The novelist David Peace, who I've never read and until about two months ago had never heard of, is the man of the moment. His book about Brian Clough's 44 days at Leeds United has been turned into a film, The Damned United. The most interesting article I've seen so far is an interview with Michael Sheen in Time Out. What excites me most is to see what the director Tom Hooper has done with it - after John Adams, one of the finest pieces of work I've seen, TV or film, in recent years, The Knowledge expects great things.
Meanwhile his Red Riding books have been adapted by Channel 4 into a trilogy of films which are gaining lots of acclaim. I've just finished catching up with the first one, Nineteen Seventy Four. The acting was very fine, the writing intelligent and its muted colours created a certain atmosphere that captured a particular perception of the 1970s (although I could have done with a few less 'interesting' shots and moody lighting). What I thought mostly though was: 'but surely this is Chinatown?!'. Okay not quite - they're two very distinct works. But there are definite similarities; Andrew Garfield's journalist protagonist as against Jack Nicholson's Jake Gittes; Rebecca Hall's Paula compared to Faye Dunaway's Evelyn Mulray; the theme of the problems of individuals being linked to widespread corruption all seemed very familiar; and Sean Bean's businessman John Dawson could be John Huston's Noah Cross, even down to his penchant for young girls. Meanwhile 'Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown' becomes 'This is the North. We do we want here!'. Having said all this, it wasn't a patch on Chinatown (1974).
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Friday, 6 March 2009
Art and Life
I was 21 and living in Cornwall. One night we made the trip from Falmouth to Truro to go to the cinema. We missed the start of the film and I had a miserable cold. It was an inauspicious start to say the least. But the film was The Truman Show (1998) and at the end of it I was convinced as I have ever been that I had just seen a masterpiece.
In the ten plus years since it was released it has, if anything, become deeper and more resonant. This was, remember, a few years before Big Brother. As happens so often The Truman Show was part of a trend of films that came out of Hollywood at the time; The Game (1997) and Edtv (1999) also looked at the theme of an individual being constantly watched and whose actions are being controlled by external forces. The subtext of this is the metaphor of cinema; how a writer and director dictate the movements of protagonists, how editing subtly changes the meaning of events and how lighting and photography can alter mood purely through the way things look.
But only The Truman Show (and considering that Edtv is actually about a man having his life filmed by a video crew, it's strange that it is so light on this) begins to hint at the implications which would become apparent with the rise of the reality television genre. Peter Weir's film suggested how we the audience would turn real life into soap opera and how, like a soap opera, our interest would be fickle and changeable.
In the end the film focussed on those creating the story behind Truman's (Jim Carrey) life and didn't quite realise how he could become like the reality TV contestant Jade Goody who, for non UK readers, has moved from a figure of fun and derision to aspirational status symbol to pariah and now with the news of her terminal cancer, a latterday saint. I feel uncomfortable comparing Goody's real pain to fiction, but as a member of the audience which has watched and followed her journey, I am complicit in creating (and encouraging) the Big Brother industry and media creation of her. The article that most sums up my feelings is by the sports journalist Martin Samuel, who may just be one of the best writers around.
In the ten plus years since it was released it has, if anything, become deeper and more resonant. This was, remember, a few years before Big Brother. As happens so often The Truman Show was part of a trend of films that came out of Hollywood at the time; The Game (1997) and Edtv (1999) also looked at the theme of an individual being constantly watched and whose actions are being controlled by external forces. The subtext of this is the metaphor of cinema; how a writer and director dictate the movements of protagonists, how editing subtly changes the meaning of events and how lighting and photography can alter mood purely through the way things look.
But only The Truman Show (and considering that Edtv is actually about a man having his life filmed by a video crew, it's strange that it is so light on this) begins to hint at the implications which would become apparent with the rise of the reality television genre. Peter Weir's film suggested how we the audience would turn real life into soap opera and how, like a soap opera, our interest would be fickle and changeable.
In the end the film focussed on those creating the story behind Truman's (Jim Carrey) life and didn't quite realise how he could become like the reality TV contestant Jade Goody who, for non UK readers, has moved from a figure of fun and derision to aspirational status symbol to pariah and now with the news of her terminal cancer, a latterday saint. I feel uncomfortable comparing Goody's real pain to fiction, but as a member of the audience which has watched and followed her journey, I am complicit in creating (and encouraging) the Big Brother industry and media creation of her. The article that most sums up my feelings is by the sports journalist Martin Samuel, who may just be one of the best writers around.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Changing Your Mind
Jonathan Rosenbaum has republished his original review of Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct (1992) to show his surpise at how much he disliked the film when it came out. He's now a fan (indeed in his book Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons he listed it in his 1,000 favourites) and it raises the interesting topic of a critic changing his or her mind.
