The local branch of Borders was advertising the last few days of its closing down sale and I wandered in to see if I could find any last minute presents for anyone - or for me.
The DVD section looked as if a hurricane had passed through, but I was tempted by a few books - Margaret Attwood's latest novel plus a handsome edition of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell with a fascinating introduction by Neil Gaiman - until I realised that even with discounts of up to 40% I could probably buy them cheaper from Amazon.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Cinema Paradiso
I tend to write my notes at different times and in different places, but these have to be the most unusual. I wrote most of this between a series of meetings held over three days in London while negitiating the finer points of an international support contract.
I have to admit that this is one film that until this screening had escaped me, but having seen it I'd be happy to see it again. I subsequently found the soundtrack on Spotify and spent an enjoyable hour listening to it while marking up a contract for a bid I'm working on. Such are the joys of working from home.
Cinema Paradiso
Italy 1988 (123 minutes)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring: Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
A further 19 wins and 12 nominations
A famous film director returns home to a Sicilian village for the first time after almost 30 years. He reminisces about his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist, first brought about his love of films. He also remembers his lost teenage love, Elena, whom he left behind when he set off for Rome.
In a poll in 2007 readers of The Guardian chose Cinema Paradiso as the greatest foreign language film ever made by a considerable margin. However when it was originally released in Italy it performed badly at the box office and it was shortened to 123 minutes for its international release. In this version it became an instant success: amongst its many awards it won both the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2002 Tornatore released an extended director's cut with a running time of 173 minute version (known in the U.S. as Cinema Paradiso: The New Version).
The 2002 version reinstates more of the story of the adult Elena, but all three versions omit the major historical national and international events of the period that would have affected the whole of Italy after the Second World War, focussing instead on the different films screened in the village. But it is this infectious celebration of film that makes the repeat viewings worth it . As David Thomson puts it:
“It has many film clips, from Renoir to Antonioni, and a little boy’s face as seen through the booth window is a winning effect – the first dozen times you see it. After that, you’re on your own.”
Tornatore has made ten further films in the 20 years since the release of Cinema Paradiso, but to date none of them has even come close to matching its worldwide success.
I have to admit that this is one film that until this screening had escaped me, but having seen it I'd be happy to see it again. I subsequently found the soundtrack on Spotify and spent an enjoyable hour listening to it while marking up a contract for a bid I'm working on. Such are the joys of working from home.
Cinema Paradiso
Italy 1988 (123 minutes)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring: Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
A further 19 wins and 12 nominations
A famous film director returns home to a Sicilian village for the first time after almost 30 years. He reminisces about his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist, first brought about his love of films. He also remembers his lost teenage love, Elena, whom he left behind when he set off for Rome.
In a poll in 2007 readers of The Guardian chose Cinema Paradiso as the greatest foreign language film ever made by a considerable margin. However when it was originally released in Italy it performed badly at the box office and it was shortened to 123 minutes for its international release. In this version it became an instant success: amongst its many awards it won both the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2002 Tornatore released an extended director's cut with a running time of 173 minute version (known in the U.S. as Cinema Paradiso: The New Version).
The 2002 version reinstates more of the story of the adult Elena, but all three versions omit the major historical national and international events of the period that would have affected the whole of Italy after the Second World War, focussing instead on the different films screened in the village. But it is this infectious celebration of film that makes the repeat viewings worth it . As David Thomson puts it:
“It has many film clips, from Renoir to Antonioni, and a little boy’s face as seen through the booth window is a winning effect – the first dozen times you see it. After that, you’re on your own.”
Tornatore has made ten further films in the 20 years since the release of Cinema Paradiso, but to date none of them has even come close to matching its worldwide success.
Milk
These are my notes for Milk which we screened in mid November. Work has been pretty hectic, so I need to catch up on things.
Milk
USA 2008 (129 minutes)
Director: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch and Josh Brolin
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Sean Penn)
Won Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Dustin Lance Black)
Six further Oscar nominations including Best Film and Best Director
A further 32 wins and 39 nominations
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay politician to hold a major public office in the US. After moving to California he became a campaigner for gay rights and was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1975. Three years later a disaffected fellow Supervisor assassinated both Milk and George Moscone, the Mayor of San Francisco
Dustin Lance Black spent three years researching Milk’s life and interviewing Milk’s associates after seeing the 1984 documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk and used this work to produce his screenplay. The screenplay reached Gus Van Sant, who had made an abortive attempt to make his own film on the life of Harvey Milk fifteen years previously, and Van Sant at once decided to film it. The film makers used Milk’s original camera shop as well as San Francisco City Hall as key locations, and several of Milk’s associates portray themselves. Other characters portrayed in the film are still active in US public life and of these the most prominent is Dianne Feinstein, who made the announcement of the assassination of Milk and Moscone to the media. After succeeding Moscone as mayor she was subsequently elected to the US Senate and in 2009 she presided over the inauguration of Barack Obama.
