I didn't get around to reviewing Anvil! The Story of Anvil! after I caught it on DVD a couple of months ago. I knew very little about either Anvil themselves or the film, a story of a band's attempts to revive the limited success of their early career. The movie is very low-budget but wonderfully gets inside the mind of guitarists Robb Reiner and Steve 'Lips' Kudlow, who trail around the deceprit state of European small-time rock with the ambition of plucky teenage bandmates. It's a wonderfully entertaining film that demonstrates the battle between artistry and practicality and the fine line between celebrity and non-celebrity.
As the shamelessly commercial Twilight: New Moon hogs up to a third of cinema screens this weekend (and surely a lot more of the box-office) I find myself unable to see even the most mediocre, middle-of-the-road Oscar vehicles. Amelia has made a paltry amount this week (less than The White Ribbon?!) but it's hardly surprising given that Mira Nair's film is the pummelled filling in the gargantuan This Is It/New Moon sandwich. Having just returned from five days in London I'm flat broke, and somehow considering paying seven pounds to see Amelia outside of my cinema subscription, on the off-chance that Hilary Swank manages a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama.
Good news for thesp equality -- the BBC have cast a deaf Actress to star in its latest thriller, The Silence, which looks rather like Wait Until Dark with an aural handicap rather than a visual one posing problems for its leading lady. Genevieve Barr is the woman in question, and the series is going to presumably come out in the Spring, when the BBC go into their serious programming mode.
I was reading The Guardian today and spotted this article on a guy who bought a random film reel on ebay for £3.20 which turned out to be an unseen short film by Charlie Chaplin. Surely something to put on the IMDB trivia page, when it eventually gets one.
I like Algiers much more than any of the films nominated in this category, but certainly not for its acting. The tone of the film lunges violently but Boyer stays pretty much the same, and the role requires similar things of him as the previous year's Conquest. A gangster in a much different sense to Cagney he's an elusive, no-nonsense figurehead that crumbles into a songster at the sight of Hedy Lamarr (who can blame him, huh?). But Boyer captures the tragedy of a man trapped in a district, top dog in a prison, bound by limitations, much more successfully than he ever captured Napoleon's ambition.
Norman wrings out the blackly comic mundanity of Jessie's approach to suicide (and existence in general) for a good half-hour before things get that heavy. Her meticulous preparation -- bags of clothes labelled with who she wants to donate them to, instructions on which pills her mother should take and when, a decade's worth of birthday presents -- detailed to generate irksome discomfort in Thelma and cynicism in the audience. Is death really as clinical a matter? 'night Mother doesn't come to any real conclusions about death (perhaps with the exception of the not-so-groundbreaking observation that it's inevitable) and is content to parade a checklist of issues that lack much depth or interest. In an attempt by her mother to assuage her daughter's morbid stance Jessie's mariage and son are discussed, but don't anchor our understanding of her and are hastily presented as outlets for empathy. If a woman's sole reason to stay alive is on the off-chance that she might get back with her ex-husband, I'd be tempted to load the gun myself.
An Education
Matt Damon - Invictus
aracter development. Just moments after Lisa's murder conviction appears a flashback of the absurd circumstantial manner by which she is wrongly mistaken of the crime, obliterating any sense of mystery about the event or doubt about the motivations of either spouse. For a film about righting the course of justice there is hardly any exploration of guilt whatsoever, the possibility of landing the pair of them in prison and leaving their son essentially parentless (a very legitimate concern, if you ask me) discussed for all of five seconds. For all of the faults in Neil Jordan's erratic depiction of justice, The Brave One, it at least addressed this issue and encouraged us to read into its character's moral dilemna. The unconditional justification of Julien's actions is admittedly more akin to Tarantino's bride than Jordan's radio host, but Anything For Her is like cutting from the first scene of Volume 1 to the last scene of Volume 2, without the sparkling dialogue.
er elements of Lewis Caroll's characters, including an intimidating and very anti-social white rabbit, a clockwork Mad Hatter and March Hare, and an axe-wielding Queen of Hearts. As a character Alice is impetuous and cold, and the deadpan repetition of her delivery of "said the white rabbit", accompanied by a close-up of the girl's mouth, gives the impression that this girl is entranced, inhuman even.
