tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44683381879932706722024-03-08T16:26:56.616-08:00Alexis's blogAlexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-73022932979122413412015-08-18T05:40:00.000-07:002015-08-18T05:40:42.380-07:00Viva Corbyn, Vive Ceylan<!--StartFragment-->
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I haven't posted a blog in a couple of years, for
various reasons: life aged 75 being altogether too enjoyable and full to spend
a great deal of time looking at a small screen; age and health making the
composition of online writings less attractive, etc etc. And horrific national
and world events also contributing to one's general feeling of depression if
not actual despair: e.g. the re-election of the British Nasty Party (Cameron,
Osborne & co. with their privileged and moneyed chums); the ongoing global destruction
and loss of life on all fronts (e.g. Syria, Gaza, the Mediterranean); planetary
pollution of every kind; crises in Greece – austerity and desperate immigrants
in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Italic; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><i>swarms</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> (copyright D.
Cameron); American, Israeli and Islamist follies and barbarism and diplomatic
or rulers' hypocrisy; pointless, dangerous and wasteful technological ingenuity
(nuclear proliferation, drones and all sorts of evil weaponry) – you name
it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">But I'll stop ranting and just urge any disillusioned
Labour voters in the (dis)United Kingdom to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, one of the
few honest and fairminded socialists left in the House of Commons: I met him a
few years ago and can confirm that he's a decent, principled, intelligent human
being, just the person to revitalise the Labour movement. The fact that Blair,
Campbell and Mandelson, all so economical with the truth, have come out so
strongly against Jeremy (oh, and just today, Brown the bankers' friend, ditto),
along with the other three whingeing Blairite contenders, should persuade
everyone who disliked and distrusted what New Labour became, to support Corbyn,
who at least has a vision of this country's future untainted by shameless
capitalistic greed and self-interest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Cut to a beautiful, humanist film – exceptional cinema,
which perhaps in time will be regarded as a twentyfirst century classic: </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-BoldItalic; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b><i>Winter Sleep</i></b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">, last year's Palme D'Or
winner at Cannes, a Franco-Turkish production written and directed by the
wonderful Turkish moviemaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Do not be put off by its length
(over 3 hours!) It's faultless and inspiring: the actors seem to live their
parts as they do in, say, Chekhov, and it's perfectly photographed and
altogether inspiring.</span></div>
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Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-45830852730182835722013-07-22T10:15:00.000-07:002013-07-23T05:58:12.576-07:00two Johnsons and CoeIn a recent London Review of Books piece, that excellent and entertaining writer Jonathan Coe examines a recent compilation, <i>The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson</i>. It's as perceptive an analysis as one might expect from Coe, whose fascinating 2004 biography of Bryan (B.S.) Johnson, <i>Like A Fiery Elephant,</i> I've only belatedly caught up with.<br />
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I was struck by some nice parallels and contrasts between Coe's devastating brief critique of Boris the right-wing, uppercrust Bullingdon bullyboy, and the admirable, if overly admiring, 500-page volume Coe devoted to the socialist, workingclass Bryan S. Both subjects, though, amply demonstrate Coe's own wit, wisdom and facility with words. He seems cleverer, as astute yet unassuming, and in many ways more interesting, than either of the Johnsons he's writing about. Coe's flawed if rather larger-than-life protagonists share/d considerable charm, however, alongside their own mightily inflated ambitions.<br />
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Boris lacks weight and intellectual and moral seriousness but masks his High Tory arrogance with a superficially attractive, no-bullshit, faux-naif comical persona. By contrast, Bryan, who regarded himself (in every sense) as a heavyweight novelist, had a rather ponderous and over-schematic approach toward Literature – at least in respect of his own work, which he considered trail-blazing experimentalism. Unfortunately, such self-conscious avant-gardery, however well-intentioned, can soon enough slide into unreadable and unrewarding failures of style, desperately humourless dead ends. Bryan's lifelong desire for ever-broader recognition <i>plus</i> great reviews, increased sales <i>and </i>the<i> </i>big money, all resulted in disappointments, depression, alcoholism, gross over-eating and furious arguments with everyone you could imagine or he could confront. It all ended desperately, with his suicide in 1973.<br />
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Coe points out that like one of his characters, B.S.Johnson was "prone to belligerence when drunk", but he could also be bluntly and aggressively opinionated when sober. It's true that in addition to his own personal and professional struggles – with just about anyone he ever had contact with in the whole English-speaking bookworld! – he also crusaded energetically on behalf of literary freelances, from the early 1960s until his untimely if seemingly inevitable death. Part of the trouble was, he spread himself much too thin in all sorts of forms and communication media – prose, poetry, plays, films, TV scripts, documentaries, radio, editing, articles, reviewing, teaching, anthologising – although some of these directions he felt he had to pursue, in order to support his wife and two children. Coe cites the author Gordon Williams, Bryan's friend and contemporary, who thought him "simply a gifted writer with a somewhat inflated opinion of himself and a baffling compulsion to insult and offend the very people who were most in a position to help him". This personal view seems to confirm a general impression and perception of him from the time.<br />
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Over a dozen years or so, Johnson and I found ourselves on and off the lists of several of the same publishers. Whatever the particular circumstances – too many premature moves, too many different editors – changing your publisher generally proves questionable, especially in regard to aspiring younger writers. Publishers and agents aren't so keen to promote you, unless they feel they own you; you're their discovery and/or property, and will therefore contribute both to their eventual backlist and their reputation – continuing testimony to their critical acumen, not to mention the hope of longterm potential profit! You must 'belong' to them exclusively or at least let them think so. This was part of the problem, and things haven't changed that much over the years. Yet Johnson did come across as never satisfied, despite (for the time) some quite generous fellowships, grants, awards, arts council tours and so on. He made a lot of noise, kicking up quite a fuss, one way or another generating a lot of publicity from his more boorish behaviour. Johnson's bullish, sometimes clowning, always intransigent, nature, may well have cloaked the desperate loneliness and insecurity all decent writers feel: indeed it proved disastrous in the end.<br />
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I recall various writer friends and contemporaries at that time joking about his self-aggrandising, would-be experimentalism and major league ambitions; it was suggested that the use of the initials B.S. accurately implied Bull Shit. This may have been a bit harsh: Coe very diligently and in perhaps over-exhaustive detail, describes BSJ's extreme, ultimately deadly earnestness towards his fame and reputation. But there's a qualitative difference between self-belief, pretension, and innate talent. Of course as Browning had it, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what's a heaven for?" (Now there was an early experimentalist!) Johnson, with all his authorial dogmas, now seems sadly dated if not <i>derrière-garde. </i>Imagining he could emulate his hero Beckett – who was kind and indulgent to him, as to so many others scribbling in his shadow – whom did he approve of, as genuine contemporary British experimentalists? Well, there were a very few chums – Ann Quin, Alan Burns, Eva Figes, Z. Ghose and G. Gordon and the like, none much read now…<br />
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Apart from his adoration of Joyce and Beckett, he seems not to have digested or admired other excellent Irish stylists of the time, the experimenters Flann O'Brien and Aidan Higgins and (naturally!) more traditional storytellers like William Trevor and John McGahern. His critical judgements and development narrowed through neurosis and dogma, and if this sounds like a generalisation via hindsight, what about his silly and ill-informed pontification, in an article for the <i>Film and Television Technician</i> (the ACTT house journal): "There is not one British film which could scrape into the world's top hundred… No, there is not one British film [i.e.1918-71] which can compare with our high achievement in all the other arts". This may have been calculated to provoke and affront his specialised and far more experienced readers; was it arrogance or ignorance? Otherwise, why not a single mention of Hitchcock, Humphrey Jennings, Michael Powell and other classic names?<br />
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BS had a streak of buffoonery, just like Boris J these days, but a deadly combination of thwarted hopes and ambitions, and of beating one's head against a wall of largely self-created hostility and confronting the largely reactionary conservative attitudes of the time, misled him into thinking he was an isolated and misunderstood genius. Even more sadly, with some late and despairing intimations that an artist's premature violent end would help ensure their immortality, his energy ran out and he felt his time would never come, except posthumously. Not a happy conclusion for a confused, often agreeable and gregarious man.<br />
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Ironically, he was right, though much good it did him: however, since his death forty years ago, he has been 'rediscovered', written about (especially well and expansively in Coe's biography – and Coe has also just edited a selection of BSJ's shorter writings), and will now doubtless be hailed as the master wordsmith he thought he was. Well, I suppose the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. I did meet Bryan Johnson in the early sixties a couple of times; he was drunk and argumentative and we had little in common; I also contributed to <i>Transatlantic Review</i> in 1962 when he was Poetry Editor: there, that's declared my interest, in so far as it goes! But he's still worth far more than his namesake – the current, shallower, more privileged but less substantial, 'other' Johnson, Boris the Tory Pretender.<br />
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<br />Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-59596149190471414502013-06-26T12:21:00.002-07:002013-06-26T12:21:23.469-07:00J.R.Ackerley and 'Tulip'I've always enjoyed the writing of the British author J.R (Joe) Ackerley, long dead now, an excellent critic, editor and prose writer. His poignant memoir <i>My Father And Myself</i> is a little classic of autobiography, a fascinating revelation of familial skeletons-in-cupboards – at once intimate and outspoken, elegantly written, confessional yet discreet.<br />
