I've just had an idea for a regular series (although I promise nothing) of postings here. I love those Twin Towers, and I want to start writing about movies more often than I have so far here, so here's the plan. Every time I spot the Twin Towers in a DVD, I will pause it, photo it, and shove it up here.
Two things may happen. One, as I say, this may kick start me into writing about movies more than I have. But two, maybe a picture will start to form of how movie makers used to use those towers. What else happens when we see them? What do they seem to mean? And so on.
Click on these two clictures (a word I'm hoping you first read here) to get the full pictures.
On the left, forty seconds into Sidewalks of New York, is the Twin Towers bit of the first sighting of the character played by Edward Burns (who also auteured the entire movie). He is being interviewed by an offscreen voice about his sex life. The Twin Towers are kept in shot, or very nearly, although out of focus, throughout this interview, bits of which, alongside interviews with the other main characters, intersperse the entire movie.
Which I enjoyed. The characters are pretty enough to be pretty, but real enough to be real. Perhaps the most telling plot point concerning Burns' rather gloomy view of life in New York is that only one child features in the entire thing, namely the child that the Rosario Dawson character conceives, by mistake and without telling him, with the Edward Burns character. Rosario Dawson then leaves New York, or at any rate says that she will. New York, Burns seems to be saying, is not a place that makes children. Too expensive. Everyone too fussed about their careers. Two many New Yorkers just don’t want kids.
Stanley Tucci plays a character for whom, in both appearance and behaviour, the phrase "love rat" might have been invented. Dennis Farina plays a man whose advice about cologne proves unsound. Cologne on the balls proves you care, says he. It proves he's weird, says the lady confronted with it. Penis size also gets an airing. In general, this is a movie with a lot to say about male insecurities and confusions, as well as female resentments at what swine men are.
If you love Woody Allen's New York movies, there's a good chance you'll like this, and for the time being Mr Burns seems able to choose his romantic partners in a manner that leaves his dignity in place.
Well-known actors love being in movies of this sort, for they queue up to be in them, half a dozen at a time. They get to talk and act and create character, instead of being upstaged by special effects or having to act opposite mysterious computer animations that only get put in afterwards. They don't have to kill people, or to die, or spend any time hanging from ceilings..
On the other hand, if you find semi-realistic movies about Relationships tedious, what with today's people having it so easy and being so cosseted that they can sit around all night long discussing their Relationships, unlike their grandparents who had depressions to survive and world wars to fight, well, one of the characters says that.
And, on the right is the very first frame of New Jack City, the rest of which I have yet to see, because, having just watched Sidewalks of New York and noted the Twin Towers, this was when I got the idea for this series (although I promise nothing) of postings. I should imagine that the people in this movie get to do lots of killing of one another and have little time to think about Relationships, although I could be quite wrong.
When classical CDs first hit the shops, I recall anti-capitalist whingers saying that it was all Brahms and Beethoven symphonies, but nothing obscure and interesting, and generally capitalism screwing up. I knew that things would eventually change, and they did, with a vengeance. There is now virtually no limit to the music you can get on CD. Oh, there are some gaps still to be chased down and filled, but the choice of stuff you can now get is fantastic compared to the bad old days of records and cassettes.
With DVDs, I have been eagerly anticipating similar bounty. New big distribution movies of course all now come out on DVD, and I presume that quite a few more go straight to DVD after only the most casual distribution in the cinemas if any. Although I further suppose that you might have to know where to look for such oddities.
Better than that is that the best movies of the pre-DVD era, starting with the most popular ones like Casablanca and It's a Wonderful Life and all the Fred and Gingers and the James Bonds. This part of the job is now well underway. Although, I'm still waiting for DVDs of the classic Ryan O'Neal, Barbara Streisand screwball comedy What's Up, Doc?, and of Metropolitan, to show up in HMV Oxford Street.
And then of course there are all the ancient TV shows that you can now get on DVD. Those are already in HMV in strength.
Nevertheless, most of what I have seen available on DVD has been pretty mainstream, not really all that esoteric or obscure.
But now, however, comes news of something that I would rate as genuinely off the beaten track.
This is from the a latest DVD issues leaflet that fell out of the this week's Radio Times:
Silent ShakespeareCLASSIC SILENT DRAMA These early film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays feature a new score by composer Laura Rossi. As well as the first Shakespeare film - King John (1899) – the collection also includes: The Tempest (1908), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1910), King Lear (1910), Twelfth Night (1910), The Merchant of Venice (1910), Richard III (1911). DVD extras include: filmed introduction and commentary by Judith Buchanan, sleeve notes by Nicci Gerrard, bibliography.
Never heard of those last two.
And that's my point. Silent Shakespeare? What on God's earth is the point of that? Well, I guess they have the words stuck on at the bottom, so maybe not so bad. But even so, weird. Learn more about it here.
In five years time? Or ten? It'll be a new world.
By all the accounts I have read (including one that I swear I read by Alice in Texas but cannot now find), and certainly by this one, Jarmusch's movie Coffee and Cigarettes is mostly very dull.
Although, these bits sound fun:
The only two episodes that generate any comic energy from the premise are the most non-Jarmuschian. In one, Cate Blanchett plays both a star called “Cate Blanchett” and, under a long black wig, her loser cousin Shelby in a strained encounter in the lounge of her hotel. The loser cousin is a laugh, but Cate as “Cate” visibly struggling not to condescend or provoke is a miniature masterpiece. Miss Blanchett pulls off single-handedly what most of the double-acts never quite manage – two people meeting for coffee and never connecting. She’s topped only by Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan’s scene, in which the actor “Alfred Molina” requests a meeting with fellow Brit “Steve Coogan” while he’s visiting Los Angeles. Alfred says he’s a huge fan of Steve and Steve replies that “obviously” he’s “aware” of Alfred’s work. Molina says he asked to meet for a reason and slides a manila folder across the table. “What stage is this at?” Coogan demands. “Is it greenlit? Is it a treatment?” So Molina explains that it’s not a project, it’s just that he was doing some genealogical research and discovered that they’re cousins – they share the same great-great-great-grandfather, and that’s pretty amazing and exciting, isn’t it? Maybe they can hang out, get to know each other. Coogan doesn’t think so.This encounter is the only one that has any narrative resolution – indeed, for Jarmusch, it’s almost an O Henry twist. And Molina’s rueful big-heartedness, which anchors the scene, is almost the antithesis of a Jarmusch performance. One notes also the curious fact that, in a movie about coffee, the most effective episode features a couple of tea drinkers. “Shall I be mother?” offers Molina, sweetly offering the pot. “I’ll be my own mother,” mumbles Coogan dourly. That may be the best exchange in the picture.
Coffee and Cigarettes was filmed over a long period, which makes it a boring film done very interestingly, I think. By the sound of it, the various mostly very boring episodes in it only involve a succession of cameos by different people. But why not have the same people coming back again and again throughout the making of the movie, getting gradually older?
If practised more regularly, this method could solve the problem of movies where a succession of actors who look very unlike each other form a queue to play the same alleged character. Answer: have the same actor play the same character over a period of thirty years.
The trick would be to have a flexible story, with the possibility of dramatically expensive special effects which could be added towards the end, after you have filmed the earlier scenes cheaply and on the basis of which you raise the money for the final expensive climaxes. You could start with your cast aged about ten and doing cheap things, and then they could get older and do gradually more dramatic things. Of course, with growing children involved, the legal situation would have to be sewn up very tight, and the story might have to be about bolshy teenagers rather than biddable ones. Like I say, duck and weave, scriptwise.
How about a bunch of kids lost in space in a small and nasty (and hence cheap) space ship, finally contriving to find their way back to (final scene – very expensive) civilisation! The excitement and with it the cost per frame would build slowly, as and when the money for the later scenes was raised. The Anabasis, in other words, with the sea at the end being expensive and special effecty, but most of the film being claustrophic and cheap.
As cameras get cheaper, and as a steadily increasing proportion of humanity dreams of being film stars and film directors, this will happen more and more often I think.
I'm busy lashing up a TransportBlog posting, following on from this Samizdata posting about air taxis, and in connection with that, I want this image ….
… up here, so I can link to it from there. Click to get it lots bigger.
The Fifth Element (and by the way these storyboards are worth a look if you are the arty type) has always struck me as a hugely under-rated movie, from the urban futurology point of view. It deserves, from that point of view, at least equal billing with Blade Runner, which I believe is only liked as much as it is because it says (with the usual absurdly short and impatient SF timeframe – it's set round about now, as I recall) that the weather is about to become permanently horrible.