In the end, this dilemna is summarised well by the film's married couple, who each think they're getting something different from the other. Separated by five years (the woman is 24, the man is 19) they are married by arrangement, but it soon becomes clear that the man is still entrenched in adolescence and only really interested in being "looked after", and the woman is craving affection and unable to get it. This is the cue for sexual exploration, and Adrift is essentially the story of how each partner reacts to the deadening state of their non-event marriage.Having already divulged that their main problem is age and maturity, Adrift takes a rather roundabout route in detailing its characters' decisions to pursue the most natural course of action that you'd have wagered on anyway. Refreshingly, the film is written with such an understanding of male and female sexuality, rather like Kubrick's final hurrah (and my favourite of His films) Eyes Wide Shut, in that it recognises that attraction and infidelity emerge from assurance -- advice itself matters far less than the person giving the advice. Dangerous Liaisons-style, the wife (Do Thi Hai Yen) is manipulated into a sexual relationship with a womaniser by his own on/off flame (Linh Dan Pham in an astoundingly effective performance), who in turn harbours feelings for the torn wife.
Every time the film seems to make an easy assessment about a character it forces us to challenge that assessment, and manages to create a network of genuine, interesting people that 'fail' through being too true to themselves. Adrift has a rather cavalier, if far from revelatory message that upset is the natural product of looking after one's own needs (whether that be sexual gratification, security, forbidden love) and emerges as a solemn, resigned meditation on arranged marriage. It's a beautifully-made tragedy, and the biggest critique of promise rings and age-gap relationships you're likely to see this year.
step back from this woman, align us with her peers and bosses, wonder what on earth she's going to say and do next, and his complete confidence in Rowlands' ability to make this woman as enthralling, confused, and necessary of your attention is thoroughly rewarded. To his credit he doesn't give her any real streams of sympathy to pursue, and Opening Night's production-inside-a-production setup, while a tad gimmicky, offers up Rowlands to such intense scrutiny that it's incredible how much she manages to confound meagre judgement, and collate her character's inconsistencies into a rich, whole, and fascinating portrayal.
Annie Hall is a film I've loved for a long time. I love how Allen reduces love, ridicules heartbreak, but can't help sentimentalising both. And how romance and relationships are ultimately shown as expansive, promising, and worthwhile, even though the characters don't end the film in a blaze of glory.
Diane Keaton's trademark goofy nature is evident most in the early scenes of Annie and Alvy's relationship, but that is not how we first see her. Keaton's first scene is getting out of a taxi, complaining to Alvie that she missed her therapy session, and frustrated that he won't walk into a screening of Liv Ullman's Face To Face two minutes late. The element of Keaton's performance I find most interesting is how she makes Annie seem so eager to promote the idea of herself as fleety and free-loving in the early stages. How she flirts by making her ticks so outlandish and yet totally adorable to Alvy, and how she eventually becomes so resentful of her decision to become an 'appealing' romantic option. It's refreshing to see a romance occur between two people that are so ego-centric and often selfishly undevoted to each other, and in the same way as Rowlands it is Keaton's job to confound ours (and Alvy's) expectations of the dynamic of their relationship and how it unfolds.
Take you to Phoenix, Arizona and show you a mother who derides her kids and throws herself at every man that isn't her husband. Whisk you off to Wisconsin to meet a woman that's so "liberal-minded" she doesn't believe in strollers. (IMAGINE a world where people didn't feel the need for strollers. Where would our children sit for crying out loud? What awful re-percussions would occur in the baby accessory market?). You'll reject these people for being laughable stereotypes and have learned very little other than you need to praise your child and buy it a stroller.
something like White Material, which is set amidst civil war in French-speaking Africa and contains a lot of themes in M.I.A's song, such as greed, possession, and social constraint.
