both Command and Conquer: Generals and Dog Soldiers.
Sidebar; Generals is a game with singularly the worst taste in humour I've played in a long while, especially if you play as the Global Liberation Army. I have no idea how they got away with some of the unit sounds they used, except that it was still early doors in the Iraq / Afghanistan conflicts and people still had a fairly broadminded sense of humour. Answers on a postcard, though, please.
Now, when I first watched Dog Soldiers I didn't do it justice; I watched it on a computer monitor, while I was doing something else, often in the tiny little Windows Media Player minimised window, for those who remember that. I still loved it, and must have rewatched it at another point.
Then I took it to a friend who still lived in London near my alma mater, with whom I share a love of films of negligible or debatable quality, and we watched it after a few beers one evening, and my love for it blossomed then, because even more so than Plunkett and Macleane, Dog Soldiers is arguably the perfect
And the fire, because, frankly, fire is almost a separate character in its entirety in the film; if it's not flares, it's sheds full of gas cylinders being blown up, molotov cocktails being thrown, or hairspray-can flamethrowers.
From a filmmakers point of view, it's also quite interesting, because once you get those tricky exterior shots out of the way at the beginning - including a night shoot, always dicey - the rest of the film fundamentally takes place at a single location, albeit occasionally stepping outside of the house for the occasional set-piece. So you have claustrophobia inside, and werewolves outside, and pretty pretty fire every now and then.
Then last year one of the courses at university actually added Dog Soldiers to their film list - the year after I took the course, of course, the bastards - and I ended up going to see it then on the basic principle that I couldn't not.
Low-budget but well-done horror is an interesting niche, because low-budget badly-done horror attracts its' own fans, and high-budget well-or-badly-done horrow attracts its' own fans, but if you have the temerity to do well on a low budget, then you succeed as much as you fail - the fans of the bad will point out the bad, the fans of the good will only see any bad you happened to leave in through trial, error or necessity - and people who don't like horror movies, well, they won't even care, so screw them.
But Dog Soldiers happily does amazing things with a low budget, and for that I have to salute them. I can only ask that you - having seen the film - do the same.
Here's another sidebar; the British trailers (not the Quotes trailer which I assume is for the American market, and I can only apologise if I'm wrong) are modelled more or less exactly on real adverts for Army / TA recruitment at the time the film was made, which I think is all kinds of amazing - although it's a shame the same isn't true in reverse, because more people might have signed up for the army if they thought they could fight werewolves. Certainly, sales of silver rings and accessories might have gone up - and then, wouldn't today's wintry economy be in better shape?
The time has come to stop apologising
Each Day, A Film
January 15th 2012 (Retrospective)
In point of fact, I hadn't realised how my tastes had realigned from loving the Bond films to finding them at best fun exercises and at worst reprehensible.
It's strange how things change.
At the same time, it's probably time to move on from Bond - at least temporarily - to talk about a film that, thirteen years on, I love equally as much as the first time I saw it as part of a film marathon in a student room in a long-since-gone tower block in far-East-London.
That film is Plunkett and Macleane.
Now, here's a mildly diverting exercise: first, watch the British trailer, then watch the American trailer. Interesting, no? The first is a meta-deprecatory pisstake of the British period film, the second film tries to make it look like a buddy comedy with some social commentary attached and the swearing edited out.
Well, I found it interesting.
This is probably going to kick off a series of film 'discussion' centred around personal experience, so I'm going to start that way in the hope of carrying on that way.
But before we get into that, let's take the film apart, because there are so many weird elements sparking against each other that it's a wonder the film stock didn't catch fire. Firstly, yes, there's Robert Carlyle and Jonny Lee Miller, fresh from Trainspotting. Then there'sDumbledore Michael Gambon, who seems to have wandered in thinking that it's a genuine period film, except that his ward/daughter/relation is Liv Tyler. Meanwhile, Alan Cumming swans around as a depraved socialite with a technical heart of gold and Ken Stott gives orders to Chibs from Sons of Anarchy. And yes, George Dawes hangs around prisons.
On top of this, Ridley Scott's son, Jake, seems to have taken on the film as a kind of inverse career trajectory - currently, the way things are done is apparently to direct the hell out of hundreds of music videos then get a film, a lá Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, et al. Jake Scott, however, directed the film and now ostensibly does what he loves, i.e. music video projects, in between working on what's apparently titled the "HBO Voyeur Project". No, seriously, it's on his IMDB page - go check it out. I'll wait.
So there are lots of weird little sparks and chemistry actions going on, and on top of that you have the music of Craig Armstrong, who appears to have hit his stride in scoring terms at just the wrong moment, because the music is something like 125% more epic than the film - although that's not a bad thing, because the music improves the film immeasurably. There are two pieces from it that I currently still even now listen to on repeat;
Don't ask me why, but these two pieces of music are, for me (and probably only me), perfection - some strange synthesis of period and house.
So the first time I saw the film was with a friend of the time - who's still technically a friend, although I haven't seen him in maybe a decade, now that I come to think of it, which is a little sad - who was, at the time, a Rich Student. You know the type; no worries about money, no worries about people not knowing he had no worries about money, kind of laid back. He was - and most likely still is - a good person, but people did treat him like a rich kid.
So one evening we decided to - I'm assuming, and it's probably a fairly accurate assumption - get some beer and some crisps in and sit down to watch four films in a pokey student room on the ninth floor of a student tower-block hall of residence (that was, rumour had it, on a 1.5% incline, but what can you do.)
Right now, I'm honestly trying to remember all four films that we watched; I know that, obviously, Plunkett and Macleane was in there, and I think we finished with the South Park film, but as for the others... I think one was Go, and I want to say that the other was Snatch - or maybe The Beach - but it saddens me that I can't place them with any particular accuracy.
After that, I believe I saw Plunkett and Macleane at least once more in the next student house - shared with the same person and a few others - and then came graduation, the real world, etc.
And then one day I found a copy in a charity shop for, I believe, £1.99, and fell in love with it all over again. Now, let's be honest, it's not a film that's due any particular kudos or respect or that will win any awards. Nobody who likes period films will watch it, because it spends the majority of it's time taking the piss out of them; nobody who likes action films will watch it, because it looks like a period film. But the middle of that Venn diagram attracts the curious and the strange, and I'm both, really.
Of course, for me it's partly nostalgia, which is something that never quite goes away. Which is why I'm writing about it on a Friday night, late, when I should by all societal norms be drunk, or curled up with a willing woman, or doing anything other than writing.
But here I am. So get ready for some more trips down memory lane, barely articulated and overly-nostalgic as they are.
January 15th 2012 (Retrospective)
In point of fact, I hadn't realised how my tastes had realigned from loving the Bond films to finding them at best fun exercises and at worst reprehensible.
It's strange how things change.
At the same time, it's probably time to move on from Bond - at least temporarily - to talk about a film that, thirteen years on, I love equally as much as the first time I saw it as part of a film marathon in a student room in a long-since-gone tower block in far-East-London.
That film is Plunkett and Macleane.
Now, here's a mildly diverting exercise: first, watch the British trailer, then watch the American trailer. Interesting, no? The first is a meta-deprecatory pisstake of the British period film, the second film tries to make it look like a buddy comedy with some social commentary attached and the swearing edited out.
Well, I found it interesting.
This is probably going to kick off a series of film 'discussion' centred around personal experience, so I'm going to start that way in the hope of carrying on that way.
