I see you shiver with anticip.....

This morning was awful. I got my act together and determined to watch a film to cheer myself up.

Question is, what? Lets put it this way, I knew what I wanted to watch. Can you guess, folks? Unfortunately, I don't have my own tv, and watching the same film three times in two weeks smacks of borderline insanity. If it weren't for my family...

Now a few months back I saw Rififi, and at the time it made a big effect. I kept thinking "What if I never see a film this good about a diamond-heist-gone-awry ever again?". This was the reasoning behind recording The Asphalt Jungle, which was also in black and white. Anyway, I recovered eventually and the film remained unwatched on the video.

Time passes, I discover there is another great movie along those lines, watch it, love it and get hit by "Hang on, surely there can't be three movies this good about a diamond-heist-gone-awry?" Enter The Asphalt Jungle, still patiently waiting to be seen. So I wound the video back and discovered the beginning had been partially wiped over by somebody else.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Lesson learnt: you can only ever see a film for the first time once. And there is no way to get around it. No matter how hard you try.

By gum I was cross. I was pretty irritable beforehand, but this really made me mad. Anyway, I rather halfheartedly pulled Run, Lola, Run.

Thank-ee goodness. It was just what I needed to run the stress out of my system. I've wanted to see this ever since hearing the theme tune, which is jolly exciting let me tell you! It's very exciting, fast paced, and totally great.

My mother hates whizzy cinematography, films where the camera won't stay still. She would have left almost immediately. It's part music video, part advert, part computer game. Lola has twenty minutes to get 100,000 marks to save her boyfriend. Now that's what I call high concept.

There are animated scenes, black and white, slo-mo, speed-up, scenes in red, cut screens, wipes, fades, dissolves - somebody has had a lot of fun with their editing suite. Lucasitis! But for once it doesn't feel superfluous. To quote some info cribbed straight from imdb, in a 71 min film they use 1581 transitions. That's an average shot length of 2.7 seconds. makes a nice contrast with all those tortuously long edits from Alien.

To start with it's disorientating, but priceless when everything falls into place. For example...the first time round she almost kills someone taking the safety catch off the gun. Second time round, she's learnt. This is what I mean by video game - you try to beat the level, you get killed, you learn and try again. She knows the bike's been stolen. Every time, things are different. Minor ripples result in one woman joining the church instead of winning the lottery. It actually reminds me slightly of a script I wrote once; but for once, the similarity didn't annoy me. Have I mentioned the music yet?

All in all, this'll go in the same box as Moulin Rouge - some people are going to hate this on account of the visual style, but if you get into it you'll adore it. There's a layer of whimsy propelling the plot which may annoy some people, but not me and not all 'em folks who put this on the imdb top 250. And it's equal to what I imagine a good dose of ecstasy to feel like.

Best of all, it entirely cured me of my apathy and I managed to zip through all my jobs for the day in about ten minutes. And it gave me the edge I requred to climb out of the window and jump about my own height onto gravel with bare feet when I got trapped in the toilet instead of sitting around lamely for an hour until my family came home and let me out (the handle's stopped working from inside, so if you shut the door you can't get out).

And it was such a boost, that when mum and sis finally did return and told me I had an hour to get ready, I actually had the drive to sort out two costumes and my tea within twenty minutes.

I hadn't told you, had I?

We're gonna see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Properly. The way it was meant to be seen. Going to one of these, as has been one of my dreams for as long as, oh, forever. I couldn't find a proper costume in time, so I'm just going as a random Transylvanian in pink slut-wear. It's gonna be great. It had better be great.


PS - last night we played the movie game again, and guess what? Not only did me and my sister win both times, but the diretor card that came up was WARNER HERZOG! It's become a bit of an in-joke, really, especially now he's taken over the position as "Favourite Director (of whose filmography I've actually seen zilch)"

Still, playing with my sister is tiring. One day, i'll be on a team with someone where I can say "Lawrence of Arabia" instead of two minutes of "David Fall? David Jump?" in reply to the best possible clue - "First name, like as in Goliath, second, what you shouldn't do over a cliff..." and

Lots of little things

Well, wasn't yesterday's post a pleasant and not at all unwelcome surprise! I have for the last two days been smiling constantly, skipping around and generally behaving like I really far am too young to keep it. Which I am, in actual fact. Well I can't comment on whether it's all vastly unsuitable seeing as I haven't seen it yet, but the British government seems to think so and they probably know best.