Gus Van Sant had made several small independent films which had been artistically successful before obtaining commercial success with the black comedy To Die For (1995), which gave Nicole Kidman a breakthrough role as a homicidally ambitious weather girl on a cable TV station, and Good Will Hunting (1997), which launched the careers of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. After the commercial failure of a strangely pointless shot for shot colour remake of Psycho (1998) Van Sant returned to series of smaller scale films which continued to win artistic plaudits, culminating in his winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Elephant (2003), a story inspired by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
Critics gave Milk widespread acclaim and Sean Penn, who bears a surprising physical resemblance to the real Harvey Milk, won many awards including a second Oscar, for his performance. The film appeared on many critics’ lists of the best films of 2008.
Weird Stuff
One of the joys of my role in the Film club is that I have a valid excuse to search out reviews and other information on the films that we are screening so that I can produce the notes for our members.
Usually this involves a quick trawl through the archives of Philip French and Peter Bradshaw with the odd vist to Wikipedia and IMDB for a killer quote or a list of awards and nominations. However Cinema Paradiso presented me with a challenge as it appeared long before online reviews, although of course it featured regularly in the usual "best of" lists. However conicidentally I had picked up my copy of Have You Seen?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films by David Thomson, which is brilliant for late-night browsing, although I am still only on the letter C. I hadn't looked at it for a while, but after opening the at my bookmark I turned the page to find his article on Cinema Paradiso. Spooky!
Usually this involves a quick trawl through the archives of Philip French and Peter Bradshaw with the odd vist to Wikipedia and IMDB for a killer quote or a list of awards and nominations. However Cinema Paradiso presented me with a challenge as it appeared long before online reviews, although of course it featured regularly in the usual "best of" lists. However conicidentally I had picked up my copy of Have You Seen?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films by David Thomson, which is brilliant for late-night browsing, although I am still only on the letter C. I hadn't looked at it for a while, but after opening the at my bookmark I turned the page to find his article on Cinema Paradiso. Spooky!
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Here are the notes I wrote before seeing the film:
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
UK/USA 2008 (94 minutes)
Director: Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewliss and Vera Framiga
Awards and Nominations
Two wins and five nominations including:
* Vera Franiga won the Best Actress Award and Mark Herman was nominated as Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards
* Joint Winner (with Slumdog Millionaire) of the Audience Award at the Chicago Film Festival
Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is living a comfortable life in Berlin during the Second World War but things change for the worse when his family has to move to the country: his father (David Thewliss) is a high ranking Nazi SS officer and his new posting is as commandant of a concentration camp. In his innocence Bruno sees the camp as a “farm”, and after initially wondering why the inhabitants all wear striped pyjamas he makes friends with a young Jewish boy of his own age who lives in the camp.
The film is based on the book of the same name by John Boyne, who described his story as a parable rather than historical fiction. But Boyne’s choice of the Holocaust as background to his novel was bound to provoke strong reactions: one reviewer questioned the overall premise of the story, claiming that there were no nine year old boys in Auschwitz as the Nazis killed all those not old enough to work. But on this specific point Boyne is close to the truth: records from Auschwitz registered that in January 1944 there were 773 male children under the age of 15 living in the camp and some were used as messengers, although it is impossible to forget the enormous numbers of other children who died in the gas chambers every day.
The film produced similarly mixed reactions from its audiences, with a tranche of good reviews praising its fidelity to the source novel and its avoidance of a clichéd ending, but with a dissenting critic who while accepting the power of the film described it as a Hollywood version of the Holocaust, literally a Disneyfication.
Mark Herman first came to prominence as writer and director of films like Brassed Off (1996) and Little Voice (1998). John Boyne is a graduate of the school of Creative Writing at UEA and has written eight other novels, although none has matched the success of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which to date has sold more than five million copies worldwide.
Even though I knew the story the film was just as powerful as I had expected it to be, and the audience left in almost complete silence.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
UK/USA 2008 (94 minutes)
Director: Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewliss and Vera Framiga
Awards and Nominations
Two wins and five nominations including:
* Vera Franiga won the Best Actress Award and Mark Herman was nominated as Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards
* Joint Winner (with Slumdog Millionaire) of the Audience Award at the Chicago Film Festival
Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is living a comfortable life in Berlin during the Second World War but things change for the worse when his family has to move to the country: his father (David Thewliss) is a high ranking Nazi SS officer and his new posting is as commandant of a concentration camp. In his innocence Bruno sees the camp as a “farm”, and after initially wondering why the inhabitants all wear striped pyjamas he makes friends with a young Jewish boy of his own age who lives in the camp.
