He was something to observe

Each Day, A Film
February 12th, 2012 (Retrospective)

And yes, we abandoned Superhero Season a little while ago, which is kind of a shame. Let's kick back into that and pick up where we left off with... Hmm.

Kind of spoiled for choice.

Let's start with Blade, because it all started with Blade.



Seriously, it all starts with Blade, because prior to that to admit to liking superhero films was to admit to liking, well, Batman Forever.

And whether the reputation of Batman Forever as a black hole of suck is entirely justified or not, well, that's your call.

The strange thing is that for the progenitor of the superhero film boom, Blade isn't really even a superhero film. Oh, sure, the protagonist has superpowers, but if you want to be snarky, it's worth noting that the sole difference between Blade and Twilight is that Blade Don't Twinkle, Motherfucker.

Okay, not the sole difference. But once you admit that your film is a vampire film, all sorts of locks and bars come down into place story-wise, and you have to be fucking clever to get around them without cheating the fans - and yes, Underworld, I'm looking at you at this point - because if your protagonist has fangs and enjoys an iron-rich liquid diet, you're attempting to attract a very specific audience sector.

Blade doesn't try and do that. The poster doesn't play up the vampire angle, or the superhero angle, or even particularly mention Marvel in any specific way, if memory serves - it's Wesley Snipes, in a longcoat, with a sword.

And Kris Kristofferson. You can't really forget Kris Kristofferson.

Here's the fun thing; I've just realised that this is the second article on Blade that's turned up on this project, making it the first time we've had a double-dip. But back then it was all about the personal; this time, it'... um... Professional?

Because it is, because I've just finished a 10,000 word writing jag about superhero films, which was, in point of fact, the primary reason this blog has fallen so critically behind deadline-wise.

Now, Blade is, in movie terms, a palate-cleanser and a market tester all in one. Let's be honest now; slate it or don't slate it, Batman Forever nearly killed the superhero film as a concept which, given the slow-burn ever since effects worked out how to portray Superman on screen, would have been a bit of a shame.

In fact, take a moment to try and work out what a world not currently in the grasp of the superhero film boom would look like. Seriously, go ahead. Imagine if Blade had ended up being a cult movie and Spawn had had no effect whatsoever. Suddenly, the superhero movie isn't viable anymore, and the graphic novel boom doesn't happen, and we don't get things like Spider-Man, Batman Begins and My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

Wait, scratch the last one.

But seriously, the superhero film has come to dominate cinema as a whole at the moment, for good or ill. It's not going away; The Avengers is released in, oh, twenty-six days, not that I'm counting, and before that we've had a slew of Marvel films and a few choice DC properties, mostly all of which have taken decent or outstanding money back.

It's easy to sell superheroes at the moment, because we all need a reason to look up in the sky, and that impulse was banished - not to put too fine a point on it - just over ten years ago. Now, suddenly, the superhero is a proxy for having hope for the future bound up with relying on people who embody massive destructive potential tempered only by their desire to 'do good'.

Whereas back in the day, it was all about killing vampires with your stake-firing shotgun and anticoagulant vials - and also frying a massively obese vampire archivist with an ultraviolet torch for comic relief, don't forget that - but because of that, slowly but surely, everything changed...

Eagle flew out of the night

Each Day, A Film:
February 11th 2012 (Retrospective)

I just realised that I didn't put the (retrospective) label on the most recent entries. Is anyone going to complain? No? Good. Let's continue.

That other film with Bil Murray? That was Where the Buffalo Roam.



I don't think I've seen a more entertaining Youtube preview pane for a while, I'll be honest, especially given that it looks like Murray is being gently fellated underneath the aircraft console.

Now, once the fervour of the HST love passed, I would still re-read Fear and Loathing every now at then, but it had become an affectionate thing to do, rather than a source of any kind of inspiration.

Then, after a few years doing Real Work, the whole HST thing tends to take on a new kind of charm - or, frankly, a fervor crossed with a fever - when you realise that your job is never going to involve actual, factual journalism.