But before we get into that, let's take the film apart, because there are so many weird elements sparking against each other that it's a wonder the film stock didn't catch fire. Firstly, yes, there's Robert Carlyle and Jonny Lee Miller, fresh from Trainspotting. Then there's
On top of this, Ridley Scott's son, Jake, seems to have taken on the film as a kind of inverse career trajectory - currently, the way things are done is apparently to direct the hell out of hundreds of music videos then get a film, a lá Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, et al. Jake Scott, however, directed the film and now ostensibly does what he loves, i.e. music video projects, in between working on what's apparently titled the "HBO Voyeur Project". No, seriously, it's on his IMDB page - go check it out. I'll wait.
So there are lots of weird little sparks and chemistry actions going on, and on top of that you have the music of Craig Armstrong, who appears to have hit his stride in scoring terms at just the wrong moment, because the music is something like 125% more epic than the film - although that's not a bad thing, because the music improves the film immeasurably. There are two pieces from it that I currently still even now listen to on repeat;
Don't ask me why, but these two pieces of music are, for me (and probably only me), perfection - some strange synthesis of period and house.
So the first time I saw the film was with a friend of the time - who's still technically a friend, although I haven't seen him in maybe a decade, now that I come to think of it, which is a little sad - who was, at the time, a Rich Student. You know the type; no worries about money, no worries about people not knowing he had no worries about money, kind of laid back. He was - and most likely still is - a good person, but people did treat him like a rich kid.
So one evening we decided to - I'm assuming, and it's probably a fairly accurate assumption - get some beer and some crisps in and sit down to watch four films in a pokey student room on the ninth floor of a student tower-block hall of residence (that was, rumour had it, on a 1.5% incline, but what can you do.)
Right now, I'm honestly trying to remember all four films that we watched; I know that, obviously, Plunkett and Macleane was in there, and I think we finished with the South Park film, but as for the others... I think one was Go, and I want to say that the other was Snatch - or maybe The Beach - but it saddens me that I can't place them with any particular accuracy.
After that, I believe I saw Plunkett and Macleane at least once more in the next student house - shared with the same person and a few others - and then came graduation, the real world, etc.
And then one day I found a copy in a charity shop for, I believe, £1.99, and fell in love with it all over again. Now, let's be honest, it's not a film that's due any particular kudos or respect or that will win any awards. Nobody who likes period films will watch it, because it spends the majority of it's time taking the piss out of them; nobody who likes action films will watch it, because it looks like a period film. But the middle of that Venn diagram attracts the curious and the strange, and I'm both, really.
Of course, for me it's partly nostalgia, which is something that never quite goes away. Which is why I'm writing about it on a Friday night, late, when I should by all societal norms be drunk, or curled up with a willing woman, or doing anything other than writing.
But here I am. So get ready for some more trips down memory lane, barely articulated and overly-nostalgic as they are.
Monday 23 January 2012
But it is such a perfect place to start, My Love
Each Day, A Film
January 14th, 2012 (Retrospective)
Then again, following on from the previous post, I do kind of hope that future historians get a kick out of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, because over the course of four films the same thing happens that it took the entire Connery / Moore / Lazenby / Dalton cycle to achieve.
I have kind of a theory; the Bond films operate in a cyclical way, whereby you start out with what's basically hardboiled detective fiction (i.e. Dr No), then slowly but surely camp, excess and gadgetry start to creep in, changing the films as they do, until you end up with Christopher Lee poncing around with a golden gun or Christopher Walken trying to blow up Silicon Valley.
Goldeneye, then, represents the cycle being renewed. Bond is no longer exactly The Man, but he's fairly close. You have a fair plot - EMP weapons being used to crash global financial systems based in London by a betrayed ex-MI6 agent.
At the same time you have the music of Eric Serra, which, while an amazing composer in his own right, does for James Bond what Batman and Robin did for superhero films. But let's move on.
For me, Goldeneye also has a sentimental place in my tiny, stoney filmgoers' heart, because it was the first Bond film I got to see at the cinema. Surely, yes, I'd seen them on TV - on Bank Holidays, most likely - before then, but actually seeing a Bond film in the cinema was just, that, cool.
And so was Bond, because the mixture wasn't quite toxic yet; yes, there were gadgets, but they were halfway believable, and yes, there was Xenia Onatopp as a concession to very slight campness. But the excess, by contrast, was channelled in the right direction; the set-pieces, like tank chases through St Petersburg, were handled with aplomb and grace. In years and films to come yes, there would be invisible cars, Terence Stamp putting together newspaper editions with a single, tiny wireless keyboard, and let's not forget Christmas Jones - but for now, Goldeneye was the formula writ large and confident.
That's the thing, see; when the formula is right, it works amazingly well, but tinker with it and you end up with Die Another Day. Then again...
January 14th, 2012 (Retrospective)
Then again, following on from the previous post, I do kind of hope that future historians get a kick out of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, because over the course of four films the same thing happens that it took the entire Connery / Moore / Lazenby / Dalton cycle to achieve.
I have kind of a theory; the Bond films operate in a cyclical way, whereby you start out with what's basically hardboiled detective fiction (i.e. Dr No), then slowly but surely camp, excess and gadgetry start to creep in, changing the films as they do, until you end up with Christopher Lee poncing around with a golden gun or Christopher Walken trying to blow up Silicon Valley.
Goldeneye, then, represents the cycle being renewed. Bond is no longer exactly The Man, but he's fairly close. You have a fair plot - EMP weapons being used to crash global financial systems based in London by a betrayed ex-MI6 agent.
At the same time you have the music of Eric Serra, which, while an amazing composer in his own right, does for James Bond what Batman and Robin did for superhero films. But let's move on.
For me, Goldeneye also has a sentimental place in my tiny, stoney filmgoers' heart, because it was the first Bond film I got to see at the cinema. Surely, yes, I'd seen them on TV - on Bank Holidays, most likely - before then, but actually seeing a Bond film in the cinema was just, that, cool.
And so was Bond, because the mixture wasn't quite toxic yet; yes, there were gadgets, but they were halfway believable, and yes, there was Xenia Onatopp as a concession to very slight campness. But the excess, by contrast, was channelled in the right direction; the set-pieces, like tank chases through St Petersburg, were handled with aplomb and grace. In years and films to come yes, there would be invisible cars, Terence Stamp putting together newspaper editions with a single, tiny wireless keyboard, and let's not forget Christmas Jones - but for now, Goldeneye was the formula writ large and confident.
That's the thing, see; when the formula is right, it works amazingly well, but tinker with it and you end up with Die Another Day. Then again...
I tripped on a cloud and fell eight miles high
Each Day, A Film:
January 13th 2011 (Retrospective)
I like to think about future historians; considering the way we treat our history, I like to think about how we're going to be viewed in, say, fifty to a hundred years time. Quirky, I know, but let's face it; the only thing that's going to survive the relentless media and popular culture creation apparatus we have at the moment are going to be films and maybe, just maybe, some music.
Seriously; every single minute of every single day is now recorded for historians of the future to be able to analyse the hell out of them, and this is in a way that wasn't available before, arguably, mass media.
So in 2062, or 2112, there'll be a cultural historian in a university somewhere studying the popular culture of turn-of-the-twenty-first century history.
I kind of hope he avoids Quantum of Solace.
Back in the day - on the first go on the degree merry-go-round - I was taught about semiotics, signs and signifiers. Semiotics always fascinated me, because - and I may not be getting it exactly right here, so bear with me - they were the cluster of single ideas that hand around a larger idea. So if you say Bond Film, there's a cluster of associated ideas that hang around that concept; girls, guns, martinis, villainous plots and an immaculately dressed Englishman who's here to save the world.