The film is based on the book of the same name by John Boyne, who described his story as a parable rather than historical fiction. But Boyne’s choice of the Holocaust as background to his novel was bound to provoke strong reactions: one reviewer questioned the overall premise of the story, claiming that there were no nine year old boys in Auschwitz as the Nazis killed all those not old enough to work. But on this specific point Boyne is close to the truth: records from Auschwitz registered that in January 1944 there were 773 male children under the age of 15 living in the camp and some were used as messengers, although it is impossible to forget the enormous numbers of other children who died in the gas chambers every day.
The film produced similarly mixed reactions from its audiences, with a tranche of good reviews praising its fidelity to the source novel and its avoidance of a clichéd ending, but with a dissenting critic who while accepting the power of the film described it as a Hollywood version of the Holocaust, literally a Disneyfication.
Mark Herman first came to prominence as writer and director of films like Brassed Off (1996) and Little Voice (1998). John Boyne is a graduate of the school of Creative Writing at UEA and has written eight other novels, although none has matched the success of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which to date has sold more than five million copies worldwide.
Even though I knew the story the film was just as powerful as I had expected it to be, and the audience left in almost complete silence.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Inherit The Wind
We've just been to see Inherit the Wind at the Old Vic, a dramatisation of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial with Kevin Spacey and David Troughton giving brilliant performaces as the defence and prosection attorneys.
When the play was first performed in the 1950s it was seen as a critique of the anti-communist witch hunts (it appeared at the same time as The Crucible), but following recent news reports about the alleged support for the teaching of creationism in schools, it now comes across as a critique of the idiocies of biblical literalism. Philip Pullman wrote a facinating article showing how both political and religious totalitarianism fears knowledge, and seeing a play like this makes us realise that the battle with superstition will be never-ending.
I've recently been reading Darwin, and his "theory" is substantiated by examples gleaned from years of detailed research and observation. For the record I'm not against the teaching of creationism in schools: just so long as it forms part of a general session on creation myths and no one makes a claim that there is the merest iota of truth in it.
When the play was first performed in the 1950s it was seen as a critique of the anti-communist witch hunts (it appeared at the same time as The Crucible), but following recent news reports about the alleged support for the teaching of creationism in schools, it now comes across as a critique of the idiocies of biblical literalism. Philip Pullman wrote a facinating article showing how both political and religious totalitarianism fears knowledge, and seeing a play like this makes us realise that the battle with superstition will be never-ending.
I've recently been reading Darwin, and his "theory" is substantiated by examples gleaned from years of detailed research and observation. For the record I'm not against the teaching of creationism in schools: just so long as it forms part of a general session on creation myths and no one makes a claim that there is the merest iota of truth in it.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Frost/Nixon
These are the film notes for tonight's film. For once I have actually seen the film I am writing about rather than having to rely purely on research.
Frost/Nixon
US 2008 (122 minutes)
Director: Ron Howard
Starring: Frank Langella and Martin Sheen
Awards and Nominations
Nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Motion Picture, Director, Actor in a Leading Role (Langella) and Adapted Screenplay (Peter Morgan).
A further 10 wins and 36 nominations
In 1977 former US President Nixon agreed to a series of TV interviews with David Frost which he hoped would rehabilitate his reputation with the American people after the scandal of Watergate. At this point in his career Frost was better known as a chat show host than a serious interviewer, and he realised that in order to sell the interviews to sceptical US television companies he needed Nixon to admit his role in the Watergate scandal rather than merely pad the interviews with endless anecdotes of life in the White House and details of foreign policy successes.
The film is based on the play of the same name by Peter Morgan, which was staged in London and New York with both Langella and Sheen in the same roles. The original interviews that Nixon gave to Frost are available on DVD, and inevitably a number of Nixon’s biographers have identified several inaccuracies in the screenplay: Nixon did not make any late night calls to Frost, Nixon had carefully planned his “confession” about Watergate, and the interviews were in no sense the epochal event in the history of politics that the film suggests.
Sheen has worked with Peter Morgan previously when he played Tony Blair on TV in The Deal (2003) and in cinema in The Queen (2006), and is due to play Blair for the third time in The Special Relationship from another script by Peter Morgan that examines Blair’s relationship with Bill Clinton. Initially Peter Morgan was scheduled to direct as well, but has now handed over the this role to Richard Loncraine in order to write the screenplays for Hereafter, a supernatural thriller that Clint Eastwood will direct as well as the next Bond film – Bond 23.
Ron Howard has demonstrated an amazing ability to mix critical and commercially successful pictures in a career as a director which has lasted for more than 30 years: he made his name as a director with commercially successful films such as Splash (1984) and Cocoon (1985), but subsequently directed critical successes such as Apollo 13 (1995) and A Beautiful Mind (2001). He followed the critical and commercial success of Frost/Nixon with Angels and Demons (2009), a sequel to his film of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2006), once again with Tom Hanks in the lead.