I have a programme called Skype running on my computer, which means that Michael Jennings can send me emails and invite immediate conversation. Here is his latest, on the subject of yesterday's posting about films stars etc.
Hmm. Just reading your culture blog. It has of course been noted by many people that Hollywood casting agents are always casting the same small number of actors because they have themselves seen very few movies and have very little imagination. One thing to be said for Quentin Tarantino is that his movies are always interestingly cast because he has seen more movies than anyone and he remembers good performances in obscure seventies TV series and the like.
Which is probably a better explanation of what I was writing about than I offered.
Picture of Ashley Judd there. She appears in lots of films, and in this case I agree with those myopic and ignorant casting agents. No wonder she looks so smug. I even like it when she is miscast in rubbish, as often happens. (New Hollywood job description: Miscasting Agent.)
Alice (back in Texas again?) was not that smitten with Troy, which I haven't myself seen and have no plans to see, until I take a look at it on the telly (if that is convenient). My favourite reason she didn't much like it was this one:
… in history, everything was brown, because colours cost too much, and this is dull on the eyeballs, …
See also The Gladiator. But I don't think it's that colour costs too much. I think it's that colour makes everything look not like XXX BC, but like XXX BC as filmed in 1960. and you wouldn't want that.
Later she says this:
Also I am worried about the small number of people who keep acting in every single movie I watch these days. There don't seem to be enough actors to go round. Half the cast of Troy looked like they were also in Lord of the Rings, and playing the same characters as well. Just dying your hair and removing the elf ears is not enough to make us think you're someone else, Orlando Bloom. We know who you are. And we know Brad Pitt is a crazed egomaniac, Sean Bean is Captain Sharpe, and all those dark wide-eyed feisty girls who look like Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley are actually the same person as each other.I don't think it was always thus: there used to be Stars and Everyone Else. Now there is a whole (albeit small) Acting Class. …
I don't know what I think about that, or even if it is true. Surely the old Stars were just as much the same from film to film as anybody is now.
I wonder if it is anything to do with getting older. When you are young (I realise that Alice is quite young now, but in the past, I surmise, she was even younger), you see a few Great Stars, and lots of old people. As you get older, you see more Stars. When you reach a hundred they all look like Stars, and there is no Everyone Else who are, compared to you, not Stars.
Plus the Stars don't look as great as those old Stars did, when you were a kid. Everyone just just looks like ... Everyone Else. The Stars merge into a great big acting company. But it's you, not them.
Just a thought.
For reasons of my own I need to display a cinema poster, which I saw in the tube yesterday.
I have been watching L'Appartment (silly me - I completely missed those Hitchcock references - he likes it too) and this has given me a taste for French Romantic comedies with gorgeous and fascinating women and adoring but decidedly ridiculous not to say ugly men (I wonder why), and, well anyway, here is another that looks promising.
Something about how 'society' (i.e. me and you and everybody) attaches too much importance to looking gorgeous in a picture, a point made (I'm guessing) by making lots of gorgeous pictures (i.e. a movie) about a particularly gorgeous woman …
… (and god help anyone who wasn't gorgeous who was up for that part), and others of the kind of gorgeous woman who can be made up to look non-gorgeous, with done-up hair and glasses, which can then be undone and taken off. …
IMPORTANT NOTE: All these french actresses have distracted me from doing an Important Posting about the play I saw last weekend. I now have no time to do the review of this that I promised in the previous posting. The instructions at the top of that posting about what to do if I did not post this posting immediately are now inopperative. I will try to do the review over the weekend. It's my blog and I'll procrastinate if I want to.
Last night I watched American film actor Richard Dreyfuss on the Frank Skinner show, doing the one part above all parts he for which is most completely unsuited and most grievously miscast, himself.
I guess a lot of actors get their start desperately trying, and failing, to play themselves. There they are, aged, I don't what, four? – and they look in a mirror or something one day and say oh god, how am I supposed to do that? They work and work at the role, trying out different versions until the audience likes it.
Many of them get themselves down pat very quickly, and then go on to further triumphs in other roles, doing other people. Almost all of them arrive at a passable version of themselves eventually. But I reckon Dreyfuss has never mastered himself. As soon as he starts in doing himself, you (and by that I mean I) want to curl up in a foetal ball and jam blotting paper in your (my) ears. All those ludicrously over-pronounced syllables, and studied juvenile-isms, which get ever more embarrassing as he gets older.
When he's in movies there are directors around to say, Richard, it's too Dreyfussy, please do it again. Try to act normal. Plus, he does other people in order to find temporary escape from being himself. That's how it looks to me. (Dreyfussy. New word to describe a particular sort of bad acting.)
There are other actors like this, I think. In the past, when faced with such people, I just switched off. Now, I can talk back, by blogging.
James Lileks writes about the music for Where Eagles Dare as if he's the only person on earth who loves it. But, Lileks, you are not alone.
He offers two snatches of it on mp3: here and here. Click and be patient.
And hullo. It seems that Lileks has been on about WED before, and that I have linked to him before about it.
RAT. Ta-ta-ta-ta TAT.
Tonight I am listening to: A London Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams. And I have chosen the mono version done by Sir Adrian Boult with the LPO, from this boxed set of all but the last of the nine RVW symphonies.
I do not offer a general review of this lovely piece, with an exhaustive explication of exactly what makes it so lovely. I just wanted to make what I hope is one interesting observation.
I refer to the second movement, "Lento", and in particular to the lovely tune in this second movement, which we first begin to hear (on this particular recording anyway) at about 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
To me, this tune could have come straight out of the sound track of a Hollywood biblical epic. It would have sounded completely in place had it occurred, not in a piece celebrating London, but in a story celebrating the life of, e.g., Jesus Christ. I'm thinking in particular of the scenes in Ben Hur where Jesus is seen, but only, by us cinema viewers, from behind. We see that archetypal hair-do, evocative of all that is magnificent and history-changing, yet at the same time consoling and loving, but only Charlton Heston gets to see Jesus' face. It's been a long while since I've seen this movie, and heard the actual music that Miklos Rozsa wrote for the Jesus scenes, but I do definitely seem to remember them sounding very similar in atmosphere to this London Symphony tune.
There is, by the way, a distinct whiff of similarly Israelite harmonies in Vaughan Williams' glorious Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and, for that matter, also in the original Tallis anthem which that piece was inspired by.
And now, that tune has come and gone. The third movement is back to the hustle and bustle (and also the Georgian stateliness) of London, as if Israel had never been thought of.
All of which leads me on to wonder about this whole musical nationalism thing. We are constantly told that particular harmonies evoke particular national moods or national landscapes. I wonder. I suspect it may be pure association caused by the constant placing together of certain sorts of music with certain sorts of imagery and certain sorts of national myths and stories, the actual connection being accidental. Had the music chips landed only somewhat differently, Dvorak could have sounded unmistakably Italian and Tchaikovsky unmistakably Finnish.
That the music of Vaughan Williams of all people made me think of ancient Israel rather than of ancient or not so ancient England is a particular irony, because RVW of all people is credited with creating an "unmistakably" English sort of sound, the one dismissed unkindly by Elizabeth Lutyens as cowpat music. (Scroll down to the start of para 2 of the review linked to.)
So: Vaughan Williams. Unmistakably English, except when he sounds unmistakably something completely different.
Instapundit caught this, but maybe you missed it.
Here's another (real but inaccurate) snap (from the DVD on my TV) of that scene:
And the people who made this delightful movie? Democrats and Kerry-persons the lot of them, I'll bet.
I wonder if this meme will catch on. It deserves to.
I spent most of my blogging time this evening concocting this, so only time for a quicky here, in the form of a snap taken in the Underground of a movie poster:
I like this poster a lot, if only because of the cricket bat. How often do you see cricket bats in movie posters? And wielded by the leading man?
But there is another reason to pay attention to this poster, which is that it illustrates an interesting trend. Look carefully. This is not an advert for the cinema release of this movie. It is an advert for the DVD and the video. I remember being very struck when I first noticed this trend, which has surely only happened since the arrival of DVD.
Here, by way of contrast, is the poster for the original cinema release. No sign of that splodge of yellowness. What's that about?
That was to be seen a lot on phone boxes. Which makes sense, I think you will agree.
Interesting that the DVD poster makes great play of quotes from the critics, the way the cinema poster doesn't. Presumably this reflects the fact that the adult stay-at-home audience is the one that buys the DVDs and adults pay more attention to critics. I certainly find that I do, now, as I get more … mature.
Prediction In a few years time, DVDs and DVD players will have got so good that cinemas will in many cases simply be big DVD playing rooms, with both domestic machines and cinemas using the same software. Why not? Under the influence of the copying menace, movies will get more numerous, but on average "smaller", with the big hits being surprise successes rather than big blockbuster pre-crafted smash hits of the sort that will immediately attract piratical attention.
