OSCAR CHAT

 

TWENTY EIGHT OUT OF SIX HUNDRED is less than 5%. Other things that are less than 5%:

• The number of voting members of AMPAS that are black.

Steve McQueen stands a great chance of becoming just the 29th black man or woman to win an Academy Award, and the first to win a Best Director award. Since the inaugural awards, there have been 600 Oscars handed out. Having suggested a nomination for handsome Hollywood hero Robert Redford here last week I now feel a bit embarrassed to have overlooked this weirdly archaic statistic. It seems difficult to believe that not a single black director has won an Oscar - in the entire history of the Academy Awards, only four films made by a black director have been nominated.

There are two ways to look at this. The first concerns the above numbers; whilst no one (i.e. me) is suggesting the Academy is institutionally racist, another statistic on their makeup is pertinent: more than half of the makeup are sixty or older. America has changed dramatically since 1953, when Sarah Keys became the first African American to challenge the 'separate but equal' race law in Carolina. That's important. From a demographic perspective it's hard to suggest America's rewarding it's film-making talent. Incidentally, McQueen is British.

The second is a knottier question and therefore a little more difficult to answer. How many films made by black directors deserved to win an Oscar? And, one step back, how many black film directors are there working in the industry? It's knottier because there are smaller considerations that flow into bigger subjects like national politics and macroeconomic policy, and those considerations are much harder to quantify.

For example: the age old debate on equality of opportunity and how that affects career trajectories. The US Social Security Administration (SSA) recently released data showing more than half of Americans earn below $30,000 pa, which is about $3,000 above the 'federal poverty line' (the line delineates who is in living in poverty and who isn't). That was for 2012. As this heat map shows, many Americans in the South live below the poverty line. The US Census Bureau suggests the majority of African Americans live in cities and suburbs within the South (although the suburbs are undoubtedly more affluent than they once were). CNN Money thinks the average public college education (i.e. open to all) is $8,200 pa per student. So allowing for a reasonable margin of error, a good percentage of African Americans will never get to college, and therefore find a door to film-making closed. And that's just part of the question - why are they in that position in the first place?

Demographics do make a huge difference - the most recent American census put the African American population of the US around 12%, so naturally more white Americans will be getting the opportunity to make an Oscar-winning film. But 12% of 381 million people is just under 45 million people - that's the equivalent of Ukraine or South Africa. It also doesn't answer the much more subjective question of quality - how many black directors are making Oscar-worthy films?

So in short, there does seem to be something wrong with the current set-up - but how much of that is in the Academy's hands is difficult to say. One final and interesting thing: the four previously nominated films made by black directors/ producers are The Color Purple, Precious, Django Unchained and The Blind Side. For anybody who's seen those films, there's a certain underdog theme to each, and three explicitly concern slavery. I think the Academy's right to promote these films as great social commentaries but they should be broadening the net more - it does ask an awkward question of what the voters are interested in watching.

Pic from Shetland Arts

 

ALL IS LOST

 **A FEW THOUGHTS**

This was the second of two films I saw last week which focused on imperilled humans at the mercy of their environment. The other film was Gravity, which I posted about below.

Sarah and I discussed both films whilst eating delicious (healthy) Malaysian food at Ning NQ, in Manchester. She hasn't seen either film and does not want to, which I think is a pragmatic reaction to two scenarios which I found very unpleasant to watch.

Sarah said she felt like being adrift in the ocean was much more preferable to space and I am inclined to agree, but on reflection, it seems the defining factors have an air of irrelevance about them. I found myself thinking again that most of the universe, including the planet Earth, is totally intolerant to human life.

I really admired the way JC Chandor set his tale up - with (what may be) the ending at the start of the tale. Throughout this, I kept returning to:

~How do people understand and process a tragedy in their lives?~

As the viewer, did I pity Redford's character because I (thought I) knew of his fate? If I'm under no illusions as to the ending, is the emotional journey more or less satisfying? The main reason I loved this is down to Redford. He invests so much into the character and creates connections with an audience through a full appreciation of, and reaction to, his environment. Another thing I unconsciously noted about All Is Lost is how out of touch almost all American cinema is with its surroundings. You could probably do World War Z in a music hall in the Caribbean, it's that focused in on itself.

Robert Redford should win Best Actor at the Oscars, no doubt. I also think JC Chandor should win Best Director, but with him, McQueen and Cuaron all up for the same thing I don't think the Academy people will make the 'right' choice. History is heavy. Now I have said that Scorsese will win again.

One award I do feel the film will walk away with is the cinematography and sound. It is gloriously expansive, and approaches its human subject in an almost alien manner - the wide underwater lenses observe Redford's plight impassively, almost benignly, from below the ocean surface. It looks and sounds like the world is watching itself.

I did feel the practical attentions of Redford really upped the ante emotionally. Lots of people have come out and claimed the science is bogus in Gravity but what mattered for me there was the fragility and the expertly unravelled storyline, as Ryan's paradox regarding her loneliness is revealed. Just watching Redford pack away glassware and wash items before the coming storm created a tangible, scary foreboding that many directors could learn from. And that's not mentioning the ordeal suffered in his lifeboat following the storm.

This is a great film and, I feel, ought to be remembered in years to come. It is lean, subtle, beautifully shot and will reduce you to an emotional wreck. A must see.

Pic thanks to Athena Cinema, Athens.

 

G     R     A     V     I     T     Y

It was as good as everyone said. I saw Gravity once everyone had come back down to Earth (yes I did that) about the astonishing special effects, the knuckle-shredding tension, the superlative performance from Sandra Bullock (I know!) which will probably see her up for another Oscar.