Quantum of Solace, by contrast, seems to be based largely around crushing, inescapable paranoia from start to finish. Thought you'd caught the bad guy? Well, yes, but he owns your staff. Think you know what the villain's up to? Well, not so much, and neither do the CIA, who are helping him. Drag a character from Casino Royale in to help you once you're disavowed by your own agency? Well, let's be honest, his getting shot and put in a dumpster before you rob his wallet - saying that he wouldn't care about what happened to his body - should not really be indicative of your best practice.
Attempts to include a quasi-Bond Girl with the name Strawberry Fields don't help, either, because mixing levity with your paranoia isn't like mixing chocolate and peanut butter.
Quantum of Solace is a very pretty, very well-made film, with great acting and set-pieces, but it's all about paranoia from start to finish; the villains have people placed at high levels within MI6, the main villain himself is aiming to control water supply, without which, well, people die; and Bond flits from paranoid set-piece to paranoid-set-piece without particularly worrying. Put it this way; the most touching moment is when he reassures Camille that he'll shoot her through the head rather than let her burn to death.
There's a website you might want to check out called Garfield Minus Garfield which is, as you might expect, exactly what it says on the tin. But watching Quantum of Solace, I was made to wonder; what if this wasn't a James Bond film? What if it was your average spy film about, for instance, an MI6 agent called John Link? Could he get away with the callous, frenetic spying that James Bond does? Would he have the same plot armour, would he get the girls, would he be all that James Bond is without the addition of the name?
Or is James Bond simply an excuse to convince us that British agents get the job done, no matter what?
January 13th 2011 (Retrospective)
I like to think about future historians; considering the way we treat our history, I like to think about how we're going to be viewed in, say, fifty to a hundred years time. Quirky, I know, but let's face it; the only thing that's going to survive the relentless media and popular culture creation apparatus we have at the moment are going to be films and maybe, just maybe, some music.
Seriously; every single minute of every single day is now recorded for historians of the future to be able to analyse the hell out of them, and this is in a way that wasn't available before, arguably, mass media.
So in 2062, or 2112, there'll be a cultural historian in a university somewhere studying the popular culture of turn-of-the-twenty-first century history.
I kind of hope he avoids Quantum of Solace.
Back in the day - on the first go on the degree merry-go-round - I was taught about semiotics, signs and signifiers. Semiotics always fascinated me, because - and I may not be getting it exactly right here, so bear with me - they were the cluster of single ideas that hand around a larger idea. So if you say Bond Film, there's a cluster of associated ideas that hang around that concept; girls, guns, martinis, villainous plots and an immaculately dressed Englishman who's here to save the world.
Quantum of Solace, by contrast, seems to be based largely around crushing, inescapable paranoia from start to finish. Thought you'd caught the bad guy? Well, yes, but he owns your staff. Think you know what the villain's up to? Well, not so much, and neither do the CIA, who are helping him. Drag a character from Casino Royale in to help you once you're disavowed by your own agency? Well, let's be honest, his getting shot and put in a dumpster before you rob his wallet - saying that he wouldn't care about what happened to his body - should not really be indicative of your best practice.
Attempts to include a quasi-Bond Girl with the name Strawberry Fields don't help, either, because mixing levity with your paranoia isn't like mixing chocolate and peanut butter.
Quantum of Solace is a very pretty, very well-made film, with great acting and set-pieces, but it's all about paranoia from start to finish; the villains have people placed at high levels within MI6, the main villain himself is aiming to control water supply, without which, well, people die; and Bond flits from paranoid set-piece to paranoid-set-piece without particularly worrying. Put it this way; the most touching moment is when he reassures Camille that he'll shoot her through the head rather than let her burn to death.
There's a website you might want to check out called Garfield Minus Garfield which is, as you might expect, exactly what it says on the tin. But watching Quantum of Solace, I was made to wonder; what if this wasn't a James Bond film? What if it was your average spy film about, for instance, an MI6 agent called John Link? Could he get away with the callous, frenetic spying that James Bond does? Would he have the same plot armour, would he get the girls, would he be all that James Bond is without the addition of the name?
Or is James Bond simply an excuse to convince us that British agents get the job done, no matter what?
Monday 16 January 2012
Nicotine for breakfast just to put me right
Each Day, A Film: UPDATE
Just so you're aware, no, this hasn't been forgotten, or given up on already. Sadly there've been some personal issues preventing me from updating the blog over the last five days or so.
When they're done with, however - and I hope it's sooner rather than later - I will be playing catchup with a series of retroactive articles. And just to make them worth the wait, I'm going to bring you... [drum roll]
A James Bond special!
Just so you're aware, no, this hasn't been forgotten, or given up on already. Sadly there've been some personal issues preventing me from updating the blog over the last five days or so.
When they're done with, however - and I hope it's sooner rather than later - I will be playing catchup with a series of retroactive articles. And just to make them worth the wait, I'm going to bring you... [drum roll]
A James Bond special!
Thursday 12 January 2012
I guess he'd like to have been Ronnie Kray, but then nature didn' t make him that way
Each Day, A Film
January 12th 2011
I thought 500 Days of Summer was, if not incredible, then fascinating.
It's not so much the film itself - although that's shiny, really - it's more the way it's presented. For the last few articles I've been talking about the problems that different styles and narratives being smooshed together poses, but it's nice to see a film where a unique style and a relatively unique narrative come together.
Let's split them down the middle; the style is unique because of the relative randomness of the time jumps between the 500 days, going from end to middle to beginning to wherever fits most at the time. Time distortion isn't a unique feature of movies - from a recent screenwriting course I distinctly remember being advised to transplant some of the ending towards the beginning of the script to establish tension and intrigue - but it's nice to see it done well.
The thing is is that the story here isn't about the relationship; it's about Tom's development, which occurs out of order. Besides, it's not even a relationship; I'm sourcing this quote from TV Tropes, so go there and look (but be prepared to lose a lot of time...), but the Word Of God runs thusly:
"Yes, Summer has elements of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl — she is an immature view of a woman. She's Tom's view of a woman. He doesn't see her complexity and the consequence for him is heartbreak. In Tom's eyes, Summer is perfection, but perfection has no depth. Summer's not a girl, she's a phase."
You can view that as mysoginist if you like - being as Deschanel's character isn't a 'girl' but a 'phase', but then again, I get the feeling that many of us - myself included - have known someone, whether romantically or not, who was a 'phase' rather than a person.
I'm relatively fond of this terminology, in fact, because over the last ten years or so there have been two or three people who were phases - one lasting three years, one lasting seven - phases that, in fact, ended with (on my part, at least), a relative lack of grace. Before that, the last 'relationship' I had could equally be viewed as a phase, but one that put me off phases. But let's avoid talking about that, for now.
So in structural terms, the film makes sense if you view it as Tom looking back on the 500 days in some form of therapy; if the narrator is Tom himself, it kind of points towards some sort of closure on his part.
Also, before this gets too in-depth, let's not forget that this film has goddamn Agent Coulson as Tom's boss, who disappointingly doesn't kick the tar out of him over donut choices.
Yeah, I'll admit I got a bit distracted by that. Also by the fact that, looking at the above few paragraphs, I've started to mix the structure in with the narrative, which probably shows you how closely related they are. But there are some really nice stylistic touches; call it magical realism if you want, but the Singing! and Dancing! segment after the first night shared together is really, really cute, and the rest of the film kind of plays with the silly putty of the narrative format without ever truly letting it snap.
Anyway, again, this isn't another in-depth article in particular, but I do recommend the film. There'll be quite a lot of films I wouldn't recommend coming up, so look on this as a good-will gas stop if you like, but let's not make things too ominous...
