Posts Tagged ‘film’

Taking bold steps into a shiny new future Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

The day before yesterday we went to the cinema because the weather was a bit dodgy. There’s a multiplex about 25 minutes walk away, and after looking over the listings in the sunday paper (La Nueva España this time) we decided on 21:Blackjack. There’s not so much in the way of V.O. here it seems (that would be the version with Spanish subtitles) so we got the dubbed version. Fortunately I read the book this is (so so loosely) based on a while back and the opening Monty Hall problem is a common theme on one of the geeky blogs I read so I was in a good position to follow it. So with the caveat that I missed about a third of the dialogue I thought it was a bit lame, the drama seemed shoehorned in and the relentless Vegasness of it just felt morally grubby.

Yesterday however, was a different kettle of fish. At the philharmonic theatre they’re putting on Lunes del cine (Mondays of cinema) and this month it’s Alfred Hitchcock’s World War, a selection of the master’s wartime work, it’s free entry too and that meant it was almost full. Last night it was Saboteur! This was much harder to follow, there seems to have been much more dialogue in old films, or this one at any rate (FSM help me if I get to watch Adam’s Rib or The Philadelphia Story). Some of the dubbing seemed to have been done from the bottom of a well, and the rate of some of the more patriotic speeches would have been hard enough to get in English, it’s harder still when you can’t use any lip reading to help you guess the sounds. Still, the ending was classic, a chase including a bad guy invading a cinema screen, improbable rescue notes and a final showdown in the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

The chap introducing the film, I guess in keeping with the pacy dialogue, spoke at a fair lick too, I kept up better than Liz I think, because I knew a lot of the names he was using. His big joke was that handcuffs (esposas) is the same as a group of wives (esposas). Well I guess you had to be there…

It’s the Bradford Film Festival and I’ve been to a few things this week.

Hohokam: Basically a low budget film which wants to be French, in that nothing happens. But it doesn’t happen in stylish and significant ways… unfortunately they’re not French, the story is set in Arizona.

Shotgun Stories: Excellent Arkansan revenge drama, a vendetta that has a surprising and pleasing denoument.

Sounds For Silents (Un chien andalou and The Finishing Touch) Silent films with live accompaniment are great: even mad Spanish surrealist eyeball slashing madness. Laurel and Hardy formed a great, weird second half. The music was composed by students from the Royal Academy.

Brazil: I’m so glad I’ve seen it on the big screen. Prescient, scary, relevant and Gilliam-strange. Braaaazillll…. da da da dee da da da deee….

Cthulu: Well we’re gonna do the Lovecraftian Horror, but the protagonist is going to be gay. And we’ll steal the plot of the wicker man, well we would if we could afford it. Some nice touches, genuinely creepy until the hordes of cthulu stumble onto the beach to claim the world as their own (my gran could have outrun them: and she died a long time ago).

Redacted:Brian de Palma goes all experimental using ‘found footage’ to create a bleak but gripping Iraq story.

XXY: Fifteen year old hermaphrodite struggles with more than the usual teenage sexual issues. Ricardo Darin sleepwalks through the movie, but he’s Ricardo Darin, so he’s still cool.

This is Cinerama: Bill Bryson raved about Cinerama. Frankly, I was bored. Maybe it’s the 50′s Americana, or maybe it was the 20 minutes of Aida that was so static it felt like 2 days. Still the screen’s good.

2001: A Space Odyssey: Being a young’un I hadn’t seen this in the cinema before so the 70mm print, on the massive curved screen of Pictureville (it’s behind the usual screen and is a good third wider) with the sound turned up to 11 was brilliant.

Highights so far: 2001 and Brazil. Lowlight: noticing that so many of the attendees were balding fat men who looked like they should be writing train numbers down and realizing that these are the sort of people who go to the daytime showings in the film festival, and the creeping sensation of ‘one of us, one of us, one of us’ that followed.

I went to see Sunshine yesterday, thanks to the National Media Museum and their policy of screening stuff again well after the original release.

I really wanted to like it. It had Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada (from the brilliant Twilight Samurai), Cillian Murphey and was an Alex Garland and Danny Boyle thing. So I was expecting something good.