So I went through a kind of Thompson Rediscovery Period, and saw the documentaries released after his death, then found out about Where The Buffalo Roam (and, yes, given that it had existed for a long time beforehand, finding out about it meant at least two clicks through Amazon).

And, frankly, Where The Buffalo Roam is not a wonderful movie. Thompson is a character, Murray is a character, but the Thompson / Murray character composite doesn't quite gel - and the Thompson persona, by all accounts, threatened to overwhelm Murray, given that it took him a while to stop acting like Thompson during his stint on Saturday Night Live, but that's deep background as opposed to actual research, so...

If anything, WTBR reminded me of the myriad reasons of why I didn't make any attempt to become a Gonzo Journalist.

So now, while I'm blogging, and behind the daily assignment deadlines, and trying to catch back up while I have the time, I find myself thinking; well, at least I'm not on drugs...

Wind was blowing, time stood still

Each Day, A Film:
February 10th 2012

Speaking of Benicio Del Toro being lateral, let's just switch right on over to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.



Time for another weird personal remembrance; a long time ago, before this film even came out, a parental unit bought a copy of Hunter S Thompson's book for me. Being a teenager at the time, I assumed this had some special significance, and operated under this assumption for a long time - that it was some sort of acceptance that I wasn't, strictly speaking, normal at the time.

You see, for a while - and this is a fun confession - I wanted to be a Gonzo Journalist.

In the same way that everyone who's read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas wants to be a Gonzo Journalist, I suspect. Because, when you read it as a teenager, it's your ultimate fantasy, really; tooling around Las Vegas with a heterosexual life partner, a boot full of drugs, a more-or-less unlimited expenses account (providing you can run fast enough and your fake ID holds up) and a totally insouciant attitude to life. Call it devil-may-care if you like, but I rather suspect the devil doesn't, because if you tried it in real life, you'd see him sooner rather than later.

Rejection of social normality is a powerful thing when you're a teenager, and Hunter S Thompson is probably responsible for more bad attempts at writing than any other journalist in living history.

But that's a good thing, because without him these attempts wouldn't have even made it that far.

My journalistic career lasted four years as a student writer / editor / general getter of free stuff, then I thought, well, this is probably not for me, because it's never going to be this good in the real world. We're talking four years of free CDs, video games, and occasionally even clothes.

No drugs, though.

Now, I'd read Fear and Loathing and then seen the film when I was still young enough to find it anti-authoritarian and cool, and it never really leaves you; somewhere underneath this cool, beatnik blogger -

No, sorry, I couldn't complete that sentence.

Somewhere underneath this jaded, cynical, and above all bored blogger, however, lies the yearning heart of teenage Thompson addict - the one who found the British versions of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (which, ten years on, I still haven't finished), Better than Sex, The Rum Diary, and anything else I could get my hands on - not realising at the time that they'd probably basically publish Thompson's grocery list if it would sell.

There's no real British equivalent of Hunter S Thompson, unless I'm desperately missing something, because we just can't do that level of sustained craziness for long enough - and even if we could, there's just not the market for it anymore. And that's a little sad, really, because every society needs its crazies, and Britain - well, Britain has Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison, and Garth Ennis for its craziness, and they all write comics for America...

... Which technically tells you all you need to know.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - the film - however, is a masterpiece because it manages to transpose the craziness all into two-or-so hours, and it shows just how infectious is; Johnny Depp being so into character (achieved by hanging around with the real, and really infectious, HST) in the same way that Bill Murray did, way back when, for an entirely different film.

I could see the city lights

Each Day, A Film:
February 9th, 2012

Ugh. Yes, this assignment is massively behind. More than I realised, annoyingly.

There's only one way around this: let's start talking about the awesome films rather than just picking one out of a virtual hat. Let's  break this funk, get out of this place, and move on up.

Let's do that with Way of the Gun.