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Watching the animated film drawn from Ackerley's book <i>My Dog Tulip </i>(itself another extraordinary autobiographical work, based on his longterm relationship with his canine, Queenie), we found it just as enchanting and indeed even more impressive on a second viewing. Released in 2009 (when I first saw it on the big screen) <i>My Dog Tulip</i> struck me as one of the very best full-length animated features I'd ever seen. My opinion was generally shared by reviewers and arthouse audiences, including Philip French, perhaps the doyen of UK film critics, who wrote: "Exquisite… A film to cherish". It's also very funny as well as touching, and says more in its 82 minutes than many more mainstream and bigger budget movies. It's voiced, quite beautifully and most appropriately, by Christopher Plummer, the late Lynn Redgrave and Isabella Rossellini, while the film's whole conception – the brilliant artwork, music and the spikily effective and witty narrative – is altogether delightful.<br />
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It's the work of a painstaking and exceptionally talented pair, an American husband and wife team working from home: their names are Paul and Sandra Fierlinger. Paul, an immigrant to the USA of Czech origin, has for years been an Ackerley fan, and here he has somehow managed to absorb and convey onscreen a quintessentially <i>English</i> style of humour. The film is witty, rueful, self-deprecating, a quietly observant, wonderfully camp analysis of class and relationships between humans and canines in the UK. (Anyone, for instance, who enjoys Hancock and Alan Bennett, would delight in this imaginative and enthusiastically created classic of animation.) Try to get hold of the dvd, for the extras are most entertaining and illuminating. I can honestly add, as a confirmed cat-lover, that this is absolutely the best and most endearing film about a man and a dog that I've ever seen – and frame by frame, it's technically brilliant too!Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-12352790078477044642013-04-25T09:53:00.000-07:002013-04-25T09:53:02.553-07:00last comment on last ritesOne more haiku, the last I intend to produce re the vile Thatcher and those creepy yet grandiose shenanigans in St Paul's last week. (Further reactions, however humorous or creative, may not be altogether good for an old geezer's blood pressure.)<br />
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OSBORNE AT HER OBSEQUIES<br />
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A clown's tears, facile:<br />
they're all in this together,<br />
Tory crocodiles!Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-67305129884583436172013-04-17T06:24:00.004-07:002013-04-17T06:24:43.866-07:00thatcheration indeed<!--StartFragment-->
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<b>EPITAPHS FOR THE BLESSED
MARGARET</b><br />
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GRAFFITO FOR A GRAVE<br />
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Writ large on a wall<o:p></o:p></div>
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somewhere in Brixton: <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">IRON<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">LADY</span>? <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">RUST IN PEACE</span><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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SHOPPING FOR THE NATION<o:p></o:p></div>
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Her greed-grocer mind<o:p></o:p></div>
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spelled <i>Upward Mobility</i><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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whatever the price<o:p></o:p></div>
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EARLY LEARNER IN THE CLASS STRUGGLE<o:p></o:p></div>
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Young ‘Snobby Roberts’<o:p></o:p></div>
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reinvented herself, moved<o:p></o:p></div>
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on, waging worse wars<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>So much for her who, among her other infamous achievements, considered Mandela a terrorist and Pinochet her pal!</i></div>
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Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-13461028166625985512013-01-14T04:44:00.000-08:002013-01-14T04:44:11.011-08:00two new documentary classicsThe finest, most memorable, and by far the most emotionally involving films I've seen in the past month are both documentaries. Our excellent local Picturehouse should be commended for showing two such disturbing – indeed deeply shocking, and therefore <i>un</i>commercial, or <i>anti</i>-commercial – films.<br />
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Both <i>5 Broken Cameras</i> (dir. Emat Burnat and Guy Davidi) and <i>McCullin</i> (dir. David Morris and Jacqui Morris) focus on truthful and courageous photo-journalism in extremely hazardous and life-threatening circumstances. Exemplary bravery, honesty and compassion are the (un)common denominators of both.<br />
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<i>5 Broken Cameras</i> is co-directed by a Palestinian and an Israeli – in itself a remarkable enterprise – and the Picturehouse brochure describes it thus: "At his son Gibreel's birth, Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat gets his first movie camera. He starts recording both Gibreel's childhood and the violent conflict that snowballs as Israel's 'security barrier' is driven through their neighbourhood. This affecting, poetic documentary reveals the determined spirit of Burnat and his family." An understatement, of course, as anyone who's been to the West Bank would recognize.<br />
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"Affecting" yes, but a truly <i>effective</i> picture too, in which the shameful daily injustices, and the bullying brutality and murderous actions perpetrated by the IDF and the self-styled Zionist "settlers" are vividly and searingly depicted. Personal essay and political cinema at its most provocative, its award at the Sundance Film Festival was well-merited: audiences will need strong stomachs and open minds to watch this extraordinary film, but let's hope it gets as widely distributed as possible. Don't miss it! (There's also a frank and informative interview with the two directors – impressive and dignified people, both of them. This is on Youtube, and a dvd will be available at the end of January.)<br />
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Don McCullin, now in his seventies, is in John Lennon's phrase a "working class hero", an internationally renowned British photographer. Here he is interviewed about his life and dangerous career – the art of survival while witnessing and chronicling many of the bloodiest and most violent conflicts of the last 50 years. These range from the Congo to Vietnam, Biafra to Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Salvador and the Middle East. McCullin's sincerity, modesty and moral decency (as with Messrs. Burnat and Davidi) shine through the interviews, stills and archive footage around which this biographical feature is constructed. This film too is revealing and riveting, and it too exposes the full madness, horror and human tragedy of occupation and war. McCullin doesn't duck the hard questions, especially the awkward and perhaps unavoidable fact that taking photos in high-risk situations so often gives the person behind the camera an adrenalin rush like no other: gambling with one's life for the sake of a scoop, in order to fix something quite fleeting, yet absolutely precious and unique, made him almost what he calls in his superb autobiography <i>Unreasonable Behaviour </i>(1990),<br />
"a war junkie". Fortunately for him and for us he survived various misadventures and injuries along the way. Now he lives in his beloved Somerset, photographing the landscape and sorting his amazing archive for posterity. Another impressive human being, now the subject of an equally impressive film.Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-85278566291262304142012-10-31T05:45:00.000-07:002012-10-31T05:45:48.031-07:00another terrific filmI've been travelling and writing quite a bit recently, hence no blog since June. We've been to Berlin and Lübeck, fascinating places, the latter a rather pleasant surprise, especially as regards art and marzipan…(Incidentally our city Exeter was bombed in WW2 in retaliation for the devastation of Lübeck, Hitler's so-called Baedeker raids of 1942.) Then the new book <i>Getting On </i>(Poems 2000-12) was launched here in Exeter, with a further launch and reading scheduled at Bookmarks in London next week (Nov 6th).<br />
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At present our main library is undergoing major alterations and refurbishment, moving to a site next door: all these changes and (let's hope) improvements will take about 14 months apparently. Alongside the staff shake-ups and redundancies, all too many books and dvds are being sold off at bargain prices: in terms of film, this has meant we've watched a variety of interesting foreign classics, award winners and recent indie stuff (because that's what The Powers That Be are generally keen to get rid of!) None of them easily classifiable, let alone qualifying as mainstream movies.<br />
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Among some unexpected treasures <i>not</i> so far listed to be sold off, is <i>Leap Year</i>, a terrific Mexican film directed by an Australian director in his mid-thirties, Michael Rowe. <i>Leap Year</i> dates from 2010, when it won the Golden Camera award at Cannes for best debut film. It's quite gruelling and explicit – one-room, low-budget filming, while the acting of Monica del Carmen is courageous and extraordinary. Here's the supreme antidote to all the sick-making Hollywood shlock pumped out about dating and human relationships: in its pared-down (89 mins) style – a quasi-Bressonian eroticism? – and its extreme and unrelenting sincerity, <i>Leap Year </i>is strong stuff. Its frankness might well offend, provoking shock and defensive emotional reactions from many quarters – especially among the narrower sorts of feminists, the censorious prudes and lovers of sentimental cliché, and all those unthinking consumers of standard porn – none of whom would properly engage with the brutal and moving realities of the film's sexual politics. And it's not simply about gender attitudes, big city isolation and loneliness, but also very much concerned with class, race and economics in Mexico, where Michael Rowe has lived for many years. Rowe's stubborn persistence in getting his uncompromising script accepted and, after years of difficulties encountered, managing to direct it so effectively, bodes well for the future of someone who seems like a genuine auteur. Good luck to him, the award for his <i>Año Bisiesto</i> was no more than he deserved.Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-20841744310160029342012-06-21T08:51:00.001-07:002012-06-21T08:51:49.617-07:00canine clerics and doggy Deans<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">The 2008 UK-NZ co-production, </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Italic","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Italic; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">Dean Spanley –</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"> is still further cause
for celebrating our excellent city library. This film is a delight, a true
lettuce, a veritable 'little gem' – 96 mins only, crisp and perfectly
delicious, excellent through and through.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">Its pedigree, however, is as weird, wonderful and unexpected as can be.