There were good things… the sound, the visual effects were stunning. The acting was for the most part excellent. The plot… ah… here’s where it got a little silly. Very silly at the end actually where it veered into a sub-Alien spaceship’s not a good place to hide.

But that’s not my real issue.

THERE’S NO SOUND IN A VACUUM!

But this is the tip of the iceberg. It’s an indicator that you’re watching a comic… something less than serious, and for me, when I see that sort of thing I need a story and characters that are totally engaging for me to suspend my disbelief… otherwise I find, completely without meaning to, that I want to say things at the screen.

• Where does the gravity come from… you’re not spinning?
• If you can manipulate gravity why are you in this mess?
• How come gravity comes back on when you close the airlock?
• How come you can stop so easily? Your engines are at the back and you haven’t turned round.
• Why do your designers make routine maintenance of kit that might well need maintenance into a process that means certain death for some unlucky engineer?
• How come you need to be here at all? Can’t the computer do it?
• How am I hearing the whoosh as the big bit of the spacecraft goes past?

THERE’S NO SOUND IN A VACUUM (I want to tattoo it on the inside of the eyelids of movie producers).

Okay. I’m not the norm… but imagine you were watching a film set in Yorkshire, in Leeds… and it’s part of the plot… it’s Leeds. Yet in the background you see Tower Bridge. Do you just say ‘oh it’s not that important. So what? Who cares?”. I care.

SOUND VACUUM

In some films and TV (Firefly is a good example) the story is so good, the characters so gripping that you don’t need answers to these questions (well, tell a lie, I do. I just don’t need them so much unless it’s a slow episode, and in the TV series space was silent, it only had noise in the movie). With Sunshine… I definitely did.

And that ruined it. For me.

So, Regarding Buenos Aires (A proposito de Buenos Aires). Pants. Elasticated nylon brown pants.

So disappointing.

The film festival notes that “eleven new Argentinian filmmakers merge their talents and perspectives to deliver a quizzically enigmatic portrait of BA considering a conceptual presence rather than precise geography. In the manner of Vigo’s A propos de Nice.”

So, in film festival terms, quizzically enigmatic means rubbish you can’t understand.

One woman was so disgruntled that she asked for a complaint form. The reason being I guess that the international consultant (okay, dream job there, watch films, pick films) was very enthusiastic about the film as he introduced it. What he didn’t say, and maybe he should have, was this:

The film you’re about to see is missing a few elements: Plot, characters, a sense of narrative and any redeeming factors. Even the locations they chose are dull and depressing.

This week and next it’s the Bradford Film Festival which means that there are good films to see nearly every day. It also means there are strange, intriguing, unsettling and sometimes downright awful films to see as well (like the Armenian short film To die is to live which was basically a montage of performance art with a thrash metal soundtrack and lots of very loud breaking glass… for eight minutes). But aside from that, so far it’s been good.

On Saturday, while Liz was away visiting friends I went to see From Russia With Love. If, like me the only Bond films you’ve seen in the cinema have been Roger Moore and onwards (Moonraker was my first I think), then you’ve missed a treat. For me, all films are better on the big screen, and it’s a real treat to be able to see classics of old up there (last year, for example, they had The Ipcress File which was great). The second Bond film is much closer in tone to the latest, and the train compartment fight, between Robert Shaw’s blonde killer and Bond is just as ferocious as anything Daniel Craig got up to.

On Monday we went to see Pandora’s Box , a restored print of the 1929 silent German classic. I believe that everyone should try and see a silent film on the big screen. We had a specially commissioned score and a pianist with great endurance (it’s over two hours long) and the film itself is nihilistic psychodrama gold. After a few minute the fact that the actors aren’t speaking is irrelevant, you’re following the story and the characters. It’s only afterwards you think that this was the way your (great) grandparents devoured film.

Other films: The Lives of Others: Riveting Oscar winner about a Stasi eavesdropper who gets involved in those he has under surveillance.

Catch a Fire: worthy South African crime drama with redemption at its core.

The Caiman: Italian satire from Nani Moretti about a B-movie director who ends up making a satire about Berlusconi.

Pitbull: Downbeat Polish hit, imagine an episode of the Bill in which everyone downs vodka every couple of minutes.

Now we’re off to have a Bradford curry for lunch, then see Twelve Angry Men followed by Regarding Buenos Aires