the cellulord is watching

TOP TEN OF 2011 - IMHO!

2012-01-07T01:01:00.003Z

I don't usually rank films. People ask me my favourite film ever, it changes. Top five? Okay, but I can't tell you the order. Normally, I know which film I like most in a year ... But can rarely think of a top ten. Last year, for some reason, I could. So I did. Here they are: The Ten Best Films of 2011 ... Official!

10: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

It annoyed me when they changed the name a couple of months before release – from Rise of the Apes. The added ‘Planet of the’ just seemed to make it all so unsubtle for me. The film itself, thankfully, worked a treat. It begins as a modern-day reworking of the Frankenstein story then develops into something far more spectacular. The motion-capture work with the rightly-celebrated Andy Serkis is remarkable – especially facially – but you never forget you’re watching a CGI monkey. Some of those facial expressions are heart-breaking … But you never think of him as a real ape.

9: THE RUM DIARY

Can’t explain why I liked this so much, because it is a minor work for all concerned. People sing the praises of Thompson, yet all the great lines in this film (of which there are many) are Bruce Robinson’s, who Johnny Depp successfully dragged out of retirement to write and direct this. The end result works well as a companion piece to both his Withnail and I and Depp/Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I can think of no higher complement than that.

8: SOURCE CODE

This is a real Rubik’s Cube of a fillum. It’s a mystery you enjoy solving. It takes the relatively unpromising premise of ‘let’s run the same eight minutes over and over again’ and manages to turn it into a compelling character-driven action-piece, one part Groundhog Day to two-parts Twilight Zone. After (the superior) Moon, this will be Duncan Jones’ calling card for the States. Expect exceptional things from him in years to come! There's loads more info, plus an explanatory infographic for those who still don't get it, with my review here.

7: ATTACK THE BLOCK

This is a bravura opening volley from Joe Cornish’s feature-film career. The film is unfairly compared to Shaun of the Dead because of the horror/comedy mix and the presence of Nick Frost. The only similarity is that they both understand and have great fondness for their source material – in this case early John Carpenter movies – but have not allowed that to stand in the way of their own creativity. I doubt if this will go down as well in the US as Shaun did, because they won’t understand much of the dialogue (if I’m honest, I didn’t understand all of it) and therefore won’t be Cornish’s hot ticket. But he has already got a Tintin script for Spielberg under his belt, so he’ll do alright!

6: CAPTAIN AMERICA: The First Avenger

This film is a good-natured, beautifully-designed romp with an excellent central performance from Chris Evans, who impressed me for the first time in his career. Yes, it’s a piece of mental chewing-gum, but it’s done with such panache – and is so loyal to the spirit of the 1940s source material – that it wins over the most cynical viewer. Along with Hugo, it has the best special effects of the year! And the best review of it, of course, is here.

5: X-MEN : FIRST CLASS

This film has a real panache, and looks to be Matthew Vaughn’s second stab at grooming a future James Bond (he gave Daniel Craig his first leading role in Layer Cake) because Michael Fassbender is captivating as Erik Lensherr, the avenging angel. A magical way of re-inventing the X-Men universe. Now, if only they could make a Wolverine film this well! For more info, my definitive review is here.

4: WARRIOR

The trailer did not sell this to me, neither did this unimaginative poster. I just wasn't interested. Then a few friends started telling me this was their film of the year. Intrigued, I investigated further and discovered: It is so much better than last year’s much-feted multi-Oscar-winner The Fighter. This is the story of two estranged kick-boxing brothers who, independently (and rather improbably) entre the same competition with inevitable results. It shouldn’t work. The plot is ridiculous, but the performances are so committed and so involving, the writing, directing and editing so perfect that you can’t help being drawn in and mesmerised by it.

3: DRIVE

Some films are released. Some escape. I had to hunt this film down with bloodhounds. It didn’t play in any multiplex in a fifty mile radius of where I live. But it was worth the hunt. This is a minimalist, chilly film with an extraordinarily controlled central performance from Ryan Gosling (Whose always interesting but easy to miss career really stepped up a gear in 2011). Yes, the film is entirely spoiled by its contentious trailer, so don't watch that, watch the film instead. To be fair, compared to Valhalla Rising (director Nicolas Winding Refn’s last film), Drive is as action-packed as a Transformers movie.

2: SUBMARINE

Came as a complete surprise to me, this did. I rarely fall for the interesting, independent British films, I’m always seduced by the big, flashy Hollywood fare. But this year was full of surprises for me. Submarine is simply a delight! If you haven’t watched it yet, treat yourself, pausing only to read my review, here.

1: HUGO

My opinion of 3D is a matter of record, yet Hugo needs to be in 3D. This is the only film yet made that made me upset that I can’t see in 3D. It is an integral part of the fabric of the film – which is a delightful fantasy set in a magical, beautifully realised world. You can feel the joy of discovery as the long unused parts of Scorsese's mind that once made him a genius, were fired into renewed life by the possibilities of this new medium. This is almost perfect movie-making for me and is a film I suspect I will revisit often on disc!

BLACK MIRROR: The National Anthem

2011-12-08T23:29:00.000Z

But what about the victim? Oh, sod her, she's not the point ...

So, Charlie Brooker has returned, to slap us in our complacent faces once more.

Once was the time, we tell ourselves, that our television was the envy of the world. My university lecturers told me. The critics I used to rub shoulders with at press-showings and festivals told me. The text books I recommend to my students tell me. Look at "Prime Suspect", they all say, or "Cracker" and before that "Edge of Darkness". Look at Dennis Potter and Alan Bleasdale! No argument from me about any of that. But that's all very, very old!

When you try and find something comparable from the last ten years ... That's where opinions are less unanimous. There's no shortage of excellence these days, but I fear that the moulds have been broken and the writings of your Tony Jordans, Paul Abbotts, Russell T. Davieses and even the (in my opinion) vastly over-valued Stephen Poliakoffs, pale in comparison to the 'greats' of the 'golden age' of the eighties. We’ve been impressed by literate, impassioned, artistic telly … Now we need to be more impressed!

Of course, part of that will be the break-up of the traditional viewing habits. it's rare now for ten million people to be watching the same programme on the same day. But the programmes that do command a huge audience, a loyal audience that tune in week after interminable week, an audience which feels so invested in the show they will Twitter about it, Facebook about it and even pay cash money to be involved in its outcome ... Are the reality shows and the soaps.

These don’t ennoble us. They do not aspire to be literature.

These are the factories out of which churn the new breed of 'celebrities' ... The business of show needs a steady stream of affordable celebrities as commodities to sell at a profit. And we accommodatingly worship these celebrities in an empty, envious and ultimately short-lived way. Our relationships with them go through a few fairly familiar stages ... Indifference, which becomes Mild Interest, then Fascination ... but, the relationship becomes abusive when we turn on them and develop a taste for their Pain. Only when that Pain is not of their own devising (such as in the case of Jade Goody's Cervical Cancer) does our sense of Guilt disguise itself as Sympathy.

At the moment, we are watching the Leveson Inquiry into tabloid journalists' invasion of people's privacy in search of the mud their front pages sling. We tut and mutter about the failure of standards and shameful immorality and try to ignore the creeping knowledge that they would have stopped doing it if we had stopped buying the papers.

There are several reasons I don't buy (or read) tabloids. Personal ethics is one of them.

There are several reasons I generally try to avoid 'reality shows'. Their cruelty is one of them.

The audience has become cruel. Of course, there's nothing new in this ... At least we're not standing in town squares to watch poor people getting hung anymore. Not literally.

I suspect that this cruelty has to do with the marching infantalisation of society. Education no longer prepares people for adulthood, it insulates them against failure. The welfare and tax systems punish those who act like responsible adults and attempt to pay their way rather than scraping by on handouts, meanwhile the popular media is obsessed with undemanding, familiar spectacle at the cost of analysis, insight and originality. It is not unusual now to age without growing.

Children laugh at others' misfortune without the conscience of an adult; they don't pause to think "There but for the grace of God ... " Well, that's okay, they're children, they're allowed. It's when those children are fully grown, with children of their own, that this unformed, uncivilised, bullying mind-set becomes an issue.

Which is where Charlie Brooker comes in. He's had the better part of a decade of watching and writing about the appalling brain-softening bilge that swells and bubbles flatulently between the ad breaks on our nation's most-watched channels. His loathing is detailing in a characteristic mix of eloquent insight and scatological spite. And, yes, he’s cruel. He sometimes feigns shock at his own levels of cruelty, then continues to unrepentantly re-demonstrate them every time he or his words appear.

But, of course, he is merely reflecting, satirically, the cruelty of the medium on which he comments.

He is also a major adopter of and leading contributor to social media (well, Twitter) with which the traditional media are attempting to maintain a clumsy symbiotic relationship. Social media has proven itself, time and again, to be a viral breeding ground of childish knee-jerk reaction. With no pause for reflection, people react and share their displeasure, even if the thing to which they are reacting is actually nothing (such as the regular ‘scares’ over Facebook starting to charge).

I have no idea how tasteless jokes used to circulate like wild-fire in the days before text and Twitter, but there’s no doubting how it happens now!

It was, therefore, only a matter of time before someone wrote a satire about both the old and new media egging each other on; and it is no great shock that Brooker thought of it first.

So, finally, I get round to what I intended to be writing about 800-odd words ago … Black Mirror. This is a triptych (though I doubt the author would call them that) of thematically linked films (though I think British TV still likes to think of them as ‘plays’) and the first is called ‘The National Anthem’.

The name, ‘Black Mirror’ suggests that the reflection of ourselves we see in the TV screen is a darker, crueller version of our actual selves. Things of which we disapprove in reality, we willingly, enthusiastically watch on screen. Morally, we are darker there. The title alone, then, is a telling metaphor of our relationship with our screens.

And what do we watch, in this black mirror? Programmes about the worst aspects of ourselves. It was inevitable, then, that this programme would be cruel. Cruel in the way that South Park and Family Guy are cruel. Cruel in the way Frankie Boyle is cruel. Full of merciless, insightful, intelligent, judgemental cruelty. But, unlike all these other peddlers of illusory human suffering, Brooker implicates the audience.

We have an appetite for televised cruelty but - partly in-hand with that childish sense of humour we now have and partly nurtured by a decade of I’m A Celebrity – this appetite is sated as much by embarrassment as it is by pain.

And so Brooker posits a situation where a member of the Royal family is kidnapped and held to ransom. The price being that the Prime Minster must fuck a pig on live television. You know this already, because you’ve heard/read about the programme in the flurry of prurient coverage it has received.

That, right there, was Brooker’s brainstorm: Criticise our addiction to sensationalising others’ embarrassment and suffering by creating exactly the kind of sensation he is targeting.

In the show, the whole country revels in the anticipation of the misery to be inflicted on their Prime Minister, much as we waited in eager anticipation to see this, Brooker’s latest diatribe. Then the British people in the film actually watch ‘the event’ and their appetite withers. That’s the thing with appetites … They’re all about anticipation. But, however distasteful people find it, they keep watching. We are shown empty street after empty street. The entire country is indoors, watching the degradation of their leader.

I thought the idea was loathsome. I was genuinely frightened that they would actually show ‘the event’. But I kept watching.

Brooker’s targets are many: Politicians who will literally do anything to hang on to power, simply because an opinion poll tells them to (the saving of a life is only ever a secondary motivation here); Journalists who will use any manipulative technique to get a lead on a story (here, the ambitious journalist in question rather satisfyingly gets shot); but, mostly you and me for our unwillingness to turn away from the car-wreck. It is what Joseph Conrad called ‘the fascination of the abomination’.

If this programme is offending you, he challenges, then simply turn it off. Such are the depths that TV has plunged to that this scenario – something from a sick joke told by a drunkard – is where Brooker has to take us in order to make his point. This is how low you have to go to be shocking these days. Of course, in doing so, he has simply lowered the bar even further.

This isn’t the first TV programme to challenge the audience for its unwillingness to avert its gaze. I am put in mind of the excellent 1983 movie Special Bulletin which takes the form of a news broadcast beaming live from a boat anti-nuclear protestors are about to destroy with a nuclear weapon. In that, the protestors repeatedly challenge the networks carrying their feed to pull the plug if they disapprove of the ‘terrorism’. Of course, no one does.

Special Bulletin ... And this news just in ... You're all fucked. Now Tammy with the weather.

The same idea was explored in the internet age in the 2006 film Untraceable, where a serial killer’s victims die on-line, their suffering increasing with the number of people logging-on to watch. This idea was adapted from a similar scenario in the ‘Mikado’ episode of the TV show Millennium (1998).