Frost/Nixon
US 2008 (122 minutes)
Director: Ron Howard
Starring: Frank Langella and Martin Sheen
Awards and Nominations
Nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Motion Picture, Director, Actor in a Leading Role (Langella) and Adapted Screenplay (Peter Morgan).
A further 10 wins and 36 nominations
In 1977 former US President Nixon agreed to a series of TV interviews with David Frost which he hoped would rehabilitate his reputation with the American people after the scandal of Watergate. At this point in his career Frost was better known as a chat show host than a serious interviewer, and he realised that in order to sell the interviews to sceptical US television companies he needed Nixon to admit his role in the Watergate scandal rather than merely pad the interviews with endless anecdotes of life in the White House and details of foreign policy successes.
The film is based on the play of the same name by Peter Morgan, which was staged in London and New York with both Langella and Sheen in the same roles. The original interviews that Nixon gave to Frost are available on DVD, and inevitably a number of Nixon’s biographers have identified several inaccuracies in the screenplay: Nixon did not make any late night calls to Frost, Nixon had carefully planned his “confession” about Watergate, and the interviews were in no sense the epochal event in the history of politics that the film suggests.
Sheen has worked with Peter Morgan previously when he played Tony Blair on TV in The Deal (2003) and in cinema in The Queen (2006), and is due to play Blair for the third time in The Special Relationship from another script by Peter Morgan that examines Blair’s relationship with Bill Clinton. Initially Peter Morgan was scheduled to direct as well, but has now handed over the this role to Richard Loncraine in order to write the screenplays for Hereafter, a supernatural thriller that Clint Eastwood will direct as well as the next Bond film – Bond 23.
Ron Howard has demonstrated an amazing ability to mix critical and commercially successful pictures in a career as a director which has lasted for more than 30 years: he made his name as a director with commercially successful films such as Splash (1984) and Cocoon (1985), but subsequently directed critical successes such as Apollo 13 (1995) and A Beautiful Mind (2001). He followed the critical and commercial success of Frost/Nixon with Angels and Demons (2009), a sequel to his film of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2006), once again with Tom Hanks in the lead.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Let the Right One In / Låt den rätte komma in
These are the film notes from last night's screening. The film was just as good as everything I had read suggested it would be, and I await the American remake already in production with trepidation.
Sweden 2008
Duration 114 minutes
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson and Per Ragnar
Awards and Nominations
56 wins
11 nominations
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a 12 years old Swedish boy who dreams of revenge against the local bullies. He meets and falls in love with Eli (Lina Leandersson), a peculiar girl who can’t stand the sun and in order to come into a room needs to be invited. She gives Oskar the strength to hit back at the bullies, but when he realises that she has to drink other people’s blood to live he’s faced with a difficult question: how much can love forgive.
The first vampire film appeared in 1909 and in the hundred years since then there have been many others. The greatest of the silent versions was F W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) – based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula story but with the vampire portrayed as the hideous creature from European folklore rather than Bram Stoker’s Byronic creation – and with the coming of sound Bela Lugosi played Dracula in a series of Hollywood films in the 1930s. Hammer Horror resurrected Dracula in 1958 with Christopher Lee playing the aristocratic vampire in a total of eight films. Since then there have been many stories which have continued the tradition of portraying the vampire as an alluring sex symbol starring actors as diverse as David Bowie, Catherin Deneuve and Tom Cruise. In the most recent manifestation of this tradition Robert Pattinson is playing a vampire who consumes only animal blood in a series of films based on the best-selling Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer.
However Let the Right One In sits firmly within another sub-genre of vampire films that links directly back to Max Shreck’s vampire in Nosferatu, a creature whose sole desire is to feed on the blood of others. Other films within this tradition include Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1979) and the more recent 30 Days of Night (2007) in which a group of vampires attack an Alaskan town as it enters a thirty day period without sunshine.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by the Swedish novelist John Ayvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Lindqvist is a devoted Morrissey fan and the title of his novel refers both to the song Let the Right One Slip In as well as the tradition in vampire lore that prevents a vampire from entering a house unless invited. The film received widespread international critical acclaim on its release and also won numerous awards. As a result of its success at various film festivals the rights to an English language remake were sold before its theatrical release, and it is currently in production with Matt Reeves as director. Alfredson has concerns about the remake saying that “remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong”, while Lindqvist is excited that Reeves will produce his own adaptation of the original novel rather than merely remaking the original film so that the end result could be quite different.
Sweden 2008
Duration 114 minutes
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson and Per Ragnar
Awards and Nominations
56 wins
11 nominations
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a 12 years old Swedish boy who dreams of revenge against the local bullies. He meets and falls in love with Eli (Lina Leandersson), a peculiar girl who can’t stand the sun and in order to come into a room needs to be invited. She gives Oskar the strength to hit back at the bullies, but when he realises that she has to drink other people’s blood to live he’s faced with a difficult question: how much can love forgive.