Throughout, White Material offers sparse, thoughtful perspectives of conflict and freedom, and whether either or both is a necessity. It struck me yesterday, while watching Andrea Arnold's problematic Fish Tank, how comparatively well Denis manages to convey different ideological views of liberty. The visual richness of colour that engulfs the characters, and the polarised extremes of proximity that render them either trapped or staring into unending desolation, are a very rewarding element of White Material. So too the moody score, and collection of Reggae songs which help to create an Eastern vibe to the film and extend its sense of scope.
Particularly towards the beginning the film is edited very briskly, cutting between community warfare and Maria on board a bus. Despite only a couple of references back to the bus, in the later stages it eventually becomes clear that the journey is the most present event in the film, and the prelude to the conclusion of events. This probably serves as the biggest problem of White Material, in that you're never really sure where you're at with it. The decisions with regard to the narrative structure, and the escalation of Maria's son's mental state, feel sudden and done for effect, and Denis seems generally unsure of how to tell the story, however competent she is at addressing the themes.
What is for sure is that as characters they exhibit directly opposing ideologies, of which we are constantly reminded. The Collector menacingly draws attention to their differing demeanors and viewpoints, the uptight stingy loner heaping all of the tension into the court of Miranda, who must defend everything that she is about. The Collector's chief mistake is making us too aware of what each of the characters is about, or at least trying to demonstrate this through silly, lazy means. Miranda's favourite book, The Catcher in the Rye, is dissected by Freddie in truly philestine fashion, and their essential differences are brought to the forefront in disappointingly plain terms: this man is all about himself, this woman is eager to explore. It's not to say that The Collector doesn't benefit from politics but the extent to which the two are at war with each other feels primarily mechanical and extracts from some of the unsettling confrontation. Terrence Stamp's dark, studious eyes contribute much more to his character than the narrative devices that accompany them. Particularly blatant is his coveted collection of dead butterflies (hence the film's title) which horrifies Miranda to the extent to which she later interrogates him about whether he intends to "collect" her. The reaction is rather terrifying, and does elevate the tension somewhat, but forms part of my main qualm with The Collector's tendency to demonstrate the sinister through rationale and mediation.
And yet, Wyler eeks so much out of a dull, stagnant setting, emphasising the power relations with menacing angles, boxing Eggar into dark corners and charting her fall from grace with monstrous precision. One gets the impression that Wyler extracts a lot from Eggar herself, and is at his most Hitchcockian in that Freddie in part feels like an authorial vessel, or at least a part-'victim'/faux-'villain' in the piece. Eggar, who conveys the defiance and panic of a fleety woman to whom 'repression' would undoubtedly exist in much more complex ways in the outside world, feels trained in the more explosive scenes, but in confronting Miranda's exasperation at the starvation of culture and concentrated banality of her new setting, she is at worst empathetic and at best a paladin.
I once met a psychologist who'd interviewed Fred West. Wyler's attempts to delve into the motivation behind abduction and obsession is rather like an evaluation of someone similarly beyond rationale. The Collector is a hell of a brave film for confronting the relatively unrelatable with what is, essentially, a battle of logic. It's a technique that's bound to deter people from fully committing to this film's ideas about obsession and practicality (I doubt Wyler would want that anyway) but deserves attention for portraying both Freddie and Miranda in a way that transcends traditional ideas about criminals and victims, and still managing to make its final point so utterly lucid.
I had heard from many people that this was one of Bogart's best performances. It's a very different turn from the "on his game" nature of The Big Sleep and Key Largo as he doesn't have the sustained self-assurance and bravado of Marlowe et al. To see Bogey as mentally weak is strange to say the least, yet (and this is not largely down to him) the question of whether this man is a killer is a lingering but rather limp one. The anti-climactic nature of In a Lonely Place is by far its weakest element, but like the standard modern biopic there are often gems to be found elsewhere. Rather like Walk the Line the reason to see this is not for the character study but for the central relationship, and the Humphrey/Gloria partnership is one of those steamy pairings that leaves you itching to discover if their rocky romance can have a tender resolution. Rent it and see.