Michael Jennings will be giving my next Last Friday of the Month talk, on the 24th, about the impact of new technology on the workings of Hollywood, and although he may not talk about this particular matter (what with the impact of new technology on Hollywood being such a huge subject), I will try to remember to ask him about this. He has already told me that in his opinion the copying of big movies is done by treacherous Hollywood insiders (in a manner that Hollywood doesn't like to talk about) rather than by people sneaking into cinemas with cameras (the story Hollywood prefers).
I found this posting, about teenagerdom, and the comments attached to it, interesting. I was particularly diverted by this further reflection from the writer of the original posting, Michael Blowhard. Comments had veered into the adultness of film actors, and Michael said this:
… And how about manliness and heroism? They seemed to have a moment or two in the sun after 9/11, but we seem back to distancing ourselves from them again. I grew up an irreverent Boomer, thinking performers like Charlton Heston were a joke, for instance. All that squareness, that granite jaw, the posing ... It seemed to beg to be ridiculed and I was willing to do the ridiculing. These days, I find myself missing that kind of thing, and admiring the people who could once do it. The only kind of heroism we seem willing to swallow (in popcult, anyway) is cartoonish heroism, it's-all-a-big-joke-anyway heroism. Which I think is kind of tragic. These days I watch an early Heston movie thinking, Good lord, the fact that he was able to do that, with conviction, and put it over, and people were able to accept and enjoy it - why, that's really great! There aren't many performers who can do that today. I don't like Costner much, but I do find myself cutting him some slack just because he seems determined to do squaresville heroism. Doesn't do it very well, but credit for trying. …
I agree about Kevin Costner, and actually like his acting rather more than Michael B seems to. Costner's problem is finding roles where what he wants to do is what they want done. I think one of his more successful movies weaving in and around these themes is Robin Hood Prince of Thieves>, which is all about the difference between stroppy rebelliousness and true adulthood. The Crusades, interestingly, are identified in that movie as a kind of adolescent tantrum, which ended in tears in the manner of a drunken teenage car expedition, but on a grander scale of course. However, while Costner is trying to be a serious grown-up, he finds himself up against a state of the art cartoon villain in the form of Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham.
Costner would probably be denounced at places like this as nothing but a wallower in political correctness. The anti-crusades stuff in Robin Hood plus the fact that in Robin learns about adulthood, maturity, etc. from a far more civilised black man. And of course there was Dances With Wolves and JFK. His constant striving after adulthood would get lost in the anti-PC complaining. But this would be a classic political box error. Political correctness is left wing. Trying to be grown-up. If you try to do both, nobody sees it because nobody wants to. Kudos to Michael for breaking out of the boxes.
Just to say, I watched all buit the beginning of a movie called Maybe Baby on Monday night, on the telly. Of this, the Radio Times (in the person one Jason Caro) had this to say:
For his debut as writer/directo, Ben Elton tries – and fails – to step into the winning comedy shoes of erstwhile Black Adder partner Richard Curtis (Notting Hill). Revolving around Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson's attempts to have a child, this clichéd, caricatured and dreadfully acted tale has all the wit, sparkle and profundity of a 1970s Confessions movie.
… which is pretty much what I recall the critics saying when this first came out. But I found it quite entertaining and more than quite involving. In my opinion the problem was not the actors, or the script, but the directing. Time and again, what looks like bad movie acting is actually a bunch of perfectly fine movie actors doing exactly what the director told them to do, and above all doing it more slowly than their instincts would have dictated and than a better director would have demanded. This didn't bowl along with nearly enough zip, and time and again the acting was over-emphatic. But the script was fun, and once you had discounted the slightly leaden style, it was fun to watch. Yet the RT gave it only one star. When I think of the dross that they award two, three and sometimes even four stars to, I think this was overdoing it.
Could the fact that the odd spot of piss was extracted from the BBC by Elton's script be part of the reason for the animus against this movie among those who decide these things? I doubt it, but maybe. Although, it was shown on BBC1.
I've just started to watch American Splendour (no link – google your way there if you want to, but I'm busy watching it and I don't want to jeopardise the Purity of my First Response), and this is the first Definitely DVD movie to have come my way. By this I mean (a) you need to own it, and (b) you can't possibly get top value from it without regular use of the pause button.
Many of the early shots are of cartoons, and the editing went past them before I had time to read the captions. So: go back, pause.
Many of the frames make excellent pictorial decorl when paused. Here's what looks to be one of the key moments of the entire movie. This is when the central figure is first shown with a cartoon bubble over his head. Idea!!!
All good movies (and I rather think that this one is going to be very good indeed – one of my recent top favourites) about Creative Types seem to have one of those Creative Moments, when they Crack It. "You've cracked it!" says Mrs Pollock in Pollock, with some addition swearing if I remember the moment correctly, when Pollock finally gives up doing pictures of stuff and starts splashing and dripping his paint about, just like the real Pollock eventually did. "That's it, that's the sound", says Mrs Glenn Miller in The Glen Miller Story. It's the magic moment when our hero finally hits the trail.
What a splendid country America is. You get your chance to do this kind of thing. And if you succeed, they make a movie about you.
Actually, it turns out, maybe he's not a cartoonist, just the guy who did the words, while his pal Crumb takes it away and illustrates it. We're in the Restaurant. "Wow man. You'd do that?" Apparently so.
I'll keep you posted.
By the way. I did buy this, ex-rental. Sight unseen. Inspired purchase at £7.99. As Woody Allen says, the public just gets a feeling about a movie.
From the far off days when there weren't nearly a billion of them. Katherine Hepburn in Summertime (1955).
Rossano Brazzo waits nearby, contemplating his moves.
On the Friday before last, I attended the talk already referred to here given by David Carr at the Evans home, and present also was Amanda Oliver, who mentioned afterwards that she had written a review of The Barbarian Invasions. I missed this the first time round, despite having myself seen the movie and having enjoyed it and admired it a lot, and despite the fact that Amandas' review was linked to at the time by the Reason Hit and Run blog. Either that or I read the review but didn't clock that she was who had written it. Her piece is very good, and a model of what a review should be. That is, she tells you what she thought of it, but gives you enough information to be able to tell whether you would be likely to share her opinion. My Samizdata piece, by comparison, is a muddle. It started with how wrong some Guardian bloke was about the movie, and that, if present at all, should have been at the end. Live and learn.
That's Amanda Oliver on right. This is one of the best photos I've taken recently. The redness is real, not Photoshopped, the walls being all red, which means they turn all light bouncing off them red. I'm in it once again (which Scott Wickstein will like – see his comment here – although I'm probably far too easy to spot for his liking), and Patrick Crozier looks on, all unaware that he's in it too. Patrick and I are blurred, while Amanda is sharp (or as sharp as my camera and your screen can between them contrive) which is as it should be. Click on it if you want it larger.
If you find my relentless photo-blogging wearisome, you can, as stated in the bit linked to above, blame my friend Gerald Hartup. He made a point at that same gathering of telling me how good some of my photos are.
I wonder what he thinks of them now. Gerald has a most interesting face, and I always seem to get great pictures of him. That was taken on that same evening. With flash this time, which changes everything.
The Internet combines very well with partying, doesn't it? You go to a party, and learn of some interesting internetted item, and can google it as soon as you get home. Without the party you wouldn't have heard about it, but without the internet, reading it would be a nightmare of clumsy snail mail correspondence that would probably not be bothered with.
And now tonight, another party means that I need to post the picture of Amanda, because she will be there tonight again too. Having delayed posting it all week, I now have an excuse. Also, a reason, because she might have asked me tonight why I didn't use it (still might), what with emailing her to say can I?, blah blah.
The Barbarian Invasions is now out on DVD. I will buy it when its price comes down to a tenner or less.
Two movie reviews you might want to know about. First, Alice (now in Texas) reviews the Kill Bills, for 2 Blowhards, no less.
And strictly second, yours truly saw School of Rock last night. More entertaining than educational, but at least entertaining.
I could probably afford the occasional trip to the theatre, but the prospect does not appeal. And what definitely does not appeal, because this I definitely cannot afford, is to acquire the theatre habit.
But for those who would appreciate regular theatre criticism from an elegantly conservative viewpoint, there is now Professor Kenneth Minogue to turn to. He is now this blog's theatre correspondent.