All this grumbling about lowering standards probably makes me sound like someone who promotes censorship. Nah. Censorship never works and usually succeeds in creating the opposite response to the one desired (cf the ‘Video Nasties Banned List’ which immediately became a collectors’ wants list). No, what I would like is some self-restraint. We should have the freedom create and consume whatever (legal) images we please. But just because we can doesn’t mean we should. And, even if we must, surely it would be better if we did so as a statement of independence, of defiance, and not simply so some impossibly wealthy tycoon can increase their market share by pandering to our basest desires?

Brooker has realised that the only way to really throttle the life out of the spineless TV monster he loathes (whilst it is making him a wealthy man), is to get down there in the gutter with it.

This show isn’t meant to be taken seriously. It is a satire. This is why no one thinks to print the finger. That’s why the people clustered around their TVs mutter about the ‘Dogma 95’ aesthetic. Sadly, like most good satire, that point will, in the fullness of time, be lost and all that will remain will be the memory of something shocking that people quite enjoyed.

The look on Rory Kinnear’s face as he is going through with his public humiliation will live me for a while … It's just as well he's got his Hamlet out of the way already, because I wonder if I will ever be able to look at his face in any role he plays from now on, without remembered the grimace, the sobbing, the drool … Because the idea at the heart of this pieces is so entirely loathsome. Far less loathsome – but far more troubling – is the Prime Minister’s willingness to go through with it.

Thing is, we know no one would in the real world … But it serves as a commentary on the ambitions of those in Power and how they will, in order to hang on to that power, abandon any ethical and moral stand they ever took. New Labour did it. The new Lib Dens did it. The Tories haven’t, but that’s only because they only ever pay lip-service to ethics and morals, they don’t actually believe in any of it.

Brooker’s final master-stroke is the revelation of who the kidnapper is and why they did it. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil it. But it’s a whole new target for Brooker’s withering scorn!

So, will this show be held up a glowing example of the new golden age of TV writing? Will it enshrine Brooker’s name on the same monuments as Potter’s and Bleasdale’s? Well, only if its story ceases to feel so extreme and distasteful; only if our culture continues on its downward spiral to infantile, puerile, docile oblivion. So, yes, then; very probably.

ANONYMOUS

2011-11-12T01:17:00.000Z

Since I'd been asked to introduce it for the local Lit.Com festival, I thought I'd best see the film. Through various real-world reasons I won't bore you with, I didn't get to see a preview before launch day but, since I was talking about The Shakespeare Authorship Question in general, rather than the movie's specific take on it, that wasn't such a big deal.

But, purely out of a sense of professional courtesy, I felt that I should go see it. So I did. I am forced to wonder if, out of the same sense of professional courtesy, either writer John Orloff or director Roland Emmerich have bothered to see any Shakespeare plays, or were they working from the Cliff Notes?

I am by no means a Shakespearean scholar. I have read no more than a handful of his plays and they have all been in a school or college environment. Never-the-less, I detected a fairly free-wheeling attitude towards his work and its historical context.

It's obviously set in some alternate version of history where Henry V was Shakespeare's first performed play, followed closely by Romeo and Juliet, then Hamlet, Richard III and, finally, King Lear. All in about a year. (It's possibly the same Emmerichian alternate universe where the pyramids were build by aliens riding woolly mammoths).

Okay, so this is a work of fiction and maybe these details aren't that important. After-all, one of the things the film is concerned with is the cloud of doubt that surrounds Shakespeare so, I don't know, maybe the documents that have always told us when the plays were first performed are fake.

Could happen. So, let's leave that and move on.

The mission here was to create an Elizabethan political thriller, concerning the machinations of court (inspired, possibly, by the similarly Machiavellian activities depicted in Elizabeth's dad's court in the hit TV show The Tudors). That, at least, seemed perfectly feasible to my historically-uncultured eye. Indeed, Edward Hogg has a considerable amount of fun playing the villain, Robert Cecil - who has a hump! I imagine some imaginative stage director will already be casting him in a revival of Richard III.

All of this courtly behaviour, however, is portrayed with a lack of conviction and subtlety, which results in it seeming nothing more than camp! Particularly in the case of Rafe Spall who plays the talentless actor called William Shakespeare who becomes the front, the patsy pretending to be the writer. As the film progresses he degenerates from an interesting possibility to a pantomime bad guy.

So, how do I do the Ifans eyebrow? Is this it?

You know that look Rhys Ifans has on his face in Notting Hill, that mischievous arched eyebrow he has when he can't believe what he's getting away with? Well, he wears that expression through pretty-much this entire movie. He plays Edward DeVere, the Earl of Oxford, who has written these heartfelt plays, using the most sophisticated language and most gripping narratives ever put on paper ... But can't come out because, well, being a writer is vulgar and beneath an Earl. I suppose one character hiding behind the facade of another is an idea that occurs time and again in Shakespeare's plays, though none of the ones seen here.

Unfortunately, as wafer-thin as his character's motivation is, I would have probably swallowed it, and Ben Jonson's inexplicable willingness to go along with all of the repercussions that arise from the deceit, if only I believed one word coming out of any of the actors' mouths.

"Dude, even his moustache is, like, as unconvincing as the dialogue." "Totally!"

This is an unfortunate occurrence when an American script-writer and a German/American director clearly decided they knew more about the way English actors spoke four hundred years ago, than the English actors actually reading the lines. Consequently, there is a general air - and not just in Ifans' performance - where the actors simply don't believe what they're saying.

With one or two exceptions ... Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave are astonishingly similar as young and old Elizabeth ... Leaving one to feel that a time machine had been employed to allow one person to play both ends of their own life.

Joely Richardson, just 74 years young!

This leads to the film's other major problem ... The film isn't just set in one hazily-sketched-in historical period, but two. So we have DeVere played by Ifans in one period, and by the red-hot-cos-he's-in-Twilight-so-let's-overlook-the-fact-that-he-looks-nothing-like-Rhys-Ifans Jamie Campbell Bower opposite Richardson's Young Elizabeth. It then makes things even more complicated by chopping-and-changing between these two narratives.

Apart from Richardson/Redgrave, no one looks like their younger selves (well, okay, David Thewlis is pretty good at playing his younger self) but this makes everything appallingly complicated and you just know that it isn't worth the brain-power of trying to figure out who is meant to be whom.

Sorry, who did you say you were, again?

To be fair, there is a pretty-good pay-off to explain all this, but, as I was watching it, I was getting increasingly irritated and confused by it all.

The film is, then, a mess on several levels. Not least because it is hilariously funny in places; a fact which, I imagine, will come as a depressing surprise to the writer and director but not to the cast.

It's just a shame Derek Jacobi decided to take the money (for what must have been just a day's work) because his presence at the beginning, serving the role of the Chorus introducing the drama, lends the film some credibility which it certainly doesn't deserve.

11/11/11

2011-11-11T15:52:00.002Z

All we ever ask our political leaders to do is protect us. Waging war is the single most despicable way they can fail ... And there is, hopefully, a special place in Hell for Blair, Bush, Thatcher and every other leader who sacrifice young men and women for a vote or a profit point.

I sometimes fear that generations of weak, mendacious leadership have left us so cynical that, if were ever again in danger of military invasion, if our freedom and lives were every *really* at risk ... No one would step up and take a stand.

I gaze at the blank-eyed mouth-breathers I sometimes teach and think that our (great) grandparents went through unimaginable suffering, simply so our generation could become ignorant, apathetic and arrogant.

Then I think about the people who still get off their arses and march and protest and camp outside St. Paul's simply because they have the right to have their say ... I think about the people who train for months to run marathons for charity, year after year ... I think about the people who risk their lives every day in lifeboats or as volunteer firefighters or mountain rescue when it would be so much easier not to ... Or who go unarmed into warzones and disaster zones to help, not because anyone makes them, but simply because they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't.

I realise that the spirit that inspired people to walk into harms way back then, still exists today. We still have heroes. There are some pretty extra-ordinary ordinary people in the world. Hopefully we'll never need to carve their names in stone.

THE CELLULORD ON STAGE - ACT THREE

2011-11-11T01:21:00.000Z

Me, intelligently wearing black in a black-walled cinema, with the lights dimmed.

And so it came to pass that I was asked to introduce 'Anonymous'. This film, written by John Orloff and directed by Roland Emmerich, tells the story of the political intrigue surrounding Queen Elizabeth's court in her dotage and how this impacts on one nobleman's secret desire to write plays, necessitating the use of a 'font', namely one William Shakespeare.

Now, whilst this is the first film to deal with the idea, it is very far from a new idea, so my introduction looked into the whole matter.

So, to begin, we all know what William Shakespeare looks like, yes?

He looks a bit like Voldemort’s younger brother …Or, if you’re a Doctor Who fan ...

... You probably think he looks like that bloke off Shameless who does the Homebase ads …

This is the most famous likeness of Shakespeare … It is an engraving by Martin Droeshout – This engraving was published in the so-called ‘folio’ – the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s works – published in 1623, seven years after he died.

The only other portrait that is considered ‘legitimate’ is that on his Funerary Monument which is inside Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.

As its name suggests – this was also created after his death – but before the folio was published – because the intro to the folio mentions the Funerary Monument, so we know that was there first!

But both of these portraits were created from memory AFTER Shakespeare died!

There are various paintings which claim to be of Shakespeare and to have been painted in his lifetime – but most are completely dismissed by academia – except:

The Chandos Portrait, painted in 1610 by John Taylor (not the Duran Duran bassist – but the Elizabethan painter … Of whose work no other examples exist) This is the one that The National Portrait Gallery has put its weight behind.

But then – in 2009 – another painting was discovered … Claiming to have been painted in 1610 also!

Called The Cobbe Portrait – It is further claimed that this painting was copied for the Droeshout Engraving.

The National Portrait Gallery thought, don’t like this idea … they maintain that this is ACTUALLY a bloke called Sir Thomas Overbury … Who was famous for a sex scandal that got him imprisoned in the Tower, where he died – but that’s another story.

Is it credible that a painting could have hung on a wall for 400 years without anyone clocking that it was Shakespeare? Well, The Cobbe collection includes works handed down from the family of the third Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's only known patron.

So, how come there are no DEFINITIVE portraits of the country’s greatest playwright? And how come those portraits we do have … all look different? That kind of uncertainy is exactly where conspiracy theories spring from!

See, this is not a new idea …

At the time of his death, Shakespeare was considered a great writer – but not THE GREATEST … Indeed – his works were adapted and re-worked many times over the years … No one saw his texts as Holy Writ … Personally I’d LOVE to see 1681 version of King Lear … with the happy ending!

Indeed, Shakespeare had been dead and gone a century before his works reached the heights of their popularity. By the time of the Licensing Act of 1737 – one in four of the plays on in London was a Shakespeare. His plays began to be studied. His reputation spread across Europe.

In 1785 a scholar named James Wilmot could find no evidence that Shakespeare had ever written anything so decided the plays must have been written by the philosopher, lawyer and scientist Sir Francis Bacon.

Further fuel was added to this when it was realised that Bacon stopped writing under his own name in 1613 – when he became full-time Attorney General. This was two years after Shakespeare supposedly wrote his last play, and three years before he allegedly died!

By the mid 1800s, when science was suggesting that we were evolved from apes, not Adam and Eve … And historians were beginning to wonder if The Bible was really written by God … Or if Jesus ever actually existed … A fella called Samuel Schmucker (!) wrote a book called Historic Doubts Respecting Shakespeare - it was meant to be a satire of other historical studies … But he inadvertently started something.

The flood of Shakespearean Authorship Doubters … Began with a woman. An American.

Delia Bacon was her name – rather improbably … And she believed she had evidence that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by a gang, a committee of famous playwrights and dignitaries – led by Sir Francis Bacon (no relation) and Sir Walter Raleigh!

Or: As you may remember him from the movie, Elizabeth:

Anyway, the problem with this theory is … Well, have you ever read anything written by a committee? Best plays ever? I don't think so.

But this unlikely idea didn’t go away … Books continued to be written, investigations undertook and, as late as the 1930s, bodies were being interred for ‘proof’ of Shakespeare’s identity. However – proof – whether for or against … Continues to elude historians!

This isn’t helped by the fact that Shakespeare himself didn’t seem to know who he was – since, in his signatures, there are 25 different spellings, such as ...