The first vampire film appeared in 1909 and in the hundred years since then there have been many others. The greatest of the silent versions was F W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) – based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula story but with the vampire portrayed as the hideous creature from European folklore rather than Bram Stoker’s Byronic creation – and with the coming of sound Bela Lugosi played Dracula in a series of Hollywood films in the 1930s. Hammer Horror resurrected Dracula in 1958 with Christopher Lee playing the aristocratic vampire in a total of eight films. Since then there have been many stories which have continued the tradition of portraying the vampire as an alluring sex symbol starring actors as diverse as David Bowie, Catherin Deneuve and Tom Cruise. In the most recent manifestation of this tradition Robert Pattinson is playing a vampire who consumes only animal blood in a series of films based on the best-selling Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer.
However Let the Right One In sits firmly within another sub-genre of vampire films that links directly back to Max Shreck’s vampire in Nosferatu, a creature whose sole desire is to feed on the blood of others. Other films within this tradition include Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1979) and the more recent 30 Days of Night (2007) in which a group of vampires attack an Alaskan town as it enters a thirty day period without sunshine.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by the Swedish novelist John Ayvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Lindqvist is a devoted Morrissey fan and the title of his novel refers both to the song Let the Right One Slip In as well as the tradition in vampire lore that prevents a vampire from entering a house unless invited. The film received widespread international critical acclaim on its release and also won numerous awards. As a result of its success at various film festivals the rights to an English language remake were sold before its theatrical release, and it is currently in production with Matt Reeves as director. Alfredson has concerns about the remake saying that “remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong”, while Lindqvist is excited that Reeves will produce his own adaptation of the original novel rather than merely remaking the original film so that the end result could be quite different.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Vicky Christina Barcelona
We are screening Vicky Christina Barcelona on Thursday 8th October. Here are the film notes:
Vicky Christina Barcelona
US/Spain 2008 (96 minutes)
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz
Awards and Nominations
Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Penelope Cruz)
Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
A further 18 wins and 27 nominations
While visiting Barcelona Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johansson) meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a famous artist, and begin a relationship with him, not knowing that his ex-wife (Penelope Cruz), with whom he had a tempestuous relationship, is about to come back into his life.
Allen sets the film up as a worldly-wise study of what remains after passion has dissipated, the type of film that Eric Rohmer has produced so well; but as Phillip French has noted its premise of American girls being bowled over by European culture the film also echoes the core plot of Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). The cast is truly international with British actor Rebecca Hall affecting a perfect American accent and two Spanish actors who are equally at home in Hollywood as well as in Spanish cinema. However it is the Spanish actors who won praise for their performances, with Javier Bardem receiving several nominations as Best Supporting Actor and Penelope Cruz winning several awards, including an Oscar, as Best Supporting Actress.
After nearly two decades of producing a string of classic films like Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah And Her Sisters (1986) and Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) in and around in New York Woody Allen moved to Europe, where his films had always been more successful, and began a new phase in his career. In London he produced Match Point (2005) which was well received and whose cast included Scarlett Johansson and followed this with Scoop (2006), which received mixed reviews and which as yet to be released in the UK, and Cassandra’s Dream (2007). From the UK he moved to Spain and Vicky Christina Barcelona marked a return to the form that produced Match Point, although it is unlikely that he will ever return to the form that produced a series of classics in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Woody Allen’s next film is Whatever Works (2009), set in France and he is currently working on what IMDB calls his Untitled Woody Allen London Project, which is scheduled for release in 2010.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Michael Palin
I went back to Oxford on Saturday for "one-off" Gaudy to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the foundation of Brasenose: a chance to meet up with old friends, revisit old haunts and enjoy what I hoped would be a memorable dinner in College. The sky was a brilliant blue and cloudless, the old stone glowed in the sunshine and the city seemed almost mythological: reflecting the shared memories of those attending the Gaudy rather than the mundane reality of the place I come to shop on an irregular basis.
As I made my way down Turl Street a woman stopped me: she had just seen Michael Palin in a DJ, and as I was also wearing a DJ she wanted to know what was going on. I explained about the BNC500 celebrations and this seemed to satisfy her curiosity. She was about to move on, but then turned back to me.
"Excuse me for asking, but are you famous?"
I thought about it for a moment.
"Not yet... but I'm working on it."
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Good Bye Lenin!
These are the film notes for this Sunday's screening:
Germany 2003
Duration 121 minutes
Director: Wolfgang Becker
Starring: Daniel Bruehl, Kathrin Sass and Chulpan Khamatova
Awards and Nominations:
Nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Film
A further 31 wins and 14 nominations
Just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall Christiane Kerner (Kathrin Sass), an ardent supporter of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany, falls into a coma. After eight months she regains consciousness but her doctors warn her son Alex (Daniel Bruehl) that any further shock could be fatal, and so Alex and his sister make increasingly desperate attempts to hide the evidence of the sudden arrival of capitalism in East Berlin, pretending instead the East German regime remains in power.