Here's a taste of his recent review of a recent Globe Theatre production of Much Ado About Nothing:
Thespians in Britain have long since taken up a moral doctrine in which the identities of actors must be subordinated to a generic humanity. By something like a kind of brainwashing, we are to be trained barely to notice and certainly not to respond to the physical identity of the actors. This may be politically admirable, but it makes for terrible Shakespeare, and often for feebly spoken verse. Physical details are important. Falstaff has to have a pillow in his belly, Helena must be taller than Hermia, and a Richard III calling 'A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!' from the turret of a tank (as happened in a recently film) cannot but bring one up short. The effect of this kind of political correctness at the Globe is just to make its performances look like end of term productions.
The polite but deadly skewering is a Minogue speciality.
Picture of the skewered production:
A quibble though. Is Minogue perchance referring to the (relatively) recent Ian McKellen film of Richard III? Maybe he isn't. But if he is, then that line was – according to my recollection – spoken not from a tank but from a jeep, the wheels of which were rotating futilely in the mud. Richard's cry sounded a little odd, but not illogical. A tank was (memorably) involved at the beginning of this movie, when a tank smashed through the wall of a library, again very effectively. In general, I loved that McKellen Richard III. Cursory googling reveals no Richard III movies since that one.
If it was another movie that Minogue was thinking of, my apologies. If I'm right that it was this particular Richard (and that it was a jeep) then the point that Minogue is making is still a good one, even if imperfectly illustrated.
Later: yes. I have the McKellen Richard III DVD. I checked. It was a jeep. But the wheels were not stuck in the mud. The jeep was just stuck futilely over a concrete overhang, denying the back wheels any purchase on the ground beneath.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Professor.
This picture has been sold at Sotheby's for £14,500,000, so Channel 4 News has just informed us, moments after it happened.
It's a Vermeer, "Young Woman Seated at the Virginals". But apparently it's not a very good Vermeer. Originally she was wearing a different shawl. Dear oh dear.
The thing about the art market is that the price reached by a painting is the price that the second most extravagant art lover in the world on that day is willing to pay, plus a little bit. It takes two, baby.
Vermeer, by the way, is the man whom Colin Firth played in Girl with a Pearl Earring, which has just come out on DVD.
At present it is in Blockbuster for £19.99, I think it was. But it will soon come down.
Two people willing to pay anything to buy a DVD does not a DVD market make. It takes more than two, baby.
An interesting cultural angle from Michael Jennings, writing about the European Football contest for Ubersportingpundit, re the fact that, now, all the big countries (England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy) are out of it:
Meanwhile, the tournament sponsors and advertisers will be unhappy. Most of the population of Europe come from countries that are out of the tournament. Most of the star players commonly used in advertising are headed for the beaches of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, Hollywood will be happy. This kind of tournament eats into cinema admissions quite badly, but now people will once again be going to the movies.
And this posting by David Carr is quite funny too. Did you know that before he became a sit-down comedian David Carr used to be a stand-up one?
Tonight one of my favourite movies, Klute, is on BBC1 and I will be watching.
I realise that quite a high proportion of the readership of this blog, consisting as I'm guessing it does of anti-lefty Americans, is unable to appreciate anything involving Jane Fonda. But all that Hanoi Jane stuff rather passed me by at first, and by the time I acquainted myself with it, I had reached one of the conclusions about Jane Fonda which I am still at, namely that she was a fine, fine movie star.
Being a movie star is a hard job. The phrase often used of our Royal Family – "They earn their money!" – springs to mind.
Just giving a really good performance in the movies you end up doing is only half the battle. The other half is choosing to do really good movies. And what I admired about Jane Fonda was that she talked her way into being offered, and then did, some truly interesting movies.
A lot of them were, you might say, reprises of what I imagine she herself thinks of as her life story. In the typical Jane Fonda movie, if there is such a thing, she goes from decorative bimbo at the beginning to much better educated and much more knowing and thoughtful - but still decorative, and if anything rather more so – Superwoman by the end.
The tendency for women in the movies is to be a judge, and a prize, and a sidekick, but not a central protagonist. She decides that the hero is indeed a hero, despite what he may himself feel. She rewards the hero with … herself, and having helped out in the action in a strictly junior capacity.
One of my favourite classic bimbo performances is by Erica Eleniak in Under Siege, which I quite often mention here as a favourite of mine. What's clever about that character is how completely she is introduced to us as bimbo diversion, being literally that in the fake show that the rock musician/terrorists fake up at the start. Eleniak literally jumps out of a cake! So the fact that she has to shoot people makes for genuinely interesting action. But, definitely a bimbo.
Fonda, at a time when bimbo was often all there was, made a point of doing something rather more than this. She whipped up publicity to that effect, and then, having contrived to be offered the kind of more interesting parts she wanted, she then did them very well. Yes, it generally involved left wing politics, but that doesn't guarantee a bad movie or uninteresting action. I particularly liked The Electric Horseman, which she did with Robert Redford.
What is clever about Klute is the twist it gives to the pure-as-the-driven-slush, deeply sentimental, romantic movie.
The best romances have to have dreary and spirit-sapping realities for the two lovers to overcome. Both their external circumstances and their own un-attractions to each other have to be real, otherwise all you get is sentiment and contrivance and nothing else. You have to feel that they deserve their romantic finale, or, try as you may, you cannot suspend disbelief. Rather in the stupid way that men like me feel that if we eat lots of tremendously healthy food we are then allowed to eat an equivalent amount of junk food without harming ourselves, romantic movie fans feel that the more obstacles the lovers overcome, the more they are entitled to end up happy ever after.
And Klute really piles on the misery. Bree Daniel, the Fonda character, starts out as a money grubbing, emotion dodging, drug abusing, orgasm faking whore with a heart of ice. And Donald Sutherland, the eventual object of her affections, is just far too ugly and boring to be a regular leading man. But he brings other virtues to the romantic table - the main one being, well, virtue - and, after quite a bit of further sexual complication, the ice is eventually melted. And what is more, he (the Klute of the title) does this not by livening up and becoming more of a swinger, but by infecting Bree, as it were, with his old fashioned romantic values.
One of my favourite Klute moments actually comes in a different movie. Night Shift is about another boring guy who hooks up with another whore, although this is altogether lighter fare (nobody gets murdered) and the whore's heart is golden from the start. The leads are played, very well I think, by the guy who used to be the Fonz (Henry Winkler) and the actress who got her big break in Cheers (Shelley Long). Eventually they go to bed, although actually they get the ball rolling first in a bath. We see them lying there, decorously covered by a fur coat, as I recall, having obviously … got the ball rolling already. Silence. Then Winkler says: "Did you ever see the movie Klute?" No, says Shelley Long. The Winkler character then recounts how, in Klute, Jane Fonda has the most tremendous orgasm, in the middle of which she snatches a look at her watch, and "you just knew she was faking it". Hey, says Shelley Long, "I don't wear a watch."
I love that moment in train movies when the train finally starts, and with it, the music.
Yesterday I watched The Cruel Sea on the telly, and to judge by that, it's the same with ship movies. I realised that I was actually watching this movie properly for the first time in my life, because the beginning was completely new to me, even though I know the book well. Exquisite stuff from a young and beautiful Denholm Elliott as one of the officers, squaring up with silent contempt to Stanley Baker's bullying First Lieutenant ("And don't you forget it!"). Then as later, this superb character actor could make putty out of star actors, for as long as he was allowed to be in it. (He got drowned a little later.) Anyway, when, after the introductions and a spot of training, they finally sailed off to war for real, the music started, just the way it does when the train starts up in The Silver Streak or in Murder on the Orient Express.
There are quite a few symphonies which work like this as well. The music starts at the start, of course it does. It has to. It's music. But it doesn't go anywhere. It merely establishes itself, pitches its tent, takes control of the ship, packs all the passengers into the train, introduces itself to itself, so to speak, often with quite a fanfare, but with no sense of motion, of going anywhere. And then when that's all done, the music really starts, that is to say, it starts out on the journey that will be the substance of the symphony. Two symphonies especially spring to mind – Elgar One and Mahler Two –and I'll bet that if you listened to them, you'd pick the exact moments that I'm talking about.
With classical music, this sense of a journey getting under way is often achieved with a change of key, with further changes as further progress unfolds. With movies, the simple fact of music itself is often the announcement of the beginning of the real journey. Either way, these are precious moments. (I seem to recall writing here about the corresponding moment in The Dam Busters, when Barnes Wallis finally cracks one of his model dams and the water (and the music) suddenly gushes forth. But I've had a look through the archives, and apparently this is my first mention of this classic moment.)
I had a date later in the afternoon, and wasn't be able to watch all of The Cruel Sea. But it has been out on DVD for a while and I will get it if the price is right.