William Shakspere Wm Shaxpere

Wm Shaxberd William Shakspear

William Shakspēr      Willm Shakp
Wm Shakspē      William Shakespeare
Willm Shackspeare      Willm Shakp
By me William Shakspeare

Of course, there is a long-standing conspiracy that the serious search for alternative authors is being suppressed, as though by some pernicious orthodox organisation … A sort of Stratford Association of Shakespeareans … Or SAS!

Another conspiracy believes that Shakespeare was REALLY Christopher Marlowe …

The fact that Marlowe was killed in a pub fight fully 20 years before Shakespeare stopped writing doesn’t deter these conspiracy theorists … Because, they point out, Marlowe was a spy, working for Queen Elizabeth – and being officially ‘dead’ gave him the perfect cover to be both a spy AND Shakespeare’s ghost writer.

You see … there is a problem which just won’t go away – How did a self-educated dealer in grain and wool from the Midlands, rise through the London ranks from actor to director to the greatest playwright and poet to ever walk the boards?

Some people simply can’t accept this … They feel that Shakespeare MUST have been from the educated nobility. And there have been A LOT of famous fans of this theory …

Sigmund Freud wrote: “It is undeniably painful to all of us that even now we do not know who was the author of the Comedies, Tragedies and Sonnets of Shakespeare”

Looks like he’s reclining on his own couch here!

Charlie Chaplin wrote in his autobiography: “I am not concerned with who wrote the works of Shakespeare … but I can hardly think it was the Stratford boy. Whoever wrote them had an aristocratic attitude.”

Orson Welles commented: “I think [an alternative candidate] wrote Shakespeare. If you don't, there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away.”

But let’s leave the last word to Charles Dickens … Arguably the SECOND greatest person ever to put pen to paper in Britain: He said - “The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up.”

There are A LOT of theories about who Shakespeare was … NONE of the ones I have mentioned appear in the film you are about to watch … They have gone for a very different explanation. They may be right. We have no way of knowing.

For what it’s worth … I think I know who wrote the greatest literary works ever in the English language … Isn't it obvious?

Blu-ray: THE DEAD

2011-11-07T19:47:00.004Z

Gimme a kiss, white-boy ...

I’m not a big fan of zombie films, for very much the same reason I don’t really have time for stalk and slash films … Because they’re all the same! I’ve seen Psycho (1960), Halloween (1978) and Scream (1996), that’s all I need. Similarly, with zombies, I’ve seen all the George Romero films and find no one else’s take on his zombie idea really adds anything. We all die. The end. Seen it; next please.

But I decided to have a stab at the lastest British-made-but-set-in-Africa zombocalypse movie ... The full review is, as you're doubtless becoming wearily accostomed ... here on What Culture!

Blu-Ray: THREE MUSKETEERS / FOUR MUSKETEERS

2011-11-07T19:39:00.002Z

Yes, in his day, Ollie could light fires with his heat vision!

These are two of my favourite British films of the seventies ... Because they are so oddball. But then Richard Lester films are always a curate's egg of weird creative decisions.

They draw together the unlikeliest call-sheet imaginable … So you have the truly bizarre spectacle of Charlton Heston ordering the torture of Spike Milligan (a Lester regular) who is married to Raquel Welch. Indeed, the first film opens with a fight scene between Michael York (playing D’Artagnan) and Joss Ackland (playing his dad) … Yes, you read that right: Basil Exposition crossing swords with Chuck De Nomolos!

And as for the rest of the cast ... You've got a starring vehicle for Oliver Reed (Athos), who was a formidable force of nature at the time, and is rarely to be seen having more fun on screen. He is supported variously by Richard Chamberlain (as Aramis), Frank Finlay (as Porthos) and a delightful Roy Kinnear in the almost silent role of the put-upon squire, Planchet. Allied against our heroes are Christopher Lee as the one-eyed Rochefort (who made this film in-between his turns in The Wicker Man and The Man With The Golden Gun) and the scheming, ice-cold Milady DeWinter (played by the then white-hot Faye Dunaway). Wow.

The full review of these great, under-valued British classics is here on What Culture!

One thing you won't find on the What Culture! site is this - my favourite Spitting Image sketch ... "Just tell 'em you went for a drink with Ollie Reed!"

TRUE BLOOD 4.12 – “And When I Die”

2011-11-07T19:25:00.001Z

How'd you like your stake?

It's been a while ... Crazy time! Now for a little catch-up:

The series finale of True Blood. Overall, I thought this was the best-written and most satisfying episode we’ve had this year. As a whole, the season seemed to lack focus, for me … It rambled. The questions asked in the first episode were not satisfyingly answered in the last, and that means that the structure of the series seems off-kilter.

And, as for Sookie ... She spends NINE episodes doing precisely nothing. Yes, I understand that the show is about her emotional development, but couldn’t they have had her doing something useful and even interesting whilst being in love with New Eric?

For a show like True Blood, a season needs to be like a novel, with each chapter leading you progressively towards a satisfactory conclusion. Fair enough, leave a few loose ends if you want, but do it with subtlety. Like Dexter does it, in other words!

Anyway, my full in-depth review is on What Culture! here:

And This News Just In ...

2011-09-25T14:33:00.001+01:00

© Wiley Miller 2011

Blu-Ray: SCARFACE

2011-09-14T18:00:00.003+01:00

So, you'll find my report on my recent involvement with the Blu-Ray launch of Scarface here. I was asked to volunteer my opinions on the film in general and director Brian De Palma in particular ... Because I'm apparently an expert on him. I wrote a book about him in a previous life, you see. In fact, here's the chapter of that book on Scarface. Read this then you too will be a Scarface connoisseur! Each chapter was structured so as to, essentially, list the common elements - such as De Palma's use of colour or voyeurism ... Techniques and themes which appear again and again in his work.

The Plot: Arriving in America as part of Castro’s evacuation of Cuba’s prisons, Tony Montana is already a hardened criminal. He sees The States as a chance for him to realise his ambition to have “what’s coming to me ... the world and everything in it”.

Soon he has negotiated his way into Frank Lopez’s drug business. Progressively, his arrogance growing at a similar pace to his paranoia, he builds his own massive drugs empire but betrays and executes so many of the people around him that he finds there is nothing left for him to do – but defend himself.

After Blow Out, De Palma decided it was time for a change of direction again. He had spent more than ten years honing his visual grammar skills. It was time to put his Hitchcock phase behind him and move more in the direction of the Hollywood mainstream and the financial security that offered.

Then the explosive script for Scarface came along. Written by Oliver Stone, the film would need a director unafraid of controversy, as it would doubtless attract criticism for its depictions of race, organised crime, drug abuse and, most of all, violence. This wasn’t the sort of script a Hollywood mainstreamer could really do justice to. But De Palma, who was already perceived as a Hollywood outsider – well, he had nothing to lose.

Like Michael Caine - everyone has a Tony Montana impersonation!

The Themes:

Violence: One hardly need mention the violence in Scarface. The chainsaw in the bathroom sequence was probably the one scene which haunted the censorship-debate throughout the eighties, only to be replaced after some eight years by Reservoir Dogs’ ear-cutting scene. In common with most moments of De Palmanian violence, it involves white walls being sprayed with a substantial amount of red blood.

Voyeurism: During Tony’s show-wedding, we get the first glimpse of his paranoia. He has bought himself a palatial mansion, and surrounded it with surveillance cameras.

The final days of Tony’s life – his time as Nebuchadnezzar, conquering lord of all Babylon; begins with a close-up of his six security monitors, which he watches morbidly. He admits that he spends 12% of his profits on surveillance.

Ironically, when the cameras warn him of the approach of Sosa’s vengeful army, he is too wrapped-up in his own incestuous rage and self-pity to even glance at the monitors which have cost him so much.

The Motifs:

Colours: Colour is more conspicuously important in Scarface than in any of De Palma’s previous films – even Sisters. The original movie poster was a striking black and white image, cut down the middle so the background was pure black on one side, pure white on the other. De Palma hired Ferdinando Scarfiotti as ‘visual consultant’ for this film and, I suspect, orchestrating its careful, thematic use of colour, would be one of his primary responsibilities.

In a DePalma film, the badguys often wear white!

Rebenga, Castro’s old torturer who Tony has to kill to secure his freedom, is dressed all in white. The white-is-evil correlation will never be more clearly defined than in this film where, of course, the Bolivian marching powder which fuels all of the chaos, is pure white. Miami Vice, the definitive American television show of the eighties also flooded the screen with bleached and designer whites, behind which untold corruption took place.

When Tony kills Rebenga, he is wearing a red T-shirt – the colour of blood and transition.

In this film, De Palma introduces the colour orange into his regular palette, especially in connection with sunsets. Miami is first seen as an idyllic sunset which is, in fact, painted on the side of a building. A similar painted sunset decorates the wall of the hotel room where the drugs buy goes so disastrously wrong. Later, when Tony makes his demand to meet Frank, and thereby force his way onto the ladder of success, he does so against the background of a real, vividly orange sunset.

Frank’s palatial home, which is both evil (it is bought with drug money) and transitional (it gives Tony his first taste of immense wealth), has stark white walls with conspicuous red details – carpets, ornaments, etc. Frank wears a white suit. His office, by contrast, is black with red highlights – and a painted orange sunset running all down one wall.

The first time we see Tony snort coke, which is very possibly his first time, it is given to him by Elvira, who is dressed all in white. Fuelled by the drug, he promptly attacks her.

By the time Tony has become a big man in his own right, and starts throwing money at his mother – he has a white suit of his own, worn with a contrasting black shirt. This is the colour of his power and corruption – much later, when he is powerless and the corruption has taken him over completely, his clothing will be the reverse of this – a black suit with white shirt.

When Tony goes to Columbia and makes the deal which will set him up in his own business – he wears the empowering red shirt. The Babylon, the night-club he comes to look upon as his own, has red doors. The bent cop – Bernstein – he meets there, wears the obligatory white suit; whilst his first show-down with his promiscuous sister, is in one of the Babylon’s toilets – all gleaming in white, with black marble fixtures. The black and white locale is particularly ironic, since his motives for keeping Manny and Gina away from each other are never less than grey.

Once Tony has acquired his money, power and woman, the colour-scheme of his life loses the white, and runs more towards the blacks and reds. More befitting a man-made hell! More indicative of the fact that his ambition has about run out. All that is left for him now – is violence.

The gallery in which he hangs the portrait of himself and his wife, has very deliberate red walls. Implying that their marriage is all about power, not about love. The carpets and corridors around Tony’s office are red, whilst the walls and his throne are jet black!

When Tony returns to Colombia, to Sosa’s for a council of war, they meet in a room of red walls! So now we know from where the violence come.

As his last ragged breath leaves him, Tony falls forward and explodes into a final gush of red blood, as he falls into his own fountain. The red aggression of his ambition brought him all the money and power he wanted, and the red of aggression finally collected the bill.

Doubles: As Tony begins to show the first signs of breaking under the strain of his own ambition, he sits in his mirrored booth – alone – his own head reflected back at himself from several different angles, illustrating that he is beginning to live in a world which requires him to develop new skills, and new personality traits. The fact that these heads are all turned away from him, possibly implying that he isn’t capable of this much transformation. He will remain a barely-literate thug.

The Techniques:

Slow/Fast-Mo: When Tony’s career takes an upswing, time flies by in the form of a montage. We see hints of Tony’s enormous wealth, and his spectacular wedding to Elvira. It is not without significance that we don’t actually see them happy together.

As so often happens with moments of extreme pain – De Palma extends the moment when Tony learns the truth about Manny and Gina, by reducing the sound to the bare minimum (the gun shots), and slowing the motion down. As Gina hurls herself down stairs, he shoots Manny, point-blank.

The next slow-motion sequence also involves guns and stairs – as Tony engages in a ferocious shoot-out, with his military-style heavy-ordnance.

Split Screen: In his office he has six security monitors, watching different sides of his house. In his humongous bathroom, he has five television screens, offering him five simultaneous distractions from his own life.

Long Takes/Tracking Shots: When Tony is caught in a sting operation, laundering vast quantities of money, the scene continues as a protracted take, all under the watchful eye of the camera hidden in the clock.

When his marriage is finally falling apart, along with any vestige of self-control, Tony rants at the diners in the prestigious restaurant: “You need me ... I’m the badguy ... so, say goodbye to the badguy ...” Self pity is rarely so ugly as when practised by the successfully ambitious.

The 1932 version - With Paul Muni's career-defining turn as Tony Camonte and Ann Dvorak as his sister.

