solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

I’m not going to call The Darjeeling Limited a return to form for Wes Anderson because ‘The Life Aquatic’ was a hugely entertaining movie. The general consensus seems to be that his previous shark-chasing Bill Murray starrer was a bit overblown and superficial, the classic ‘third album’ if you will (although his forth film). For me, it was a hugely enjoyable and stimulating hour and a half in the cinema. I sometimes feel that people forget that Wes is basically great at making very entertaining films. He is constantly being copied by other directors and his films will all only increase in acclaim in time. Why the resistance to be entertained? Horses for courses I guess.

Anyway, if you do think The Life Aquatic was self indulgent, you should like this new Indian train caper a little more. It’s an absolutely fantastic movie; smaller, tighter and with a focus on character and fractured sibling relationships. It’s a simple, but enjoyable, premise; three brothers try to get their relationship back on a spiritual journey on a train, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’. As you might suspect, it doesn’t go the way they had planned.

Darjeeling has got everything you would expect from Anderson; it looks amazing, has a fantastic soundtrack, loads of wit and wry observations, great performances and occasional, stimulating diversions from the speedy narrative. Adrien Brody is a fantastic, fresh voice to the Anderson family and he gives a poignant performance of a confused man at a turning point in his life. It’s a good old fashioned movie with quality character development married to the kind of widescreen spectacle that only cinema can provide. It’s another feast of a film from Anderson, once again clocking in at an hour and a half exactly. It was consciously a looser shoot this time and it does feel more natural than his recent work truth be told. The sexy short film with Natalie Portman (Hotel Chevalier) should be in front of prints in the UK too; a pleasure that was missed in the US (and this preview).

I love it. Day-Lewis looks creepy as hell in the trailers for Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘There will be blood’ and he seem to be able to do the same in poster form too. Well either creepy, or like he just let go of a fart, tried to hide it, but it was obvious to everyone else in the room that it was him.. but in some circles they call that acting fuckfaces.

I’m still annoyed that both ‘There will be blood’ and ‘No Country for Old Men’ aren’t playing at the London Film Festival (currently going on) although it’s rumoured that the surprise film might be PTA’s film, that always get sold out to smug BFI memebers before any of the public can get a look-in. nice.

Poster via Impawards

OK, buying dvds is a minefield. One false move and BLAM you’re sat there shitting yourself with bloody stumps where your arms used to be. Well maybe not quite that bad, but it’s still fucked. There’s a new ‘definitive’ edition of Twin Peaks being released on dvd this month. The problem being that in this case ‘definitive’ is clever Illuminati code for ‘half-arsed’.

So what these clever bastards have done is gather up all the dvd extras they can, restore the prints and locate the best mixes of the sound they can find (DTS 5.1 in this case), get a hold of the uncut pilot and dig out some commentaries… then scatter these jewels to the wind and see where they land. The result is a R1 season 1 boxset with some extras, a not great print, the commentaries, DTS sound but no pilot. A R2 boxset with the pilot included, but no DTS. A definitive edition that adds a bunch of new extras, restored prints, but loses DTS sound, loses the commentaries and loses some other extras that were on the individual season boxsets.

Congratulations, and welcome to the asshole club.

The only good thing to come out of it seems to be the above clip that accompanied the set on amazon.com titled ‘Good, hot, black coffee’. Awesome.

I need to check out the ‘Agent Cooper tapes‘ too… regain my David Lynch shaped erection.

and it still creeps the fuck out of me

I posted a link to this in the mini-review of this film below, but I think it’s worth posting directly again, because the more I remember about the documentary, the more I think how much I liked it. The trailer features a couple of excerpts of some really shocking news footage they used in the film of Police Helicopters dropping a bomb onto the roof of a house where a group of black radicals were held up (A siege the police started)

A look at the life of imprisoned political activist and former Black Panther member, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who’s death sentence for killing a police officer was overturned in 2001 due to errors made during his original 1982 sentencing hearing.