The extraordinary plot, unusually witty and engaging, is drawn from Lord
Dunsany's novel </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Italic","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Italic; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">My Talks With Dean Spanley</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">. Dunsany (1878-1935), was an Anglo-Irish peer,
friendly with Yeats, Gogarty and other literati of his time. He wrote in many
fields, in verse and prose, and had plays performed at the Abbey Theatre,
Dublin. He's remembered these days, if at all, for various anthologised
supernatural tales in collections here and there; these uncanny stories may
seem rather understated by current tastes, and occasionally a bit whimsical,
but they're generally literate and well worth seeking out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">I've not read the Dunsany novel on which the film is based, but the
screenwriter is another original, the veteran Alan Sharp. Sharp, a Scottish
novelist who moved to the USA in the Sixties, and now lives in New Zealand,
worked with distinction in Hollywood on some terrific movies. I recall and
recommend </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Italic","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Italic; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">Night Moves</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"> and </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Italic","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Italic; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">Ulzana's Raid</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"> – just two of his screenplays, thriller and western respectively,
which managed to put various new twists on those declining genres. The quality
of the dialogue and narrative is almost guaranteed, therefore, by this unlikely
Celtic combination, ancient and modern. And the fine and perfectly judged
direction is by a relatively new hand, Toa Fraser, a (thirtyish?) New Zealand
guy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times-Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">As for the story, it's a very curious narrative, set in Edwardian times,
about reincarnation and metempsychosis and father-son relationships and the
ways of dogs and man, wine and cricket, life and death! There's no violence,
but considerable verbal wit and impeccable visual style in this film: the
exceptional, high-quality cast (five principal characters) play it out quite
beautifully. Entrancing, hilarious and yet poignant performances by them
all…We've never seen Peter O'Toole better, he's quite brilliant here, while
Jeremy Northam, Bryan Brown, Judy Parfitt and Sam Neill are superb in support.
Neill, especially, is both funny and affecting as the eponymous Spanley, an
anguished churchman strangely dogged by caninity, who seems ready to sell his
soul for some rare Tokay. What an ensemble! The players all seem effortlessly
to inhabit that vanished Edwardian world: it's the art that conceals art, thoroughgoing
professionalism plus the odd dash of sheer inspiration. This is a ravishing
film to look at also, neatly paced and edited what's more, and unlike anything
else I've seen in years. "A genuine and surprising pleasure", Time
Out called it, and their critic was spot on: Woof woof! sniff this special
treat out now!</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-75676043860502720832012-03-30T10:07:00.004-07:002012-06-21T08:42:17.067-07:00Jean Rhys and her new blue plaqueIn London post-WW2 there's never been quite the equivalent of a Parisian <i>crepuscule</i>, that brief 'blue hour' to which Jean Rhys often refers in her pre-war writings set in these cities. At any rate, it was around 4 o'clock on a dull grey but luckily dry March afternoon (06.03.2012) when the impressive English Heritage blue plaque for Jean was unveiled.<br />
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Witnesses to this memorable day numbered about two dozen, most notably Jean's granddaughter Ellen Moerman and various Dutch and French friends and colleagues; the excellent organisers from English Heritage, Dr Celina Fox and Libby Wardle; my partner Maggie Fisher, photographer for both my memoirs of Jean; Paul Sieveking, co-founding Editor of <i>Fortean Times</i>, and a mixed bag of cross-generational admirers, along with several biographers of the psychologising/speculative variety. Ironically but perhaps fittingly too, there were no publishers, no literary critics and no journalists to be seen. Jean had stated quite specifically that she never wanted biographies of herself – something Ellen also confirmed. (See too my recent haiku <i>The Author/ities</i> included with the short speech mentioned below.) However, Jean would doubtless have been delighted to be accepted, acknowledged and celebrated so enthusiastically and indeed definitively as a famous name in 20th century literature.</div>
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The distinguished historian and author Celina Fox, opening the proceedings, spoke about the work of English Heritage and their criteria for blue plaque consideration. It was at Flat 22, Dr Fox pointed out, that Jean and her second husband Leslie Tilden Smith lived, after their visit to Dominica. This was the only time Jean revisited the island of her childhood and it had proved a bitter experience, though it did bear strange and extraordinary fruit in <i>Wide Sargasso Sea. </i>If Jean's most famous book was written in Devon, however, it was fitting she should be commemorated in London where she spent much of her life, the city serving as background for much of her fiction. At Paultons House Jean Rhys wrote that superb and tragic book <i>Good Morning, Midnight.</i> But it was also in Chelsea, in 1914, that she first began setting down in notebooks bought in the Kings Road, memories of an emotionally devastating love affair – the sort of traumatic material she could later describe, concisely and objectively, like no other modern writer.</div>
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The traffic on the Kings Road scarcely required raised voices, let alone microphones, and after my own short speech, I introduced Ellen, who concluded her own comments on this relaxed and touching occasion by drawing the red curtains (which a cherrypicker had earlier placed high on the wall), and so the plaque was permanently on view to London and the world.</div>
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Photos of this ceremony – plus the cover of a special commemorative booklet of a quartet of her terrific short stories, edited by Ellen Moerman – may be viewed at http://www.alexislykiard.com. Click on <i>Articles and Reviews</i>, then on <i>Jean Rhys Used To Live There Once </i>for my short eulogy on the occasion, and for further information about the proceedings.</div>
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<br /></div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-28863034322041775162012-02-28T10:57:00.007-08:002012-02-28T14:03:15.943-08:00Check out the Czechs and GreeksTwo more excellent dvds from Europe, via our beleaguered but still splendid city Library. First, though it hardly needs recommendation, especially after its initial, huge international success, an absolute milestone of Czech cinema – Milos Forman's superb picture from 1965, <i>A Blonde In Love. </i>Don't be put off by the<i> </i>iffy UK title: this modest, 81-minute B&W masterpiece is an unforgettable movie, so humane, quirkily funny and bitter-sweet about the thwarted dreams and expectations of young lovers. It proved a favourite with Lindsay Anderson, Ken Loach, Tom Milne and many other estimable cineastes and critics. As for director Forman, he progressed of course to Hollywood and a glittering career as an 'American' filmmaker, scooping in the process various Oscars for <i>One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest</i>. His colleague on <i>ABIL, </i>Ivan Passer, didn't do so badly either (see my earlier comments on Passer's terrific thriller <i>Cutter's Way</i>).<div><i><br /></i></div><div>All in all, <i>ABIL,</i> a small-scale, perfectly realised and observant piece proved highly revealing and slyly satirical about Czech life under a repressive regime. (This was several years before the shortlived Prague Spring gave the ordinary unprivileged citizens a welcome glimmer of hope and temporary relief from their everyday struggle to exist.) If the film had not been such a prizewinner and runaway success both critically and commercially worldwide, Forman and his team might have found themselves in trouble with the homeland authorities.