Io Sono L'Amore (I Am Love)
It's difficult to believe that The Informant! has turned out far from how Soderbergh envisioned it. A livened, jazzy score accompanies a ferocious onslaught of office politics and satirical jibes at the corrupt corporate world. There's teasing fun to be had here. And still, the monotony of the film's succession of deceit is neither conquered nor enhanced by the playful, obtrusive accompinament (way too much 007 going on in there) and The Informant! is eventually found out for not being modest enough with its style (Brass: yes, Flair: no). Ocean's Eleven, with its slick breed of stars and effortlessly fresh vibe, had the character network and meandering interplay to justify its self-importance. The Informant!'s similarly single-minded approach has the kind of faux-plumage that screams 'mutton dressed as lamb'.
The prime steak in the piece comes in the form of Damon, who I doubted could play someone as funny and manipulative as Whitacre, but grows into the role majestically. Full of bravado he rattles off responses to interrogation with fervent, stern, desperate sincerity, and as we are privvy to his motivations for much of the film the minute cracks he displays in his character are smirk-enducingly accurate, and often hysterical to watch.
The comparisons to Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley aren't difficult to detect. While Tom Ripley was a figure to study, be wary of, admire, feel sorry for, Mark Whitacre is a much softer anti-hero -- eminently rootable a liar, but someone we mostly laugh at rather than with. The Informant! works better in the latter half, when Whitacre becomes more of an individual than representative of a cut-throat breed, and it's largely down to Damon.
I'm flying to Venice this afternoon for the film festival. I don't know what to make of Venice, having only really seen it in films like Summertime, Don't Look Now, and the bleak Death in Venice. All three are very different films and yet come to the conclusion that the city is a bit of a maze or puzzle.
The lineup for this year's Venice Film Festival (the 66th of its kind) was announced yesterday. It runs from September 2-12, and I'll be attending this year (yay!). All the headlines were for Michael Moore, whose new documentary about the world's economic meltdown, Capitalism: A Love Story will premiere there, and Werner Herzog's "remake" of Bad Lieutenant starring Nicholas Cage will also be shown. An even juicier element is that Abel Ferrara, Lieutenant's original director, who upon hearing of Herzog's version stated that he hoped everyone connected with the film would be "blown up", is bringing his own film Napoli, Napoli, Napoli to the festival.
Out of Competition
Important works by directors already established in past editions of the Festival.
ANNI LUCE - FRANCESCO MASELLI
Italy, 91'
Roberto Herlitzka, Ennio Fantastichini, Valentina Carnelutti, Arnoldo Foà, Lucia Poli
BROOKLYN’S FINEST - ANTOINE FUQUA
USA, 140'
Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, Wesley Snipes, Ellen Barkin
CHENGDU, WO AI NI (CHENGDU, I LOVE YOU) - FRUIT CHAN, CUI JIAN
China, 78'
Tao Guo, Anya Wu, Weiei Tan
DELHI-6 - MEHRA RAKEYSH OMPRAKASH
India, 110'
Om Puri, Waheeda Rehman, Abhishek Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor
DEV D - ANURAG KASHYAP
India, 144'
Abhay Deol, Mahie Gill, Kalki Koechlin
EHKY YA SCHAHRAZAD (SCHEHERAZADE, TELL ME A STORY) - YOUSRY NASRALLAH
Egypt, 135'
Mona Zakki, Mahmoud Hemeda, Hassan El Raddad, Sawsan Badr
GULAAL - ANURAG KASHYAP
India, 140'
K K Menon, Aditya Srivastav, Piyush Mishra, Mahi Gill
THE HOLE - JOE DANTE
USA, 98'
Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Natham Gamble, Teri Polo, Bruce Dern
THE INFORMANT! - STEVEN SODERBERGH
USA, 108'