Unfortunately, this means todays post is going to come out a bit like my thoughts - a jumbled messy ranty set of curious but unconnected nonsense.

Anyway, this afternoon I was overcome with a sudden mad wish to rewatch The Sting. Well, not mad as such - 'tis a perfectly sane idea, as it's great. So I trotted across to youtube in hope of finding something. Unfortunately, this video is all it came up with. Not that I have any serious problems with that of course, it just wasn't entirely what I had in mind...I did watch it, but I had to mute the music because it was awful and totally out of place. And I must say, as goes the slash, it was very badly done. If ever I had the inclination (which I wouldn't generally, but after watching this travesty I'm tempted...) I'm sure I could do it much better. There's some awful awful editing work here and I'm pretty unconvinced, especially by the first half. Now if they styled it as a trailer a la Brokeback to the Future, it would give it a better structure and possibly it would have been more effective. On the other hand, if you think I'm being waaay too pretentious and/or defensive and you really enjoyed it, you may as well give this a go. The editing here is slightly better quality - though that's not to say I'm very happy about it. I'm starting to get a tad sick of the Brokeback music y'know, and that film is far far a too easy target. Besides...being deeply in love with Sundance myself...well I'm not sure I'd be able to cope... Speaking of Mr Redford, I found a neat little fan site here. I'm particularly fond of the startup spiel:

Hollywood has a lot of male actors, but how many of them are REAL MEN?

you know, the sort of guy who could rescue you from a wild horse,

build a house, teach you about conservation

and then gaze at you with those beautiful blue eyes?

Who do I speak of?

Who else, but Robert Redford!!!

I have been a dedicated, loyal fan of Mr. Redford since I first saw him in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid in the early 70's. This page is my tribute to you, Mr. Redford and to say thank you for making movies that that inspire and give reflection to life!

Said like a pro, and may I add I agree entirely. I was also rather excited by the ecards, and my friends all promptly recieved several of each. And this link lead to this terrific site - merci de ma prof de Francais!

While on the subject of random links, the http://www.celebmatch.com/ site says that Robert Redford and I are 72% compatable - 57% physical, 58% intellectual but 99% emotionally perfect for each other!

And now for something completely different. A reward, if you like, for succesfully sitting through all that gooing - Robert deNiro's most enthralling performance yet...as a cabbage on Sesamie Street. I kid you not. It's utterly convincing. My favourite part's when he explains to Elmo that he can pretend to be a New York taxi driver...unfortunately, he doesn't enlighten the fluffy creature by going into any more detail than that.

As for film watching, I've seen Being John Malkovitch and Behind Enemy Lines in the last few days. I'm trying to come up with some intellectual comments to make on the former but so far I can't summon my critical powers to say anything profound. It makes Ed Wood look mainstream. I'd certainly recommend it for anyone who liked Eternal Sunshine - wacky trips through the subconscious, bittersweet romances. In fact, the final chase in Being John Malkovitch is almost a two minute trial run for ESOTSM. One day I will do a list of the top ten most dysfunctional romances - Brazil will be in the top five or so, this will be right at the top just above Vertigo - a love triangle with one hell of an added complication...I was positively spitting in disbelief when it came into the open!

Craig, our hero guy, is really really sweet. I have a soft spot for the actor, but even without that the devoted puppeteer remains sympathetic. Lottie is played by CAMERON DIAZ. I need to shout that, because otherwise you may not notice and get distracted by the fact she can act. Pretty darn well at that.

I like the faux documentary, but there are lots of other excellent moments worth a mention, like the job interview. Overall, the keyword here is wacky. Just to summarise the first few minutes - weedy puppeteer is married to sweet woman who keeps animal sanctuary in her house - is to invite blinking looks of disbelief.

And Behind Enemy Lines? Well Gene Hackman played the same role as usual, and Owen Wilson was better than expected in a non-comedy. However, there is something undeniably rubbish about this film, I just couldn't quite put my finger on what. It's pretty entertaining, but three things let it down badly. The first thing was the music, which had "God bless America" written all over it - stirring in the most taccy way imaginable.