</div><div><br /></div><div>But joyous subversion apart, there's just so much to enjoy: the eponymous teenage blonde Hana Brejchova (Forman's ex-sister-in-law) whose debut this was, gives a quite delightful performance, although performance is perhaps the wrong word for such a natural, poignant and attractive on-screen presence. Most of the amazingly well chosen cast were non-professionals, while the best-known actor, the male lead Vladimir Pucholt (another perfectly judged character) eventually moved to the UK, assisted by Lindsay Anderson and others. Pucholt, who had not been allowed to study medicine, his first love – apparently because of his suspect bourgeois background, or some such strange authoritarian pretext – moved again to Canada and became a paediatrician in Toronto. What a star, eh?! This sort of unusual honesty, a decent, anti-heroic, gently humane and good-humoured view of life suffuses the film: it's a touching, uplifting and at times hilarious work.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not in this league, but very original and strangely affecting too, as well as humorous and unexpected, is <i>Attenberg </i>(dir. Athina Rachel Tsingari, 2010). As in <i>ABIL</i>,<i> </i>there's a stunning young actress, Ariane Labed, who won an award for her performance at the Venice Festival of 2010. Yorgos Lanthimos, director of an even odder, also recent Greek film called <i>Dogtooth</i>,<i> </i>plays one of the main roles, but it's all impeccably acted and directed. (In colour, almost inevitably these days – though as with the late great Angelopoulos, there's often mud, rain, factories, cheap hotels, dereliction and ugly concrete buildings – so sundrenched beaches etc don't actually get much of a look-in.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Never mind, though: this weird, downbeat little tale of a virginal young woman trying to come to terms both with her father's terminal illness and her own inexperience confronting sex and mortality – let alone her own reclusiveness and problem with living in the 'real' world – has considerable fascination. It's eccentric and intriguing, but never boring… Labed's obsession with David Attenborough/'Attenberg' and his tv. studies of different species makes a strange and rather funny counterpoint to the glum confusion and manic girly behaviour depicted. Viewers may also learn, and perhaps be as outraged as we were, that the Greek Orthodox church does not allow cremation! Director Tsingari herself is very intelligent, and her comments (see the interview in the <i>Extras</i>) on this sort of social hypocrisy, and about her individual approach to directing the picture – referencing screwball comedy, buddy movies, rites of adulthood and much else, suggest she's a talent to watch. But… given the current Greek crisis… who will step forward to finance her next film? Fingers crossed.</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-26657553607110484082012-02-19T09:46:00.000-08:002012-02-19T11:18:20.444-08:00Russia and 'Russitania'I've just seen for the first time two old films, both set in 'old' Russia, both beautifully made B&W features, both very much of their times (the Forties and Fifties). Each looks back however to depict a particular vision of Russia during an earlier historical period: they cover the pre-Revolutionary era and WW2, embracing both melodrama and drama, kitsch and tragedy – courtesy of Moscow and Hollywood. Two inevitably different views of course – poles apart, fantastical or neoRealist – of Russia and what one might label 'Russitania'. <div><br /></div><div>I'd highly recommend <i>Summer Storm</i> (d. Douglas Sirk, 1944), taken from Chekhov's only novel <i>The Shooting Party</i>, itself a little known yet fascinating piece of early crime fiction. Sirk was a wonderful director, another of those talented European emigrés to Hollywood, and he assembled an odd but splendid trio of leads: George Sanders, Edward Everett Horton, Linda Darnell – and even Sig Ruman as the latter's drunken dad! The lovely and planturous Linda D. plays a splendid femme fatale, not at all a fairhaired Chekovian <i>belle paysanne</i>, but superb and statuesque nonetheless. In his film review of July 1944, the great James Agee wrote of "Linda Darnell, flashing her eyes and teeth and flexing her glands at both men", adding wistfully, "since, in general appearance she is a kind of person I can imagine going on all fours for, especially if I were a provincial judge, I thought her not entirely ill cast." Sanders is Sanders, witty, worldweary and irreplaceable. He was actually closer to Chekhov than the other thesps (born, after all, in St Petersburg); indeed, David Thomson has remarked on the unique Sanders style of "ostentatious and articulate disdain", brilliantly comparing him to "an amused, intelligent and playful Nabokov narrator". Many incidental pleasures too, in this studio-bound but highly entertaining Russitanian flick – another fine dvd reissue.</div><div><br /></div><div>As for Mikhail Kalatovov's 1958 Cannes prizewinner, <i>The Cranes Are Flying</i>, it's moving and gruelling, a big international breakthrough for post-war Soviet cinema, and a truly gripping anti-militarist piece. What's more, there's another, very different and equally gorgeous female lead, the beautiful and redoubtable Tatiana Samoilova, the great-niece of Stanislavski, no less! Film historian and distinguished documentarist Basil Wright has noted (1974) that here "we at last find a heroine of character, indeed of a certain elegance, very much unlike the puddingy future <i>hausfrauen</i> of the cliche-ridden Stalinist cinema." Apart from what Wright calls its "technical exuberance" the film is a salutary reminder of the sacrifices made by ordinary Russians during WW2 (their losses – around forty million dead – were on a scale scarcely imaginable to us today). Samoilova is deeply affecting while everyone, given the tragic nature of the story, seems to 'exist' on the screen, rather than 'act': this was very much a picture of the real world, rather than a skilfully contrived studio fantasy. But both these films, so expertly made, in their quite different ways provide unforgettable images and performances which, once seen, will surely linger in the minds of anyone who loves what Lenin called 'The Tenth Muse'.</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-6440368038340663042012-02-17T07:48:00.000-08:002012-02-17T09:01:02.620-08:00two terrific noirsBoth dated 1950, both B&W as noirs should be, brilliantly photographed by Burnett Guffey and Hal Rosson respectively. Both are adapted from good, workmanlike pulp novels, by Dorothy B. Hughes and W.R.Burnett. (Who they? younger fans may ask, but even the minor genre names are easier to follow up now than they once were.) Anyway, both have superb casts of clearly defined, believable if not sympathetic, and of course <i>flawed</i> characters.<div><br /></div><div>Nicholas Ray's <i>In A Lonely Place</i> (via Hughes) contains perhaps Bogart's and Gloria Grahame's finest performances, which in both their cases is saying something. John Huston's <i>The Asphalt Jungle </i>also has a topflight cast, though not of such starry names – Sterling Hayden, Jean Hagen [see my Feb 12 blog], Sam Jaffe, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern. (But there's an unforgettable cameo by the young Marilyn Monroe!) While <i>IALP</i>, a psychological thriller, has very little explicit violence, <i>TAJ</i> has quite a lot: both, though, are equally affecting/involving. You care rather more about these people than the stock characters and cliche'd types in most genre movies. But then Ray was a near-great director. Andrew Sarris, one of the best ever US film critics, in his outstanding and provocative book <i>The American Cinema</i> (1968), lists Ray in the section 'The Far Side Of Paradise', concluding that "His films are the indisputable records of a very personal anguish that found artistic expression for little more than a decade". Ray's characters are imbued with "all the psychic ills of the Fifties", says Sarris shrewdly as ever; indeed, Bogart's sardonic paranoia and Grahame's bruised and spiky beauty, are a perfect match (in acting terms) and make a perfect <i>mis</i>match in terms of the twisting, cunningly paced narrative.</div><div><br /></div><div>Where Ray's vision was often appealingly raw, imaginative (or dare one say, re Hollywood, <i>poetic</i>?) and always highly emotional, Huston tended to be overblown and overrated [he's "Less than meets the eye", in another very apt Sarris category], too often cynical and calculating. In his latter years Huston turned increasingly to adapting, or in my view, ruining, some great and inspired works of literature by Melville, Crane, Lowry, Tennessee Williams, McCullers, and Joyce – works whose obsessive poetry totally eluded him. <i>TAJ</i> is probably Huston's last truly excellent movie. In terms of getting everything absolutely right, that is… But it was good to see these two terrific noirs once again: they've worn well since I first saw them, in the Sixties – the Ray one of the best and sourest dissections of Hollywood, the Huston one of the best heist movies. They've recently been reissued/restored in dvd form and no movie collection should be without them. </div><div><br /></div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-16026390242699308932012-02-06T05:33:00.000-08:002012-02-06T08:37:55.561-08:00auntie Beeb cops out again<div><div>The latest example/victim of the compromises that the cop-out mentality involves was a play last Saturday night in the regular weekend drama series – <i>The Wire</i>, on Radio 3. The Radio Editor of the BBC's official <i>Radio Times</i> magazine selected this play, <i>Zurich</i>,<i> </i>as her Choice of the Day, ending her mini-essay with the words "it's an ultimately uplifting story". This, along with the play's title, was the giveaway that must have tipped off many listeners to the cop-out ending. Why then bother to listen, albeit incredulously, to a threequarter hour play trundling towards a foregone conclusion?