I wrote most of this posting while The Cruel Sea, what I watched of it, was still in progress, and noted down in particular the Jack Hawkins line: "… how to die without wasting anyone's time …". That sums up a whole generation – doesn't it? – the last of them leaving us only now. This was a hell of a journey, in other words. The phrase "face the music" suggests itself. For us, that's Fred and Ginger. For them, that too, but also rather more.
The Cruel Sea even managed to make Donald Sinden sounds non-ridiculous. Now there's a first, or maybe a last would be more accurate.
Also, while googling for links, I learned that Alan Rawsthorne did the music. I like Rawsthorne's music. He was, I believe, one of those Communists whose views about world politics (if not about the local misfortunes that may have given rise to them) I loath and detest, but whose approach to art I like a lot. I particularly recommend this Chandos disc of his piano concertos. And if you follow that link you will also find, just below, info about the Naxos disc of (almost) the same pieces, also very good.
Is it just me, or is the music that they attach to soft porn movies an abomination? I would love soft porn if they didn't switch on ghastly wallpaper music as soon as the sex begins.
Like now for example. The sex has just begun. So, obviously, I have switched off the sound track. But until they began it they were having a really nice conversation, and although I'm guessing they aren't now saying very much, I could be wrong, and the thought bothers me. Also, they were presumably making the occasional sound of a more real sort.
Although, I must tell you, when they don't interrupt with wallpaper music, but do keep the actual sounds that the participants are making, that can be extremely disturbing. I've just seen the latest Jack Nicholson movie, the one where he falls in love with his latest girlfrield's mother, played by the not-as-young-as-she-was but still-doing-not-half-badly Diane Keaton. And Nicholson makes extraordinary groaning and snuffling noises, like a pig. I think these were the same noises he made when he played the Devil in The Witches of Eastwick, although my memory could be playing tricks on me about that. But I've definitely heard this noise somewhere before, and I am pretty sure it was Nicholson again, and that the setting was diabolical.
Wow, this particular soft porn movie just had a really great view of the Twin Towers.
To explain the significance of this image, I have to tell you a little about the plot. Basically, Our Handsome Hero has lucked into a job as a sex therapist counsellor type person. He has already done several sessions, if you know what I mean, and I know that you do. Well, two minutes ago Our Handsome Hero just recruited his Handsome Friend to help him share his workload, if you know what I mean … reprise. And that was when they showed the Twin Towers.
I think I know what they meant.
Read through the above, I realise that Jack Nicholson is better at getting sex and at doing sex than I am. And maybe my mistake has been not making pig noises.
Michael Jennings has another of his fascinating blow-by-blow accounts of business in Hollywood lately, this time about this year's "Summer Movie Season". (He explains what that means.)
He makes many interesting points, as he always does in these pieces (which could well end up as a quite successful book, it occurs to me). I've not yet read all of this posting, but have already been especially diverted by the trend Michael notes, towards Hollywood movies being released at the same time all around the world:
One other thing that has been happening this year is what is often called "day and date" international programming. Traditionally, films were released in the US first, and would be rolled out throughout the rest of the world over a period of months. This is now happening less and less for big movies. Films are being released on the same weekend in most major markets. There are two reasons for this. The first is that Hollywood as always is afraid of piracy. Certainly they are losing some money to pirates. Once upon a time I was frequently offered illicit CD and VCDs and VHS tapes when walking down the streets of Asian cities, but if I wanted them in developed countries they would be harder to find. These days I cannot walk down Oxford Street in London without encountering someone selling illicit DVDs of movies current in the US that have probably not been released in the UK yet. Releasing movies in large swathes of Europe and Asia on the same weekend as in the US certainly reduces the window in which this activity is profitable, and this is the main reason given for the fact that there are now simultaneous worldwide releases.But in reality this is more of a symptom than the cause.
The fact is, the world is rapidly becoming one global media market. …
Michael then digresses to the anachronistically chaotic problems faced by TV signals when trying to gain acceptance for themselves in countries which, technically, they can reach with ease, but which are political defended against them. But that is, as I say, a digression. The big picture story here is globalisation.
… Traditionally movie producers have managed to segment advertising campaigns and everything else into these national markets, but it is working less and less. Publicity campaigns now cross borders at high speed. Teenagers in Australia know by Friday afternoon whether a movie just released in the US is any good. People read reviews from foreign newspapers' websites. If there is a delay between release in the US and release elsewhere, the media buzz may have died by the time the fim gets there. People on British websites such as this one might be writing for largely American audiences, and it is counterproductive if the movies they are talking about are two months old in American terms. All this means that segmented national releases no longer work. And Hollywood is learning to deal with that. (If simultaneous worldwide releases are going to happen, one of the chief problems is expense and logistics. It costs a lot to strike that many prints of celluloid, and getting them around the world is expensive and time consuming. Thus this trend is also an impetus for digital distribution and projection systems to come into being to facilitate this that is not really there for the domestic market. This is particularly so in rapidly developing countries where there are no large networks of existing conventional cinemas already. And indeed we are seeing this, particularly in China, where quite a large network of digital cinemas has been built in the last couple of years).In any event, this makes writing about the summer movie season much easier for me, since I can now see most of the movies at the same times the Americans do. Of the first five big summer releases this year, four of them have or will be released in the UK within two days of the release in the US. …
I like living in this kind of world, and resented the previous one, where Hollywood stars would turn up on our chat shows and have to wrench their tired minds back to their previous movie but three. And I bet the stars prefer the new world order too. This way, they only have to do their marathons of chit-chatting for the media just the once for each movie.
More importantly, I like the idea of a world in which I have that bit more in common than I used to have with a random guy I meet who lives in China or Turkistan. We already have some things in common of course, most notably major historical events, like 9/11, or, from an earlier time, the assassination of President Kennedy. We have the big sporting events, of course, like the Olympics and the soccer World Cup. The Millenium happened at more or less the same time everywhere, which was also fun. But "history", and also sport, tends to get editorialised locally. I like the idea of an entire movie, with its particular point of view, being shown everywhere, un-"explained" by local middle men.
Of course, so far, these Global Movies have all been made in America. But interestingly (and I can't recall where I've been reading this because I've been reading it in all kinds of places – maybe Michael Jennings has talked about it too) these Global Movies are almost as much of an attack on indigenous US culture as they are on everyone else's culture. All slam bang action, and "universal" themes, with no excessively local references to confuse the Turkistanians.
Nevertheless, for all its dangers of lowest-common-denominator vapidity, I like the idea of a global fuss being made about a movie, even a bad movie, at the same time everywhere. That way I can have a nice little chat with a Turkistanian tourist in London about why, no, I won't be bothering with the latest Tom Cruise either.
Of course "Globalisation" has been gradual, and has been going on for a long, long time, at least since the electric telegraph was first got going in 1842, and this is just another little step in that long, slow, faltering trend, with its numerous local and localist interruptions and counter-reactions (stimulated into existence by the very fact of Globalisation). Nevertheless, as the Jazz Man on the Fast Show says: nice. (What's the Fast Show? Never mind, it's a local thing we have here.)
Yes, over the last few nights I've watched my way through Lawrence of Arabia on DVD.
This was one of three DVDs I hired from Blockbuster - £5 for three, for a week. On the whole, this arrangement is not quite the bargain it may seem. The idea is that, as ancient DVDs accumulate on their shelves, and as most of the people who really, really want to see them have seen them, they hire out their back catalogue for longer, and for less. The competition from the Mom and Pop Everything Including Videos And DVDs shops has also stirred Blockhuster into action.
Trouble is, for the time being anyway, they've overdone the price cut.
Basically, this is such a "good deal" that there aren't any rentable copies of the majority of the DVDs the pretty covers of which are on display. This means that it takes a long time to find three that appeal. And when you do, what with there only being one copy of each movie they are liable to be in a seriously scratched state, such that they not infrequently won't play properly all the way through, which is extremely irritating. My advice to Blockbuster would be: get this system working properly by having a decent number of copies of each title, and in decent condition, and don't waste your money on national TV advertising until the product is worth bragging about. Hard selling a duff product is a textbook way to build bad word of mouth. The idea is excellent. The execution, at any rate its manifestation in my branch (the Warwick Way branch) of Blockbuster, is not good.
This deal has, though, caused me to rent weird little foreign movies (to make up the three) which I wouldn't otherwise have given a second thought to, which hasn't been all bad news. There are usually a few of those available.
And it also caused me to take another look at Lawrence. What a movie! I had no idea. I thought I had seen it, but I never take in what is happening in a movie the first two goes. Plus I was obviously far too young to grasp even approximately what was happening the first time around. It is humiliating how much I learned about Lawrence – who he was, what he was, what he did, when he did it, where he did it, etc. etc.
