In the murky race for cinema receipts studios use marketing, the festival circuit and celebrity interviews all to maximise sales, but nothing is as good as the art of timing. Dreamworks' green skinned ogre is managing that feat by releasing in the UK the weekend after England were unceremoniously (and quite justly) dumped out of the Football World Cup. What's more as no other studio has anything near it's scope the film of week is Shrek Forever After.
The Ballroom
Perhaps the best way to celebrate the World Cup this week is this Brazilian drama, following a number of couple during one balmy night of ballroom dancing. There's some nice music and delicate tangoing in the trailer.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Crimefighters
Shoestring budget British comedy with vigilante justice York-style taking on the vicious wave of increasing crime. Looks silly, but fun, with some chucklesome sound mixing in the trailer.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Heartbreaker
Romain Duris stars as a professional relationship destroyer, yes you can pay him to romance one half of a couple in order to force them to break from their unsuitable partner. The Frenchman is unfeasibly attractive. Can someone please tell him I need to be rescued.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●○○○○○○
I Hate Luv Storys
Imran Khan and Sonam Kapoor make a very attractive couple in this Bollywood-set Bollywood drama, shame the plot looks horribly contrived.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Lymelife
There are a couple of Culkin brothers, together on screen at last, heading up this semi-autobiographical look at disintegrating families from the inside from writer-directer Derick Martini. Maybe a bit too familiar to The Squid and the Whale to really shine, Timothy Hutton and Alec Baldwin are among the adults.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●○○○○○○
Nandalala
Don't hold your breath, this Sri Lankan film about an incredible journey undertaken by a seven year old and the child-like adult he's befriended has already been delayed twice. Look out for this again in about 5 months.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Shrek Forever After
If it ain't broke, don't fix it is the Dreamworks maxim for their green cash cow, and the constant OKayness of this franchise will continue. Expect the same fair to middling jokes to be trotted out along with the stars Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz. Eddie Murphy will still steal the show as donkey, and Julie Andrews is still selling out.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●○○○○○
Skeletons
Direct from the Edinburgh film festival it's a buddy comedy about travelling exorcists, a curious deadpan mix of gothic horror and double-glazing sales techniques. And Jason Isaacs' moustache.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
White Material
Isabelle Huppert makes it to UK cinemas two weeks in a row with Claire Denis' study of post-colonialism racial tensions in modern Africa. Her steely eyed plantation owner immediately brings to mind Deneuve in Indochine.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Friday, 2 July 2010
Touch of the greenstuff (Out this week - 02 July 2010)
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
The Ghost
2010. Dir: Roman Polanski. Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams and Tom Wilkinson. ●●●●○
One of the curses of a well rounded education and a small exposure to the works of Sigmund Freud is that I tend to over analyse myself. To that end, whilst on one hand I have the perfectly practical reasoning that weekly reviews have been reinstated because the backlog has been dealt with, I think we can all see the subconscious in action as I review Roman Polanski's The Ghost, a critique on the failures of New Labour, especially in relation to foreign policy and anti-terrorism measures, in the week of a general election.
I mention this not only as an insult into the workings of my own mind, but also as a parallel example of how events in he real world can affect artistic decisions. Much too has been made of Polanski's house arrest and how his current situation may have affected the editing of his latest film.
Indeed there are several occasions in the narrative that may be Roman crying out about the mess of the situation. In venom in Kim Cattrall's aide to the former Prime Minister as she spits out "The pack are on the move" in relation to the press. Or Peirce Brosnan's Adam Lang and Ewan McGregor's unnamed ghost writer enforced imprisonment in the Martha's Vineyard mansion that holds most of the action. Of course both of these incident's are lifted directly from Richard Harris' superb source novel but the style and emphasis of these moments - rather then the content - is pure Polanski.
The story is a typical conspiracy thriller. McGregor's anonymous antagonist is surprisingly selected to re-write the ex-British Prime Minster's memoirs following the untimely death of his previous Ghost Writer. He flies to America, entrenching himself with Adam Lang and his wife (Brosnan and Williams) just in time for the European courts to begin proceedings against him for war crimes relating to having knowledge of, and allowing, rendition of terror suspects in order to face torture - it's lucky that America doesn't recognise the International War Crimes Commission, isn't it? Whilst there, with the aid of a couple of university photos, a party membership card and a couple of trips around the island McGregor begins to suspect that Lang may have some very dark secrets and that perhaps his predecessor's death wasn't so accidental.
