This is the Film archive
October 14, 2007
Once
Another cultural highlight this week was a screening of Once at the NFT. It’s a great film and was followed by a Q&A and then a live music performance from the two lead actors (‘musicians who can half act’ rather than ‘actors who can half sing or play music’ as they described themselves). It’s a great movie. Hope everyone else realises.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 6:09 PM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2006
enron
Left all in the game in the middle, to make a pear and rhubarb crumble among other things, but came back for the end. The story was fairly predictable but there was some good writing and Ray was on top form swearing away. Could use this programme to explore the various meanings of the ‘c’ word (no, not ‘cool, students).
But the really good film I saw this week was Enron - The Smartest Guys In The Room (yes, folks, that’s irony). An amazing story, very well told. There’s so much you could say about it but a few things particularly intrigued me.
First was to see how they started digging a little hole and ended up digging something big enough for the whole company to fall into, and to drag in Arthur Andersen, a whole pile of banks and the state of California with them. Hadn’t realised they were responsible for the ‘Governator’.
Second, was the connection they made between the Enron traders and the Milgram experiments (where more than 50% of ordinary folks turned out to be willing to electrocute strangers to the point at which they risked death just because a man in a white coat told them to). Funnily enough, I was just recently watching the start of Ghostbusters which was also inspired by Milgram.
Finally, it was that queasy feeling as you’d laughed at the evil idiots** for a couple of hours and were then reminded that it really wasn’t funny at all, particularly when you saw what they did to Californians and to the ordinary employees who were completely shafted by them. As usual, the ordinary folk were left with nothing while the guys who caused the mess were cashing in their millions on the way to their cells.
B-)
**not including the guy whose suicide started the film
Posted by Billy at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2006
chicken little
Yes, we’re talking three movies in one week, folks. Today, Kiloh and I went to circus class with Apoa and waited in the cafe while she worked on the trapeze. Kiloh opened her little handbag and produced a giant hole punch, a staple remover and a stapler and set up an office in the cafe. We sat and worked on laptops and DS’s, with a limited wifi connection while Apoa worked on her rope climbing and front balance.
Then we headed to Leicester Square and Chicken Little in 3D. The 3D was not hitech but it worked pretty well. It didn’t add much to the movie, but there were a couple of nice moments when tentacles reached out to us from the screen. The movie was pretty good but not as gripping as some of the classics from recent years.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:25 PM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2006
walk the line
Saw this with Apoa today. She wasn’t sure but I persuaded her and she thought it was pretty good. I think some of the middle bits were a bit slow and grownup for her. I’ve been playing the kids ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ for ages so it had a bit of family significance too. I really enjoyed it. I’m a sucker for popstar biopics anyway and would agree with Mark Kermode that this is up there with the Buddy Holly Story and Slade in Flame (although, to be honest, I don’t remember too clearly what the teenage me made of them). Without wanting to spoil it, I thought the two best scenes were the ‘one song’ bit and the ‘I can’t go down there’ bit.
Meanwhile, we came first equal in the school film quiz last night. We’d have won if we could have listed the 20 Broccoli Bond movies in their order of release. We got the first 9 and the last 3 but the rest were a bit of a Roger Moore-Timothy Dalton soup.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2006
good night, and good luck
imdb - good night, and good luck
Wonderful movie. Even the Holloway Odeon couldn’t spoil it. I don’t think it was just me who felt like the audience (who usually seem like they’re really just out for a chat and just happen to have picked a cinema as the venue) were completely rapt. It had a really magical ‘look-and-feel’ - I felt like I was watching ghosts. Quite a Reithian message, which I always approve of (up to a point, Lord Copper). By the time it finished, I had a strong urge to chainsmoke and drink ‘scotch’ until 3 in the morning.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2006
la campagne to pluto
Saw a talk on Renoir the other day. The highlight was the unused footage from Une Partie de Campagne
I’m nerdy enough to enjoy hearing Renoir say ‘coupez’ and watching his son using the clapper board but I felt like I was dreaming watching the main love scene again and again, and then wakening up every time the scene was over and Sylvia Bataille switched off her rapture and laughed at the camera. It is of course the classic ‘man-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer’ scene but I won’t comment on patonamu’s ‘Romantisized rape scene fantasy of a Man’ comment (at bottom of imdb page.