References: Tony begins by explaining that he learned to speak English by watching gangster movies “Humphrey Bogart ... James Cagney”. So, in the film’s opening moments, De Palma pays tribute to the 30s Hollywood genre which, ironically, was about to revitalise his career. During this same sequence, one of the unseen cops asks Tony “Do you like to dress up like a woman?” His denial underscores that we have moved on from Dressed To Kill into new, less psychologically complex territory.

Tony and Frank sit in a mirrored booth in The Babylon night-club. De Palma will employ similar booths for Farrow in Bonfire Of The Vanities and for Carlito in Carlito’s Way.

Although I’m not sure if it counts as a direct reference to Hitch – the master of suspense’s movies were known, among many other things, for their unconvincing back-projections. Here, the driving scenes are always acted out against obvious back-projections.

One of the few specific details which this film carries over from the 1932 version – is the sign saying ‘The World is Yours’ at the foot of which, Tony will eventually die.

The car-chase, with the bomb under the lead car, and the children playing in it, combined with the dodgy back projection, puts one in mind of the child on the bus with the bomb in the birdcage in Hitch’s Sabotage (1936).

STAR WARS EPISODE 1138: THE RETURN OF THE FRANCHISE

2011-09-13T18:00:00.021+01:00

Lucas' portrait by, of course, the incomparable Drew Struzan

And so the latest iteration of the George Lucas Wants Your Money saga begins today - with the Blu-Ray release of all six Star Wars films in a new re-tweaked, re-tampered form. They're his films, if he can't accept that they are finished, that's his prerogative. Personally I couldn't care less whether or not the Gummy Bears blink or Han shoots first in these versions. I have the original versions,. They're the ones I like. I won't be buying the discs - not until the price drops, at any rate - because the days of me slavishly hoovering-up everything he produces are gone. I've been through the crisis of disappointment caused by incomplete release after incomplete release. Been there, done that and, yes, I bought the t-shirt!

This piece was written immediately after seeing Phantom Menace for the first time - when having an entirely CGI character was revolutionary ... If annoying.

It's twelve years since I stood in the queue in Leicester Square ... Surrounded by people dressed as Darth Maul - a character they apparently loved but knew little about. Twelve years that have seen Lucas name dragged down and kicked around by an world wide web full of commentators. I like to think I got there first. This piece exploring the artistic emptiness at the heart of what became the prequel trilogy. It was published in Model Mart magazine, which published a Star Wars special to tie-in with the release of Phantom Menace and its accompanying avalanche of merchandise.

The first half is a Story So Far resume of Lucas' career for those who had forgotten or didn't know (it had been seventeen years since the previous Star Wars movie) and the second half was my consideration on that damn film

I stand by many of the conclusions I pre-emptively drew ... Now you can decide for yourself:

Have camera, will travel ...

Sometime, during his childhood in the dusty wastes of post-war Modesto, California, Young George Walton Lucas must have rolled a pebble down a slope, and watched as sticks, leaves and other pebbles joined it on its tumble towards the ground far below.

Those lazy summer days were a great time for George, a memorable time, spent cheering on his filmic heroes in run-down old flea-pit cinemas, or dreaming of the days when he would be old enough to fly hot-rod cars at break-neck speeds down the county’s long, straight roads. At eighteen, he crashed one such car and spent three-months in hospital; plenty of time to evaluate what little life had had, and what more he wanted.

That car-crash sent a metaphorical pebble rolling which would, over the next thirty-seven years, turn into a cultural avalanche none of us can now ignore. That car-crash caused George Lucas to enrol at film-school, and the listless dreamer became a driven story-teller.

He was an intellectual, troubled by dark and complex ideas that, in turn, became dark and complex films. This interview - I have linked to in the past - perfectly represents who he was in these early days and where he was artistically. This is a time when the ideas that became Star Wars had hardly formed in his mind.

I only mention all of this because it is crucial, when trying to assess his ‘Star Wars’ films, to understand that those early-years experiences have stayed with Lucas, to this day, and his exploration of them has had a profound effect on American cinema over the last quarter-century.

I suppose anyone's memories of 1963 would be a bit fuzzy now!

The world-altering phenomenon of ‘Star Wars’ really began with Lucas’ previous movie ‘American Graffiti’ (1973), a film which looked back across a decade to 1962, a time before the Kennedy assassination, before the disaster of Vietnam, before campus riots, to a time when America could still consider itself innocent and pure.

The tale was little more than a romanticised recollection of Lucas’ own adolescence, to a time when having the greasiest hair, the dumbest blonde and the fastest car were all-important ingredients in the acquisition of ‘cool’. It even featured the hot-rod race and the crash which had played such a key part in his own life.

Charting the seismic changes in America in just ten years ... With this marvellous poster by Mad Magazine's Mort Drucker.

Innumerable exploitation films of the fifties and sixties had focussed on these young, nomadic people and their live-fast-die-young attitude, but ‘Graffiti’ was the first American film to look back at this time with affection, to invite the audience to think: “Remember when we did that!?” The film was pure, unapologetic nostalgia, and the post-Kennedy, post-Vietnam, post campus-riots population lapped it up, desperate for something stable to cling to in a rapidly changing world.

Earning fifty times its production cost, ‘Graffiti’ became, proportionally, the most successful film ever made and inspired a national taste for nostalgia exemplified by the TV series ‘Happy Days’. To misappropriate Robin Williams’ phrase: If you claim to remember the sixties, they were probably the seventies re-runs!

‘Graffiti’s’ success made George a millionaire, and elevated him to be one of the most influential young film-makers in seventies Hollywood. The Powers That Be were prepared to listen to any idea he came up with, however ludicrous. So his next idea was to venture even further into his own past, back to a childhood when his major distraction was the Saturday afternoon serials.

How can you NOT love Flash!?

Initially, his plan was to film a re-make of Universal’s 1936 ‘Flash Gordon’, but he couldn’t secure the rights, so set about thinking up his own serial. The result was ‘Star Wars’. To an industry committed to churning-out domestic dramas and grittily realistic crime-stories with small budgets and smaller audiences, Lucas pitched a big, unwieldy, space opera; the kind of simple, glossy movie Hollywood had specialised in before TV took its audience away. He would cast actors whose faces you would never see, or whose dialogue you couldn’t understand, and required special-effects no one yet knew how to do.

Total madness. Yet, even in these early years, Lucas’ skill as a salesman far outweighed his artistic gifts. The Powers That Be at Twentieth Century Fox looked at the mountain of money their competitor Universal had made out of ‘American Graffiti’, and decided that, as he had already made one hit against all the odds, they would roll the dice.

The original and still the best - the British poster by Greg and Tim Hildebrandt

‘Star Wars’ generated income unimagined until that time, and bombarded popular culture with its influence. ‘Star Wars’ memorabilia remains the most collectable, most hotly fought-over media-related merchandise there is, leaving ‘Star Trek’ a distant second. Magazines like ‘Starlog’, ‘Starburst’ and ‘Cinefex’ were born or grew to prominence in the wake of ‘Star Wars’ - catering for the audience’s new-found passion for sf films. The studios were not slow in pouncing on this new-found market.

At college, the older Lucas had been introduced to more mature influences – English Lit. gave him T.H White’s ‘The Once and Future King’, Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ and ‘The Iliad’ as well as JRR Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ and Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’. Film Studies brought him to Akira Kurosawa’s ‘The Hidden Fortress’ (1958), John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’ (1956) and Leni Riefenstahl’s ‘Triumph of the Will’ (1935), all of which loaned details to ‘Star Wars’ and all of which have continued to be largely ignored in that respect. Yet, when Lucas admitted that the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell – particularly his book ‘The Hero Has A Thousand Faces’ - had had a profound effect on his laying out the story for ‘Star Wars’, it became compulsory reading throughout Hollywood. In his book ‘The Writer’s Journey’, Christopher Vogler relates Campbell’s theories to both of 1977’s big SF hits:

“I worked with Campbell’s idea of The Hero’s Journey to understand the phenomenal repeat business of movies such as ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Close Encounters’. People were going back to see these films as if seeking some kind of religious experience. It seemed to me these films drew in this special way because they reflected the universally satisfying patterns Campbell found in myths. They had something people needed.”

And the people had something the film companies needed – their money – so Campbellian movies became the backbone of the Hollywood production line. So it was that, in very short order, vast quantities of money was thrown at simple hero-villain movies, preferably with a science-fiction flavour: ‘Superman’ (1978) took to the skies for the first time in twenty-five years, the old-dark house movie moved out to the stars in ‘Alien’ (1979), ‘Star Trek’ (1979) finally lumbered onto the big screen, as did Lucas’ point-of-departure: ‘Flash Gordon’ (1980). ‘Buck Rogers’ made it to the small screen in 1979, as did ‘Battlestar Galactica’. Disney banked its largest-ever budget on ‘The Black Hole’, a thinly-disguised re-make of its own ‘20,000 Leagues’. Even Lucas himself was caught-up in the furor, producing the clearly serial-derived ‘Indiana Jones’ trilogy, as well as the indifferent ‘Willow’ (1988) and the appalling ‘Howard the Duck’ (1986). The list is, unfortunately, endless.

And my favourite Empire poster by Japanese artist Noriyoshi Ohrai

When Lucas came to make his follow-up ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ (1980), it debuted in a radically different market-place – one now awash with simplistic child-oriented vaguely-sf-inspired block-busters. Every year the average cost of a movie, along with the amount it could be expected to earn, climbed stratospherically. Every year the film companies made more noise to promote their ever-more expensive movies. For the first time since the fifties – films were big events, the ragged remnants of Britain’s once glorious cinema industry heaved under the weight of attendance unlike any since the war.

So it was a brave decision for Lucas – the first movie-mogul of the modern age – to invest all of his time and a good deal of his own money into breaking all the rules once again. ‘Empire’ was a solemn and mature film compared to its predecessor: the climactic show-down came only twenty-minutes in, the middle act explored this buddhist-ish religion he’d invented, then he wrapped it up with a down-beat, cliff-hanger ending where the hero didn’t win.

By this point Lucas had set up his own film studio, enigmatically named ‘Lucasfilm’, and had sunk much of his earnings into creating ‘Industrial Light and Magic’ – the first of what would become many separate companies all working under the pretentious and inaccurate ‘LucasArts’ banner. These would come to include ‘Sprocket Labs’ the pioneers in digital editing, ‘THX’ the industry standard in audio reproduction (now available at your local multiplex) and ‘Pixar’ the first production house dedicated to CGI animation (and producers of ‘Toy Story’ and ‘A Bug’s Life’). In a brilliant and – at that time – unique move, all of these companies were in business to provide expert services to other film companies, as well as to his ‘Star Wars’ franchise. Thus George’s investments began to reap rewards far beyond the earnings of one mere film. Progressively he became The Powers That Be. He no longer needed anyone else’s assistance or permission to continue his work.

The first ‘Star Wars’ film had spawned a marketing revolution whereby even the most insignificant back-ground character could, it seemed, be turned into a toy children would pay through their parent’s noses for. The acid-test second movie introduced new characters and new toys and the world’s appetite seemed unquenchable. The third film was therefore carefully and cynically designed to sell such toys, games, books, stickers and comics. Simply telling a story came a long way down the list of priorities.

Of course, power-broking his ever-growing empire meant that George had less and less time to spend at the sharp-end of movie-making. The first film had been written, directed and produced by him, the second was co-written and co-produced by him, with his old film-studies tutor Irvin Kershner handling the directing. By the time the third movie came around – George only had time to fit in a little executive producing. You see, George The Artist was quietly being put to sleep, to make way for Mr. Lucas The Businessman. One could, with some justification, compare this to a sedate and liberal Republic being consumed by the greed and efficiency of a machinic Empire. The result was ‘The Return of the Jedi’ and the less said about that, the better!

Lesbian Leia in nearly-nude naughtiness ... Or just Carrie Fisher and her stunt double sun-bathing. You decide.

To this day, every producer in Hollywood wants to reproduce Lucas’ success, and chooses to do so by emulating his methods, rather than his original motives. Nowadays, no film of even a medium-sized budget will be green-lighted until it has a bankable ‘star’ attached - a name of which the worthy burghers of Pig’s Knuckle, Nebraska can be reasonably expected to have heard.

Why? Because ‘Star Wars’ brought back the personality cults that had pretty much died out with Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Dean. The public began to look up to ‘stars’ again, and therefore make the effort to go and see their films. Schwarzenegger and Stallone were among the first to capitalise upon this, by being the first to earn ever-more outrageous amounts of money for effectively re-making the same film over and again.