January 12th 2011
I thought 500 Days of Summer was, if not incredible, then fascinating.
It's not so much the film itself - although that's shiny, really - it's more the way it's presented. For the last few articles I've been talking about the problems that different styles and narratives being smooshed together poses, but it's nice to see a film where a unique style and a relatively unique narrative come together.
Let's split them down the middle; the style is unique because of the relative randomness of the time jumps between the 500 days, going from end to middle to beginning to wherever fits most at the time. Time distortion isn't a unique feature of movies - from a recent screenwriting course I distinctly remember being advised to transplant some of the ending towards the beginning of the script to establish tension and intrigue - but it's nice to see it done well.
The thing is is that the story here isn't about the relationship; it's about Tom's development, which occurs out of order. Besides, it's not even a relationship; I'm sourcing this quote from TV Tropes, so go there and look (but be prepared to lose a lot of time...), but the Word Of God runs thusly:
"Yes, Summer has elements of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl — she is an immature view of a woman. She's Tom's view of a woman. He doesn't see her complexity and the consequence for him is heartbreak. In Tom's eyes, Summer is perfection, but perfection has no depth. Summer's not a girl, she's a phase."
You can view that as mysoginist if you like - being as Deschanel's character isn't a 'girl' but a 'phase', but then again, I get the feeling that many of us - myself included - have known someone, whether romantically or not, who was a 'phase' rather than a person.
I'm relatively fond of this terminology, in fact, because over the last ten years or so there have been two or three people who were phases - one lasting three years, one lasting seven - phases that, in fact, ended with (on my part, at least), a relative lack of grace. Before that, the last 'relationship' I had could equally be viewed as a phase, but one that put me off phases. But let's avoid talking about that, for now.
So in structural terms, the film makes sense if you view it as Tom looking back on the 500 days in some form of therapy; if the narrator is Tom himself, it kind of points towards some sort of closure on his part.
Also, before this gets too in-depth, let's not forget that this film has goddamn Agent Coulson as Tom's boss, who disappointingly doesn't kick the tar out of him over donut choices.
Yeah, I'll admit I got a bit distracted by that. Also by the fact that, looking at the above few paragraphs, I've started to mix the structure in with the narrative, which probably shows you how closely related they are. But there are some really nice stylistic touches; call it magical realism if you want, but the Singing! and Dancing! segment after the first night shared together is really, really cute, and the rest of the film kind of plays with the silly putty of the narrative format without ever truly letting it snap.
Anyway, again, this isn't another in-depth article in particular, but I do recommend the film. There'll be quite a lot of films I wouldn't recommend coming up, so look on this as a good-will gas stop if you like, but let's not make things too ominous...
Wednesday 11 January 2012
You kick up the leaves and the magic is lost
Each Day, A Film
January 11th 2012
Sometimes, films surprise you.
Not often, but sometimes. Now, among the people I correspond with about films - which is, admittedly, not the widest circle in the world - Johnny Mnemonic is not universally loved, and it's partly because of the problem discussed in previous entries, i.e. that there are competing storylines that don't exactly mesh, somehow. Within this film, it's a little blatant; you have corporate espionage rubbing up against designer diseases apparently targetting the lower rungs of society, and into that you inject Keaun Reeves, who has a sharp dress sense and no memories. What could possibly go wrong?
As I believe I've mentioned before, I'm an avid fan of William Gibson, so I was half-sold on the film even though it's not specifically tied to anything other than a short story from Burning Chrome. I like cyberpunk, and always have liked it, but it's very peculiar in that it's very difficult to do on film but comparatively easy to do so in literature; it's easier to describe the kind of atmosphere the term provokes rather than visualise it.
There's one point, for instance, that stands out as an intersection between Gibson-as-cyberpunk and Gibson-as-futurist; within the comparatively recent Blue Ant trilogy, the protagonist meets a character who trades in past-life technology, specifically curtas, antiquated calculators, who then leads her to a steganographer. The slightly strange intersection between old numeromancy and new codebreaking felt, for me, like Cayce Pollard had walked into a variant of the shop on the Bridge of the same-named trilogy, because while technology keeps advancing, it never exactly goes away.
That's one of the fun things about Johnny Mnemonic; the size of the memory that he is able to take on seemed massive then but almost trivial now measured in, if I remember, gigabytes rather than, say, terabytes as now seem to be the norm in external hard drives - so any modern watching renders him antiquated while placed within a futuristic setting. Hence, cyberpunk.
The film also features one of my favourite middle-class-breakdowns in cinematic history. Bear in mind that Johnny is a courier - nothing flash, nothing particularly special, but important - but oh, has Johnny developed tastes during his working life; when faced with the narrative he ends up injected to and a brief sojourn to a rubbish tip where people keep trying to kill him with burning scrap cars dropped from a height, he has a complete meltdown;
Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? THAT'S where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the fucking last month's newspapers blowing *back* and *forth*. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - *I want ROOM SERVICE*! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo!
Poor, poor Johnny.
The film also has some strange tics, such as introducing Dolph Lundgren as a crazed street preacher who's more likely to beat the shit out of you than preach, or Udo Kier - looking oddly like Jean-Clade Van Damme, to me at least - as Ralfi, the wheeler-dealer-hustler with the high-end bodyguards. There's also Henry Rollins - Henry Rollins! - as a street-level doctor, and Ice-T as the leader of a low-tech gang that keeps a codebreaking dolphin wired to a satellite dish in their headquarters - so, no, not that low-tech.
And then there's Takeshi Kitano.
Let's move on, because Takeshi Kitano in a film like this is so intrinsically strange and yet awesome that to dwell on it feels a little curious.
Another thing; representations of cyberspace within filmmaking generally suck. That's not a value judgement, it's more that trying to create a visual representation of a nonvisual medium basically equates to throwing bundles of money at a graphic designer and a visual effects supervisor and letting them do whatever the fuck they want. But within Johnny Mnemonic, they're curiously restrained; sure, there's the soaring through pillars of information, but it's still, after all these years, fairly fascinating to watch.
Again, it's another film that if the narrative had discarded the notion that good has to always triumph utterly that things might have gone better; sure, it's nice that the cure for Nerve Attenuation Syndrome gets beamed to the world, but the world is clearly in such a shitty state already that this won't make the most huge amount of difference. At the same time, the corporations are now so huge that it won't really matter to them that potential workers, customers and clients are no longer dying in droves, so it's win-win for them - they lose the profit stream on the treatments for NAS and can't sell the cure, but there's always another targeted disease, right?
Anyway, placed in the Keanu Reeves canon - and yes, ostensibly such a thing exists - the film is a strange but oddly jewel-like beauty. I hope that makes sense...
January 11th 2012
Sometimes, films surprise you.
Not often, but sometimes. Now, among the people I correspond with about films - which is, admittedly, not the widest circle in the world - Johnny Mnemonic is not universally loved, and it's partly because of the problem discussed in previous entries, i.e. that there are competing storylines that don't exactly mesh, somehow. Within this film, it's a little blatant; you have corporate espionage rubbing up against designer diseases apparently targetting the lower rungs of society, and into that you inject Keaun Reeves, who has a sharp dress sense and no memories. What could possibly go wrong?
As I believe I've mentioned before, I'm an avid fan of William Gibson, so I was half-sold on the film even though it's not specifically tied to anything other than a short story from Burning Chrome. I like cyberpunk, and always have liked it, but it's very peculiar in that it's very difficult to do on film but comparatively easy to do so in literature; it's easier to describe the kind of atmosphere the term provokes rather than visualise it.