I left before the question session to go to the screen next door for Breakfast On Pluto followed by a Q+A with Neil Jordan and Cillian Murphy. As Neil Jordan says, the film is ‘picaresque’ and ‘not plot-driven’ so there is a slight sense that it’s just a bunch of stuff happening until it finishes rather than having a sense of climax and resolution. But it’s great, and Cillian Murphy really is awesome. All the other performers are great too, including Gavin Friday and his glam rock covers band.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:22 PM | Comments (0)
film language
premiere - film-making lexicon
This is tiny but I guess it’s a start. Hope they’re planning to add to it.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:18 PM | Comments (1)
December 28, 2005
kong takes more victims
We went to see the new King Kong on Kiloh’s birthday. Kiloh was the only kid who agreed with me that it wasn’t as good as the 1933 movie, but even she thought I was nuts when I said that I preferred the 1933 special effects. I just think that you know where you are when you’re looking at 18-inches of metal covered in rabbit skin and you never get those queasy feelings that you do when cgi goes a bit wonky. The main reason the 1933 version is better is because it’s perfectly formed, compact storytelling and perefectly paced. There were very few moments in the new one that I didn’t enjoy experiencing (although I’ve never been much into fight scenes and tend to fall asleep until they’re over) but it could never have the effect on you that the original did (I’ve been comparing notes and have found quite a few people who had a similar experience to the 10-year-old me who was up all night talking about it with my brother after my first viewing). Anyway, last night we babysat Clem so that Dug and Nicki could go to see it. They came home early as they couldn’t take any more and walked out before the return to New York. Their opinion of the cgi was extremely negative, so maybe I can still convince Kiloh of the superiority of metal and rabbitskin.
Meanwhile, Santa brought the kids a PS2 with a King Kong game. I’ve been struggling with my spatial ineptitude on Skull Island. You know you’re in trouble when you’re helpfully advised to ‘look behind you!’ and you’re not quite sure how to do it.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2005
meet shane black
Went to my first ever London Film Festival event with Dug on Friday evening, a screening of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the first film directed by Shane Black. He’s a very significant Hollywood writer, having written films like Lethal Weapon and The Long Kiss Goodnight. He was Hollywood’s (i.e. everywhere’s) highest-paid screenwriter at one point and is credited with having changed the way studios deal with writers when he accepted gazillions of dollars for one of his scripts. He was there to introduce it and there was a Q&A with him at the end. We were right at the back but we didn’t mind so much when the people next to us were asked to swap for seats nearer the front as the director didn’t want to disturb people at the front when he slipped off to get ready for the Q&A. He must have enjoyed sitting there surrounded by people who were laughing very loudly at the film he made (yes, they were meant to be laughing).
The film was really good and full of jokes about grammaticality, ambiguity, etc. I can’t really use examples from the film, though, until I can count on a fair number of people having seen it.
To make sure we got enough of him, we also went to a screen talk with him yesterday. He was a really good conversationalist with some good insights into the writing process and a bit less insight into directing which, he says, is ‘a snap’. The best thing was the sense that he was relaxed about telling you what he really thought. If he thought a certain director’s films should all be ritually burned and never mentioned again, he was happy to say so.
Just to complete the story of my weekend, I went from the screen talk to a couple of computer stores and a guitar shop before having my pedal fall apart on the way home. I had to head back to Camden to get the bike fixed today and will have to head back to the computer shop again soon as the memory I bought turns out not to be the right kind. Meanwhile, my watch has fallen apart and the catflap has been smashed by some desperate creature breaking out at speed. And something bad happened to my front thigh muscle (I know there’s a technical name but anyway) during football warmup on Friday. Thank goodness Ohna, Apoa and Kiloh have come back so they can share in all of this kind of thing again.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:53 PM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2005
jeds (sic) apostrophe
Back in December 2002, I posted this note from Jed about Dont Look Back:
I just read your blog on apostrophes and wondered if you are interested in my apostrophe story: A million years ago when I was making TV Commercials with D.A.Pennebaker (he of ‘Primary’ and ‘Woodstock’ then and ‘Startup.com’ now) I also helped Penne in the closing post production on his film of Bob Dylans English tour. I designed the poster (now a collector’s item - and No, I don’t have a copy) and took his title ‘Don’t Look Back’ and did an all caps title that became ‘DONT LOOK BACK’. We had a lot of talk about it ( and I have some current emails from Penne discussing it again) and when it came out Safire of The New York Times went ballistic - never mind the movie, he wrote a whole column blasting the movie just for that missing apostrophe. I was quoted by Penne as saying something like ‘Well, we wanted to be controversial’ (which I’m sure I never said!). But today, all over the world that movie and my poster are still working together quite well without the aid of that apostrophe
Last night I went to see the movie at the NFT and I found that the programme notes mentioned that ‘Jed Falby. the advertising executive who copperplated the poster with Pennebaker’ was the one who suggested dropping the apostrophe.
Looks like one of Jed’s stories was true!
B-)
PS Enjoyed the film, which had a decent and enthusiastic audience (they applauded at the end!). In fact, I sometimes found it hard to distinguish the reverential audiences in the movie from the audience in the cinema.
PPS One key scene is the one where Dylan is annoyed because somebody threw a glass. I looked up the movie on imdb (where there’s a note saying ‘orthographically correct title’ for the Lynne Trusses of the world) and was amused to find that it had been Joan Baez who threw the glass cos she was fed up with Dylan.