The second thing was the lucasitis, the worst case I've ever seen. For those of you just joining me, lucasitis is the result of the filmmakers sitting down in front of the editing suite and going "Oooooh! I can do slo-mo, and change the colours, and make it swoop, and zoom!" It's named for Star Wars' unusually enthusiastic use of fancy transitions, and I normally interpret it as a substitute for real tension. It's distracting and unecessary. I took particular exception to the slo-mo run between exploding mines and the snazzy circling shots of him on the top of a mountain (which begs the question, if he's trying to stay hidden in an area full of enemies, why is he sitting in the most prominent location imaginable?)

And the final thing? Well, boys and girls, it was cliche kingdom most of the way through. The one that ticked me off most was undeniably the fact HE WAS GOING TO RESIGN! How many times do i have to say it: never resign, it always leads to calamity, whether that be abduction by a mysterious village or, as in this film, being dumped on the wrong side of the border.

And now, for a bit of spoilervision: Case point 2: his buddy was a gonner from the start. Case point 3: no one in their right mind who'd been exposed to such ineptitude by the armed forces would ever consider going back. Case point 4: the last five minutes. Now up until then I was willing to forgive the odd bit of stupidity - cinema is fiction after all, even when based on fact - but this is just a little over the top. He hits the sniper four times, and the sniper falls over, but then he's back on his feet and it's all so dramatic! And then the Serbian army show up! And then the Americans show up, in the nick of time! (PS - what's the last film you've seen where the Americans send helicopters to rescue one downed man? Eh?) But as he runs to the helicopters (in slow motion, obviously) he has a change of heart and runs back to get the photographs! Oh the angst! So the helicopters cover him - 70 infantry can't hit one very obvious green shape in the snow, several half-truck-half-tank-things can't down one of the helicopters - as he runs, again in slo mo, there and back again. It's a total massacre. Obviously, as the Serbians are the bad guys, they can't hit anything. But my father, who's a stickler for all things military is a tad sceptical and informs me that as the trucks were in fact BMP-1 mechanised infantry fighting vehicles, their 73mm cannons should have knocked the Admiral's Hughes 214ST straight out of the sky. While the precice make of armament may a tad irrelevant, my point is that even an amateur can tell the odds are ridiculous. All in all, my mother managed to stay awake so it's pretty entertaining, if you're willing not so much to suspend but entirely dispatch of your disbelief for an hour and a half.


And now for a minirant. I realise I haven't informed you of my irrational irritation with the newer Scarface. It is simply this - there is at least twice as much merchandise as there are fans. My tiny village home has a poster rack in one of the little local stores - all motivational rubbish and pictures of kittens, and nothing movie related whatsoever, except one of Al Pacino threatening people. I went on holiday, I found a movieposter store - one or two posters for everything else, but no, Scarface has to have six. Two days later, I see Scarface t-shirts for sale. Come on! Who buys these things?! We go searching for cupboards, the furniture store has the occasional watercolour of a fruitbowl for sale, oh and a 17cm square art block with you guessed it printed in blue. And to add insult to injury, last week I saw a cute little electronic device - which plays randomly selected quotes when you flick a switch. OK, so were any of these the case with a film which I loved I'd be overjoyed. It's just how in every quarter this film outnumbers the rest (except perhaps, the first Harry Potter) - surely there cannot be that much call for it?!


Finally (took a long time to get here, didn't it?) Collective Apathy has two brilliant movie stick man quizzes, both of which I scored 14 on. To add insult to injury, it doesn't even give you the answers once you've got them wrong. But the actual pictures are pretty cute and worth a look.

Gotta go now - I've a 6 disc set (in particular, the trailers) waiting for me...

Je suis revenu!

Yay! Hello world, I'm back! My ten-day soujourn in France was spent mostly quoting things my family hadn't seen, more's the pity.

Spy Game - 3.5 stars

Spy Game was entirely excellent. It felt like it was based on a book, with a talky sensible plot - our hero attempts a rescue on the other side of the world without even leaving his office. A lot of films would have flown Nathan out to China and let him spend an hour-or-so fighting off goons, being threatened by masterminds, and this isn't a dig at James Bond no really it isn't honest would I lie to you?