There's one point, for instance, that stands out as an intersection between Gibson-as-cyberpunk and Gibson-as-futurist; within the comparatively recent Blue Ant trilogy, the protagonist meets a character who trades in past-life technology, specifically curtas, antiquated calculators, who then leads her to a steganographer. The slightly strange intersection between old numeromancy and new codebreaking felt, for me, like Cayce Pollard had walked into a variant of the shop on the Bridge of the same-named trilogy, because while technology keeps advancing, it never exactly goes away.
That's one of the fun things about Johnny Mnemonic; the size of the memory that he is able to take on seemed massive then but almost trivial now measured in, if I remember, gigabytes rather than, say, terabytes as now seem to be the norm in external hard drives - so any modern watching renders him antiquated while placed within a futuristic setting. Hence, cyberpunk.
The film also features one of my favourite middle-class-breakdowns in cinematic history. Bear in mind that Johnny is a courier - nothing flash, nothing particularly special, but important - but oh, has Johnny developed tastes during his working life; when faced with the narrative he ends up injected to and a brief sojourn to a rubbish tip where people keep trying to kill him with burning scrap cars dropped from a height, he has a complete meltdown;
Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? THAT'S where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the fucking last month's newspapers blowing *back* and *forth*. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - *I want ROOM SERVICE*! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo!
Poor, poor Johnny.
The film also has some strange tics, such as introducing Dolph Lundgren as a crazed street preacher who's more likely to beat the shit out of you than preach, or Udo Kier - looking oddly like Jean-Clade Van Damme, to me at least - as Ralfi, the wheeler-dealer-hustler with the high-end bodyguards. There's also Henry Rollins - Henry Rollins! - as a street-level doctor, and Ice-T as the leader of a low-tech gang that keeps a codebreaking dolphin wired to a satellite dish in their headquarters - so, no, not that low-tech.
And then there's Takeshi Kitano.
Let's move on, because Takeshi Kitano in a film like this is so intrinsically strange and yet awesome that to dwell on it feels a little curious.
Another thing; representations of cyberspace within filmmaking generally suck. That's not a value judgement, it's more that trying to create a visual representation of a nonvisual medium basically equates to throwing bundles of money at a graphic designer and a visual effects supervisor and letting them do whatever the fuck they want. But within Johnny Mnemonic, they're curiously restrained; sure, there's the soaring through pillars of information, but it's still, after all these years, fairly fascinating to watch.
Again, it's another film that if the narrative had discarded the notion that good has to always triumph utterly that things might have gone better; sure, it's nice that the cure for Nerve Attenuation Syndrome gets beamed to the world, but the world is clearly in such a shitty state already that this won't make the most huge amount of difference. At the same time, the corporations are now so huge that it won't really matter to them that potential workers, customers and clients are no longer dying in droves, so it's win-win for them - they lose the profit stream on the treatments for NAS and can't sell the cure, but there's always another targeted disease, right?
Anyway, placed in the Keanu Reeves canon - and yes, ostensibly such a thing exists - the film is a strange but oddly jewel-like beauty. I hope that makes sense...
Tuesday 10 January 2012
LIfestyles of the rich and famous - some die with a name, some die nameless
Each Day, A Film:
January 10th 2012
I love you, gentle reader. I don't know who you are, or where you are, butIf you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career wherever and whoever you are, then, well, love.
How much, you ask?
Enough to watch Green Lantern for you. That's how much.
Also because Green Lantern was only £5, but let's pretend that that's neither here nor there.
Better people than I have summarised the issues with the film, so let's get to the nitty-gritty; the problem here is, well, empathy.
Will may be the most important force in the universe viz generating green swords, guns and racetracks, but Empathy is the most important concept in filmmaking; if people don't empathise with a character, you're basically fucked.
I think this is the primary reason that a film about a newly-appointed Galactic Policeman spends the majority of it's time on Earth, with real humans and whatnot, rather than tasking the effects budget and making a space opera for real and true. The CGI - to my mind - is pretty good, especially on Oa, but it's when CGI mixes with Real Earth that things get a bit hinky, somehow.
Following on from yesterday, then, it could be said that Green Lantern is an unholy mish-mash of pure space opera, relationship drama, and Peter Saarsgard killing people with his brain. One or the other or maybe two together would make a fine film - how could a romantic comedy not fail to be livened up by telekinetics with father issues? - but all three together is just a little odd, somehow.
I don't really have that much to add except to summarise the film as ooh, pretty, so I'm afraid today's entry is a short one - but such, as they say, is life.
January 10th 2012
I love you, gentle reader. I don't know who you are, or where you are, but
How much, you ask?
Enough to watch Green Lantern for you. That's how much.
Also because Green Lantern was only £5, but let's pretend that that's neither here nor there.
Better people than I have summarised the issues with the film, so let's get to the nitty-gritty; the problem here is, well, empathy.
Will may be the most important force in the universe viz generating green swords, guns and racetracks, but Empathy is the most important concept in filmmaking; if people don't empathise with a character, you're basically fucked.
I think this is the primary reason that a film about a newly-appointed Galactic Policeman spends the majority of it's time on Earth, with real humans and whatnot, rather than tasking the effects budget and making a space opera for real and true. The CGI - to my mind - is pretty good, especially on Oa, but it's when CGI mixes with Real Earth that things get a bit hinky, somehow.
Following on from yesterday, then, it could be said that Green Lantern is an unholy mish-mash of pure space opera, relationship drama, and Peter Saarsgard killing people with his brain. One or the other or maybe two together would make a fine film - how could a romantic comedy not fail to be livened up by telekinetics with father issues? - but all three together is just a little odd, somehow.
I don't really have that much to add except to summarise the film as ooh, pretty, so I'm afraid today's entry is a short one - but such, as they say, is life.
Monday 9 January 2012
When food is gone you are my daily meal
Each Day, A Film:
January 9th 2012
I am fascinated by the way in which narratives occasionally get welded together for the necessity of making a film. With that in mind: Equilibrium.
Let's not even start about how Sean Bean seems to have a cinematic death wish.
No, wait, lets.
Anyway. Equilibrium is all kinds of fascinating to me because someone, somewhere, had a thought process something like this:
"Right. Prozac, everyone's taking it. Nice gunplay, everyone's interested since The Matrix. What else... Oh, right! Orwellian post-fascist state politics! Winning!"
I love Equilibrium in equal proportion to how much the central premise doesn't work. Said central premise runs like so:
(I) Eliminate emotion by mandatory mass-dosage of prozac-substitute drugs;
(II) ??????????
(III)Christian Bale starts with the face-slicing Profit!
So now all kinds of artwork and culture are verboten because they might provoke emotions, and emotions lead to war. This is literally the logic; you can't have love without hate, anger without compassion, desire without lust, so why not just eliminate everything and haveChristian Bale slicing people's faces off a society where everyone is just a lovely little cog in Sean Pertwee's giant wheel?
If you do experience emotions, you're part of the resistance that hides authentic Mona Lisas under your floorboards. Except that Christian Bale can literally smell culture - he knows if it's under the floor, behind the walls, wherever. Copy of La Boheme hidden under carpets in the attic? Casablanca on DVD in a safe covered under the ornamental koi carp pond? War and Peace first editions on the moon? Fuck you, Christian Bale can smell that culture.
And Christian Bale has guns, and he knows how to use them. That's part of the welding; the elaborate Gun Kata system, while visually beautiful, is very, very strange. One of the stand-out sequences is in the first application of the system; Christian Bale - and I know I could refer to him as Grammaton Cleric whatsisface but where's the fun in that? - fly-kicks a door as the bolts are blown off, surfs the door into the centre of a room packed with militants in the dark, and none of them think "Well, if we just shoot in the centre of the room we might hit each other but we can't miss that cocky prick".