I mean, why not? It's no more bizarre than many of the other choices out there.

One thing about living in England pre-the-1990s was that, frankly, you took what you could get regarding video and latterly DVD releases that weren't mainstream, guaranteed blockbusters that would be on the new releases shelf at, well, Blockbusters.

For a while, during the last merry-go-round on the degree carousel, I ended up working in Marketing and PR. I'll be honest; I sucked at it (sorry, Reuben) because, at that time, I really didn't give a shit. I think this is something that can easily - and perhaps lazily - be filed under the folly of youth, but really, I was - as many of us are at that age - a bit of a lazy dickpiece.

Now, the interesting thing is that the company I was supposedly doing independent PR was the then-nascent Lovefilm, which is now an entirely different enterprise, to be sure. Back then, it was a small quasi-independent distribution company, which for some reason thought it was a good idea to hire a student at London universities (or maybe just our university, I was never sure) in PR and to get them to hire a 'friend', then to organise film events or simply to convince masses of students to go see a film.

Have you ever tried to 'convince' a 'student' to do anything? It pretty much doesn't work, even if it's for fucking free, so this was pretty much a non-starter. Especially when the product was designed to appeal to the edge-of-market viewer, who's not going to be ordered around no way no how anyhow.

Of all the films I didn't manage to help out representing at the time - and this was before I saw the light in film terms, so, well, shit - Way of the Gun was certainly one of them. And as part of this, or maybe in the student journalism role - my memory's hazy on the how, exactly, but it happened - I received a video copy, then filed it away.

Fast forward a year or so and I must have got round to watching it with a film-watching friend, and, well, it was kind of a revelation.

Over the last few years, I've become a devotee of spaghetti westerns, to the extent that I can be generously mocked for my love for Sergio Leone films. But to me, the western is something oddly pure; the plots are basically men with plans and guns encounter issues and shoot at them; there's no 'emotions', no 'complications' and, more often than not, no 'romance'.

Westerns are a fine thing, and underneath all the trappings of a kidnap / action movie / drama, Way of the Gun is a western, whether it intends to be or not.

Plus, it's a film where Sarah Silverman is credited as "Raving Bitch".

What more do you need to know?

Well, finally, it's another career intersection; Ryan Phillippe on the way up, Benicio Del Toro on the lateral, Juliette Lewis... Well, who knows in that case; James Caan basically out-acting everyone else there, and Taye Diggs, who must have been thinking maybe if I do this, I can end up in Equilibrium!

Make me thrill as only you know how

Each Day, A Film:
February 8th 2012 (Retrospective)

Then again, we may as well talk about Training Day as not.



Seriously, we may as well. Because I have a... 'fun' story about the film.

Back in the day, when the film came out, I was still friends with someone with whom I've burnt the bridge since quite comprehensively, but that's another story for another time. Now, at the time he was a friend, I remember watching this on DVD with him. I'd seen it before, but I don't know if he had.

I don't remember anything about watching the film with him other than the one moment when, towards the end, Ethan Hawke lands a lethal-looking punch on Denzel Washington following a protracted fight sequence, and my friend looked ecstatic at this, laughing and cheering. It could have been just because the good guy - the good cop who's consistently fucked around throughout the entire narrative - finally lands a victory on the bad cop.

But there isn't good cop and bad cop, any more than there's white hats and black hats, and I was really uncomfortable because it felt a lot like my 'friend' was just impressed by Ethan Hawke - notably, let's be honest, a white man - landing a haymaker on Denzel Washington who is - again, let's lay our cards on the table - an African American.

It didn't feel like it was because it was the climax of the film, it felt like he was celebrating it because the good white man was triumphing over the eeeee-vil black man.

Like I said, a bit uncomfortable.