Here’s the myspace page and here’s the page where you can find out about screenings at the LFF

Book properties, comic book properties… there’s a a fair few that mean a lot to me and I don’t want to see fucked up by being made into shitty films. ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ is really … really high.. on that list if not at the top. I think Spike Jonze might just be the perfect person to direct the film, and I have a lot of faith the guy will do it justice. So Jonze is coupled with ‘Dave Eggerss’ to write the script, and apparently it’s really good.

The NYmag has this to say:

“In transforming the 338-word story of Where the Wild Things Are into a 111-page screenplay, Eggers and Jonze have fleshed out the story not, unexpectedly, with wild plot developments, and not, thankfully, with densely packed pop-fiction references. Instead Where the Wild Things Are is filled with richly imagined psychological detail, and the screenplay for this live-action film simply becomes a longer and more moving version of what Maurice Sendak’s book has always been at heart: a book about a lonely boy leaving the emotional terrain of boyhood behind.”

So with Jonze at the helm, what is supposedly a great script, and voice talent from people like Forest Whitaker, Catherine Keener and James Gandolfino they’re certainly setting it up right.

I’m trying to not get too pumped-up as it’s not released until this time next year… but sometimes I just can’t help myself.

You can read the full review over at Vulture here

I saw it over at bigscreenlittlescreen

Kidz in da Hood
Dir: Catti Edfeldt and Ylva Gustavsson

I was wary off the bat with ‘Kidz in da Hood’ (Förortsungar) because of the ‘kool’ spellings in the title, that coupled with the fact that it was a ’street’ movie for children made me start to worry for my sanity before I even sat down in the screening. ‘Kidz..’ is the story of a young immigrant girl who along with her grandfather finds refuge in a young musicians flat on a council estate in Sweden. I was unaware that ‘Kidz..’ is kind of a musical as It didn’t mention it in the blurb I read and when a character broke into song (or rap) I was like ‘oh jesus…’. Here’s the thing.. I fucking HATE musicals.. I really can’t stand them, they’re just below cheerleading and mime in my scaling of the dramatic arts. I don’t know what it was about this film but something won me over even with the actors throwing in the occasional song. The child leads are all good, rating high on the cute factor without ever slipping into little rascals territory and the adults are also sincere and likable. The standouts are obviously Beylula Kidane Adgoy as Amina (her first acting role) and Gustaf Skarsgård as Johan (son of Stellan Skarsgård no less).

Despite my initial hesitations ‘Kidz in da Hood’ was a charming film, ideal for kids and adults alike. It’s not perfect but has some great performances, a plot that skips along and the occasional Swedish kid rapping.. which is actually much better than it might sound.

Rating: Kidz in da Hood is 96 minutes long and feels like exactly that

You can check out the non-subtitled trailer on the official swedish site here

Book tickets here

The Heartbeat Detector
Dir: Nicolas Klotz

Ok here’s the imdb synopsis for this film “Paris, today. Simon works as psychologist in the human resources department of a petrochemical corporation. When Management gets him to investigate one of the factory’s executives, Simon’s perception becomes disturbingly chaotic and cloudy. The experience affects his body, his mind, his personal life and his sensibility. The calm assurance that made him such a rigorous technician starts to falter.”

The LFF kicks off tonight (a gala screening of ‘Eastern promises’) so I thought I should really get my shit together and write up some reviews of what i’ve seen so far…. this is the first post of many.

I’m thinking a good way to rate these rather than ’stars’ is to tell you how long the films are in actual running time, and how long they felt like to sit through. I’ve sat through 80 minutes films that felt like 3 hours of tedium, but on the other hand I sat through 3 hour films that flew by.

California Dreamin’
Dir: Cristian Nemescu

California Dreamin’ was the film that they kicked off the press screenings with, and a good choice it was. An excellent Romanian comedy-drama about a team of American soldiers escorting military cargo on a train through to Kosovo, but when the train is held up by a bolshy self-important station master… Hilarity Ensues. I really enjoyed California Dreamin’, it was well constructed, funny and touching without being trite and melodramatic. The Romanian actors were great without exception and it was very cool to Armand Assante back on the screen in a role he was obviously born for.