Grammaton Clerics are apparently indestructible by being the Bruce Lee of the gun world, wherein however many people they face they're so fast and so well-trained that it's nothing to flip a shotgun 180 degrees while it's in someone's hand and shoot them in the face.
And this only happens because Christian Bale has fallen in love with a puppy.
Seriously.
Sean Bean falls in love with a Yeats poem;
January 9th 2012
I am fascinated by the way in which narratives occasionally get welded together for the necessity of making a film. With that in mind: Equilibrium.
Let's not even start about how Sean Bean seems to have a cinematic death wish.
No, wait, lets.
Anyway. Equilibrium is all kinds of fascinating to me because someone, somewhere, had a thought process something like this:
"Right. Prozac, everyone's taking it. Nice gunplay, everyone's interested since The Matrix. What else... Oh, right! Orwellian post-fascist state politics! Winning!"
I love Equilibrium in equal proportion to how much the central premise doesn't work. Said central premise runs like so:
(I) Eliminate emotion by mandatory mass-dosage of prozac-substitute drugs;
(II) ??????????
(III)
So now all kinds of artwork and culture are verboten because they might provoke emotions, and emotions lead to war. This is literally the logic; you can't have love without hate, anger without compassion, desire without lust, so why not just eliminate everything and have
If you do experience emotions, you're part of the resistance that hides authentic Mona Lisas under your floorboards. Except that Christian Bale can literally smell culture - he knows if it's under the floor, behind the walls, wherever. Copy of La Boheme hidden under carpets in the attic? Casablanca on DVD in a safe covered under the ornamental koi carp pond? War and Peace first editions on the moon? Fuck you, Christian Bale can smell that culture.
And Christian Bale has guns, and he knows how to use them. That's part of the welding; the elaborate Gun Kata system, while visually beautiful, is very, very strange. One of the stand-out sequences is in the first application of the system; Christian Bale - and I know I could refer to him as Grammaton Cleric whatsisface but where's the fun in that? - fly-kicks a door as the bolts are blown off, surfs the door into the centre of a room packed with militants in the dark, and none of them think "Well, if we just shoot in the centre of the room we might hit each other but we can't miss that cocky prick".
Grammaton Clerics are apparently indestructible by being the Bruce Lee of the gun world, wherein however many people they face they're so fast and so well-trained that it's nothing to flip a shotgun 180 degrees while it's in someone's hand and shoot them in the face.
And this only happens because Christian Bale has fallen in love with a puppy.
Seriously.
Sean Bean falls in love with a Yeats poem;
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
And it's not enough for Christian Bale to shoot him because of this; he also has to shoot Sean Bean through the book because it's all philosophical and whatnot for Sean Bean to be using culture as his shield, albeit a shield that's not great against gunpowder projectile weapons at point-blank range.
When Christian Bale accidentally misses his dose of prozac prozium, he's okay at masking it until he accidentally picks up a dog during a mass culling, leading to hilarity, people getting shot in the face and, eventually, yes, a face-slicing.
There's a lot to love about Equilibrium; the special effects and Gun Kata are very well-crafted, the world is nicely realised in the gap between total order and cultured chaos, wherein hiding a book can lead to transports full of armed people storming your house. Inside the city, all is order; outside, it's all postindustrial ruins. In the city, everything is literally in black and white; outside, at least you get to wear camoflage gear.
Now, ask yourself; if you're taking a mood stabiliser that eliminates love as much as it does hate, why did Christian Bale get married in the first place? TvTropish 'Fridge Brilliance' suggests that Sean Pertwee runs an intensive dating program to match people up so that they can fuck keep the population going; you can kind of see it now, can't you?
Christian Bale
Occupation:
Grammaton Cleric
Likes:
Guns, Long dark coats, sleeping on a mattress without sheets or covering, looking after stray dogs, slicing people's faces off
Dislikes:
Culture, emotions, guns being in people's hands other than his own, Sean Bean (eventually), not slicing people's faces off.
At least by the end of things there's a happy ending, in that people wake up from their comatose mood-stabilised stupor and... Wait... War breaks out? Yeah, that's the perfect happy ending right there.
Sunday 8 January 2012
I watch them watch me watch them too across the street across the room
Each Day, A Film:
January 8th 2012
Today has to be a bit of a cheat, I'm afraid, because yesterday was consumed with (a) scriptwriting and (b) Dungeon Defenders, thanks to a close friend having convinced me into taking on insanely hard challenges therein - so instead of having the time to watch a film, you're going to have to rely on my memory. Lucky you.
One thing I always find an interesting litmus test of a film is the quality of the trailers available - and posted - on Youtube. Sure, I could track them down to the original website, or Apple, but your average Youtube person can be fairly dedicated when it comes to this sort of thing, and also when it comes to slightly strange video uploads; five videos below the above in the listings was one simply titiled Marv Tortures GOOD QUALITY. I like to think that you can't torture quality, but I've seen films that would challenge that assertion.
But Sin City is, quite frankly, an extremely strange beast, because for starters, who needs locations or sets?
Robert Rodriguez is someone we're going to return to - god willing and if the creek don't rise - a few times over the course of this year. He - unknowingly, of course - formed a central part of the why of how I decided to become a filmmaker. But Sin City represents an interesting proposition, because - if you like - it's a comic book movie made using the comic book as a storyboard, formassive damage amazing faithfulness, that isn't exactly, well... comic?
There's a debate about the whole comic books / graphic novels divide, as if renaming something fundamentally changes content and perception - when, as we all know, the medium is the message. Well, we don't all know - I don't know it, I just happen to believe it - and making such a faithful transition from the original material to film is all kinds of interesting, to me, at least. Not least because maybe Frank Miller has some issues with tactful and tasteful representations of sex workers, or, less charitably, women in general.
(Although, as someone points out in the comments thread for the above site, "Now, let's be fair - not all of Frank Miller's female characters are whores. Some are are strippers.")
The film - questionable overtones regarding feminism aside, which can be countered with a "it's neo-noir" argument, although Kiss Kiss Bang Bang tends to shoot that down - is unquestionably beautiful, well-done and stylised. The dialogue is for the majority also beautifully stylised, but every now and then, well...
DWIGHT: The Valkyrie at my side is shouting and laughing with the pure, hateful, bloodthirsty joy of the slaughter... and so am I.
Works in print, maybe less so when Clive Owen's saying it. Then again, there's a whole subdiscussion to be had about Clive Owen, because he can make the most portentous lines sound lackadaisical and invest the smallest lines with the most amazing amount of emotion - which will be revisited, I would think, with posts to come about The Bourne Identity and Shoot-Em-Up.
I have another reason for having both a lot of love for Sin City and for having a fair amount of it committed to memory; on assignment, I've been involved in recreating a scene from it:
Curiously, looking back, that was the last assignment that went 100% well before things started getting a little... loopy, perhaps, is a good word for it. Because after this comes music videos and longer recreations of The Departed, and the kind of burnout that faithful readers - i.e. you, Oliver and Stan - will recognise lead to month after month after month of complaining.
Which is the reason behind the rebranding exercise, which in turn is the reason I'm writing about Sin City. Recursive, non?
Anyway, I don't have anything particularly deep or insightful to say about the film, but if it helps, I really, really recommend watching it.
Tomorrow, however, I'll do you - yes, you - the courtesy of actually making time to watch the film for discussion. Now, isn't that something to look forward to?