Matt Damon, Melanie Lynskey, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale
L’ORO DI CUBA - GIULIANO MONTALDO
Italy, 74'
(Documentary)
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS - GRANT HESLOV
USA, 90'
George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey
NAPOLI NAPOLI NAPOLI - ABEL FERRARA
Italy, 102'
Luca Lionello, Ernesto Mahieux, Shanyn Leigh, Giuseppe Lanzetta
PROVE PER UNA TRAGEDIA SICILIANA - ROMAN PASKA, JOHN TURTURRO
Italy, 77'
(Documentary)
REC 2 - JAUME BALAGUERÓ, PACO PLAZA
Spain, 85'
Manuela Velasco, Jonathan Mellor, Andreas Ros Mire, Ariel Casas, Pablo Rosso
SOUTH OF THE BORDER - OLIVER STONE
USA, 102'
(Documentary)
TOY STORY 3-D - JOHN LASSETER
USA, 80'
(Animation)
TOY STORY 2 3-D - JOHN LASSETER, LEE UNKRICH, ASH BRANNON
USA, 94'
(Animation)
VALHALLA RISING - NICOLAS WINDING REFN
Denmark, 90'
Mads Mikkelsen, Alexander Morton, Stewart Porter
YONA YONA PENGUIN - RINTARO
Japan, 87'
(Animation)
Orizzonte
The new trends in world cinema.
1428 - HAIBIN DU
China, 115'
(documentary)
AADMI KI AURAT AUR ANYA KAHANIYA (THE MAN’S WOMAN AND OTHER STORIES) - AMIT DUTTA
India, 78'
Ashok Kumar, Nitin Goel, Shubham Vardhan, Pushpendra Singh
ARMANDO TESTA - POVERO MA MODERNO - PAPPI CORSICATO
Italy, 50'
(documentary)
BLOKADNJE DNEVNIKI (READING BOOK OF BLOCKADE) - ALEKSANDER SOKUROV
Russia, 96'
(documentary)
CHOI VOI (ADRIFT) - THAC CHUYEN BUI
Vietnam, 110'
Yen Hai, Pham Linh-Dan, Khoa Dui
THE DEATH OF PENTHEUS - PHILIP HAAS
USA, 18'
Loud, brash, honest, dependable -- they're admittedly not the most exciting adjectives, and so it might not be difficult to surmise why Ruth Chatterton's Fran leaves these characteristics behind for a cosmopolitan life in Europe. Her husband Sam is played with admittedly little variety by Huston, but he manages to capture the perplexity of this retired, business-minded, commonsensical veteran at his wife's actions. Why has she done this? Why has she done this now? Why doesn't she want to be a mother anymore? Why doesn't she want to be a grandmother? Where has this come from? The revelation that he doesn't know his wife half as much as he thought he did comes as a bit of a body blow, and Huston gives the wounded husband a frantic yet assured, grumbly, uncompromising demeanor. The hurt is there but it's beyond this guy to go to pieces, just clean up the damage and move on.
**** Leslie Howard in The Petrified Forest
aints of each nun's commitment to God the two roles require much different work from her. John Huston's Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison initially bothered me rather a lot; Mitchum as a WWII navy Corporal gets washed up on a desert island (presumably somewhere near Japan) where he meets the sole inhabitant, Kerr's Sister Angela. She appears indifferent towards his arrival, perplexed even, yet the following weeks see them engage in what is some heavily intense interaction for people who have just met each other, allbeit in what becomes a quest for survival against Japanese attack. Questions are begged: What was Sister Angela doing before his arrival? Making cups of green tea and playing Patience? How has the solitude affected her? How does she react to no longer being alone?
Aside from this scene, Kerr is given an altogether fluffier arc than she was in Black Narcissus (a decade earlier) where Sister Clodagh, and her feelings for the local totty Mr. Dean, are decidedly less lucid. Clodagh (a much more impersonal and mysterious moniker as it is) sums up the relative inpenatrability of the woman herself, who uses her habit as more of a hiding place, a reserved place of judgement. Given a quest to set up a nunnery up in the cloudy peaks of the Himalayas, Clodagh's Mother Superior voices her concerns over whether the young nun is emotionally secure and selfless enough to succeed.