I realise that liberties were taken with the mere facts. Real Lawrence was a midget, O'Toole Lawrence was a giant. The American journalist was called something quite different. Only the facts were changed. But the rough outlines of the story are presumably approximately as told in the movie, and I didn't really know these at all, I now realise. I spent quite a bit of time poring over an Atlas, and was very grateful for the extra information on DVD number 2 which explained the routes of Lawrence's various journeyings.
One particular thing I didn't know about this movie until now was that Robert Bolt (he of A Man For All Seasons) did the script for it. It showed. That man had a real knack of summarising great gobs of history in one line of dialogue. I think Bolt's contribution helps to account for what was, for me, the most interesting aspect of all of this movie, which was the way it so continuously held my interest. More and more these days, I find my mind wandering during movies. Lawrence held my interest throughout, and I clockwatched during it only to register how long it had been going on without me clockwatching, if you get my meaning. I always knew that it looked great, with all those mountains and mirages and Arabs cavalry charging with big flags. What I hadn't realised was how engagingly the actual story was told. All the feuding between different brands of Arabs had been pretty much lost on me the first time round, as had the scenes in Damascus towards the end, when Lawrence's Arabs storm into Damascus but then get bored with politics, city life, etc. and bugger off back to the desert.
But the pictures obviously helped, a lot, in fact I've since read that David Lean had to be sure that the pictures would work before he started seriously to make the movie. Freddie Young, I think they said, was the Director of Photography, and he was a Big Cheese, yes? I remembered some of the great visual effects (blowing out the match and cutting to the desert, Omar Sharif riding out of the mirage) probably because these get rehashed endlessly on the television whenever Lawrence is talked about. But there were many more visual glories that I had quite forgotten about. That every frame was concocted with the care of an oil painter is obviously a huge part of why I constantly wanted to see what happened next.
All that, plus another couple of really pretty good movies, called Slap Her She's French and Dirty Pretty Things which, the latter especially, were also above average in my opinion, for a fiver. And not a scratch on any of them, enough to matter. This time, I got my Blockbuster special offer money's worth. And they don't have to be back until tomorrow.
I'm watching Police Academy on the TV. This is one of the all time great movies, destined to grow and grow in esteem as the decades role by. It abounds with superb comic creations, none finer than Commandant Lassard, the magnificently un-policemanlike figurehead of the Academy, played by the sublime George Gaynes. "I'm trapped here?" – "Well yes, we all are."
And who could forget the black man (Michael Winslow) who imitates police cars and games machines and electric razors and horse noises? Then there is the amazing Tackleberry (David Graf) who draws his gun when confronted with a cat stuck up a tree, and who is distraught when "there was gunplay, and he missed it". Or how about the guy who whimpers wordlessly when his car is wrecked.? I never get tired of that bit. And as for the blond instructress, Sergeant Callaghan, played by the glorious Leslie Easterbrook. "Come at me with an imaginary knife." "Do I have to?" "Yes you do." Whatever happened to her? Still working away, it would appear.
The Crumpet Interest in Police Academy is played by none other than Kim Cattrall, she of Sex and the City fame.
Police Academy is the pinnacle of Steve Guttenberg's career. (If there are other pinnacles in this career, I am not aware of them.) His contribution to this movie is easy to underrate. He adds a welcome touch of charm in general and Gay Innuendo in particular (as when he inserts himself into the end of the Blow Job scene), without overdoing it.
The movie reviewing classes don't like this movie, because beneath and beyond all the mayhem and comic foolery and Chaucerian bawdy and the extraction of piss out of excessively militaristic young men with hair that is too short, it ends up endorsing the Rightness of Law and Order. Scum are Scum, and Good Upstanding Policemen are needed to control them. The movie ends with a grand parade, in which the entire caste graduates triumphantly.
The subsequent manifestations of Police Academy (Police Academies 2 to 6) tend to rehash the best jokes in the original one, and are not quite as great, although still good fun I think. But these have somewhat delayed the inevitable critical consensus to the effect that the original Police Academy is right up there with Citizen Kane, Some Like It Hot, Lawrence of Arabia, The Battle of Algiers, The Godfather and Carry On Up The Khyber.
And now, the Blow Job Scene …
Last night I went to see The Eternal … … the one with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet How amusing to give a movie about memory loss a title that is impossible to remember.
Anyway, as I say, for all those of you with short term memory loss, it's about memory loss, and there is lots of pot and whiskey swirling and swilling about in it, and I haven't done any of the first or nearly enough of the second to really empathise with the main characters. The way I see it, this is one of those movies that romanticises and makes "real" the mental malfunctions of a particular bit of the lowlife subculture, in this case the one where people with enough brains and education to know far better nevertheless inflict brain damage upon themselves with drugs and booze. The romantic pretence embodied in this movie is that instead of just forgetting stuff, the characters decide to forget particular stuff, and there are Mad Scientists with Computers who do Frankensteiny things in reverse to their brains to make them forget stuff. Now I'm no computer expert, but it is my clear understanding that they have not yet reached this state of advanced mental destructiveness, where you can put a helmet on someone and then just chase their conscious mind around in their brain with scanners and zap whatever they then think about. The techies have a bit of a way to go before they can do that. I further surmise that when they do get to be able to do this, the people doing it will be quite well paid and inhabit buildings where people have security passes and advanced degrees, to say nothing of anti-drugs and anti-booze employment policies. Nerds in bedrooms don't pioneer things like this while remaining in their bedrooms.
So, I didn't believe in the various premises of the movie for one moment. Or perhaps it was that, on account of not liking the movie enough, I spent a lot of time analysing it, instead of just enjoying it.
I normally don't like Jim Carrey. Too manic and selfish and self-referential. For similar reasons, I didn't like Jerry Lewis or Jack Lemmon, although I did love Jack Lemmon's taste in movie scripts and two of my all time favourites have him starring in them – The Appartment and Some Like It Hot. Jerry Lewis, on the other hand, had crap taste in scripts and was himself crap, which made everything very easy.
But I liked Carrey in this. He cooled it down and behaved like a normal person (the way Jerry Lewis eventually did in a few less crap late movies), which under the circumstances was a rather peculiar decision but there you go, that's actors for you. Maybe, like John Hurt in Alien, Carrey reckoned that there was no point in him trying to upstage the real star of the movie, which was the Special Effects department. But I don't like Special Effects as much as I used to. As one of my cinema companions said, there was a nice movie in there in among all the craziness, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, having a romance, which she would have liked to see. Me too.
The Two Nerds I just found annoying. The movie itself was apparently created by two real nerds named Kaufman and Gondry. I suspect these two real nerds of having done far too much dope and booze themselves, and that the Two Nerds were a fantasised self portrait, with the socially dyslexic and mentally damaged selves of the two real nerds kitted up to look like movie stars, in this case a fattened up Mark Ruffalo and the little one in Lord of the Rings. Both were ludicrously miscast in my opinion, especially the little one.
The boss of the Two Nerds, played by Tom Wilkinson, was likewise unbelievable. He seemed entirely sane, other than the small matter of what he did for a living and who he did it with, when the part surely called for a Mad Professor type.
And there was the basic problem with this movie, for me. A completely unbelievable scenario was created, and then you were asked to Take It Seriously, the way the Tom Wilkinson character did. I just couldn't do this.
Some of the memory loss effects were quite good. Things disappearing in front of your eyes, etc. But on the whole, I was underwhelmed. In a world of drug addled movie makers and drug addled movie goers, I felt left out. I didn't hate it, definitely not. A lot of it was quite fun. Kate Winslet is nice, after all. So, I might give it another look when it comes around on telly.
In the latest Gramophone (paper only) comes news that:
A new DVD release of The Battle of Britain will reunite the film with the original soundtrack by Sir William Walton.Walton was initially commissioned to compose the score for Guy Hamilton's 1969 film depicting the decisive serial conflict that took place in the skies over southern England in 1940. Although recorded, it was replaced by a score commissioned from Ron Goodwin, with only Walton's Battle in the Air sequence remaining. One explanation for the decision is that Walton's score was not long enough to fill an accompanying soundtrack LP.
In 1900 Timothy Gee, who as the film's assistant music editor worked closely with Walton, tracked down the original recording to the garage of Eric Tomlinson, the recording engineer. He then persuaded MGM, who are releasing the DVD, to restore Walton's music to the film.
He recalls that many people working on the film opposed the decision to scrap Walton's score. 'I think it is now more in tune with Guy Hamilton's concept of the picture,' he said.