</div><div><br /></div><div>We stuck with the play, however, because the "issue", (ghastly overworked word) which it tried none too well to dramatise, was, and remains, an important one, and not just for older generations. Two fortyish Irish guys – Paul wheelchair bound, paraplegic for 16 years after a car crash, accompanied by his longtime best friend Aidan – travel to Zurich for an AC/DC concert. Paul has told neither mother nor friend that he's decided to end his life at a Swiss clinic. (Did we hear 'Gravitas' substituted for 'Dignitas'?) In the course of the play Paul tells Aidan and us quite insistently that his life is limited, painful, humiliating, lonely and depressing; he feels as a severely disabled person that he has not had and cannot have, any meaningful relationships, and has absolutely nothing to look forward to except more long years of even worse suffering. </div><div><br /></div><div>But Aidan ducks out of doing the brave, moral and decent thing – to comfort and help his friend get to the clinic and offer support on that final journey; instead, he angrily lectures him and promptly takes a taxi to the airport. Then, in a completely unlikely last-minute volte-face, Aidan dashes back to the clinic and arrives in the nick of time before the irreligious cynic can quaff the hemlock. Aidan bursts in without demur and persuades Paul, in a couple of preachy minutes flat, not to persevere with his long-considered and courageous decision to put an end to what's been a meaningless continuance rather than a meaningful existence. And so back they go to Ireland, no problem. "Just like that", as Tommy Cooper would have said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, how nice and neat and safe and heartwarming! We can all switch off and feel better. But what of proper, serious debate – what price good sense, humanity and reason? 'Dignity in (not) Dying' it certainly wasn't – more like 'Humiliation in Going-on-living, or Larkin's "Man hands on misery to man". (Incidentally, <i>Zurich</i> came across as predictably patronising and sanctimonious towards disabled people. But noticing the preponderance of Irish names involved – author, production credits etc – one rather suspects some religious pressure somewhere behind the scenes and the unconvincingly pat and moralistic 'argument'.)</div></div><div><br /></div><div>On another note, if you ever listen to <i>Feedback</i> on BBC R4 you'll rapidly conclude it's a waste of time contacting Auntie with even the slightest whiff of criticism. Listeners invariably get fobbed off with some statement that exudes defensive smugness, rather than any logical explanation, apology or (gawd forbid!) admission that a programme, producer or presenter might possibly have got something wrong, might perhaps have been partial, biassed or mistaken. Political correctness, waffle and avoidance of what the managers perceive as potentially controversial, will always win out.</div><div><br /></div><div>It leads to a feeble style of broadcasting – driven by a seemingly general dread of causing offence to somebody somewhere, to anybody anywhere! – and it has its inevitable consequences of fudging and cant. These are exemplified by numerous trailers and warnings about the strong language and possibly distressing issues raised in the programmes to follow. When there's a really important issue – life and death – to deal with, we deserve more honesty or at least something better than what we're currently being fed. </div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-40398021953199456352012-02-05T08:08:00.000-08:002012-02-05T09:16:05.136-08:00death of a masterUpon the sad demise, a week or so ago, of one of the world's last indisputably great film directors, I'd meant to post some sort of comment, however sadly inadequate. But I did read some decent Obits, and meanwhile have been entranced, watching again (or in some cases seeing for the first time), various masterpieces (<i>The Travelling Players; Landscape In The Mist</i>, etc) by the man who was Greece's finest filmmaker, Theo Angelopoulos. At least he'd have had the brief satisfaction of seeing his films collected as dvds in three boxed sets, the last of which is generally available this month.<div><br /></div><div>What a way to go, however! Angelopoulos was aged 75, directing his new film in Piraeus, when run down by a motorcyclist who turns out to have been an off-duty policeman. Road accidents of one kind and another, so often seeming absurd and arbitrary as well as particularly shocking, have curtailed any number of formidable creative talents (Nathanael West, Camus, Pollock, Clifford Brown, W.G. Sebald etc): you're left thinking 'I wish there'd been more time, more work, more opportunity to relish what might have come next'.</div><div><br /></div><div>Still, the legacy of Angelopoulos, those long, slow, remarkable and remarkably complex films, may now be properly assessed. He was a true original, and anyone interested in the art of cinema will be fascinated by his work. You don't have to know about Greek myths, history or politics, but the more you do know or care to find out about Greece's past and troubled present, the better. If you want lots of violence, fast editing, loud music and all the other obvious and banal aspects of the current mainstream, you won't like Angelopoulos's unique style or his exquisite and original use of landscape, and the emotion and poetry will pass you by. Time and patience are required in order to appreciate to the full the imaginative and innovative cinema of Angelopoulos: one is drawn into these lives and images gradually, frame by frame… And like all true artists he creates an atmosphere, a special world that fascinates and almost hypnotizes: it's a genuine and extraordinary experience that, as they say 'grows on you', and one which you can grow with. 'Caviare to the general' maybe, but a taste very well worth acquiring.</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-80463961496454052652012-01-26T03:37:00.000-08:002012-01-26T04:51:11.462-08:00all Allen ain'tWhat a marvel is <i>The Shop Around The Corner</i> (d. Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)! Found a copy of this classic (Korean, what's more) in yet another recently opened local charity shop, for just a quid. The young James Stewart is the perfect foil for Margaret Sullavan (1911-60), that unique and highly original performer, who made a successful if relatively brief career on both stage and screen. Sullavan is now largely forgotten, except by older film fans: she projected a gutsy yet vulnerable, breezy but endearing charm. Her private life however, like that of many another Hollywood star away from the unreal celluloid world, seems to have been genuinely troubled – three marriages, ill-health, increasing deafness and death by her own hand… Her admirer Louise Brooks, another complex character and terrific actress, praised "that wonderful voice of hers – strange, fey, mysterious – like a voice singing in the snow."<div><br /></div><div>Sullavan and Stewart are quite wonderful together, and the supporting cast, especially Frank Morgan as the shop owner, are also superb. This sublimely bitter-sweet – not quite screwball, if splendidly quickfire – comedy now seems perhaps closer to Renoir than Hawks or Preston Sturges, but with delightful hints of all three. Lubitsch directed with what was at the time labelled his 'touch' – a style full of feeling, European wit and elegance and just a dash of cynicism.</div><div><br /></div><div>My favourite Lubitsch film, if anything even more enjoyable, remains the hilarious <i>To Be Or Not To Be </i>(1942), starring the lovely and equally ill-fated Carole Lombard. This, for whatever devious reasons of copyright or studio archival manoeuvres, seems currently unavailable. But maybe I'll be lucky enough to truffle out a Korean copy of this one too, and in some other inviting shop around the corner?