As Alex desperately attempts to deceive his mother he resorts to media distortion and emotional blackmail to co-opt people into his schemes and to compel them to act against their principles. These are the tools that the East German regime used to control the general population - as shown so brilliantly in The Lives of Others (2006) – but here Alex’s sole motive is his love for his mother. Alex even manages to create an alternative history of Germany in which the West is cracking up and the generous East opens its borders to accommodate refugees from capitalism, but eventually his deception unravels and Christiane learns the truth about what has really happened.
The film shows that for some Germans the reunification of their country happened too quickly, with the loss of some of the good elements of East Germany as well as the bad. As Alex points out, in the false TV shows he creates East Germany is having the end it deserved rather than the end it got.
The film includes an apparent anachronism in that a t-shirt worn by one of the characters appears to picture the green glyph pattern from The Matrix – a film which did not appear until 1999. However in a deleted scene on the DVD the character, an amateur film maker, tells Alex about an idea for a film where people were enslaved by machines to produce energy while trapped in a computer dream world – a film in which characters live in a simulated reality. The film also contains references to 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange and the flying statue of Lenin echoes a scene with the flying statue of Jesus in La Dolce Vita.
Germany 2003
Duration 121 minutes
Director: Wolfgang Becker
Starring: Daniel Bruehl, Kathrin Sass and Chulpan Khamatova
Awards and Nominations:
Nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Film
A further 31 wins and 14 nominations
Just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall Christiane Kerner (Kathrin Sass), an ardent supporter of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany, falls into a coma. After eight months she regains consciousness but her doctors warn her son Alex (Daniel Bruehl) that any further shock could be fatal, and so Alex and his sister make increasingly desperate attempts to hide the evidence of the sudden arrival of capitalism in East Berlin, pretending instead the East German regime remains in power.
As Alex desperately attempts to deceive his mother he resorts to media distortion and emotional blackmail to co-opt people into his schemes and to compel them to act against their principles. These are the tools that the East German regime used to control the general population - as shown so brilliantly in The Lives of Others (2006) – but here Alex’s sole motive is his love for his mother. Alex even manages to create an alternative history of Germany in which the West is cracking up and the generous East opens its borders to accommodate refugees from capitalism, but eventually his deception unravels and Christiane learns the truth about what has really happened.
The film shows that for some Germans the reunification of their country happened too quickly, with the loss of some of the good elements of East Germany as well as the bad. As Alex points out, in the false TV shows he creates East Germany is having the end it deserved rather than the end it got.
The film includes an apparent anachronism in that a t-shirt worn by one of the characters appears to picture the green glyph pattern from The Matrix – a film which did not appear until 1999. However in a deleted scene on the DVD the character, an amateur film maker, tells Alex about an idea for a film where people were enslaved by machines to produce energy while trapped in a computer dream world – a film in which characters live in a simulated reality. The film also contains references to 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange and the flying statue of Lenin echoes a scene with the flying statue of Jesus in La Dolce Vita.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Liberty in the Age of Terror
Last night we went to hear a talk by A C Grayling - a brilliant lecture in defence of civil society and enlightenment values. I always read his articles in The Guardian and other sites and I've just ordered the book (plus its predecessor which is the story of of the struggle for liberty and rights in the modern West) from my favourite on-line retailer.
After the talk Grayling took a series of questions including one about the future of print media. In his view the mainstream press is under huge pressure from the internet; he described the growth of blogging as giving people access to the biggest lavatory wall ever built in order to express their opinions, with at least 95% of what is published online being worthless.
It is not for me to comment on the value - or otherwise - of this blog. I hope that it will reflect the hard work by members of our committee to get our film club up and running: we have fun choosing our films and it's a pleasure to see a new film or revisit an old favourite. But I can't help remembering the warning words from Alan Bennett in Forty Years On:
"When a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, then the writing is on the wall".
After the talk Grayling took a series of questions including one about the future of print media. In his view the mainstream press is under huge pressure from the internet; he described the growth of blogging as giving people access to the biggest lavatory wall ever built in order to express their opinions, with at least 95% of what is published online being worthless.
It is not for me to comment on the value - or otherwise - of this blog. I hope that it will reflect the hard work by members of our committee to get our film club up and running: we have fun choosing our films and it's a pleasure to see a new film or revisit an old favourite. But I can't help remembering the warning words from Alan Bennett in Forty Years On:
"When a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, then the writing is on the wall".