Hand-in-hand with this, a world-wide industry has evolved around the pursuit of celebrity - not just in producing fanzines, posters, ‘their own story’ books etc, but now informally through the ever-present paparazzi and, increasingly, the instamatic rumour-mill of the Internet. Every single column inch (including this one) whether good, bad or indifferent, is free-publicity and therefore money in the bank for Hollywood. Star’s faces have become a permanent fixture on every magazine cover and chat-show sofa.

Then there’s the merchandising question. Learning from ‘Jedi’s’ example, big budget summer movies must generate spin-offs. This can be seen particularly clearly in Disney films where every single character is specifically designed so it can become everything from a cuddly toy to a screen saver. This Spring saw ‘A Bug’s Life’ re-telling ‘The Magnificent Seven’ with ‘cute’ bugs – each one targeted squarely at your disposable income.

Increasingly, the celebrity-obsession of the media, and the telephone-number figures paid by merchandising companies, have met in the middle – with innumerable magazine and newspaper articles over the last few months under the inevitable witty heading ‘May the Market Force be With You’, discussing the billions that the new ‘Star Wars’ had earned before a single frame of it played to a paying punter. The US premier of the ninety-second ‘The Phantom Menace’ trailer actually made headlines in the UK, and it wasn’t even a slow news day!

Of course, bigger special-effects and ever-more grandiloquent ‘stars’ mean bigger budgets. Consequently, the drive to be bigger, faster and louder than last year’s hit is sending the financial band-wagon racing completely out of control. Now Jim (King of the World) Cameron has successfully spent $300 million of somebody else’s money to make the completely backward-facing ‘Titanic’. This film became the first ever to earn over $1 billion worldwide. After video and TV sales have been added in, it will have very probably crested $2 billion. Does this mean we can expect more films about sinking ships? No, it means we can expect more films to cost $300 million plus!

Let's bankrupt Hollywood! Hell, yes!!

This means that no one dare risk making a movie unless they know it’ll be a hit, and how do they know that? By copying something that already is a hit – and hits have never come bigger than ‘Star Wars’.

The overwhelming belief in Hollywood - founded on nothing more secure than Lucas’ fondness for the films of his childhood - is that if it hasn’t been a hit already, it won’t be a hit now. It is an obsession which William Goldman, in his delightfully clear-eyed view of Hollywood: ‘Adventures in the Screen Trade’, calls simply ‘Past Magic’. Hollywood lives to evoke past magic!

This is madness. The first ‘Star Wars’ cost less than $10 million to make. This resulted in Lucas having to leave certain ingredients out, or find cheaper, more creative alternatives. He managed to ‘correct’ some of these details with the recent wash-and-brush-up job: ‘Star Wars – The Special Edition’, which cost another $10 million. Even so, almost $1 billion have been earned from a, by comparison, minuscule investment. The new ‘Star Wars’ installment has apparently cost $130 million – and is considered relatively cheap given the number of expensive special effects crested 1,900, almost three times as many as in any other film … ever.

The entire movie-making industry of the United States has come to be about numbers, not about telling stories. The truly sad thing is that this has come about almost entirely because one single film-maker never fully got over the disappointment of not being able to make a living driving fast cars. This is evident from even a cursory analysis of the content of the ‘Star Wars’ films:

The past is a supremely important place to Lucas and to the characters he creates. Famously, ‘Star Wars’ begins with the motto: ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …’. This not only serves, as intended, as a sort of ‘Once upon a time …’, thereby giving the film instant legendary or mythical status, it also tells us that the past is still a relevant and exciting place.

See, you have to imagine yourself as Ewan MacGregor ... Only twenty years older.

He weighs his dialogue down with hinted-at back-story, and most of the weight of this was shouldered in the first film by Alec Guinness’ Ben – Obi Wan – Kenobi. This is why in only his third line of dialogue, he confesses: “Obi Wan? Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.” It is Ben who first mentions – in passing – the Knights of Jedi. Luke then goes on to ask if Ben fought in ‘The Clone Wars’, during which, he believes, his father was killed. This early exchange was to prove crucial in the development of the whole ‘Star Wars’ myth. Since that all-too-brief mention, the Clone War saga has gone undiscussed in official ‘Star Wars’ circles, until now.

Similarly, Darth Vader’s appellation ‘Dark Lord of The Sith’ goes by in all three original films, without comment, only to be raised once more – and partially explained - in the new film.

The serials didn’t generally have time to indulge in these sorts of red-herrings, there was too much derring to do on the way to the next cliff-hanger. Cliff-hanger episode-endings (still a staple of genre television … I saw one in ‘The X-Files’ only last week) were a vehicle designed purely to bring the paying-public back next week. Anticipation was everything. Watching Flash Gordon struggling in the clutches of the mildly ridiculous crab-monster, on your own, at home, on TV, dilutes the experience. You need the group hysteria of an audience of your peers to fuel the suspension of disbelief which will get you over the holes in the plot.

Lucas set out to re-awaken this passion and group kinetic of group cinema-going in a decade where the only cinematic boom-market was the porno-movie. The seventies were marked by a cynicism and disbelief in the magical. ‘Star Wars’ was always intended to be a group experience. Year after year the film (then films) enjoyed cinematic re-issues. This is also why, as soon as he could, Lucas borrowed an idea from TV shows and pop-stars, and set up fan clubs – to hold on to this manufactured feeling of community. The Internet now serves his purposes very well, because people can be alone and spread out over the world, yet united in their love of The World According To George.

Although ‘Star Wars’ came to a rounded-off conclusion (the only loose-ends being the survival of the badguy, and all that pesky back-story), ‘Empire’ didn’t, it ended on a cliff-hanger. Han Solo was lost, Luke’s hand was lost, Luke’s faith was lost, all-in-all, things were in a bad way. The miracle was that, despite a two-year wait (as opposed to the seven-days of the original series) the audience’s anticipation didn’t leach away, it increased exponentially.

Well, it's been seventeen years since the last instalment of the ‘Star Wars’ saga wrapped everything up in a very final manner. How do you maintain anticipation over such a protracted length of time? The ‘Star Wars: The Special Edition’ project was a stroke of genius, it brought all the nostalgia and all the memories flooding back to the thirty-somethings who had seen it in their teens. Now they were old enough to take their own children to see it and the message, the group experience, the consuming habit, was passed on to a whole new generation – like a light-sabre being passed from father to son. Like a tumbling pebble gathering whole new kinds of stones into its wake as it rolls past.

Me and my Shadow ...

Now Lucas’ message is far more evolved, and he is far more confident in delivering it. He doesn’t have to be like Ben Kenobi, trying to generate interest in his listener by hinting at the mere existence of ‘The Force’, now he has a whole generation keen to know more. So, where do you go when you’ve finished your story off? Well, if you’re George Lucas and you are looking for inspiration, there is only one port of call - you go back into your past:

Ben: “A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all-but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of The Force."

Luke: “The Force?”

Ben: “Well, the Force is what gives the Jedi his power. It is an energy field, created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”

Such a simple notion, on the face of it, and yet this exchange contains the seed which would give rise to a whole new ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. Also, the pseudo-religiosity of this ‘Force’, is the one thing (other than the box-office receipts) which sets the ‘Star Wars’ saga apart from all of its copyists. It would be fair to say that it surrounds, penetrates and binds Lucas with his films. Increasingly, Lucas claims that the preaching associated with the Force has become his primary motivation for staying with ‘Star Wars’. The four years’ work that went into ‘The Phantom Menace’ was, he would like us to believe, a labour of love, and not at all motivated by the 100% of the opening-week’s takings that he demanded.

As he told ‘The Sunday Times Magazine’ (16 May), in his single interview with a British paper: “Somebody has to tell young people what we think is a good person … I mean, we should be doing this all the time. That’s what ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’ are about – ‘This is what a good person is; this is what we aspire to be.’ You need that in a society. It’s the basic job of mythology. [It tells you] This is how you fit. This is how it works, what’s expected of you, how you define your role in society and what your obligations are.”

Giving morality back to the masses, it’s a dirty job, but George is prepared to do it; and in return, since piety is its own reward, he only asks for complete control of the associated merchandising.

As ‘The Observer’ noted (March 28): “The American toy giant Hasbro ... [have paid] ... Lucasfilm some $610m ... [also] ... the Tri Con Restaurant Group, which owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken chains in the US, has bet right. It has paid Lucasfilm a record $2bn for the fast food marketing rights.” Companies are queuing up to pay George to promote his film for him.

So, what does he do with his billions? ‘The Sunday Times’ article also goes on to mention that the modestly entitled ‘George Lucas Educational Foundation’ exists to reform educational policy and improve schools by encouraging use of advanced technology. Charities are laudable organisations, and am I right in thinking that they are, coincidentally, as tax-exempt in America as they are in the UK?

In keeping with Lucas’ drive to romanticise the past – the prequel has a much plusher look to it than the original ‘Star Wars’, as if to imply that ‘A longer time ago, in a galaxy not quite so far away, relativistically speaking …’ things were better. The first ‘Star Wars’ trilogy exists in a point of galactic history where everywhere is run down save the galactic core where the despot ruler has feathered his nest. Our story opens in orbit around a dirty little planet out in the unfashionable reaches of an unpopular solar system, it doesn’t even hint at the breadth of experience and civilisation to be found Out There.

The buildings are a rough-hewn, little more than holes in the ground, the clothes are somewhat shoddy, the robots are rusty and the aliens distinctly low-rent. The Millennium Falcon is a dilapidated pile, held together by inertia and its pilot’s ego. The soldiers of the Empire are a bunch of dim-witted buffoons, only good for running into things, missing vital clues and blasting wildly and inaccurately at anything that moves. It is a second-hand Ford Escort of a universe, with too many light-years on the clock and one careless Emperor.

The new movie is set some thirty years earlier, when the universe was ruled by a benign Republican Senate. In this universe, the architecture is rarely less than spectacular, the clothes fit better, the robots are shiny and new and the aliens are now numerous, exotic and occasionally even convincing. The Queen’s Naboo Transporter is sleek and gorgeous and works first time. The android soldiers of the soon-to-be-Empire are clean, impressive, numerous and … still unable to hit a planetoid at thirty paces. Ah well, you can’t have everything.

Lucas has written his idealised rememberings of imaginary things past on a huge canvas, and they look better than they ever did. Which, I suppose, gets to the heart of nostalgia and the not inconsequential part it plays in people’s reasons for collecting memorabilia. The past always looks better than the present.

Struzan's attempt to give the new film the nostalgic feel of the old ones.

Maybe this is why an entire generation still venerates the original ‘Star Wars’ enough to generate some 500 web-sites dedicated to the new one. Maybe this is why The Queues outside sun-drenched Californian cinemas have been called ‘This generation’s Woodstock’. Over the months before the Glorious 19^th of May, anticipation grew into hysteria. People flew from all over the world to attend the first midnight screening in Times Square – three hours before LA’s midnight screening.

Maybe it is all just a trick of imprecise memory, maybe they thought they had enjoyed ‘Star Wars 1977’ more than they really had. That, at least, would help explain the howl of disappointment which reverberated around the world’s media when they all finally saw the film, and returned to their homes bereft of purpose. The despair of their knee-jerk reactions could be likened to – to coin a phrase – “ ... a great disturbance in the Force ... as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”

What the hell were they expecting?

Well, if the mythic and religious significance which is now constantly attributed to ‘Star Wars’ is carried to its logical extreme: they were expecting The Second Coming.

What they have instead, is a re-tread of the first and third existing movies, with far, far more product placement. As with ‘Graffiti’ and the original ‘Star Wars’ the young hero races cars for recreation. As with ‘Jedi’ (and, of course, the Vietnam war) a primitive people fight a hugely sophisticated war machine to a halt. As with all pulp fiction – and not, unfortunately, like real life - the heroes and villains are clearly identified (yes, I know Darth Sideous is supposed to be a mystery, but if you can’t work out who he is, you aren’t really trying!).

The REAL Dark Side

Basically, you have another bubble-gum movie aimed at kids, with a bit of spiritual sub-text to give the critics something to write about. Nothing, in other words, that you didn’t get last time round. The problem, from the point of view of the fans who grew-up on ‘Star Wars’, is that they are older, more mature and hopefully more sophisticated. George Lucas design for ‘Star Wars’, on the other hand, is just older.