</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-4292385703668573932012-01-26T03:10:00.000-08:002012-01-26T03:34:55.069-08:00Allen's angstThe decline of Woody Allen in recent years has been pitiful. I watched in disbelief (luckily having copped a freebie copy) <i>Vicky Cristina Barcelona </i>(2008) – a dismal waste of time, money and talent. Does this man inhabit the real world or, come to that, his well-heeled American tourist's idea of Europe? This dreary little travel brochure and vehicle for product-placement lacks wit, irony or any hint of humour or realism. Arty types and intellectuals, according to him, are all beautiful people who live in beautiful villas, drive flashy sportscars and fly private planes. And they all have unlimited time and money with which to indulge themselves. We're invited to admire them and empathize with their trivial love-lives. Their life-styles seem to have been inspired by <i>Hello</i> – or in this case perhaps, <i>Ola! – </i>while the clumsy cinematography and deadpan voice-over (not by Allen, and anyhow utterly banal) do nothing but expose some wooden performances. (Only the talented Rebecca Hall emerges from this cinemuddle without damaging her rising reputation.) Mysteriously, this trite tripe was an 'Official Cannes Selection'. But talking of damaging one's reputation, maybe Allen should simply pack it in now, while the going's not so good.Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-33293351413152648592012-01-22T05:23:00.000-08:002012-01-22T07:18:36.574-08:00knife edge of hysteriaFurther to my previous comments about great B&W photography in Bela Tarr's <i>MFL</i>, the excellent work of Ernest Laszlo (another Hungarian, this time a long-term Hollywood emigré) in <i>The Big Knife</i>, 1955, is to be cherished. Robert Aldrich's terrific drama, which I saw in student days and had not seen since, seems better now than it ever did. Aldrich, once affectionately termed by French critics 'le gros Bob', was one of the very best Hollywood directors, specialising in gritty if not brutal movies about survival against the odds. Working mainly within the system, Aldrich produced some genre classics - war, westerns, noirs etc - including some of my absolute favourites in those fields: <i>Attack, Apache, The Last Sunset, Ulzana's Raid, The Grissom Gang, Emperor Of The North</i>, and the quite superb <i>Kiss Me Deadly. </i>You'd expect no less from a man who'd worked with Welles, while the physicality, the brilliantly expressive, almost expressionist, camera angles, the almost if not quite OTT performances, all seem perfectly right in these films' contexts.<div><br /></div><div>As for <i>The Big Knife</i> itself, it features a matchless cast: the inimitable Jack Palance in one of his finest and most gripping dramatic roles; well supported by Ida Lupino, Shelley Winters, Everett Sloane, Wendell Corey, and Jean Hagen (she of "Aah jest caint <i>stann</i> um" fame in <i>Singing In The Rain).</i> And of course, there's Rod Steiger with a strange haircut and a deaf-aid, ranting and raving away as a studio mogul who's an unholy mix of Messrs Mayer and Cohn… Yet his "hammy outrageousness" (<i>Time Out</i>) somehow works when set against Palance's obdurate intensity. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here's fear and loathing in LA, via the flawed but often brilliant Clifford Odets! His "wordy and stagebound script"<i> </i>was nonetheless considered (also by <i>Time Out</i>) "intellligent and literate", and it seems in hindsight a rather accurate depiction of Fifties America, cold war paranoia and all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Early last year we saw a stage production of Odets's first success, <i>Waiting For Lefty</i>, and this Thirties piece seemed both curiously timely and dated. The powerful verbal gifts (along with the accompanying torrential verbosity) retained much of their force, while most of the occasional sentimental blemishes could be overlooked: Odets's socialism, like his heart, was in the right, or rather the left, place. Alas, by the end of the McCarthy era, Odets had sold out and become an extremely well-rewarded Hollywood hack, albeit one of the best around: see also<i> Sweet Smell Of Success</i>, an equally fine, equally hysterical film scripted by him a couple of years after <i>TBK</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, just like Aldrich himself, whose later output declined and became slickly commercial (remember <i>The Dirty Dozen</i> and what happened to the later careers of Mesdames Davis and Crawford?) Odets went for the easy money flowing down the mainstream. But he remained, according to Jean Renoir, a decent, warm and very generous friend. In <i>My Life And My Films</i> (1974) Renoir writes movingly of their friendship and Odets's last days. He praises Odets's only foray into directing - the very odd <i>None But The Lonely Heart</i>, which starred an absurdly OTT Cary Grant plus dreadful cockney (not even Bristolian!) accent. This praise was, one feels, down to Renoir's own comradeship and innate generosity, rather than a true reflection of an interesting failure: surely <i>NBTLH</i> is not, as anyone who's seen this muddled piece will agree, any sort of "masterpiece"? Still those were times of exaggeration, days of hysteria and suspicion, when friendship accorded to outsiders, foreigners and exiles in Hollywood was in short supply. Renoir simply notes that Odets was "like everyone representative of his period… a victim of the anti-communist obsession". The paranoia and blame of that time are in impressive and riveting evidence in <i>The Big Knife.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-11855984347663678062012-01-16T10:15:00.000-08:002012-01-16T11:28:32.573-08:00cutting edge of pseuderyWhat fairly recent movie garnered the following puffs on its dvd case? ("Mesmeric… This is film noir as metaphysical poetry… Extraordinary black and white camerawork" - <i>Time Out</i>. "extraordinary" - <i>The Observer</i>. "compelling" - Peter Bradshaw, <i>The Guardian</i>. "majestic and mysterious"- <i>Scotland on Sunday</i>. "mesmerising… Swinton is just one highlight" - Jonathan Romney, <i>Independent on Sunday</i>.) And was a Cannes festival selection, at that? Answer: <i>The Man From London</i>, directed by Bela Tarr, 2007.<div><br /></div><div>I recalled struggling with his earlier four hour effort, the dismal <i>Satantango, </i>whose opening sequence, a dark wet farmyard somewhere in Hungary, lasts for about half an hour – during which time we see some murky outbuildings, cattle crossing the mud in the wind and rain and nothing much else of any excitement or edification. We found ourselves eventually forced to fastforward in disbelief, and realised that nothing much else did happen during this interminable and lugubriously boring saga: nothing like our own dear and multiply-plotted Archers! </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyhow, in all fairness, I checked out of our library this more recent film, because the time listed was only "90 mins approx". Also, <i>The MFL</i> was based on an author I admire, Simenon: this promised to be an unexpected marvel of psychological accuracy and gripping too. And the excellent and risktaking Swinton is always worth watching… Ah what a disappointment! The opening shot, up down and across, back and forth, along a ship's hull at night, was indeed leisurely. Thereafter the trades description act should have been invoked: a total of two hours ten minutes is not quite "90 mins approx", while all those carefully-selected, grandiose M-words and laudatory adjectives from various supposedly intelligent critics, from "mesmeric" onward, should have tipped us the wink. We dutifully stayed the course, again with considerable exasperation: was it really possible for any filmmaker to be so impossibly, wilfully slow, to show such complete and utter disdain for both narrative and audience?</div><div><br /></div><div>Absurd multilingual dubbing and absolutely ludicrous 'storyline' didn't make for a riveting experience. Why should the extremely aged retiree Scotland Yard inspector, the eponymous <i>TMFL</i>, who speaks with the voice of Edward Fox, cross the Channel to investigate a missing sixty thousand quid – from a theatre box office of all unlikely places? He ignores a corpse in the harbour (Bastia apparently, rather than Belgium) and finally allows a murderer – the killer of the first killer, if you follow me – to go free with a large wodge of money and a pat on the back. (Tarr very much?) I don't think I have spoilt the film by hinting at the sheer absurdity of it all. Yes, it's indeed beautifully lit and photographed, but so what? Every face and object, longshot or closeup, is lingered on interminably, for no discernible purpose. A frustrated stills photographer Tarr may be or might have been, but an auteur he ain't. A pretty pretentious interview with The Man From Hungary is included as an 'extra'. This confirmed my misgivings and resolve never to watch another such piece of stodgily intellectualised boloney ever again. Life is too short, and good art is still shorter, but the Bela experience is far too long: beware and avoid!