Posted by Billy at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
sideways
Nice evening with Rupert. Plenty time to eat before the movie for a change. The movie was Sideways It’s really good, although I’d have ended it with him driving off from the wedding. The possibility of everything that happens after is already implied. I’d have found it hard to murder the darling scene in the burger bar, though.
And yes, I did manage to be sensible and am now finishing off a nice cup of decaff tea before going to bed.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:03 AM | Comments (0)
February 26, 2005
gabba gabba hey
Went to see this with Robbie, Andrew and Rupert the other night. Fascinating film, funny, sad and real. A bit like a documentary on humans. Structured like a Ramones set, just one two-minute blast after another.
Great to see Robbie and hear more about his new job and imminent relocation to Oxford. Things are looking pretty good, overall, I’d say. I think Rupert had had one of those difficult, draining days that will be familiar to teachers and academics everywhere.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2005
vera drake - the other view
Think I just shot down in Justin’s estimation. He couldn’t have had a more definitively opposite view of the ‘appaling…typical Mike Leigh…’ load of rubbish I went to see last night. In his mind, it’s a cartoony class-divisive black-and-white-morality load of rubbish where the world is divided into lovely lovely working folk and the big bad evil establishment/middle/upper class ones. Oh well.
B-}
Posted by Billy at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
vera drake
Went to see it tonight. Came out of the cinema feeling awestruck and physically affected by it all. I know some people will be critical of what they will see as sentimental aspects (the music, Vera’s way of talking) but a) they’re wrong, and b) they’re wrong. I’m surprised people have seen it as so definitely ‘taking sides’. It seems to me that there’s a real honesty about the complexity of being a human in all of the characters. Ohna pointed out that, while Vera is ‘helping out’ the women she treats, she doesn’t really connect with them any more than with the guy she keeps making a ‘nice cup of tea’ for. She comes in, boils the water, does the job, and moves on. And you feel the humanity in the characters who have to do the bad stuff to Vera as much as in the people doing ‘good’ things. Even the snobby one has some humanity and ability to compromise. The only one you don’t have much sympathy for is the black market friend. Except that she is female and it is largely about a deeply sexist society. It reminded me of Zola doing his experiments to observe what happens to characters in particular social situations.
But the most amazing thing was just to see film-makers managing to get every single detail of every image and action so absolutely right. Why bother going to see films with actors in them when you can have films with actual people in them? I haven’t seen Million Dollar Baby or The Aviator but I find it deeply weird that they could even be being considered for an oscar in the year that this film came out (except that that kind of weirdness is completely predictable in Oscarland, of course).
Note for pragmatics class: best moment was the Christmas chocolate box. (Note to myself: must also remember ‘minced meat’ and ‘good morning, Mrs. Hooper’ from Desperate Housewives). You can see I’m about to switch back into teaching mode now that (most of) the assessment boards are out of the way.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 1:09 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2004
'bring on the millionaire pop stars'
The Guide from the Guardian has a guideblog which is quite good fun. I liked the bit in this post about the Pet Shop Boys and Potemkin where it says that someone yelled ‘Bring on the millionaire pop stars!’ when ‘the lecture about world poverty started dragging on’. Shame on their lack of revolutionary consciousness! (Or is the problem that it’s overdeveloped?)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 2:04 PM | Comments (1)
bolsheviks in the square
Went to see the Pet Shop Boys soundtracking Battleship Potemkin in Trafalgar Square last night. There were bolsheviks there carrying red flags and distributing leaflets (one was entitled ‘The bolsheviks have had a bad press!’) At the beginning, the MC ran through some of the protests that have taken place in Trafalgar Square, including Rock Against Racism in 1978 (see previous post), many Stop The War protests in the past year or so, and even going back to an antiwar demo in 1914.
The film was much more powerful on a big screen and the music kind of worked. One effect which was used well was adding just a few real sounds into the soundtrack: a plate smashing and gunshots.
I don’t agree with the whingers who, according to this BBC News report, couldn’t see the subtitles and I think the Guardian review it also mentions is deeply suspect, even though I haven’t read it. I never trust a reviewer who says what you’d expect them to say.
In homage, I cycled home afterwards with a red flag flying on the back of my bike.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:49 AM | Comments (0)
September 8, 2004
'did you see the model?'
When we went to see the final part of ‘Lord of the Rings’, the whole cinema erupted into laughter at the funny little hobbits at the end. On Midweek Ian Holm just revealed that at least some people on the film knew how awful it was. After talking about the mask/makeup debate, and enjoying the fact that a man in his 70’s had to be aged up to be Bilbo, he said:
‘But did you see the model? At the end? When Bilbo waddles onto the boat?’
He and Libby had a laugh about the idea that they had gone through all that work on special effects throughout the three movies and then just shoved a wig on a model at the end.
B-}
Posted by Billy at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)