The plot is gently thrilling, and kinda misleading as well. Spies, explosions - whatever, this film's more about nostalga, guilt and thinking about things rationally. A lot of people will see this thinking it's going to be something else. It felt more like a political thriller really, all the desk stuff, with a bit of excitement thrown in for good measure.

Nathan is a great character - in the present, he's a retiring old man who reminisces about his uncle's farm; at the same time he's still the professional agent with his mind as sharp as ever, and in the past he's an uber-efficient chap with no qualms about doing nasty nasty things. Indeed, he has a Godfather complex - because when you think about it, he is a pretty bad guy even though he in no way seems it. And by nasty, I don't just mean the obvious incidents - how about his great isolation technique? Interestingly, they actually removed a plot strand to make his character a little less morally pitch black.

Now I'm not going to criticise RR's acting - in fact, yes I am. He is to be fair a little...one note...wry and charming heroes, right? True, he's not always a goodie but he's never entirely a baddie either. Perhaps it's all stunning play acting on his character's part, but I never got the feeling he really could do all those dreadful things. In the present sections, dashing around head office and causing trouble, he really convinces; in the flashbacks less so. Perhaps it's just my rather hard set perceptions of the actor?

Brad Pitt is, to be entirely honest, one of the few people I would endorse for the role of Dorian if the Picture of Dorian Gray was ever adapted. He's blonde, he can act (see Twelve Monkeys!) and he has this wonderfully edgy beauty. His acting was nothing really special in this, but he was very nice to look at.

This film had a touch of Lucasitis - the feeling that the editor sat down at is desk and went "WOW! Look at all these cool things I can do! I can turn the image into a 3D bell and make it swing around the scene, and cover it with a stained glass effect and zoom in and out! Lets put them ALL in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" OK, so the Starwarses aren't exactly like that, they just have fun with the fades. Now I didn't really mind it, but my mother would have found it annoying and claimed it was making her unwell. It actually shows a lack of confidence in the actors. The scene behind the Fujifilm advert on the roof should have been a really strong one, if the camera had just held still enough to watch them actually act. There are some films which deserve, or need whizzy cinematography - this was not one of them, and it gave the feeling the plot was trying to be something it wasn't.

As always, I took especial notice of the colours, which were lovely - someone had spent time touching up the Vietnam sequences to give them a certain feel, and ditto with Berlin, and Beruit and everywhere.

Favourite scenes? Well the training montage was great - learning the significance of the stick of gum, "I want to see you one one of those balconeys in five minutes", seeing the pair of them on screen together mmmmmm - sorry about that, what I meant was it created an intellectually dynamic polarity between the two idealistically-opposed characters which challenged the pseudo-liberal preconceptions of our post-modernist world. Oh and Bishop didn't need to tell Muir he was hideous, even in jest. That kinda thing hurts...and "age before beauty" was another unecessary comment. But surely my fave bit was *spoilervison*===>the veeery end - Nathan leaving the complex in a kinda echo of the ambulance leaving the prison at the start, but this time everything turning out shiny and the last lines: "There seems to have been an...incident in China...", and the reaction of the board when they realise they were being played all along. Oh I just love sucess! <=====*spoilervision*

Heavens! I almost forgot the music! It seemed reeeally familiar, perhaps it's been in an advert or documentary. It's really nice though, really really nice.

I was watching the special features and I really recognised the voice of the director. At that moment, I remembered the name and immediately got hit with a thunderbolt of no-duhness. It's Tony Scott! Ridley Scott's younger brother, who's not quite as famous but probably just as talented. It must suck. I've got a younger sister, and she's always beating me at everything. But at least it's just things like year 6 IQ tests and design-an-ad competitions, not being the Eighth Best Director In The World EVER. I hope he doesn't hold a grudge...