January 8th 2012
Today has to be a bit of a cheat, I'm afraid, because yesterday was consumed with (a) scriptwriting and (b) Dungeon Defenders, thanks to a close friend having convinced me into taking on insanely hard challenges therein - so instead of having the time to watch a film, you're going to have to rely on my memory. Lucky you.
One thing I always find an interesting litmus test of a film is the quality of the trailers available - and posted - on Youtube. Sure, I could track them down to the original website, or Apple, but your average Youtube person can be fairly dedicated when it comes to this sort of thing, and also when it comes to slightly strange video uploads; five videos below the above in the listings was one simply titiled Marv Tortures GOOD QUALITY. I like to think that you can't torture quality, but I've seen films that would challenge that assertion.
But Sin City is, quite frankly, an extremely strange beast, because for starters, who needs locations or sets?
Robert Rodriguez is someone we're going to return to - god willing and if the creek don't rise - a few times over the course of this year. He - unknowingly, of course - formed a central part of the why of how I decided to become a filmmaker. But Sin City represents an interesting proposition, because - if you like - it's a comic book movie made using the comic book as a storyboard, for
There's a debate about the whole comic books / graphic novels divide, as if renaming something fundamentally changes content and perception - when, as we all know, the medium is the message. Well, we don't all know - I don't know it, I just happen to believe it - and making such a faithful transition from the original material to film is all kinds of interesting, to me, at least. Not least because maybe Frank Miller has some issues with tactful and tasteful representations of sex workers, or, less charitably, women in general.
(Although, as someone points out in the comments thread for the above site, "Now, let's be fair - not all of Frank Miller's female characters are whores. Some are are strippers.")
The film - questionable overtones regarding feminism aside, which can be countered with a "it's neo-noir" argument, although Kiss Kiss Bang Bang tends to shoot that down - is unquestionably beautiful, well-done and stylised. The dialogue is for the majority also beautifully stylised, but every now and then, well...
DWIGHT: The Valkyrie at my side is shouting and laughing with the pure, hateful, bloodthirsty joy of the slaughter... and so am I.
Works in print, maybe less so when Clive Owen's saying it. Then again, there's a whole subdiscussion to be had about Clive Owen, because he can make the most portentous lines sound lackadaisical and invest the smallest lines with the most amazing amount of emotion - which will be revisited, I would think, with posts to come about The Bourne Identity and Shoot-Em-Up.
I have another reason for having both a lot of love for Sin City and for having a fair amount of it committed to memory; on assignment, I've been involved in recreating a scene from it:
Curiously, looking back, that was the last assignment that went 100% well before things started getting a little... loopy, perhaps, is a good word for it. Because after this comes music videos and longer recreations of The Departed, and the kind of burnout that faithful readers - i.e. you, Oliver and Stan - will recognise lead to month after month after month of complaining.
Which is the reason behind the rebranding exercise, which in turn is the reason I'm writing about Sin City. Recursive, non?
Anyway, I don't have anything particularly deep or insightful to say about the film, but if it helps, I really, really recommend watching it.
Tomorrow, however, I'll do you - yes, you - the courtesy of actually making time to watch the film for discussion. Now, isn't that something to look forward to?
Saturday 7 January 2012
Like a door that I had left unopened
Each Day, A Film
January 7th 2012
So, then. Saturday Night Fever.
Le Sigh.
Let's do something funny; let's take a quote in complete isolation, shorn of context, and present it as if it means something. This is a favourite tactic of internet debaters, but it's not something I've really indulged in before. Without further ado;
Tony Manero: If you put your dick in a spic, does it get bigger than a nigger?
I'm not claiming that this says anything about the film in particular or in any broader sense, or that it's a searing portrayal of the racial tensions of the time, or a realistic depiction of Italian-American values circa 1977. It's just... When it came up in the film, it made me stop, and think. It's arguably realistic dialogue - the kind of thing people say when they're surrounded by friends who won't challenge them - but that's just the point; for the majority of the film, nobody challenges them. The New York of 1977 is the kind of place where sex in a car on a pubic street by a club with lots of people milling around is just normal, somehow. And why not? After all, I don't know what New York was like pre-Giuliani. Or at all, in fact. I know a little of Manhattan, a little of Coney Island and Little Odessa, and that's about it, so who am I to judge?
Tony Manero: Are you a nice girl, or are you a cunt?
Annette: Can't I be both?
Tony Manero: No, it's a decision a girl's gotta make early in life, if she's gonna be a nice girl or a cunt.
There I go again, quoting out of context.
Connie: So are you as good in bed as you are on the dance floor?
Tony Manero: You know, Connie, if you're as good in bed as you are on the dance floor, you're one lousy fuck.
Connie: So how come they always send me flowers in the morning?
Tony Manero: I dunno. Maybe they thought you was dead?
A funny thing; the first ever short film I made - at least, the first ever short film I completed, because Dusk was a clusterfuck from start to finish - was about Disco. In more detail, it was supposed to be about a man whose father used to run an all-night kitchen that people used to stop at after a hard evening'syou should be dancing for a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich. It was kind of a mockumentary, although in reality it probably should just be mocked because it was someone talking followed by two tits in afro wigs, stick-on mustaches, fake bling dancing in front of a camera with low-light mode engaged.
Then again, I learnt a lot from that film. Mostly the value of afro wigs - disproportionately cheap in comparison to their usefulness, but by god don't get them near an open flame - and the kind of fun you can have making silly films.
But anyway, all I knew about disco was from compilations and cheesy, kitch-y portrayals on television, but even with out-of-context quotes, I feel the same kind of thing about Saturday Night Fever; I've learnt a fair amount from it.
Just not necessarily things I needed to learn, that's all.
January 7th 2012
So, then. Saturday Night Fever.
Le Sigh.
Let's do something funny; let's take a quote in complete isolation, shorn of context, and present it as if it means something. This is a favourite tactic of internet debaters, but it's not something I've really indulged in before. Without further ado;
Tony Manero: If you put your dick in a spic, does it get bigger than a nigger?
I'm not claiming that this says anything about the film in particular or in any broader sense, or that it's a searing portrayal of the racial tensions of the time, or a realistic depiction of Italian-American values circa 1977. It's just... When it came up in the film, it made me stop, and think. It's arguably realistic dialogue - the kind of thing people say when they're surrounded by friends who won't challenge them - but that's just the point; for the majority of the film, nobody challenges them. The New York of 1977 is the kind of place where sex in a car on a pubic street by a club with lots of people milling around is just normal, somehow. And why not? After all, I don't know what New York was like pre-Giuliani. Or at all, in fact. I know a little of Manhattan, a little of Coney Island and Little Odessa, and that's about it, so who am I to judge?
Tony Manero: Are you a nice girl, or are you a cunt?
Annette: Can't I be both?
Tony Manero: No, it's a decision a girl's gotta make early in life, if she's gonna be a nice girl or a cunt.
There I go again, quoting out of context.
Connie: So are you as good in bed as you are on the dance floor?
Tony Manero: You know, Connie, if you're as good in bed as you are on the dance floor, you're one lousy fuck.
Connie: So how come they always send me flowers in the morning?
Tony Manero: I dunno. Maybe they thought you was dead?
A funny thing; the first ever short film I made - at least, the first ever short film I completed, because Dusk was a clusterfuck from start to finish - was about Disco. In more detail, it was supposed to be about a man whose father used to run an all-night kitchen that people used to stop at after a hard evening's
Then again, I learnt a lot from that film. Mostly the value of afro wigs - disproportionately cheap in comparison to their usefulness, but by god don't get them near an open flame - and the kind of fun you can have making silly films.