The problem we Brits encounter is a little different from that which faced those first-night Americans. In the grand scheme of things Britain accounts for about 3% of the world cinema-going market. Consequently, we don’t matter that much. Therefore, when all of the ‘Star Wars’ merchandising burst on the market two weeks before the film opened in the States, we got it too – except for us it was three months before it opened.

For us, all those jealously guarded secrets, all the hysterical anticipation, all the pressure to be there first, is tempered by the fact that a mere glance at the back cover of the soundtrack album will give away one of the movie’s main surprises. You can buy the comic adaptation, the entire script. You can find out how every single special effect was constructed. You can play the movie out on your computer as a strategy game, or simply play endless pod-races in another computer game. Should you be suitably inclined, you can even wander down to your local car-boot sale and purchase a knock-off copy of the pirate video (although you’d be a bloody fool to try since the legit video will be out before Christmas).

Don't buy bootlegs, kids ... I did and look what happened to me!

Essentially, what you have is a finely tuned machine for mesmerising munchkins and making moolah, employing very old and well-established techniques. Any spiritual guidance the film offers is purely collateral. So, if you go to see/went to see ‘The Phantom Menace’ expecting anything other than a big, noisy, good-looking movie, you would doubtlessly be disappointed. If you wanted something that would change your life, you’ve got problems.

Granted, there is, amongst the mish-mash of other mythic sources Lucas has culled to cobble together his saga – a trace of Biblical imagery here and there. If you fancy stretching a few points.

Emperor Palpatine’s destruction of the Jedi Order can be compared to Pharaoh casting the Hebrew boy-children into the Nile (which I suppose would make Tatooine one big basket of bulrushes). Jabba the Hutt serves a similar purpose as Pilate, which presumably makes Lando at least a temporary Judas. Does that make the spectral threesome of dead Jedis – Ben, Yoda and Anakin – three wise men, or a holy trinity?

And, while we're on the subject, what is one supposed to make of the insinuation that Anakin’s mother Shmi was impregnated not by a person, but by the previously unmentioned microscopic organisms ‘Midi-Chlorians’. Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson) stands before the Jedi Council and confesses his suspicion that, since “... [Anakin’s] cells have the highest concentration of Midi Chlorians I have seen in a life form. It is possible he was conceived by the Midi-Chlorians.” Which, co-incidentally, would make him “The one who will bring balance to the Force.” In other words, Qui-Gon is fairly sure that Anakin was not conceived in the normal manner and is, therefore, The Messiah.

It’s all fairly mixed up, and not a tad pretentious. After all, you could just as easily apply the same logic to ‘Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars’ (1938) and decide that the quakes and tidal waves caused by Ming’s earth-shattering Nitron Lamp are a metaphor for the brimstone and fire which rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah. Which would make Flash into Lot and Ming into God. I think not!

Still, faith is where you find it, and for a generation which had their dreams shattered by the social and political corruption of the seventies, and then ground into the dirt by the greed and bigotry of the eighties – there were precious few heroes to cling to. Traditional dogmatic religion was, at least in the Western World, perceived largely as a lost cause; yet the simple truths behind the tenets of most religions can seemingly gather converts if presented in a new and different manner. Maybe superheroes are the new saints, and maybe they can be just as reassuring and inspirational as their secular forebears, if in a less obvious way.

Well, replace the pulp buzz-word ‘superhero’ with the nineties teen-cult phrase ‘jedi knight’, and the same could very well be said of ‘Star Wars’.

Maybe this is where George is going next. Following L. Ron Hubbard’s example, maybe we can soon expect the founding of ‘LucasFaith’™. After all, religions are tax exempt too!

Of course ... There are other theories as to why George has turned into the film-maker he has:

THE CELLULORD ON STAGE - ACT TWO

2011-09-13T01:06:00.000+01:00

So, I was down on The South Coast, doing my turn, telling people How To Have an Opinion when I received an interesting and unsolicited "tweet" on my Twitter account - @cellulord. This intriguing message was from James King - @jameskingmovies - and he had a tempting proposal which I simply couldn't turn down

Turns out he was going to introducing a special screening of the new Scarface Blu-Ray and he wanted me to be his guest interviewee. It seems he knew of the Brian DePalma book I wrote in a previous life and, having written said book, made me an 'expert' on Brian DePalma. I had to re-read my book on the train since I'd written it eleven years ago and had successfully forgotten most every word but but, y'know, I'll take 'em where I can get 'em.

The screening was to take place here:

That is one of the two screening rooms in The Soho Hotel which is, I am assured, London's swankiest residence these days. Think Hotel Babylon crossed with Derek Flint's apartment and you're about there!

So down I went to That There London and met Mr. King - who has failed entirely to grasp the point of film criticism, in that he stands there tall, slim, handsome and cheerful with a particularly distressing full head of hair! Critics are short and bald with an attitude problem, doesn't he know this?

Anyway - we got on very well, despite having first about five minutes before going on stage. Of course, we have a shared love of movies and a radio background, so there is a lot of common-ground.

The whole event was organised by Katie Aust on behalf of HMV and their rewards programme (which you can involved with here) and Sarah Jackson, who was also kind enough to take some photos of me in full flow.

James does a bang-up job of feigning interest as my point rambles on ... and on ... and on ...

... Before I treat him to my Lady Gaga impersonation.

And, in case you don't know what all the fuss is about. Scarface ... The film that defined the 1980s:

TRUE BLOOD 4.11 – Soul of Fire

2011-09-13T00:12:00.000+01:00

Okay ramblers, let's get ramblin' ...

So, it’s all kicking-off! After interminable weeks of piddling-about, waiting and wondering if Bill was ever going to man up and Sookie was ever going to wake up now, finally, we have the show-down between the armies of the night and the most dangerous enemy they’ve ever faced. Yes? Well … Sort of.

Essentially we have a siege, but it’s a very sedate siege, really. With a lot of talking and not much besieging. However, we do have Eric performing the coolest blood-suck of the series and then, suddenly, it’s all over!

After such a long, rambling build-up I was really hoping for more energy, more peril … More dead vampires.

You'll have to read the full review to learn all the gory details. You can find it on What Culture here.

And you can some behind-the-scenes video action (with lots of spoilers) here:

Ep. 47 - Inside the Episode

TRUE BLOOD 4.10 – Burning Down the House

2011-09-08T12:00:00.014+01:00

Let's go to work ... Finally.

The last few weeks’ episodes have been named after the songs which have accompanied the end credits … So, this week, I was all geared-up for some Talking Heads action … But no, it’s a cover by The Used. Devastated!

Sookie is finally motivated to doing something that doesn’t involve showing the world her knicker collection. She gets mad and, finally, after nine weeks of, frankly, doing bugger-naff-all, she unleashes all kinds of super-powers. She saves the day – and both of her vamp bfs – and knocks all of the wide-eyed-puppy-dog stuffing out of Eric.

otherwise, it's a performances episode, with several actors getting to update their audition reels with some powerful scenes. What don’t we get? You'll have to read the full review to find out.

You can find it on What Culture here.

Then come back and listen to the version of Burning Down the House they should have used!

THE CELLULORD ON STAGE - ACT ONE

2011-09-07T18:00:00.006+01:00

Your humble Cellulord doing his turn as Murray Lachlan Young's warm-up ...

So, I've been away. I've let my film reviewing responsibilities slide terribly over the last month. I have a pile of notes that need writing up, but before I get to them, I thought I'd let you know something of where I've been.

Firstly, I was invited to give workshops at the inaugural West Dean Festival about how to be a film reviewer and how to publish a blog. Well, I'm hardly qualified to talk knowledgably about the latter, but I have more than a few opinions about the former. So I put together an hour-long presentation called:

'How To Have An Opinion'

Among the things I discussed were the need for a reviewer to become well-read in his subject because, after all, a reviewer is merely a person with an opinion. Now, some people maintain that, in a free country, their opinion is theirs by right but, as the great Harlan Ellison put it so eloquently in the documentary Dreams With Sharp Teeth:

We looked at what offering your opinion as a critic can be. It can be your soap-box, your chance to put across your dogmatic ideology. It's your chance to be creative with words and to structure and eloquent, persuasive argument. What it isn't ... Is something that will make a blind bit of different. Film critics do not change the world.

For an illustration of this, I looked no further than The Critic, a show produced in 1994 and 5, which starred Jon Lovitz and concerned the peregrinations of a cynical, bald, fat, middle-aged film critic. Can't think why I identify with the show so much ...

We also looked people's motives for becoming a critic or reviewer and found that this same episode of The Critic - episode 6, "Eyes on the Prize" - had the answer to that as well. It shows quite clearly why Jay Sherman became a film critic ... And it's the reason so many do ... Because he couldn't cut it as a film-maker:

Sadly, this very situation makes too many critics spiteful and, seemingly, motivated by jealousy. I know that I'd far rather be a movie script-writer than a critic, but that isn't quite how things have worked out, not yet at any rate. Never-the-less, I try not to let my unfulfilled creative urges boil over into a cruel and bile-filled tirade against the work of those who are being creative. At least not too often.

When I am moved to be needlessly unkind to a film, I try to remember this comment by undeniably one of the greatest film-makers who ever shouted "Action" on a soundstage:

You see, I would be mortified to think that any high-minded put-down of mine could upset a film-maker. I genuinely love movies and have to admire the work of the people who keep putting them up there on the screen for me to enjoy. Obviously there are exceptions, Mr. Sandler, but, as a general rule, I try not to be unnecessarily unkind.

Because, remember, all a critic is is a person with an opinion and, as Charles Durning put it so eloquently in the Jodie Foster film Home For The Holidays ...

So, that's a glimpse at my modest contribution to The West Dean Festival. I was on stage immediately before Murray Lachlan Young, who was very gracious about my talk. Relieved to have done my bit, I didn't return the complement by staying to watch him perform. Regret that now!

Anyway, this was the first ever West Dean Festival - a three-day event marked with dozens of workshops in everything from knitting to enamelling and pizza throwing. There were philosophical discussions to the accompaniment of ukulels, self-published comics, ferret racing and story-telling. There were street performers ever though were no streets and there was live music wafting from tents in all directions. There were gangs of exciting kids dressed as lions and tigers and bears galloping around, chasing each-other's tails in a safe, supportive, relaxed and fun atmosphere all in the gorgeous surroundings of West Dean's rolling grounds. There was even original Salvador Dali artwork on the college walls. The weather was welcoming, the college staff moreso and the overall atmosphere - as with any good festival - was of a timeless, other-worldliness that bitter reality could not penetrate. It was a little bubble of perfect summer. I'm glad I went and look forward keenly to the next one!

You get a flavour of the event from this home video:

But, for me, the find of the event was the closing night headliner: James Hunter. I'm not a particular fan of 60s inspired Soul and Blues, but the infectious energy they had on stage and the virtuosity of their performance was just too winning! And, furthermore, Hunter himself was just having so much fun playing the music he so obviously loves, you couldn't help loving it too!

Here you get an idea of his very English sense of humour and his very American singing voice:

And here you get him and his full band - including that smokey Hammond organ and amazing sax sounds ... On Jools Holland's Later ...

TRUE BLOOD 4.9 – “Let’s Get Out Of Here”.

2011-09-07T12:00:00.024+01:00

Sookie continues to frequent only the finest lingerie shops ...

After the last two weeks, things were starting to tie together in a satisfying manner but this week, once again, some of the plot threads seem to have broken free and are flapping around loose.

What of Marnie/Antonia? Well, she brought Eric under her spell at the end of last week’s battle and so she has turned Eric into a weapon … one could even call him a tool.

Meanwhile, on a not unrelated matter, Sookie, with nothing better to do, fantasises about her two vampires. She insists she doesn’t want them fighting over her … But, of course, that’s exactly what she wants!

I have been asked not to re-print my What Culture reviews here so, for the time being, following this link will be your best way to read this full review. Don't panic, my cinema reviews will still be appearing here, when I get some free time to catch up with them!

Then, when you have read the review, pop back here and watch this mini making-of:

Ep. 45 - Inside the Episode

Tom Hanks had the RIGHT Idea ... I Want MY Money Back!

2011-09-06T23:46:00.000+01:00

Larry Crowne didn't play my local cinema because, contrary to appearances, it doesn't contain any car chases and therefore is of no interest to the mouth-breathers who frequent my local kinema. I, therefore, have no opinion on the film ... But there are others on which I certainly do!

So, you’ve seen the news story – reported here in The Guardian – of Tom Hanks giving the cinema ticket money back to two people who didn’t like his film Larry Crowne. Is that a dangerous precedent or the way forward?