Pauline Kael famously never did (largely because she - also famously - rarely saw a film more than once), David Thomson believes it's why rewatching films is so worthwhile and often does. Probably one of the most famous examples is Joseph Morgenstern who wrote Newsweek's review of Bonnie and Clyde. In the August 25 1997 edition of the Los Angeles Times he explains what happened next:
'I think I subconsciously sensed that I’d missed something. When we went out on Saturday and my wife asked what movie I wanted to see, I said “Bonnie and Clyde.” The audience just went wild, and the cold sweat started forming on my neck. I knew I’d blown it.
On Monday morning, I went into Newsweek and wrote a six-column review. It began with a description of the previous review, and then I said, “I am sorry to say I consider that review grossly unfair and regrettably inaccurate. I am sorrier to say I wrote it.”
That night I met Pauline Kael at a Chinese restaurant and she said, “I read your review and you really blew it.” And all I could say was, “Wait until you see the one next week.”'
Pauline Kael famously never did (largely because she - also famously - rarely saw a film more than once), David Thomson believes it's why rewatching films is so worthwhile and often does. Probably one of the most famous examples is Joseph Morgenstern who wrote Newsweek's review of Bonnie and Clyde. In the August 25 1997 edition of the Los Angeles Times he explains what happened next:
'I think I subconsciously sensed that I’d missed something. When we went out on Saturday and my wife asked what movie I wanted to see, I said “Bonnie and Clyde.” The audience just went wild, and the cold sweat started forming on my neck. I knew I’d blown it.
On Monday morning, I went into Newsweek and wrote a six-column review. It began with a description of the previous review, and then I said, “I am sorry to say I consider that review grossly unfair and regrettably inaccurate. I am sorrier to say I wrote it.”
That night I met Pauline Kael at a Chinese restaurant and she said, “I read your review and you really blew it.” And all I could say was, “Wait until you see the one next week.”'
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
A Douglas Sirk steak with extra mash
Channel 4 has just shown two Douglas Sirk films Magnificent Obsession (1954) and Imitation of Life (1939), both of which were remakes of John M. Stahl films. I'm looking forward to catching up with them. Meanwhile there is a new book out about the making of Imitation of Life.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Watching (and reading) habits
Read this. And then read Andrew Sullivan every day. You probably do anyway. Most of the time it's nothing to do with films - just brilliance. As the P.A. Announcer in MASH would say, 'That is all.'
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Some meditations on Cinematic Space
My previous posts lead on to some thoughts about cinematic space. In particular the way films create – for the want of a better phrase – ‘safe space’, in the same way that ‘home’ is a ‘safe space’ or ‘refuge’ is; a place of comfort, a feeling of not wanting to leave, of being happy within certain confines. A psychological trick that we use as human beings is to go to a ‘happy place’ in our heads at times of distress or unhappiness, a memory of a place and time that was particularly special in our lives. In this, the cinema is – as it is so often – like memory:
I am child, four or five, attending nursery, or returning to it after some time out. It is that time of day when the staff seem to abandon hopes of control and surrender to the chaos and mayhem. I and a group of other children find an alcove, a short corridor with a dead end. We build a barricade of sorts out of soft cushions and plastic mattresses which encloses us in. We decide to defend and protect this space from the others. They come and try to tear down our walls. Eventually they succeed. But for a time they don’t and in that time there is a sense of comfort and warmth and at oneness with the world. Yet there is also excitement and fascination and I don’t want this moment to end yet I know it must.
In film there are often sequences we choose to watch over and over again, often as opposed to the films themselves in their entirety. David Thomson claims to regularly view a dance of Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire in Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), a truly glorious piece of choreography set to Cole Porter’s ‘Begin the Beguine’ on a black marble floor, which partially mirrors the two dancers dressed in white, all set against a backdrop of black and white lights, almost a night sky.
Another sequence that I cannot forget and that Thomson looked at in an essay for the Spring 1980 edition of Sight and Sound is Humphrey Bogart’s visit to the Acme Bookshop in The Big Sleep(1946): ‘We are in paradise, a version of Los Angeles with book stores on either side of the street. Is there any surer trace of William Faulkner’s involvement on The Big Sleep than the dreamy city being so book-ended, or book stores harbouring sharp honeys who can persuade the bookworm that he is on the verge of racy action whenever he browses among dry pages?’