Finally, I found this site. It's a common...commen...ah, hell I can't spell it. It's all about That Mind Bending Genre, using that mental tag for it which I thought I'd invented. Only being a nice, polite person with irritable parents I'm hardly going to use it in public. Anyway, it's entirely fascinating but TOTALLY SPOILER RIDDEN! So flick through to the ones you've seen, or indeed don't risk it. But there is an interesting Donnie Darko theory:

http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc46.2003/eig.mindfilms/index.html

Clooneyfest: Ocean's 11, Intolerable Cruelty and a bit about Genesis

OK, so I lied. Next big review will not be Ocean's Eleven because I can't think of enough to say about it and any opinions would be coloured by having recently watched The Sting. Here are the highlights of said review:

This is probably the most slickly edited film you will see this year. It reminds me a little of when my friend and I first went into an editing suite to deal with our film. It was a digital package thing, and we suddenly had hundreds of wipes, effects, silly things which no sensible director could ever get away with. I remember being particularly taken with the sepier effect (how do you spell it?), and spent a long time writing a Western just so we could use it. Anyway, the editors of Ocean's Eleven evidently came down with a serious bout of Lucasitis (ever seen how many fancy transition effects Star Wars contains?) - but luckily enough, it works with marvelous aplomb producing said slick effect.

The plot contained the requisite twists - but somehow they totally failed to engage. Perhaps that was just me...I would have liked it if a little more had gone wrong. They should have been given an oppertunity to think on their feet. I ended up feeling very sorry for our bad guy (was it just me or did he look Pacino-esque? Ever since seeing the Godfather it’s like I’ve just been watching one movie over and over again – wedding scenes become Wedding scenes, and any guy in a black hat automatically becomes suspicious. Was it the costume, the expression, the hair or is it just me?)

The actors were very well picked - an old guy, a Chinese guy, a nerdy guy etc - as to make character recognition easy. Nevertheless I occasionally got confused as to who was who. My entire family were happy – George Clooney for mum, Brad Pitt for me. George was of course wonderful too with that wonderful sad look of his...

But then again, Brad Pitt was also my greatest problem with this film, and I‘m going to tell you why…and this is where all impartiality falls down…I have long thought Mr Pitt resembled my object of admiration, Robert Redford. Sigh, I know…he’s mine! He looks similar, and has some of the same mannerisms. The Movie Book (a terrible book by the way, don’t buy it. It’s a long list of movie-people, with a large colour photograph and a tiny bit of information. Half you’ve never heard of, and the half you might consider looking up you already know that much about. And the pictures are wretched too) describes Mr Pitt as Mr Redford’s “pale echo”, and I want you to focus on that “pale” word. Now the real problem came in the casting – because if you compare The Sting and Ocean’s Eleven you will see that both RR and BP take pretty much the same role – the younger, good looking sidekick of the more experienced wise guy. This was incredibly distracting and despite being exceptionally fond of BP, I spent the entire time wishing he was RR instead.

Finally, this film is cool. Don’t ask me how they managed it but somehow they managed to make it zing with coolness. It’s like a coolness boost. It manages to be cool without being cocky, except that kind of cool cockyness which somepeople find cool. Get the picture?

Overall rating is 3.75 out of 5. Because I gave the Sting 4/5 and I want to make sure people know that if you only watch one...



Last night I watched Intolerable Cruelty - another Clooney movie which involves him using his sad look. It was wonderful! Only dad has recently seen Syriana and he tells me the contrast between the roles was jarring and painful. It was good, with a wonderfully flooring twist in the middle and not too much sentimentality (OK, perhaps's that's wrong...). And of course, it's painful to see the beautiful people pair up - what hope is there for those of us who don't look like Ms Zeta-Jones? A good 3/5.

And that brings me up to the present - almost.


Because I have some news which is not really connected with films but to make it connect with films I have a quote. Genesis fans of the world unite! (Genesis are a band, BTW, they are not religious they are wonderful which is much better!)

First for the quote from American Psycho (the narrator is doing something else at the time, I warn you):

"Do you like Phil Collins? I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where, uh, Phil Collins' presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don't you, uh, dance a little. Take the lyrics to Land of Confusion. In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. In Too Deep is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as, uh, anything I've heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your ass. Phil Collins' solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like In the Air Tonight and, uh, Against All Odds. Sabrina, don't just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is Sussudio, a great, great song, a personal favorite"


Honestly! Invisible Touch their masterpiece? He really is a psycho...


And that brings me onto this: http://contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/genesis%20to%20reform_11_03_2006

I wish I WISH they would stop it with the reunion rumours. Because it's never going to happen, they all hate each other, they're not going to revisit 40yrold music (Jeez that's a long time...) and it's just not going to happen.

I hate it!


Last film watched: I'm half way through the new Pride and Prejudice and half way through A Bridge Too Far.