My Ratings (in order of preference):-
**** Franchot Tone in Mutiny on the Bounty
While caught at the centre of a struggle between a tyrannical Captain and his increasingly concerned first mate, Tone's eager midshipman features a lot less than he ought to and is often left in the shade in favour of the more obvious 'characters' of the piece. Nevertheless, his presence is a valuable one, and as the most grounded character within a very fervently political environment, the honest, loyal remonstrations against mutiny feel integral to the film's ideas about what 'serving' your country really means. Tone charts the arc of his surefire, adaptable Byam in moving from a position of anti-idealism to a much more sceptical outlook on institutional hierarchy, and learns his lesson the hard way.
*** Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty
Laughton's silliness reached its peak with royalty in 1933 and, while Captain Bligh aboard the Bounty would never purport to be anything other than a stern nobleman, his monstrous actions are a flimsy way of setting up the ethical dilemnas that plague the film's second half. Parts of Laughton's Bligh are successful: he's predictable, emotionally-disposable, only harmful through position, and kind of reminded me of Captain Manwairing in Dad's Army (i.e. laughably hypocritical). Is this enough? Mutiny is let down a tad by its own narrow-minded views about villainry and Laughton does nothing to suggest that Bligh is battling with ethics himself, or indeed considering anything outside of his power-trip duty. In the end he plays up to Lloyd's emphasis on accessibility, the easier option but possibly also a wise one.
*** Victor McLaglen in The Informer
*** Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)
Surely there isn't a more definitive screen version of Henry VIII than this 1933 tour-de-force? As well as looking remarkably like the man himself Laughton chews on drumsticks and spits orders with the self-righteous bravura of a man consumed by inherent, ingrained arrogance, and raucously chomps at the bit when surveying the womenfolk too. My problems with the film stem from its rushed desire to pack every juicy bit of history into ninety very stagy minutes, and Laughton himself doesn't really help in this regard. His mannered approach occasionally feels cartoonish, and his effective moments usually come in the form of comedy. A good performance but nothing exceptional.
* Leslie Howard in Berkeley Square (1933)
The toe-in-the-water exploration of the absurd Berkeley Square requires Leslie Howard to be: a) besotted with the idea of his own ancestry, b) besotted with a member of his own ancestry, and c) infuriated with both a and b. Infuriation is something Leslie Howard can only demonstrate with the snarl of a terrier puppy, and even the stuffiness of the film's setting and subject cannot make his efforts feel beyond first base. I am generally a Leslie fan but he feels as if he's acting in a glass box here, understandably unsure of his film's bizarre intentions but fatally unable to eek out any belief for his character's fascinations or sympathy for the predicament he gets himself into.
The Snubbed
*** Warner Baxter in 42nd Street (1933)
The academy don't really like men in musicals. William Powell in The Great Ziegfeld (not exactly a "musical" but about musical theatre) similarly found himself on the wrong side of a snub, and that was for a film about HIM. 42nd Street is also more concerned with women and theatricality than the man who must hold it all together, Warner Baxter. Baxter isn't wonderful but he does draw attention to the frantic, fragile nature of showbusiness and the line between success and failure, and responds to each mini-disaster with the level of comic resignation that takes envy and shoves it down your throat.
** Nils Asther in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)
This beastly pet-figure of reluctant lust for heroine Barbara Stanwyck would later be modestly improved upon by Yul Brynner in Walter Lang's The King and I. Asther's stoney stern glare (as if he were telling off a small child), and satisfyingly smug closed-grin seem to be the faces of choice, and as such he loops them throughout The Bitter Tea, making his General Yen somebody fundamentally formidable, but never really expanding upon the barbarism that tarnishes his acceptability. A late scene shows promise but in general he's one of the main reasons why the film doesn't work.