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Reader
Here are my film notes for our next screening:
UK 2008
Duration 124 minutes
Director: Stephen Daldry
Starring: Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Actress (Kate Winslet)
Won BAFTA for Best Actress (Kate Winslet)
Won Best Director (Stephen Daldry) in Evening Standard Film Awards
A further 10 wins and 25 nominations
In Germany in the late 1950s the teenage Michael Berg (David Kross) has an affair with an older woman Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) who then disappears. Years later Hanna reappears as a defendant in a war crimes trial based on her actions as a guard in a Nazi concentration camp. Michael, who is now studying law, realises that Hanna is keeping something secret which, if she chooses to reveal it, could save her from jail. During Hanna’s lengthy jail sentence Michael (now played by Ralph Fiennes) communicated with her by sending her recordings of great works of literature.
In the two decades since reunification Germany has examined its recent history in a series of internationally successful films like Downfall (2004), The Lives of Others (2006) and Goodbye Lenin (2003). The Reader is part of this same analysis of German history: it portrays Hanna’s trial for war crimes in the 1960s, but eschews any flashback to the events themselves that would allow the viewer to decide on her guilt or innocence. Thus the questions it raises are the extent to which ordinary Germans share responsibility for the Holocaust and other atrocities of the Nazi regime, and how this responsibility affects subsequent generations. As one of the survivors says to the adult Michael when he meets her in New York “What do you think these places were – universities? What are you looking for? Forgiveness for her or to feel better about yourself?”
The film is based on the 1995 novel by the German writer Bernard Schlink that became a best-seller in both Germany and the US. The screenplay is by David Hare who had previously worked with Stephen Daldry as screenwriter for The Hours (2002), but who has also shown a strong interest in this period in plays and films like Licking Hitler (1974) and Plenty (1985). Hare rejected the long internal monologues that Schlink had included in the novel and, more significantly, changed the ending so that Michael begins to tell the story of Hanna and him to his daughter, explaining this decision as follows:
“It’s about literature as a powerful means of communication, and at other times as a substitute for communication.”
It was Schlink himself who insisted that the film be shot in English rather than German as he felt that it posed questions about living in a post-genocidal society that went beyond the time and locations of wartime Germany, and he worked closely with Daldry and Hare to choose locations for the film.
The casting brings deliberate echoes of other films that have dealt with the Germany in the Second World War: Ralph Fiennes played Amon Goeth, the commandant of a labour camp in Schindler’s List (1993) while Bruno Ganz, in the role of Michael’s tutor, gave an unforgettable portrayal of Hitler in Downfall. However it was Kate Winslet who won most praise – and awards - for her performance: after a record number of nominations in 2009 she won the Oscar for Best Actress.
UK 2008
Duration 124 minutes
Director: Stephen Daldry
Starring: Kate Winslet, David Kross and Ralph Fiennes
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Actress (Kate Winslet)
Won BAFTA for Best Actress (Kate Winslet)
Won Best Director (Stephen Daldry) in Evening Standard Film Awards
A further 10 wins and 25 nominations
In Germany in the late 1950s the teenage Michael Berg (David Kross) has an affair with an older woman Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) who then disappears. Years later Hanna reappears as a defendant in a war crimes trial based on her actions as a guard in a Nazi concentration camp. Michael, who is now studying law, realises that Hanna is keeping something secret which, if she chooses to reveal it, could save her from jail. During Hanna’s lengthy jail sentence Michael (now played by Ralph Fiennes) communicated with her by sending her recordings of great works of literature.
In the two decades since reunification Germany has examined its recent history in a series of internationally successful films like Downfall (2004), The Lives of Others (2006) and Goodbye Lenin (2003). The Reader is part of this same analysis of German history: it portrays Hanna’s trial for war crimes in the 1960s, but eschews any flashback to the events themselves that would allow the viewer to decide on her guilt or innocence. Thus the questions it raises are the extent to which ordinary Germans share responsibility for the Holocaust and other atrocities of the Nazi regime, and how this responsibility affects subsequent generations. As one of the survivors says to the adult Michael when he meets her in New York “What do you think these places were – universities? What are you looking for? Forgiveness for her or to feel better about yourself?”
The film is based on the 1995 novel by the German writer Bernard Schlink that became a best-seller in both Germany and the US. The screenplay is by David Hare who had previously worked with Stephen Daldry as screenwriter for The Hours (2002), but who has also shown a strong interest in this period in plays and films like Licking Hitler (1974) and Plenty (1985). Hare rejected the long internal monologues that Schlink had included in the novel and, more significantly, changed the ending so that Michael begins to tell the story of Hanna and him to his daughter, explaining this decision as follows:
“It’s about literature as a powerful means of communication, and at other times as a substitute for communication.”
It was Schlink himself who insisted that the film be shot in English rather than German as he felt that it posed questions about living in a post-genocidal society that went beyond the time and locations of wartime Germany, and he worked closely with Daldry and Hare to choose locations for the film.