</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-10123100639688132412012-01-02T06:47:00.000-08:002012-01-02T07:35:31.735-08:00those Quays!The Quay twins, never to be confused with the awful Krays, conceived and directed in 1995 the unique and extraordinary <i>Institute Benjamenta</i>, or <i>This dream people call human life. </i>It was great to catch up with this rare gem a few days ago (thanks once again to Exeter's fine film library!) in its new dual format edition. This includes an informative booklet and lots of fascinating extras – several other shorts by the Brothers Q, and interviews with them and the exceptional actors Mark Rylance and Alice Krige, who star in this wonderful film. Of course the fact that it's B&W and drawn from the weird works of the German-Swiss author Robert Walser (1878-1956), whose latter years, from 1929, were spent in a mental hospital, may discourage your average browser in search of digital tricks and zappy sledgehammer editing, but the loss will be theirs.<div><br /></div><div> The distinguished British poet and translator Christopher Middleton refers to Walser's "charmed ironic clownishness", and certainly the Quays seem to capture this. "An exquisitely realised anti-fairytale, a fragile world shimmering with luminous energy and hypnotic beauty" says blurb, and for once that's spot on. I should think anyone who likes Beckett, Kafka and Keaton would love this film about a very peculiar training school for servants, but it's a truly independent and original piece of cinema. Gottfried John, a Fassbinder stalwart, also plays an important part, and the film is mysterious, comical, oneiric, surreal and gorgeous to watch. Those who have savoured the strangely distinctive, sometimes nightmarish animation and the singularly odd puppetry and dreamscapes of the Quays' earlier films – their adaptations of Bruno Schulz for example – and their affinity with Central European filmmakers like Svjankmaier and Borowczyk, will need no further recommendation.</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-13616891186280742252011-12-23T14:56:00.000-08:002011-12-24T15:26:28.614-08:00two oldies but goodiesTwo amazing movies: one of the best ever documentaries; one of the most visually exquisite films ever made. First, <i>The Thin Blue Line </i>(1988), directed by Errol Morris the true story of the murder of a policeman in a Texan town. A grim and absolutely riveting chunk of lowlife exposing a dreadful miscarriage of US justice, it involved a mixture of corruption, malice and incompetence that resulted in the wrong man being convicted and despatched to Death Row. Uniquely and admirably, the filmmaker's dogged investigation into this crime proved instrumental in the innocent's belated release and the actual killer's eventual arrest and conviction. Apart from its vital crusading element, the film is brilliantly assembled – interviews trenchant and edgy, photography, editing and music all terrific. (The latter is by Philip Glass, what's more!) Gripping, grotesque and often blackly humorous, it's an indictment of ignorance, prejudice and the complete folly of judging by appearances.<div><br /></div><div>A very different but equally extraordinary picture is <i>Színdbad </i>(1971), the wonderful Hungarian film directed by ill-fated, highly talented Zoltan Huszárak – dead at fifty and still scarcely known outside his homeland. The excellent Second Run outfit this year released a dvd of his single masterpiece: it's a film of breathtaking visual beauty, humorous, poignant and in the best sense truly colourful. In just 90 minutes, the eponymous protagonist is shown reflecting on his life of sensual indulgence: memories of food and women predominate, since Színdbad's a greedy connoisseur of both. Yet the singleminded pursuit of pleasure can't ever distract him from the awareness of time passing and of ageing, nor from the inevitability of that final encounter which always comprises the last voyage of every Sinbad. The film adapts some fictions dating from 1911-1912 by a well-known Hungarian author Gyula Krúdy – poetic, avant-garde for their time and, by reputation, extremely difficult to translate. It seems though that Huszárak accomplished the near-impossible in movie terms: if the narrative on first viewing appears baffling here and there, this stunning film absolutely holds the interest throughout. Spellbinding colour photography and editing, a fine central performance, and some of the strangest and most lingeringly beautiful images and sequences ever: think Ophuls, Renoir, Michael Powell, than whom there's no higher praise!</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-4198854331293717662011-12-21T08:20:00.000-08:002011-12-24T15:23:57.419-08:00admirations and qualificationsI'm a great admirer of Terence Davies and his extraordinary films and have told him so in the past, but <i>The Deep Blue Sea</i> is a sad miscalculation, curate's egg if ever there was! There's a wonderful cast, giving uniformly excellent performances, as one would expect from a lineup that includes Simon Russell Beale, Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and, in support, Barbara Jefford and Ann Mitchell… But, but, but – why remake what was originally a somewhat thin if 'wellmade' and rather middlebrow theatre piece (by T. Rattigan), already filmed, equally unexcitingly, with Kenneth More and Vivien Leigh in 1955?<div><br /></div><div>As regards recreating the immediate post-WW2 period, it's all slightly <i>wrong</i>: the dark interiors aren't dingy enough, the film is generally too colourful and soft-focus, while London in the late 1940s and early 50s seemed – via my own recollections of a middleclass background and upbringing there – altogether more sombre, dirty and impoverished. The film's clothes and the people wearing them invariably look too <i>clean</i>; the streets and bomb sites are too 'theatrically' arranged and not really squalid; the smogs and grime are missing: the glum and downbeat plot required monochrome!<i> </i>Weisz is too young and glamorous for the role of Hester, while the age-gap between herself and Russell Beale, playing her husband Judge Collyer, makes their earlier relationship (or 'backstory' if you prefer) altogether unlikely. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's a flashback scene to the blitz with people sheltering in the underground, which, again, is too extended and extraneous and so seems wilful, artificial, quite the opposite of truly atmospheric. (Matthew Sweet's recent book <i>West End Front </i>tells fascinating tales of the toffs – among whom would surely be numbered the likes of Judge and Lady Collyer – holing out in the posher London hotels whose cellars and basements had been specially adapted for the comfort and convenience of the better-orf.) Further details are off-kilter also: jolly pub singalongs, dwelt on indulgently, ditto the opening and closing Samuel Barber stuff. Oh dear, and Weisz doesn't even smoke her cigarettes convincingly, the only minor (if important!) criticism one might make of her very fine performance…</div><div><br /></div><div>Once again, as in my previous comments on Andrea Arnold, one must stress that every talented director has the right to come a cropper every so often! It's hard enough to raise funding for any film, fullstop, and creative spirits <i>need</i> to work. So the temptation to remake or adapt a classic, or some tried-and-tested vehicle for actors, must be ever-present. At least this is a watchable couple of hours, dull and a bit camp, but not out-and-out exasperating drivel like <i>Withering Depths: </i>try again lads and lasses, to find, fund and film something worthier of your considerable talents!</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-29504872953239382952011-12-09T05:30:00.000-08:002011-12-13T08:24:38.880-08:00ups and downs with books and filmsJulian Barnes's Man Booker win was predictable (a 'third time lucky' or consolation prize for a dependable if unexceptional veteran?), but his rather slight novel's not a patch on a longlisted debut noirish fiction by A.D.Miller <i>Snowdrops</i>. Barnes is a good critic of, and writer on, most things French, particularly literature, but Miller's terrific Moscow-set thriller with its chilly atmospheric descriptions, cool psychological insights and frighteningly casual brutality is very well written indeed, Graham Greene without the catholic claptrap, an uncluttered and intelligent look at current Russian society. (Maybe <i>Snowdrops</i> didn't have enough intellectual pretension, perhaps downgraded somewhat as a 'genre' novel, but we found it a fascinating and unputdownable read.)<div><br /></div><div>Two recent films seen, by a couple of the best directors around (both women, coincidentally). <i>Wuthering Heights</i> (dir. Andrea Arnold), an absolute disaster, a dreadful film from what's anyhow a very over-rated novel. A friend who works in the theatre told us it was like having her face thrust in pig slurry for two hours! I suppose re Arnold and her directing of features it was "third time unlucky" and every director, however talented, has the right to try something and fail, but this was an absolute disaster with hardly any redeeming features, anachronistic to the point of absurdity. The idea of a rather sensitive <i>black</i> Heathcliff (a nod to updating and/or political correctness?) was simply misguided, and, given the 1820s, any such person who told his landowning 'superiors' to "Fuck off you cunts!"simply could not have existed, nor continued to exist thereafter! More generally, no one so much as shivered in all that cold and wet oop on they moors; the drippy closing song, a folk-rock indulgence was ridiculous, etc etc. But it's hardly worth serious analysis: avoid!