I am the age I am now. It is last year.. I am walking down Portobello Road towards the market on a Saturday afternoon. It starts to rain and put up my very flimsy umbrella which may break at any time. Then I come to the market stalls which are under the Westway, a concrete flyover overhead which is the motorway into Central London. The space under the Westway is packed full of people sheltering from the rain. I make my way through and take a spot at a stall selling discount CDs and DVDs and flick through the boxes. This is partly to kill time while the rain stops, but also to find a bargain. The owner of the stall plays music, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Nina Simone and then Glen Miller. There is almost a party atmosphere as the sound echoes into the space under the flyover; a kind of communal joy as everyone exalts being in the dry. There is a short burst as the rain gets heavier and the mood is heavy with a nostalgic war on the home front like spirit. A girl half dances while walking past
Then there is John Boorman’s Hope and Glory (1987), a semi autobiographical story of a young boy (Sebastian Rice Edwards) growing up in South London during World War II works as a series of these kinds of memories rather than any kind of coherent whole. Boorman’s alter ego, Bill, runs over playgrounds of houses left derelict by the blitz, catches hundreds of fish when a German plane drops a bomb in the river and discovers how to bowl the perfect googly. Meanwhile Bill’s friends and family sit around the piano and talk about how much better life is now that war is on and his teenage sister Dawn (Sammi Davis) dances joyfully around the house (ironically they’re all singing ‘Begin the Beguine’ – maybe it’s something about that song!). In the most wondrous moment of the film a barrage balloon comes lose from its ropes and floats across the rooftops like a huge great friendly lumbering elephant in the sky (Dawn (Sammi Davis): He just got fed up with all the other boring old barrage balloons and decided it was time to have
some fun!) only to be shot down by the Home Guard.
As David Bordwell wrote in his blog a few months ago, the true cinephile would ‘watch damn near anything looking for a moment’s worth of magic’.
I am child, four or five, attending nursery, or returning to it after some time out. It is that time of day when the staff seem to abandon hopes of control and surrender to the chaos and mayhem. I and a group of other children find an alcove, a short corridor with a dead end. We build a barricade of sorts out of soft cushions and plastic mattresses which encloses us in. We decide to defend and protect this space from the others. They come and try to tear down our walls. Eventually they succeed. But for a time they don’t and in that time there is a sense of comfort and warmth and at oneness with the world. Yet there is also excitement and fascination and I don’t want this moment to end yet I know it must.
In film there are often sequences we choose to watch over and over again, often as opposed to the films themselves in their entirety. David Thomson claims to regularly view a dance of Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire in Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), a truly glorious piece of choreography set to Cole Porter’s ‘Begin the Beguine’ on a black marble floor, which partially mirrors the two dancers dressed in white, all set against a backdrop of black and white lights, almost a night sky.
Another sequence that I cannot forget and that Thomson looked at in an essay for the Spring 1980 edition of Sight and Sound is Humphrey Bogart’s visit to the Acme Bookshop in The Big Sleep(1946): ‘We are in paradise, a version of Los Angeles with book stores on either side of the street. Is there any surer trace of William Faulkner’s involvement on The Big Sleep than the dreamy city being so book-ended, or book stores harbouring sharp honeys who can persuade the bookworm that he is on the verge of racy action whenever he browses among dry pages?’
I am the age I am now. It is last year.. I am walking down Portobello Road towards the market on a Saturday afternoon. It starts to rain and put up my very flimsy umbrella which may break at any time. Then I come to the market stalls which are under the Westway, a concrete flyover overhead which is the motorway into Central London. The space under the Westway is packed full of people sheltering from the rain. I make my way through and take a spot at a stall selling discount CDs and DVDs and flick through the boxes. This is partly to kill time while the rain stops, but also to find a bargain. The owner of the stall plays music, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Nina Simone and then Glen Miller. There is almost a party atmosphere as the sound echoes into the space under the flyover; a kind of communal joy as everyone exalts being in the dry. There is a short burst as the rain gets heavier and the mood is heavy with a nostalgic war on the home front like spirit. A girl half dances while walking past
Then there is John Boorman’s Hope and Glory (1987), a semi autobiographical story of a young boy (Sebastian Rice Edwards) growing up in South London during World War II works as a series of these kinds of memories rather than any kind of coherent whole. Boorman’s alter ego, Bill, runs over playgrounds of houses left derelict by the blitz, catches hundreds of fish when a German plane drops a bomb in the river and discovers how to bowl the perfect googly. Meanwhile Bill’s friends and family sit around the piano and talk about how much better life is now that war is on and his teenage sister Dawn (Sammi Davis) dances joyfully around the house (ironically they’re all singing ‘Begin the Beguine’ – maybe it’s something about that song!). In the most wondrous moment of the film a barrage balloon comes lose from its ropes and floats across the rooftops like a huge great friendly lumbering elephant in the sky (Dawn (Sammi Davis): He just got fed up with all the other boring old barrage balloons and decided it was time to have
some fun!) only to be shot down by the Home Guard.
As David Bordwell wrote in his blog a few months ago, the true cinephile would ‘watch damn near anything looking for a moment’s worth of magic’.
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