The casting brings deliberate echoes of other films that have dealt with the Germany in the Second World War: Ralph Fiennes played Amon Goeth, the commandant of a labour camp in Schindler’s List (1993) while Bruno Ganz, in the role of Michael’s tutor, gave an unforgettable portrayal of Hitler in Downfall. However it was Kate Winslet who won most praise – and awards - for her performance: after a record number of nominations in 2009 she won the Oscar for Best Actress.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Selecting the 2009 Programme
It is the job of the committee to select the films that we screen in each season and we all take our responsibilities very seriously.
After a few false starts the films we choose for our programme seem fall into the following categories:
1. Box office successes which subsequently won major awards.
2. Independent films that came from nowhere to pick up a few awards.
3. Films starring Judi Dench, Helen Mirren or Kate Winslet.
4. A selection of classic foreign language films.
The benefit of this is that it enables us all to catch up on the films that we missed while they were on general release - a full-time job does limit the number of films you can see and my mental "must see" list grows longer by the week - as well as to stumble across the occasional unexpected gem.
For the start of the season we try to select a crowd pleaser to encourage members to renew their subscriptions. This year our choice was In The Loop, which despite the 24 carat swearing (apparently Armando Ianucci sends all his scripts to a swearing consultant who adds the expletives) was very successful. Apparently it's even better on a second viewing, and I look forward to seeing it again very soon.
Our next film was Conversations with my Gardener which definitely falls into the category of unexpected gem: a middle-aged French artist returns to his home village and deciding to renovate his parents' old home finds he has appointed an old school friend as his gardener. If the film ever suffered the indignity of a Hollywood remake it would easily lapse into the most awful sentimentality, but the director kept his actors just on the right side of mawkishness.
Later this month our film is definitely in Category 3: we will be screening The Reader.
After a few false starts the films we choose for our programme seem fall into the following categories:
1. Box office successes which subsequently won major awards.
2. Independent films that came from nowhere to pick up a few awards.
3. Films starring Judi Dench, Helen Mirren or Kate Winslet.
4. A selection of classic foreign language films.
The benefit of this is that it enables us all to catch up on the films that we missed while they were on general release - a full-time job does limit the number of films you can see and my mental "must see" list grows longer by the week - as well as to stumble across the occasional unexpected gem.
For the start of the season we try to select a crowd pleaser to encourage members to renew their subscriptions. This year our choice was In The Loop, which despite the 24 carat swearing (apparently Armando Ianucci sends all his scripts to a swearing consultant who adds the expletives) was very successful. Apparently it's even better on a second viewing, and I look forward to seeing it again very soon.
Our next film was Conversations with my Gardener which definitely falls into the category of unexpected gem: a middle-aged French artist returns to his home village and deciding to renovate his parents' old home finds he has appointed an old school friend as his gardener. If the film ever suffered the indignity of a Hollywood remake it would easily lapse into the most awful sentimentality, but the director kept his actors just on the right side of mawkishness.
Later this month our film is definitely in Category 3: we will be screening The Reader.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Dreaming the same dream in unison
I have seen films in many different locations, from the sublime (Palais de Festival at Cannes) to the ridiculous (The Coronet on Didcot Broadway), but one factor remains constant: even a bad film can seem better by seeing it on a big screen in the company of others.
Once upon a time we poor film buffs were forced to haunt the wilder reaches of BBC2 in search of the occasional glimpse of films by Fellini, Bergman and Truffaut. The arrival of video cassettes improved the supply a little, but it took the the arrival of the DVD to compel movie companies to throw open the cupboard doors and ransack their back catalogues in a desparate attempt to shift some stock before DVDs go the same way as CDs and we download everything on to our iPods.
But no film company is able to provide the real audience experience, and it for this reason that twice a month a loyal and - hopefully - growing band of film fans meet in our local village hall to dream the same dream in unison.
The aim of this blog is to follow the fortunes of our village film club as we embark on our fourth season. Along the way I reserve the right to digress as I think fit into other film-related issues and to write about my favourite films, directors, actors, writers and composers.
The only common thread will be that there will be some link, however tangential, to film.
Once upon a time we poor film buffs were forced to haunt the wilder reaches of BBC2 in search of the occasional glimpse of films by Fellini, Bergman and Truffaut. The arrival of video cassettes improved the supply a little, but it took the the arrival of the DVD to compel movie companies to throw open the cupboard doors and ransack their back catalogues in a desparate attempt to shift some stock before DVDs go the same way as CDs and we download everything on to our iPods.
But no film company is able to provide the real audience experience, and it for this reason that twice a month a loyal and - hopefully - growing band of film fans meet in our local village hall to dream the same dream in unison.
The aim of this blog is to follow the fortunes of our village film club as we embark on our fourth season. Along the way I reserve the right to digress as I think fit into other film-related issues and to write about my favourite films, directors, actors, writers and composers.
The only common thread will be that there will be some link, however tangential, to film.
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