I thought I did some blogging about this, but haven't been able to disinter any. But I do vividly recall instantly noticing the Walton music when it cut into the original version of this movie, and being very impressed. Although, I think Goodwin's music is also very good, especially the triumphant German march at the beginning. (I did find a posting about Goodwin's music for Where Eagles Dare.) Would that this were a straightforward replacement of rubbish by gold. Alas, not. Still, I'm looking forward to this DVD. (here and here are links to more on this topic.)
As for the film itself, it's another of these real events with made-up people jobs, which I really really wish they wouldn't do. (Think Charlton Heston in Midway. Urrgh!) I mean, if you can have the likes of Dowding, Park and Leigh Mallory for real, why not the real pilots, and maybe a real wife or girlfriend or two? I suppose there are all kinds of legal and confidentiality reasons, but all the same, when I see a historical movie, I want it to be as accurate as possible. I don't want to be learning things that ain't so. A lot to ask from the movies, I know. At least with these TV drama-stroke-documentaries which lots complain about but not me, they try to get things accurate, and when they can't because it isn't known, they say so.
Despite all that, I do love The Battle of Britain, made-up pilots, no William Walton, and all. It even has Laurence Olivier in it, and I still like it. That's rare for me.
Busy day, so only time for a quota posting. This time not a photo, but a snatch of dialogue from Office Space, remembered well enough to get the essentials of the joke, but probably not.
Google: "Office Space" and "He's really good", and I have the exact quote for you! All hail the Internet!
PETER: Maybe I should go see that doctor. He did help Nancy lose weight.MICHAEL: Nancy's anorexic.
PETER: I know. He's really good.
Ha!
Speaking, as I was in the previous posting, of DVDs, I'm two thirds of the way through the Godfather triology (no links – you know the one I mean), on DVD.
The second one had a really strong "deleted scenes from the real movie" feeling about it. I don't share the widespread opinion that Godfather 2 is the greatest movie in general and sequel in particular ever made. I thought half of it was those deleted scenes, and the other half was a rather slight anti-capitalist Americans Being Evil in Central America movie, that every star seemed to want to do one of in those days, usually starring a journalist or a photojournalist. The Godfather is, in short, one movie, not three. There is The Movie. There are the extra bits. There is the Al Pacino versus the Jewish Guy bit, which is as small and mundane and stitched on as the Real Movie is big and remarkable and of itself. And there is 3, which everyone says is nonsense, and which I'll let you know about when I've sat through it.
What is remarkable about Godfather, I think, is that it is a European Art Movie and an American Gangster Movie, all in one. There is no dramatic tension. You know from the very start what is going to happen, even if you've never been told (which is most unlikely). What there is is superb cinematography and production design. It's just one amazing oil painting after another. And the cars …
I mean it about the dramatic tension, and the oil paintings. The remarkable thing about this movie is that time and again, you are not shown how whatever just happened was actually arranged. The horse's head just shows up in the guy's bed. Rival mafiosi just get shot. Only the bit where Michael gets the gun from the toilet is gone into in any detail, and even then, we learn nothing of how exactly the gun got there in the first place.
In the normal mafia movie, the James Caan character would be the central figure. But the whole point of Godfather is that the James Caan figure is not the central figure. Too impulsive. Too eager to do something. Not willing enough simply to let nature take its course. So the James Caan guy does not get the top job when Marlon Brando retires. The passive Al Pacino character, the one who just sits in the corner quietly, and later at his desk quietly, and allows most things to just happen, gets the job. And the active, impulsive, James Caan guy gets killed, because of his desire to act. He gets lured into the open and gunned down. The one action that Michael takes being the decision to kill the cop. "Where does it say you can't kill a cop?" Like the perfect poker player, Micheal Corleone sits and waits, and then plays his ace, himself.
The eldest brother, on the other hand, is so inactive that he never does anything. He lets things happen to him and nothing else. Which eventually does for him as well.
Great movie.
Some time ago, I seem to recall them showing on British TV a re-edit of the first two parts of Godfather with everything in chronological order, with those deleted scenes reinserted in their correct place in other words. That I would like to have. Failing that, a bit of paper with all the scenes itemised, starting with a de-Hyman-Rothised G2, then the Real Movie, but with Michael's first marriage from G2 interpolated, then (if you want it) Hyman Roth. Next time, that may be how I do it.
There's an interesting article by Sharon Waxman in the New York Times about the importance of the DVD market to Hollywood, which includes speculations that DVDs may be changing the content of movies.
LOS ANGELES, April 19 — The other day the chairman of 20th Century Fox, Jim Gianopulos, said he got a call from a lawyer friend. The friend said it was an anniversary of the firm and asked where he could get 100 DVD copies of the cult Fox movie "Office Space". The film made only $10 million at the box office but has become a hit on DVD. No one at Fox pretends to know why, but the film's success is another big drop in the river of DVD cash now flowing into Hollywood's coffers.
I'll tell you why. They thought it was crap. But the word of mouth disagreed.
No one in charge at Fox would have spotted Office Space. They are bosses. They were the ones being sent up. They should have asked their nephews and nieces in their twenties with crap jobs like the jobs of the people who work for them. (No use asking the people who work for them, because a truthful conversation in such circumstances would have been impossible. "Uuuuuuurrrrrrrrgggggghhhhh I'm gonna need you to come in Sunday to tell us what you think of this uuuurrrrrggghhhh movie … so if you could be here at 7am that would be uuuurrrrrgggghhhhhh great", or whatever is the equivalent in Hollywoodese.)
Not since the advent of the videocassette in the mid-1980's has the movie industry enjoyed such a windfall from a new product. And just as video caused a seismic shift two decades ago, the success of the DVD is altering priorities and the balance of power in the making of popular culture. And industry players, starting with the Writers Guild, are lining up to claim their share.There's good cause. Between January and mid-March this year, Americans spent $1.78 billion at the box office. But in the same period they spent $4.8 billion – more than $3 billion more – to buy and rent DVD's and videocassettes.
Little wonder then that studio executives now calibrate the release dates of DVD's with the same care used for opening weekends, as seen by Miramax's strategic release of "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" a few days before the theatrical release of "Kill Bill: Vol. 2." (The DVD made $40 million its first day out.)
Studios now spend comparable amounts of money on DVD and theatrical marketing campaigns. Disney spent an estimated $50 million marketing the "Finding Nemo" DVD last year, said officials at Pixar, which made the film. It was money well spent. The DVD took in $431 million domestically, about $100 million more than the domestic box office. DVD has resuscitated canceled or nearly canceled television series like "The Family Guy" and "24," and has helped small art movies like "Donnie Darko" win rerelease in theaters. It is also beginning to affect the kinds of movies being made, as DVD revenues figure heavily in green-light decisions and are used as a perk to woo craft-conscious movie directors.
I think DVD is one of the reasons I'm starting to feel this way about movies.
The piece ends thus:
What no one knows is how long the windfall will last, whether DVD is a consumer bubble that will burst once the studios finish releasing the films and TV shows in their libraries, or whether it will remain a strong current in the entertainment industry profit stream."Right now the studios are making money hand over fist," said Mr. Lesher. "But in five years when you can download a movie as fast as a song, that will go away."
Mr. Gianopulos disagreed. DVD's will last "because of the uniqueness of that experience," he said. "It's no longer 'I saw that movie.' It's 'I saw that movie, now I'm going to see multiple dimensions of that movie.' That's why you want to own it."
I'm with Mr Gianopulos, provided they make them cheap enough. (I bought Office Space for £5.99.) For a fiver a go, I'll keep on buying these things. For more than a tenner, forget it, except if they are Whit Stillman movies.
For more erudite commentary on the above, await the comment(s) here of Michael Jennings, or read these Samizdata pieces.
I won't be seeing the movie because it's not (any longer) my kind of thing, but I do (still) love these huge movie posters. How much would they be paying per week for a spread like this?
This one was photoed last week, right under where the Eurostars come and go in and out of Waterloo.
Looks like tosh to me. But I'm glad to see Kate Beckinsale keeping busy. That must be her in the poster.
Yes, I did a Samizdata posting today called Could someone do with 9/11 what Mel Gibson did with the crucifixion?
My answer is: probably not. Reason: we've already seen it.
Commenter number one agreed, and rammed it home by supplying the link to this.
I'm guessing that not all of my regular readers are regular readers of Alice Bachini. (And vice versa of course.) If so, had I not linked to them, they might have missed these Quentin Crisp quotes, of which this one is my favourite:
I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.
And my personal favourite Crisp quote of all, if I remember it right, goes something like this. He was accosted in a bus or some such public place by a group of belligerent young men, or it may have been a belligerent middle aged lady, who asked, belligerently, "Who are you???" His reply, clearly much used and like his appearance something he prepared earlier:
Who indeed?