Now, Training Day itself is, no bones about it, an excellent film. The balance is pretty much just right between making Ethan Hawke as the good man in a bad place  sympathetic as it is about making Denzel Wasthington, a devil attempting to rule his own hell, likeable, on however temporary a basis. That's no mean feat; look at it this way, making Ethan Hawke relatable in Training Day is like making Jude Law relatable in Existenz (and I know there's some odd capitalisation there, but I can't be bothered to look it up, so hey); it shouldn't work, but it does, then Willem DaFoe cripples you with a boltgun.

I've seen Training Day on my own, I've seen Training Day with friends with questionable attitudes to racial politics, I've seen Training Day with friends without questionable attitudes to racial politics, and I've always thought I'd look forward to seeing it again.

Then I saw The Shield, then Harsh Times, then Street Kings, and suddenly that urge to visit LA - more than the hour I've spent there in my life - has suddenly diminished.

Such is life, I guess.

Now, yes, I could have talked about the plot of the film - man sows the seeds of his own destruction, tries to buy his way out of it, Ethan Hawke stops him - but the plot is almost secondary to Hawke and Washington, somehow.

But for me, it's all about the memories - about who I've watched it with, and where, and how, from the DVD to the screener video another friend had it on where you had the Universal Pictures Copyright Message pop up every twenty minutes and it still didn't detract from how good the film was.

Darkness falls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand

Each Day, A Film: 
February 7th 2012 (Retrospective)

You know, it'd be nice to be less than a month behind on this assignment but, as we all know, life has a way of getting in the way. So let's just flow back into it like nothing happened by talking about Street Kings. 



You see, sometimes it's easier to talk about something by talking about what it's not. And Street Kings isn't Training Day.

Oh, it'd be easy to rip Street Kings apart as a film; Keanu Reeves acts as if he's been tranquilised throughout the entire enterprise even though he's a go-it-alone take-no-shit ask-no-questions hyphenated-descriptor policeman who would, one would think, not want to act as if sedatives were what he used instead of paracetamol.

But let's not treat Street Kings as a film. No, let's treat it as a career intersection, which is far more interesting. Let's break it into ups, downs and laterals.

On the UP side, you have Chris Evans as the Ensemble Rouder-Outer. Post-Sunshine, pre-Push, quite far pre-Captain America, Evans' presence in Street Kings is frankly fucking bizarre, as if the need for a straight man completely counterbalances the rest of the film. And Evans plays it very straight, almost to the point where Ethan Hawke in - yes - Training Day would wonder who put the stick that far up his arse. But, like all straight-cops, Evans has to - more's the pity - learn some lessons from the storyline, the main one of which being not to just do whatever your agent suggests just because Keanu Reeves is in the film.

Now, let's talk about the DOWN, because this film makes no sense whatsoever for Keanu Reeves; put it this way, it makes little sense and it's still the film he did before The Day The Earth Stood Still, which, again, tranquilisers, let's be honest. Reeves kind of wanders through the film, without seeming particularly worried about... Anything, really.

Then there's the laterals, in Hugh Laurie and his magnificent bald patch and Forest Whitaker. Now, Laurie - in trying to break out from House, one surmises, or simply trying to pay the bills that can't be paid by being the executive producer and star of a multi-million dollar syndicated TV series, so perhaps they're really expensive hookers just something he can't talk about.

Now, ask yourself; who did Hugh Laurie sell his soul to to get such a quick rise in his acting career and to trailblaze the way for the current wave of British Actors Playing Quirky Dominant Males In Genre TV? For sure he's smart, talented and intelligent, but just stop and think for a moment; how do you go from Jeeves and Wooster to House in twenty short steps?

So let's maintain that Laurie is a lateral presence, because his presence in the film is a little... odd. To say the least.

And Forest Whitaker... Well, it feels like someone said "How do you fancy basically playing the exact opposite of your character on The Shield? You do? Great! See you at the cast party, dear!"

It's easy to mock the film - and yes, it really is - but it's not that bad. It's a decent slice of action and drama that's much more stylised than Training Day and really doesn't care if you think that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Then again, I paid £3 for it, so maybe I'm biased towards it because of that.