There is a strange inconsistency in the format of the thriller aspects of the plot. Some clues are given undue attention - the casting of Eli Wallach as a lonely islander seems very odd until you realise he has something very important to say. On the other hand the set-up for the clue in the BMW (product placement aplenty in this film) is superb. The conspiracy itself is also massively flawed, as Robert Pugh former Foreign Minister states in the trailer "Name one decision Lang made in ten years as Prime Minister that wasn't in the interests of the U.S.A." which implicitly indicates it was deliberate not because Lang was weak or misguided.
The two stand-outs in the cast were Brosnan and Williams, both of whom gave fully engaging and dimensional performances. Brosnan in particular should be congratulated for not taking the easy option and impersonating Blair (even though Harris has admitted the character is based on him). The rest of the cast are pretty forgettable, McGregor and Cattrall can't seem to decide what accent their going for and Tom Wilkinson and Timothy Hutton are utterly wasted as Lang's former University colleague and lawyer respectively.
Talking about Harris' novel there are a couple of tweaks towards the end which are diffent. I'm not too keen about the airport scene which in the book has much more to say about Lang's desire to go down in history (there's a moment when he appears to know...). The coda, where the final twist is announced, is far more satisfying dramatically - if a little cheesy - and few could argue that the last shot is the most effective we've seen this year.
Polanski directs the action well, with a palpable tension in the air, aided by the coldness and greyness of the landscape. As with many of his films architecture is vital in sustaining mood, and the presence of the main location is as foreboding and clinical as any prison. So we return to his current lodgings, and the question of whether his art is affected.
Undoutably it is. As undoutably as my review has been timed by my super-ego. Yesterday in British courts six former Guantanamo Bay detainees overturned a ruling that allowed government use of secret evidence to defend itself against a damages claim. Their argument that their illegal detention and torture at Guantanamo was sanctioned, or at least acknowledged, by senior Government Ministers. That's a New Labour Government, a party steeped in socialist values that has eroded civil liberties faster than at any time since the English Civil War, that has widened the gap betwen the rich and the poor and made it harder to bridge that divide, that has created the largest budget deficit in UK history, that has failed to regulate the financial services sector some 2 years after it took us into a recession, that took us into an illegal war and may even have been complicit in toturing innocent men. New Labour has failed. It is indeed time for a change.
Friday, 8 January 2010
20 for 2010 - The Ghost
Straight in at number 10 (appropriately for a movie about the British Prime Minister) is The Ghost.
Richard Harris' pageturner about the former PM's memoirs, and the naive ghost writer he hires to write them was an immediate best seller on both sides of the Atlantic, mainly because the politician in question so closely mimics Tony Blair in his behaviour and manner that it's hard to believe Blair didn't sue.
The film though has had some even more bizarre press, with director Roman Polanski finishing post production whilst under house arrest for the child sex allegation dating back to the 70's.
Whether the film will survive the stink of the case will remain to be seen, it premiers at the Berlin Film Festival in February and the reviews will be hotly anticipated in only so that can be trashed by everyone else. A good review will be seen as sticking up for the man during these testing times, a bad one will be punishment for the crime. The only way we'll be ale to judge this one is to see it for ourselves.
Pierce Brosnan plays the PM, Olivia Williams his cryptic Cherie-alike wife and Ewan MacGregor will be investigating Brosnan's lifestory in more ways than one.
PS. I've read the novel, and therefore know what happens in it's final shocking chapter, so I'm not putting in any more plot lest I give away the ending.
Sunday, 16 August 2009
Timothy Hutton
Happy Birthday to
Timothy Hutton
49 today
Amazingly it's been 30 years since Tim stole our hearts and made us all want to give him a big hug in Ordinary People. Whilst his career hasn't been as sparkling as that early start there have always been interesting projects on the go. Up next is an unspecified role in Roman Polanski's The Ghost, which is well timed as the official website, with a tiny teaser, opened this week. Take a look here.