A few more Crisp quotes here.
You get the feeling that, provided he was all kitted up, Crisp liked being photographed. In fact I believe he regarded being photographed as a kind of public service. (Crisp was also a quite good graphic artist, which I didn't know until now.)
Which reminds me that, in Britain (and elsewhere?), many of us fondly remember the TV play called The Naked Civil Servant, not least because it kick-re-started the acting career of John Hurt. This was shown in the days when starring as a very obviously homosexual homosexual would be "career suicide" for a leading man of the Hurt sort. Said Hurt at the time: "What career?" He has been interestingly busy ever since (most recently as the star of the TV Alan Clarke Diaries.)
Not long after doing Crisp, Hurt got the on-the-face-of-it completely non-Crispian part of the bloke from whose stomach the Alien first emerged. I wonder, did he get that part because he had played Crisp? Did the John Hurt persona, from The Naked Civil Servant onwards, suggest a normal looking guy who harboured a monster within?
Now they're all at it. The last time I observed Michael Douglas at work, he was doing a turn on Will and Grace as a gay police detective. The publicity profile of a leading man cannot now be said to be complete until some suggestions of gayness have been sprinkled into the mix.
This obviously means that Western Civilisation now teaters on the brink of collapse. But doesn't it always? Isn't that part of its charm?
Yes, I'm starting to like the kind of movies that critics like. The other day I watched a movie starring Juliette Binoche, and was not disgusted.
Partly it was that the Juliette Binoche character was busy actually doing something worthy and virtuous, in this case being a good wife (as it used to be called) to the man she loved. But the best thing about watching the movie was that I had no idea what exactly was going to happen next, and this I found enjoyable. It used to be that what mattered to me was agreeing with what was happening. Whether what was happening was predictable was less important, so long as I approved of the message. But now, I find, predictable virtue, however virtuous, is predictable.
Or take another art type movie, which I'm now in the middle of, on account of the copy of it that I hired from Blockbuster disintegrated into digitally random rectangles and eventually ground to a complete halt. (Someone had been performing experiments on it to see how much sandpapering a DVD can take, before it grinds to a halt.) This is Eyes Wide Shut, with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. The Cruise character is boring, and the Kidman character's only virtue is the flawlessly excellent appearance of her naked body, the nakeder the better. Everything else about her is appalling. But, what are they going to do next? And who with? And what will these people say to them? The last thing that happened was a bereaved woman saying that she didn't want to marry her fiancé Carl and go and live in a different part of the USA, because she was in love with Doctor Tom Cruise. Silly woman. But, my God, I didn't see that coming. And I have no idea what the rest of it will consist of. It's like "Reality TV" only much, much more interesting.
Talking of Reality TV, the thing that used to annoy me about art movies was that the events described in them tend to be utterly irrational and senseless and pointless, in a word, European. But the great virtue of irrational and senseless and European is that you can't crack the code and see what's coming next. American movies are purposive, on the side of virtue, against vice, inspiring, and they tend embody the proposition that virtue can and should triumph over vice, which they do by duly displaying said triumph. And the problem is you can see it coming a mile away. (The scary movies follow different rules, but they are still rules, as the Scary Movie movies have gone to great lengths to explain. Scary movies scare me, and I never watch them, apart from An American Werewolf in London because it has Jenny Agutter in it.)
And I think another reason why I am starting to prefer art movies is that, like the movie critics, I have seen enough American type movies thank you and don't want to see any more per month than I now do. Time was when I saw about one per month, and that was fine. But with the coming of Blockbuster DVDs I am liable to see more like one a week, or one every few days, and one American type movie every few days is too much. In short, my intake of movies is starting to be like that of the movie critics. They, poor things, have always had to watch about six American type movies every day, and they got fed up with this years ago and have for decades been yelling: please, no, stop with the virtuously happy endings and give us insane movies about mad women played by Jennifer Jason Leigh having sex in smashed up cars in car crashes. That's obviously an extreme manifestation of the syndrome, but I'm beginning to feel the same early symptoms, which involve not despising Juliette Binoche as much as I used to, and reading the opinions of critics quoted on movie posters as an actual guide to my future DVD hiring decisions.
Blockbuster have very sportingly provided me with another copy of Eyes Wide Shut, and another week to watch it. This second one looks as if experiments have been conducted with jam rather than sandpaper, but so did the Juliette Binoche one, and that played fine. Come to think of it, there is an extra dimension of edge-of-seat-excitement with all this in the sense that not only do you not, with Blockbuster DVDs, know how it will end, but whether it will end at all. Although, I suppose that some would regard that as a drawback.
There may be all kinds of reasons why I find I like these foreign movies, but the thing that triggered all this was simple economics. Blockbuster have a deal where you can rent three DVDs for an entire week, for only a fiver. Good deal! But the bad news is there are very few decent American movies, by the time all those other damn people have rented them out. Which left only the foreign language crap, i.e. stuff with subtitles, and other stuff which might as well have subtitles for all the sense it makes. So, I decided to give the foreign crap and pseudo-foreign crap a try. And, it's not completely crap.
This chap is going to go far. He is pictured here with Zoe Wanamaker, in one of those sitcoms that the critics disapprove of very strongly because it is so nice, but which the public (which includes me) thought was great fun, what with it being so nice, and also funny, called My Family.
The chap in question is called Kris Marshall, and Nick, his creation in My Family (Zoe Wanamaker plays his mum), was a work of genius, right up there in the comic universe with Vicky (yer bert no bert yer bert no bert) Pollard.
Kris Marshall is now starring in an ITV series called Murder City, which is set in London and which I dip into now and again for the pictures of the snazzy new buildings, bridges, etc.
Murder City is tripe so complete that I have no words to describe how complete this completeness, from the tripe point of view, is, other than to say that it is completely complete. And the character played by Kris Marshall is the most ludicrous creation I have paid any attention to on TV for a very long time. The plots are beyond preposterous. The scripts are beyond parody.
Yet, Kris Marshall will emerge from this grotesque morass with his reputation unblemished, if only because he has proved himself willing to do absolutely any old complete tripe that anyone puts in front of him, and to do it in a manner so far over the top that he can look down on the battle and see the airplanes fighting each other, never mind the soldiers on the ground.
His performance in Murder City reminds me, in this respect, of the character played (Oscar winningly) by Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl, who is an actor, and who is made to play a gay Richard III, and who then gets given a film part by Nicol Williamson on the grounds that if he is willing to do that he is obviously willing to do anything.
Yesterday evening I gave a speech about culture, etc., which seemed to go well enough. However, during it, I overheard myself say something which I had never heard myself say before.
This was in answer to a question about which was my favourite movie, and which was my favourite novel. I started by saying that, thank goodness, we don't have to decide.
But one should not entirely dodge such questions, and I found myself replying that two of my favourite films were: Some Like It Hot, which appears on lots of people's lists of best movies ever: and: a far less well known darkly comic thriller called Into The Night. If you follow that link you will find that perhaps this is one of those cult favourites that lots of people like, on the quiet. I'd forgotten that the cast is so full of movie directors, which is a sure sign of cultness.
Metropolitan never got a mention.
But next came the bit that I really wasn't expecting. I said that as I get older I realise that there are great things (I think I mentioned the "towers of Chicago"), and great works of art, that I will never experience, great novels I will never read. And I then said that of the novels that I have not yet read, the one I am most determined that I shall read, before I die, is Crime and Punishment, by Dostoyevsky.
And that's true. For some reason I have got it into my head that this is one of those artistic pinnacles that I simply must find or make the time to scale. Someone or something seems to have convinced me that this is one of those great works of art that I simply must not go to my grave in serious ignorance of.
Where did I get this notion from? I really don't know. Just a lot of people telling me that it is supremely great, together with the fact that it is not that enormous, by the standards of Great Literature.
My procedure when wishing to acquaint myself with great works of literature is not to just read them, but rather to grab hold of as many movie of TV adaptations of the work in question, and get a rough idea of the story, and of the main characters, into my head. Then, I dip in among the book itself, as if doing a jigsaw puzzle, assembling a bit of the picture here, and a bit of it there, and gradually joining up the bits until I have the whole thing read. After which, if I really like it, I continue to dip.
This is because I find literature really, really difficult to read, in the manner enjoyed by its first readers. Without visual aids like these, I just haven't the patience, the attention span, or the sheer concentrated application to get through these things. Even the longest and most intractable piece of classical music (a Wagner opera for example) only lasts a few hours. A great book can occupy me for weeks.
I suppose the truth is that I don't like literatur