</div><div><br /></div><div>Lynne Ramsay's welcome return to direction, with <i>We Need To Talk About Kevin</i>, was something else altogether. Properly forceful and shocking. (Given a dvd of this, we were riveted, neither of us having read the book.) But we're longterm fans of the intense, statuesque and magnificent Tilda Swinton, a brilliant actress (no, <i>not</i> actor!) The casting was completely convincing too, all except for the husband, who – no fault of his own – looked like a bluecollar worker, someone off a building site, perhaps, and thus no intellectual or physical match for the brainy and literate Tilda character. It was never explained, either, how this taciturn geezer made his money – and there was lots of it, judging by the family's lavish home and life-style. Maybe we missed something that made sense or was explained adequately in the book, but this seemed the only flaw in a very absorbing and thought-provoking movie: recommended for those not, as they say, of nervous disposition.</div><div><br /></div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-33336204682236197652011-11-21T06:32:00.000-08:002011-11-21T07:28:05.309-08:00travels and more filmsGetting around France by SNCF, especially if you are eligible for and invest in, a Carte Senior, booking well ahead, is a very pleasant experience, easy, affordable and stress-free. Too much in our three weeks to reflect upon and write about, as yet. Highlights included the biggest ever Diane Arbus exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Musée Angladon in Avignon (great collection of 19th and 20th century art, plus first editions, notebooks, sketches, MSS etc from the likes of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Apollinaire, Jarry, the Surrealists and best of all where I was concerned – 3 of Lautréamont-Ducasse's 7 known letters). The amazing Roman arena/amphitheatre at Nimes, and walking over the hills to the equally stunning Pont du Gard. And staying, for several days in her Provençal village house, with Jean Rhys's granddaughter: thank you, Ellen! Following which, Mourjou's (23rd?) annual chestnut festival, where we spent a wonderful week chez our old friend the grand maître of the chataigneraie, author and cheesemeister Peter Graham. Bliss: wonderful weather, great company and fantastic quality and quantity of degustations of all sorts.<div><br /></div><div>Adjusting to the UK on return has proved gradual if not downright strange. But at least a couple of good films (borrowed once again from the wonderful World Cinema section of our beleaguered local library) to regale us: <i>Larks on a string</i> (Jiri Menzel, 1969) and <i>Incendies</i> (Denis Villeneuve, 2011). The first, immediately banned in his native Czechoslovakia for years, did not resurface until 1990, and caused Menzel much hassle – disrupting a career that had promised so much, with the Oscar-winning <i>Closely Observed Trains</i>. His colleague on both films and several later ones, the fine author Bohumil Hrabal, also suffered when the shortlived Prague spring of 1968 was followed by the brutal Soviet occupation of their country. <i>Larks… </i>gained an underground reputation however, and in 1990 won the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear. The 2011 dvd reissue, plus short interview with Jiri Menzel, is highly recommended, a very funny yet poignant and instructive little satire and a colourful (in both senses) slice of European history. </div><div><br /></div><div>As for this year's foreign Oscar-nominated <i>Incendies, </i>it's closer to Greek tragedy, but set in an unspecified Middle Eastern country whose inhabitants, whether exiled or returned, cannot escape past or present conflicts and all the various dreadful legacies of violence. If that sounds solemn or 'worthy', believe me it's not! This French-Canadian-Arabic production is impeccably acted by a cast that includes both professional and non-professional actors: indeed, some of the latter are actually refugees themselves. The result, adapted from a stage play, is an extremely powerful and moving cinematic drama, full of extraordinary landscapes, faces and situations. Unmissable for anyone interested in contemporary cinema, and also including some fascinating director interviews.</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-54145278596109275732011-08-24T14:39:00.000-07:002011-08-24T16:01:03.402-07:00A French maestroLooking forward to another French trip in a couple of months, and meanwhile borrowed from our city library (grimly facing the threats of council and Cameronian cuts and austerities) two terrific films. Both are directed by that excellent (if still underrated – in this country at least) filmmaker Maurice Pialat (1925-2003). Pialat was one of the finest post-WW2 French auteurs, and remained a controversial figure throughout his distinguished career. The first in time, only recently available on dvd, is <i>A Nos Amours</i> (1983) and introduces, in her extraordinary cinema debut, the sixteen year old Sandrine Bonnaire. Bonnaire became one of the most attractive and intelligent European actresses of her generation, and this film examining a disturbed adolescence in a dysfunctional family has sensational performances by everyone involved, including Pialat himself as the father and failed patriarch, and Evelyne Ker as the mother. Bonnaire from the first to the very last frame is gorgeous and indeed unforgettable. It's a film that hasn't dated at all and packs a powerful punch, and I'm glad to have caught up with it at last. A classic!<div>
<br /></div><div>Totally different, but also powerful and moving, is Pialat's take on <i>Van Gogh</i> (1991). On a second viewing, twenty years after its original release, I was struck by the superb performances, especially by Jacques Dutronc as the troubled artist. It is as it should be, an exquisitely colourful, beautifully photographed piece, full of surprises: the characters seem to <i>live</i> onscreen rather than 'act' in any costumed impersonation or BBC-style period drama. It's all strangely convincing, coolly framed yet highly emotional, unpredictable and always provocative. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>One of the best-ever writers on cinema, David Thomson, who's invariably judicious, witty and illuminating, makes an apt final comment on Maurice Pialat in his indispensable <i>New Biographical Dictionary of Film</i>. Thomson links Pialat's humanist style and very distinctive approach to cinema with that of those other greats, Renoir, Ozu and Mizoguchi. Not much else to add! You can only agree with such an insightful and consistently reliable movie critic and biographer. And having now seen just four Pialat films out of what's a considerable oeuvre, I look forward to seeing as many of the others as possible.</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4468338187993270672.post-70241248373708088532011-08-08T16:07:00.000-07:002011-08-09T10:51:19.758-07:00A few more unmissables<i>A Separation</i>, the excellent Iranian film which won several awards recently at the Berlin film festival, is just about faultless. It's an absolutely riveting narrative demonstrating just how an inflexible Law (whether based on religionist or state control) can wreck lives and relationships. Terrific stuff, with performances that seemed lived rather than 'acted'.<div>
<br /></div><div>As regards recent British cinema, there are some exciting younger directors around. Try to see <i>The Disappearance of Alice Creed</i>, a clever, twisty indie threehander, written and directed by (30ish?) J. Blakeson, and starring Gemma Arterton – very gutsy and convincing. The film, an economical, well-paced and rather nasty kidnapping tale, seems more than timely too, given the ordeal only days ago of that wealthy young heiress in Australia!</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Saw a dvd of Andrea Arnold's <i>Fish Tank</i>, which, like her earlier films <i>Red Road </i>and the award-winning short, <i>Wasp</i>, are mightily impressive on second viewings. What strong performances she draws from her young casts, and what a bleak and brutal Britain she exposes! Far from entertaining stuff, but completely gripping and provocative in the best sense. Only Clio Barnard's grim biographical documentary <i>The Arbor –</i> which recounts, via family, friends and colleagues, the truly horrific success-and-disaster-story of the late Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar – can match Arnold's unflinching and ferocious vision. In these films are to be found a wild bunch of bright but underprivileged young women, struggling against a male-dominated society that uses, torments and rejects them. Not recommended for depressives of either sex, however!</div>Alexishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14733333815866525002noreply@blogger.com0