Rating: California Dreamin’ was 2 hours 35 minutes long, but felt like 90 minutes.

You can check out my full review of this film here and another review written by my friend Mike here

Book tickets here

Island of Lost Souls
Dir: Nikolaj Arcel

I already talked a bit about ‘The Island of Lost Souls’, and while it started out feeling a bit like a high-budget kids tv show, it really brought me around quite quickly. It’s quite east to tout ‘Island of Lost Souls’ as the Danish Harry Potter, but I think it has more going for it than that. It was a really well rounded fantasy film, with magical kids, creepy scarecrows, and lots of body swapping. Apparently the film was slammed in Denmark for being to americanised, but I still felt a strong Scandinavian storytelling influence while watching it, and think it’s done its country proud

A great film to take the kids too…

Rating: ‘Island of Lost Souls’ was 1 hour 40 minutes, but felt like 1 hour 10.

Book tickets here

Hannah take the Stairs
Dir: Joe Swanberg

I pride myself with knowing a lot of useless shit about films, too much useless shit if i’m honest, yet somehow this gem of information had eluded me until now. The Manchester Morgue Blog had this (above) Japanese version of the poster for ‘Army of Darkness’.. renamed in Japan to ‘Captain Supermarket’ (Kyaputien supamaketto: Shiryo no harawata III). That name coupled with the sheer madness that is this poster is why I love Japan.

For comparisons sake here’s the US poster, no shopping bags with chainsaws in them or dancing toothbrushes on that one is there? exactly… rubbish.

The MM blog opened my eyes, and for that I thank them, if you check out the site, i’d recommend grabbing one of the compilations they put together of awful/great obscure horror movie music while you’re there… like this, featuring such classics as the end theme to Troll 2 and a musical number from ‘Lady Terminator’… much awesomeness

“A secret NATO train filled with US Marines is halted by a bolshy local station master; rambunctious Balkan farce moves inexorably to tragedy as the soldiers and townspeople try to fraternise.”

Sitting down to watch what I thought was going to be a dark satire on the conflict in Kosovo, and American military interference in foreign wars wasn’t an easy sell first thing in the morning. Saying that, if there’s one thing the London Film Festival has taught me it’s; don’t judge a film until you’ve actually watched it. ‘California Dreamin’ turned out to be an incredibly sweet ‘farce’ (for the want of a better word) that never overtly tried to hard to be oddball or charming yet pulled off both with skill.

The story essentially revolves around a couple of central characters, Doiaru the Romanian station master and black marketeer, who seems to live by the adage ‘If I can be an asshole, I will be an asshole’, Captain Jones (played by Armand Assante… last seen in multiple direct-to-video movies from my youth) a military intelligence officer in charge of seeing their package (a large container.. of unknown contents) reaches it’s destination, and The Mayor who’s attempting to welcome the soldiers to his town in order to gain investment in the region and generally manage the whole situation.

‘quirk’ is a difficult thing to put your finger on in a film, but is easy to overcook. There’s films I’ve seen in the past that portray Eastern Europe as this weird place, full of colorful characters and weird cultural differences; ‘Everything is Illuminated’ is one that springs to mind, that was so heavy handed and trite I could barely stand it. When a film sets out to be consciously ‘quirky’ I personally can smell it coming a mile away, and it grinds on me. ‘California Dreamin’ did everything right in that respect, tell a story, set-up your characters and play it out as best you can… and let ‘quirk’ come naturally to the situations.

There’s a scene in the film where the town throws a party for the soldiers, and the townspeople have obviously gathered all their American memorabilia in one place including some incredibly odd paintings of cultural icons like George Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the mayor wears a hap-hazard ’stars and stripes’ tie, and an Elvis impersonator shows up to sing. It’s with elements like this that the film really triumphs, it doesn’t try to rub the laughs in your face, but rather just adds elements into the mix and trusts that the audience will see the humor in it.