Well, I think that might be the way forward! Bringing film-makers to book.

So, over on WhatCulture! I've put together a list of the five biggest miscreants who OWE ME BIG!!

You'll find the list here.

And yes, it is meant to be funny!

TRUE BLOOD – 4.8 – Spellbound

2011-09-06T23:19:00.004+01:00

Sookie and Eric lying in a bed S-H-A-G-G-I-N-G

This week, we get an indication that trouble is brewing early on when the werewolves decide to “Stay the fuck away from the Vampires and Witches at war”.

Marnie-Antonia is livid that she only killed one vamp.

Bill brokers a meetings with Marnie-Antonia to take place, appropriately, in a cemetery.

Yes, with extra Anchovies ...

But what of Eric and Sookie, the love-birds, I hear you cry? Well, under the influence of her Faerie blood, they act like a couple of stoned teens as they’re all nekkid in the shower. And, yes, Alexander Skarsgård finally gets his ass out. Happy now?

And so we arrive at the meeting between Bill and Marnie-Antonia and there are an extraordinary number of surprises and shocks in this culminating sequence.

After this, they really will be at war! Can’t wait.

Oh, and the best five minutes of the season so far is followed by the best piece of end credit music!

I have been asked not to re-print my What Culture reviews here so, for the time being, following this link will be your best way to read this full review. Don't panic, my cinema reviews will still be appearing here, when I get some free time to catch up with them!

Then, when you have read the review, pop back here and watch this mini making-of:

Ep. 44 - Inside the Episode

THE CELLULORD HITS THE AIRWAVES

2011-08-17T22:55:00.002+01:00

So I decided to go to a car-boot sale this morning. It was sunny and, so far as I knew, I had nothing special to do. Bought some old film mags (a clutch of Picturegoer magazines from the 1950s and 40s, the oldest being from 1924). I get a real thrill leafing through magazines which were first read fifty-plus years ago. The style of the articles and particularly the adverts give one a little slice of history as real people lived it!

Anyway, I was sitting in the car, leafing through one of these when my phone rang. It was my local BBC radio station. They were running a feature based on this news item, about Virgin Airlines giving warnings about movies that are likely to make their customers cry. They wanted me to talk about tear-jerking movies.

So I did. And here is that bijou nugget of timeless radio gold. The Cellulord on BBC Humberside, interviewed by their afternoon presenter, Carl Wheatley:

The Cellulord on BBC Humberside by cellulord

TRUE BLOOD – 4.7: Cold Grey Light of Dawn

2011-08-14T00:00:00.003+01:00

Deborah Ann Woll seems to be the big hit of this season ... Her career's really hotting up!

It’s still Full Moon; weirdness still abounds!

We get more of Jesus and LaFayette’s adventures down Mexico-way.

We get more of Pam's hilarious spite, plus an odd make-over for her.

Pam's new beauty regime is kept under wraps.

The Marnie/Antonia story finally takes centre-stage and Bill reminds us just how potentially dangerous she is - just before she demonstrates her power in the most shocking cliff-hanger ending of the season.

I have been asked not to re-print my What Culture reviews here so, for the time being, all the details and my review in full is here: On What Culture! Don't panic, my cinema reviews will still be appearing here!

Then, after you've been there, swing back here and watch this mini-making of:

Ep. 43 - Inside the Episode

CAPTAIN AMERICA - THE FIRST AVENGER (MOVIE)

2011-08-13T11:02:00.003+01:00

This follows on from my review of the less-than-impressive Thor, which you'll find here.

Maybe we have reached the point in cultural history where we have used up all our originality. I can’t help it, whenever I watch a film these days, I find it puts me in mind of one or more existing films. Maybe the paucity of imagination in this summer’s movies is simply a symptom of a wider cultural malaise … Greater artists than we have today have used up all the good, original ideas. There’s none left. Maybe, from now on, everything will be a parody or pastiche of something else. Maybe post-modernism really is the death of cultural evolution.

All of which is clearly not the fault of Joe Johnson or his team making Captain America here. After all, this is an adaptation! It must resemble something existing … Otherwise what sort of adaptation would it be? The comic book Captain America was born in the 1940s and I'm glad they felt the need to keep him in his proper place which, inevitably, leads to some 1940s pastiche. That's okay, it is a right and proper requirement of the story.

However, I began my viewing experience confused … For no immediately obvious reason the modern-day prologue of this film is a clear, unambiguous homage to the original 1951 The Thing From Another World. That came from ten years after the origins of Cap, from a very different world, a world worried about The Russians and Nuclear War. I suppose one could make the case that the thing they are chipping out of the ice is from another world – a world at war with Germany.

So we begin the film proper – By travelling back to Cap’s roots in 1942. America has finally, reluctantly stepped-up and joined in the war. Against this background, jobbing comic-book creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Cap as a patriotic character, wrapped in the flag, partly to cash in on the immense popularity of Superman (first published in 1938) but also to inspire young Americans to support the war effort. As such, he is clear, unashamed propaganda.

This is very well represented in the film version, with a young, weedy, diminutive Steve Rogers constantly trying to enlist and constantly being rejected. For a while, there, I was convinced they’d done an amazing job of finding an actor who looked just like an 8-stone version of Chris Evans, but eventually had to concede that they were doing some remarkably clever Benjamin Button-type stuff with the real Evans. Remarkable. This special effect version of Evans has to carry the film through its first act, whilst making Rogers human and believable. What they can’t do these days!

When his steely determination to volunteer finally bears fruit, he is assigned to Tommy Lee Jones’ ‘Strategic Scientific Reserve’ unit. Jones has great fun as the scenery-chewing Col. Phillips, the traditional officer who will never openly betray the respect he clearly has for Rogers’ bravery.

These boot camp scenes are lovely, showing Rogers still being bullied, still coming last, yet being the smartest kid in the platoon and using his bravery and intelligence to win over the respect of his fellow recruits and the heart of Peggy Carter, the initially quite aloof Intelligence Officer.

He and his friend, the perfectly-normally proportioned Bucky Barnes take dates to the Stark Expo – which gave me a moment a joy … I love the way these Marvel Movie Universe films are all folding into each other … And we meet a young Howard Stark. The relationship between Stark and Rogers will, I have no doubt, be the cause of much conversation in The Avengers next year … But enough wandering from the point -

Let’s mention the bad-guy: Johann Schmidt, a Nazi officer with his own army within the German army – known as Hydra. He is played with cold, creepy efficiency by Hugo Weaving – hot from his turn as Abberline in Johnson’s last movie – The Wolfman. He is looking for “Odin’s Tesseract” (a gentle reminder of Thor, this summer’s other Marvel Movie Universe movie – Because, of course, whilst X-Men First Class is a movie based on a Marvel comic, is not set in the consistent Marvel Movie Universe … But then, neither are Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Blade ... Oh, it’s complicated, don’t worry about it … ). This is a glowing cube – The Cosmic Cube for those of us who’ve read the comics – An infinite source of magical power to fuel Schmidt’s super-weapons. “And” He laughs scornfully “The Fuhrer digs for trinkets in the desert”. That isn’t the last Raiders reference we’ll get here, but it’s certainly the funniest.

World's easiest Rubik's cube!

Schmidt has an opposite number – a good German scientist, played by the fatherly Stanley Tucci, who plays his stereotypical German, Dr. Erskine for all he’s worth. It is Erskine who brewed the first Super Soldier Serum

Schmidt has a secret – one that the trailer and much of the pre-release hype has spoiled but, in case you’ve avoided it all, I’ll play along … He was the first subject for the Super Soldier Serum (you know – the serum they gave to Tim Roth in The Incredible Hulk a couple of years ago … See, these films are slowly all heading in one direction!) The serum had strange side-effects on Schmidt, but it has since been perfected and now it is safe … Safe for a weedy little volunteer like Steve Rogers.

It is said that the serum ‘amplifies’ the person who receives it … So it made Schmidt even more ruthless and egomaniacal; with Rogers it will accentuate his determination and his unwavering decency. That’s always been the key trait with Cap, no-matter the situation, however vexing the problem, he approaches it with an absolute, unshakeable moral code.

Foreplay completed, the film proper begins with Roger’s transformation into the bulked-up, rippling form of the real Chris Evans who is, distressingly, not CGI’d … He really is that fit. Bastard.

"I'm up 'ere, luv."

From here on in, it’s pretty-much action-scene after action-scene. The film jumps from incident to incident, hopping around the world, and we follow it because they have invested in creating such interesting characters in that long, careful first act.

The transformation of Steve Rogers Super Soldier into Captain America is dealt with beautifully – entirely in-keeping with the period and presented as a musical number! Inspired! Such a clever way of introducing the iconography of the comics!

The costume he finally wears is taken from the much more contemporary Ultimate version of Cap, written by Mark Millar and drawn by Bryan Hitch; but that was specifically designed to look believable and wearable in the real-world; so they were wise to borrow it!

See ... Casual yet practical.

In the middle of one battle sequence, we get a glimpse of a tell-tale bowler hat and I let out an impromptu cheer – for there they are: The Howling Commandoes! Never referred to as such in the film, but that’s who they are, Dum-Dum Dugan, Falsworth and the rest. And wouldn’t Tommy Lee Jones have made a brilliant Sgt. Fury, if things had gone another way? There’s a thought!

Anyway – the movie’s numerous action set-pieces are smoothly and economically constructed, with a minimum of plot between them; but each sequence leads logically and inevitably to the next so we, the audience, feel like guests along for a ride rather than customers being shepherded from one fair-ground attraction to another.

If anything, they are too economical – hurtling past with no time for us to feel any sense of danger. So, yes the sequences are thrilling, but you never feel that anyone is in peril. Of course, that may be a deliberate ploy to lull the viewer into a possibly false sense of security.

There are several hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck moments in here; Such as the first time he throws that shield and catches it again. I got a buzz out of that comparable to the first time Hugh Jackman snikt his claws in that cage in the first X-Men movie. I also loved the more-understandable-than-The-Thing reference to Powell and Pressburger’s Matter of life and Death.

This film works like a clock, every sequence perfectly designed and machined to work perfectly with every other sequence. Every detail is there for a purpose. I just love the design, from Cap’s final costume to the art deco motorbikes ridden by the Hydra thugs and beyond. The film looks lovely – every bit the follow-up to The Rocketeer that I’d hoped!

Which offers me the perfect opportunity to feature one of my favourite posters of the last twenty years.

Captain America is that rarest of things – a tent-pole summer movie that could have done with being longer! I would have liked more character development and more dialogue scenes between the fights. I’d have liked the Howling Commandoes to get more screen-time – and, in the flip-side, Toby Jones’ Dr. Zola also needed fleshing out more. Maybe in the BluRay.

One sour note that rang wrong as the film’s credits were rolling … Simon and Kirby are not afforded a credit in the main titles … But Stan Lee is! Yes, they are named in the credits roll, but not in the main sequence. The bad blood that exists between Marvel and now Jack Kirby’s estate is a matter of record - particularly in this extensive article from The Comics Journal - and it is sad that the corporate giant can’t just bury the hatchet once and for all.

Indeed - since writing that paragraph, the battle has raged on, as detailed in this recent piece from Hollywood Reporter.

Of course, I only noticed this because I was sitting through the credits, waiting for the inevitable post-titles sequence. I wasn’t disappointed – there it is: The first teaser trailer for next year’s The Avengers. With fair fortune and a following wind … I’ll be assembling on May the 4^th!

"See, Chris, you CAN appear in a good Marvel movie ... Even if you are only after the credits."

TRUE BLOOD 4.6 – “I Wish I Was The Moon”

2011-08-09T01:21:00.005+01:00

Bill looks back sourly as his days modelling for Grattan ...

It’s Full Moon – and we know that’s the time when all the freaks come out … So how can we expect Full Moon in Bon Temps to be anything other than the night when it all kicks off.

Snookie finally goes from ‘get out of my house’ to ‘get into my knickers’.

This results in Bill turning into the bad-guy and passing a True Death sentence on Eric.

Sam - Tommy, Tommy - Sam ... Just like that!

Tommy finds that he can now shape-change into other people, a turn-up that could prove to have fatal consequences for him.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Jason's superpower is that he’s extra-good at sex. Oh, and speaking of which ...

So, Jess keeps her clothes on this week ... One of the few who do!

... Jess turns up to be with him.

No-one expects The Spanish inquisition!