But anyway, all I knew about disco was from compilations and cheesy, kitch-y portrayals on television, but even with out-of-context quotes, I feel the same kind of thing about Saturday Night Fever; I've learnt a fair amount from it.
Just not necessarily things I needed to learn, that's all.
She killed it with kisses, and from it she fled
This is the hundredth post. There's nothing to see here; move along.
Friday 6 January 2012
How do you say broke in Spanish? Me no hablo
Each Day, A Film:
January 6th 2012
To be honest, I wanted to talk about The Beach today, and kick off a strange little Robert Carlyle marathon, but I haven't had time to rewatch it - and I plan on watching as many of the films I write about here, although of the five so far I didn't get the chance to watch Double Indemnity, but I've seen it enough that I felt comfortable writing about it anyway and damn but this is a long sentence - so instead, we're going to do something a little different.
Today is all about Not Quite Hollywood.
It's important to note that I love the strange, and the weird, when it comes to films. I had to explain this - albeit in the context of Bhangra and Bollywood music - to a recent friend. It's difficult for anyone born after, arguably, 1990 to quite understand, but when I grew up it was in a small town, with four TV channels, two radio stations other than the BBC channels, and if you wanted to listen to music other than what was on the charts you had to actually go and damn well find it, whippersnappers, the rain was never cold, everything was cheaper and love wasn't deadly, etc, etc, etc...
I joke, but it's a truth for me that - for good or bad - I recognised the necessity of searching out interesting and strange things, which meant failing as much as succeeding, of course. I lived in London for a while, but being terminally shy I didn't explore as much as I would have liked, so my searches were confined to Camden CD stores and receiving a ridiculous amount of free CDs as a 'student journalist' meant I didn't actually have to go that far for the new, the strange, and the occasionally crap.
The problem is that this sounds elitist, but nothing could be further from the truth; I listen to Radio 1, for instance, on a regular basis and have done for about twelve years, and I love mainstream music. At the same time, I love finding odd little cultural corners and bringing stuff out into the light.
This was before the culture flood, though. Culture Flood is another term I use loosely, but for me it denotes the period from when the value of CDs and DVDs started to drop to the increase in digital media sales - neither of which is a bad thing, but suddenly it's like swimming in an ocean rather than navigating a river; there's so much in every single direction that finding stuff becomes a completely random rather than a targeted proposition. Again, not a bad thing, because I like random, but now, frankly, I have no idea where to begin looking. This probably means it's time to go back to Camden, but even that's changed a little since I used to go there searching for CDs and strange accessories.
Anyway... A while ago, Not Quite Hollywood popped up on my radar, and was added to a wishlist, but nothing further really came of it until I finally got round to ordering a copy, but I wish I'd watched it earlier, to be honest, because it's an illumination of a world of filmmaking that probably rarely left Australia - and sometimes that looks like a bad thing - but it's a tale told with such happiness and seemingly happy - if occasionally conflicting - memories that it's impossible not to get carried along with the proceedings.
I wish I could find some of the quotes, but alas both my memory and IMDB fail me - although the discussion over whether George Lazenby (playing a villain) punched the hero of the film (who every single person describes as being an arsehole in real life) for real is entertaining, given that Lazenby swears he didn't and everyone else swears he did.
If you like things easily divided into sections, it's basically Sex, then Horror, then Cars, so if you're uncomfortable with nudity, you're basically screwed, but again, everyone gets in on the action, with actresses revealing they were happy to earn an extra $100 for stripping and directors talking about all manner of strange goings-on.
Also, what's quite refreshing is that Quentin Tarantino, while forming a nice touchstone within the documentary, isn't basically cut back to every five minutes because he's a big name; he's used as a handy reference point, but he's not revered, and that's all kinds of refreshing.
I've got no especial love for exploitation or grindhouse films, but damn if this documentary doesn't make them look like the most fun you can have with or without your clothes on, at the same time as lampshading the goings-on and leaving nobody unscathed. It's that kind of film where everyone smiles as they call everyone else and themselves a bastard.
It's a good documentary to talk about before the weekend, because if you see it you'll be left in a good mood for days.
January 6th 2012
To be honest, I wanted to talk about The Beach today, and kick off a strange little Robert Carlyle marathon, but I haven't had time to rewatch it - and I plan on watching as many of the films I write about here, although of the five so far I didn't get the chance to watch Double Indemnity, but I've seen it enough that I felt comfortable writing about it anyway and damn but this is a long sentence - so instead, we're going to do something a little different.
Today is all about Not Quite Hollywood.
It's important to note that I love the strange, and the weird, when it comes to films. I had to explain this - albeit in the context of Bhangra and Bollywood music - to a recent friend. It's difficult for anyone born after, arguably, 1990 to quite understand, but when I grew up it was in a small town, with four TV channels, two radio stations other than the BBC channels, and if you wanted to listen to music other than what was on the charts you had to actually go and damn well find it, whippersnappers, the rain was never cold, everything was cheaper and love wasn't deadly, etc, etc, etc...
I joke, but it's a truth for me that - for good or bad - I recognised the necessity of searching out interesting and strange things, which meant failing as much as succeeding, of course. I lived in London for a while, but being terminally shy I didn't explore as much as I would have liked, so my searches were confined to Camden CD stores and receiving a ridiculous amount of free CDs as a 'student journalist' meant I didn't actually have to go that far for the new, the strange, and the occasionally crap.
The problem is that this sounds elitist, but nothing could be further from the truth; I listen to Radio 1, for instance, on a regular basis and have done for about twelve years, and I love mainstream music. At the same time, I love finding odd little cultural corners and bringing stuff out into the light.
This was before the culture flood, though. Culture Flood is another term I use loosely, but for me it denotes the period from when the value of CDs and DVDs started to drop to the increase in digital media sales - neither of which is a bad thing, but suddenly it's like swimming in an ocean rather than navigating a river; there's so much in every single direction that finding stuff becomes a completely random rather than a targeted proposition. Again, not a bad thing, because I like random, but now, frankly, I have no idea where to begin looking. This probably means it's time to go back to Camden, but even that's changed a little since I used to go there searching for CDs and strange accessories.
Anyway... A while ago, Not Quite Hollywood popped up on my radar, and was added to a wishlist, but nothing further really came of it until I finally got round to ordering a copy, but I wish I'd watched it earlier, to be honest, because it's an illumination of a world of filmmaking that probably rarely left Australia - and sometimes that looks like a bad thing - but it's a tale told with such happiness and seemingly happy - if occasionally conflicting - memories that it's impossible not to get carried along with the proceedings.
I wish I could find some of the quotes, but alas both my memory and IMDB fail me - although the discussion over whether George Lazenby (playing a villain) punched the hero of the film (who every single person describes as being an arsehole in real life) for real is entertaining, given that Lazenby swears he didn't and everyone else swears he did.
If you like things easily divided into sections, it's basically Sex, then Horror, then Cars, so if you're uncomfortable with nudity, you're basically screwed, but again, everyone gets in on the action, with actresses revealing they were happy to earn an extra $100 for stripping and directors talking about all manner of strange goings-on.
Also, what's quite refreshing is that Quentin Tarantino, while forming a nice touchstone within the documentary, isn't basically cut back to every five minutes because he's a big name; he's used as a handy reference point, but he's not revered, and that's all kinds of refreshing.
I've got no especial love for exploitation or grindhouse films, but damn if this documentary doesn't make them look like the most fun you can have with or without your clothes on, at the same time as lampshading the goings-on and leaving nobody unscathed. It's that kind of film where everyone smiles as they call everyone else and themselves a bastard.
It's a good documentary to talk about before the weekend, because if you see it you'll be left in a good mood for days.
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