Down in King Bill’s dungeon, Marnie continues to be a pathetic, needy spirit whore – begging The Spanish Witch to use her. She may regret what she wishes for ...

I have been asked not to re-print my What Culture reviews here so, for the time being, All the details and my full review in full here: On What Culture! Don't panic, my cinema reviews will still be appearing here!

Then, after you've read it - swing back here to watch this mini making-of:

Ep. 42 – Inside the Episode

TRUE BLOOD 4.5 – “Me and the Devil”

2011-07-30T00:19:00.002+01:00

That hoodie must be getting aromatic now, he's been wearing it weeks!

This week, Bon Temps gets religion. We have good honest existentialist angst, an epiphany, prayer, an exorcism and rather too much gospel singing!

We also get a lot of dreams and flashbacks this week!

We get some extra screen-time for some of last week’s B stories. We also learn an important life-lesson about gators!

Meanwhile, we spend the most time yet with Marnie in her Moon Goddess Emporium. The problem with this storyline, so far, has been that we, the viewer, don’t fear of witches. But Pam does!

This was not a Good Face Day for Pam

After one brief appearance last week, Terry and Arlene and their cute little possessed moppet have their own little sub-plot.

See ... See ... Cutest little demon ever!

Oh, and Sookie sleeps with Eric!

Well, NO ONE expected this ... Did they!

All the details and my review in full here: On What Culture!

I have been asked not to re-print my What Culture reviews here so, for the time being, following the link will be your best way to resume normal service. Don't panic, my cinema reviews will still be appearing here!

BLU-RAY: SUBMARINE

2011-07-30T00:04:00.000+01:00

This is a film (based on the novel of the same name) about a teenager called Oliver, awash on a sea of hormones and confusion. This is not, it’s fair to say, unexplored territory. From Catcher in the Rye via The Breakfast Club to Juno, you will find many brilliantly observed and painfully true depictions of the terrible teens.

There are so many rites of passage films depicting the shedding of childish things that you’d be forgiven for thinking there was nothing new to say about it but, as with silly love songs, we don’t seem to have had enough. And I am grateful for that because Submarine is wonderful!

The movie that I was mostly put in mind of is Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl (1981). And that’s about as fine a complement as I can pay a British teen movie. Part of the reason for the comparison is that Submarine seems to be set in the eighties. There’s nothing that overtly tells you this … But the absence of mobile phones and laptops and the presence of video tapes and Paddy Considine’s mullet would seem to suggest that! Also, it is that point in the eighties when some people still hadn’t quite got over being in the seventies.

Thing is, that’s the time I was trudging through the ignominies of teenage. So, unlike y’r modern teen who LOLs and LMFAOs their way through life, experiencing everything vicariously through their constantly updating social networks whilst growing a thick skin of cynicism; I remember having to make my mistakes myself and having to figure out how and why I’d made them alone.

We were a sadly solitary lot, the teenage boys of the 1980s. Similarly, Oliver (Craig Roberts) lives in an isolated world largely of his own imagining. He agonises about being invisible to girls but, in his mental experiments, he imagines being dead would be a good career move because he would then, in his absence, become the centre of everyone’s attention.

Rather like Adrian Mole (also from the eighties) Oliver is well-read and erudite but has no life experiences to elucidate with his wide vocabulary … So, in the absence of an incident-filled life, he makes things up.

As children will, he tries a bit of everything. Tired of being bullied, he tries a spot of bullying himself, just to see if it agrees with him and will impress Jordana, the girl on whom he fixates. He has the ability to rationalise any behaviour to himself – including spying on his parents to the point when he knows, to the day, when they last had sex … Some seven months previously.

So far, the film probably doesn’t sound especially new or unusual … But writer / director Richard Ayoade (who you will, of course, know as Moss in the I.T Crowd) has created a beautifully visualised depiction of mundane alienation. There is a clever economy of shooting here and Ayoade even allows the editing to carry the gag occasionally. That shows real maturity but, it’s worth mentioning, whilst this is Ayoade’s first movie, it isn’t his first time in the director’s chair: His first screen credit, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace was as co-writer and director as well as co-star!

Whilst the whole film is seen from Oliver’s perspective, making him very much the centre of things, he is surrounded by great oddball characters: His rigid, perpetually-embarrassed middle-class parents (played by Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins), Graham, the mullet-wearing Ninja neighbour (Paddy Considine) and, of course, the frosty presence of Jordana herself (Yasmin Paige). All of these characters are layered and complex and portrayed with the lightest of touch by an inspired cast.

Visually, the film is full of unobtrusive but beautiful tracking shots, with the camera flowing effortlessly through the wintery Welsh wilderness, making it look quite magical; even if this does lead to some rather self-conscious referencing of Francois Truffaut. Hey it’s nice, for once, for someone to not be referencing Spielberg or Tarantino!

Oliver’s eccentric, experimental relationship with Jordana, conducted almost exclusively out-of-doors in duffle-coats, is made up of perfectly conceived vignettes, often gathered together in delightful little montages. Like any miniature, the details are absolutely crucial in this small film, the humour is gentle and heartfelt but the themes, they’re universal, and here played out to the accompaniment of Alex (Arctic Monkeys) Turner’s simple, soulful songs.

As the film progresses into its third act, we do begin to lose sympathy with Oliver. His rationalisations become quite cruel and self-serving, but this is because he is still a child, unfamiliar with and unsure of how to cope with the emotions he feels. It is quite brave of the film to not gloss over this and not try to idealise Oliver.

What about that title, then: Submarine? Well, apart from the submarine Oliver has painted on his bedroom wall, this is mainly a reference to his discovery of sonar. Using sonar we can detect what is going on inside a hard metal object. Oliver’s fear is that there is no sonar for people, no way of being able to detect what is going in on in the human heart. Of course, we do develop that sonar: It’s called empathy.

One has to experience teenage traumas in order to develop that empathy. That is the point of a coming-of-age story and that is the key difference between a child and an adult. We can enjoy the humour, understand the human drama and be moved by the emotions precisely because we have been through that rite of passage and can now empathise with those who are still struggling through it.

Fortunately, watching this film is very far from a struggle. It may just be my film of the year!

THE EXTRAS:

Audio Commentary – This is the best extra by far. Featuring Ayoade, of course, as well as the original novelist, Joe Dunthorne (I love it when novelists get this involved in a movie adaptation) and Director of Photography, Eric Wilson, who does extraordinary work with the seemingly impossible task of making midwinter Wales seems like a place you actually want to be. A great excuse to watch the film again straight away!

Through The Prism – 16.00

This is the self-help video that Graham T. Purvis (the Ninja neighbour) flogs at his ‘seminars’ and parts of which we see peppered through the film. It is essentially Paddy Considine improvising in character. A bravura performance, to be sure, but the joke does wear thin.

Message From Ben Stiller – 2.00

A heartfelt pep-talk video from Ben Stiller, sitting in sun-kissed LA, sent to the film-crew entrenched in Wales in the rainiest month on record. He certainly feels their pain.

Interviews – 24.30

EPK (Electronic Press-Kit) interviews with all the main stars. Feel free to add your own questions then howl with laughter as the cast answer a completely different question.

Deleted Scenes – 9.40

One of the joys of the film is its cracking pace and economy. These scenes would, almost without exception, have slowed things down. They do, however, fill-in some of the details about Oliver’s dad who is, to be frank, only sketched-in as a character in the film.

Extended Scenes – 4.50

Ditto

London Comedy Festival Q&A – 10.00

Seemingly shot by an iPhone, this gives an impression of what the Festival screening must have been like, for those people trapped at the back who couldn’t hear.

Glasgow Film Festival Q&A – 11.40

This one is better and more coherent, although Ayoade does seem to be a bit nonplussed at being asked questions about his film.

Camera Test – 3.50

This is a run-through of the key under-the-bridge scene, with different hair and an unattractive mack instead of the duffle-coat. Those tiny details really do matter!

Piledriver Waltz Video – 3.20

The video for one of Alex Turner’s songs, made up of seemingly unused montage material from the film. Quite delightful!

BLU-RAY: THE LINCOLN LAWYER

2011-07-29T23:48:00.003+01:00

So, you have an opinion on Matthew McConaughey, don’t you! Everyone does. After the better part of a decade appearing in films which are, at best, undemanding and, at worst, just plain awful, he has become something of a joke around Hollywood because he just can’t seem to keep his nipples off screen.

Now, aged 42, McC (as I’ve decided to dub him) clearly thinks it is time to be taken as seriously as he fifteen years ago so, once again, he has slipped into a lawyer’s loafers for The Lincoln Lawyer. Mick Haller is a slick, cynical wheeler-dealer of a defence lawyer whose office is the back seat of his thirty year old Lincoln Town Car (with the number plate NTGUILTY) because, like the shark he resembles, he has to keep moving and all his clients, whether they did it or not, walk free after hiring him.

Except one. The one case that will come back to haunt him is that of Jesus Martinez, who was found guilty of a brutal murder and was destined for Death Row before Haller’s manoeuvrings had him committed for fifteen years instead. He considers that a result, initially, but events eventually make him reassess.

And when I say ‘eventually’, I mean it! Boy, does the first hour of this film drag. We spend far too long being introduced to his complicated life and the wide range of characters who live in it with him. The film is written in such a way that every single incidental character and every single off-hand line of dialogue will come in handy during the film’s second half. The problem with that is that the astute viewer or experienced fan of courtroom dramas will know where and why a lot of this detail will matter.

"Wow, you mean you don't have to take your shirt off in this one, either, Marisa?"

But worse than the confusing structure of the first hour is the fact that McC plays Haller as a total dick throughout. Then at the mid-point, when he gets his epiphany (right on cue) he changes; he realises he made a big mistake with the Martinez case and has to do something about it. Problem is, we’ve spent a whole hour not liking or not caring about him, so McC suddenly has to work doubly hard to earn our sympathy.

TV shows like Shark and Boston Legal and, before that, The Practice, have shown that you can take the overly-familiar trappings of court-room drama and turn them out weekly, yet still make them compelling. A major motion picture has to step-up to this high bar and get over it in pretty impressive style.

The twist is that Haller so dislikes his client that he actually wants to lose the case, but still has to do his best work. Hang on, though, wasn’t that also the case with Al Pacino in … And Justice For All and, for that matter, Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar?

So, you see, with McC struggling to be taken seriously and the story struggling to feel original, it’s an uphill struggle. It’s to his credit that we do give a damn by the film’s closing act! And it could all be saved if they could just pull off that moment we wait for in all court-room dramas, that tingle of excitement you get when the canny cross-examiner springs his trap: The ‘You Can’t Handle the Truth’ Moment.

Do they manage it? Almost. Does this lift this film above the mediocrity of being just another mid-list drama? Not quite. Is the revelation worth two hours of watching Marisa Tomei wandering around in the background wondering what she’s there for? No. Is it worth it for the brief glimpses of Michael Paré (who, apparently, isn’t dead after all), or William H. Macy or Bryan Cranston without his beard; or even for another one of John Leguizamo’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameos? No, no, no and no.

"Don't complain, John - At least this isn't Repo Men ... At least you weren't digitally removed!"

Are the extras on the disc worth it? Well, let’s have a look, shall we:

EXTRAS:

To their credit, the extras concentrate on Michael Connelly, the writer of the source novel, and he is a fascinating individual … Not quite as eccentric as Eddie Bunker or James Ellroy, but heading that way!

Making The Case: 13.30

This is an interesting but fairly standard telling of how the novel became the film which considers the age-old problem of turning a 400-odd page novel into a 120 page script and how much of the novel must be lost. McC has a nice way of encapsulating this when he says the film is like the ‘greatest hits’ of the novel.

Is it just me, or does Michael Connelly look like an older, scarier Mark Kermode?

Michael Connelly – At Home on the Road: 10.00

This accompanies Connelly as he drives around his beloved LA, introducing us to the locations that inspired the book (as well as the apartment that he bought because Raymond Chandler once lived there).

McC and Connelly – Face to Face: 5.30

This is a smarmy love-in which is almost as uncomfortable to watch as Connelly clearly feels about being in it.

Deleted Scenes: 4.40

Although these do explain why Earl, Mick’s driver, disappears in the middle of the film, and where the rap music we keep hearing actually comes from, these don’t add much especially important to the film. Sadly, they aren’t the only scenes that should have been deleted from this overly-long, overly-formulaic drama.

Over-all, then, the extras are nothing to write home about. There’s no audio commentary, very-little on-set footage and very little insight into the process.

And for those keeping score: McC Nipple Count: 1!