The biggest draw for me, though, was the 3D element. I have seen four films (I think) in 3D. Gravity is the fourth and so far it's the only one to do anything interesting with the format. And interesting is probably putting it lightly. It was great to feel so directly involved with something, watching a film that made superior use of its environment, much like All Is Lost in fact.

Leaving aside the physics and the chemical side of things, I feel like Cuaron handled the 'space is the ultimate metaphor for the human condition' thing adroitly. Ryan's loneliness is the mirror image of Matt's; but Cuaron riffs on the same sensation through both of them in smart, character-building ways. Matt bounces around the vast nothingness as he tells his story about floating, alone, through the crowded streets of Mardi Gras trying to find his lost love; Ryan stays attached to the dock, focusing down on the one thing in front of her, in the same way that she does with her daughter.

Cuaron finds ways to create drama in a lean, clinical fashion. He has excellent manners when creating drama. He also employs action at strategic intervals like he is conducting an orchestra. The crash sequence is astonishing and has to be seen on a big screen; nothing else will do it justice. This might be the best film I never buy on DVD.

I don't know why Cuaron has been called out for bogus science by those in the know: this seems stupid and self-effacing by those who've said so. Of significantly more interest were the remarks made by overtly Christian writers who suggested a belief in (a) God in the film. Ryan's numerous monologues do appear to be referring to an unconscious belief in someone/thing that's not present: but as the admirably brief intro makes clear, an inhospitable environment's the natural catalyst for humans to reconnect with their absent brethren too. I felt like Cuaron took the humanist route in his treatment of Ryan's grief and both sides should probably feel there's some merit in the others perspectives. Which I suppose is pretty much humanism in a nutshell.

Besides those elements the running time was a pleasant and effective surprise, lending some urgency to the whole enterprise and giving a 'real time' element to the story.

This is also the first time I've loved watching Sandra Bullock in something - her Ryan was full of faults, imprecise in the most unforgiving of environments, and blinded by emotion for her colleague and daughter, both absent to some extent. But getting mad somehow seemed brutally careless - as Peter Bradshaw said, this is the first space film happening now, with real live humans, rather than the past or future, with a faceless android, or a Vulcan. As such empathy was a much more direct sensation - easy, familiar, and it gave the film a powerful directness.

The best expression of Gravity's effects? Afterwards I craved familiarity. Much as Ryan squeezes wet soil between her fingers following re-entry, I wandered around Manchester in the rain, glasses in my bag. You'll never want to go into space again. 

(Pic from Alt Film Guide)

Twenty fourteen (2014) will be EXCITING. If you want it to be. I want it to be. Here's what I'm excited about.

Lord of the Flies - in ballet

 

That's right. Matthew Bourne, him of the winningly solid pudgeface (not a word but it ought to be) and sixth form gelled fringe brings Golding's societal piece to the stage. I know almost nothing about ballet, besides watching a very impressive Natalie Portman performance in the very impressive Black Swan back in 2011, but I've caught snippets of Bourne's version of that (check out the trailer here) which I wish I'd seen live as it looks excellent.

Equally LotF was never one of the books I got to read at school but I've since atoned for that criminal gap in my formal education and am 'intrigued' to say the least what he will do with characters like Piggy. Extra incentive, if needed: it starts round the corner from me at the Lowry Theatre in Salford.

The Premier League

 

Being a Manchester City fan, I've enormously enjoyed the first half of this English season, watching a renascent side destroy opposition defences (my highlights, since you asked, were the 6-3 v Arsenal, the 3-2 v Bayern away, and of course that first Davey Moyes derby) at home.

But it's no real wonder the Premier League managed to blow even its own astonishing rights deals out of the water when there is finally some sporting drama on Saturdays again. Who's going down? Who will win the league? Will Levy keep Sherwood? What is going on with Mata? Will Thud go to the World Cup? And will Luis Suarez ever just bundle one in off his arse? The quality's great, but the stories are many, varied and seemingly endless. We might not see another one like it for a bit, so catch it if you can.

Dave Eggers does Bill Bryson

One of my favourite ever books a historical collection of food writing, in all of its literary forms, in The New Yorker magazine. Composed of pieces by writers, not cooks or chefs, I quickly realised that you don't need to know your subject as much as needing to know how to write - but some subject knowledge is important.

I'm guessing 'some' is precisely the right amount for Dave Eggers. The novelist formally collects his memoirs of his trips to Thailand, the Sudan and the northeastern states of America amongst many, many others into Visitations, a piece of work I will presume to contain more than its fair share of breezy metaphysical rhetoric slung around  'some' interesting perspectives on, say, mini shrines on the street corners of Bangkok.

Obviously Eggers is known for his forays into parts of the world untouched by much of the professional writing class, and his sharp eye and goofy wit will undoubtedly bring to life much of a planet still perused through the 'World' section of broadsheet newspapers.

Visitations is out in November 2014

The Men Are Back In Town

 

To misquote Thin Lizzy, but it sort of feels like they never left. The hardest woikin' band 'n sho'bidness has got to be these guys right now, who are on for their fifth album in as many years in between tours. Anybody can knock an album together in under a fortnight - several bands made it sound like a skill in the early noughties - but The Men's range has broadened in parallel with their ever-longer tours, and New Moon is a soulful echo of Neil Young's early years, without losing their belt and braces steely punk sound around the fringes. For a band that appears hellbent on challenging normal concepts of time, the record's title - Tomorrow's Hits - feels entirely appropriate.

*!* Tomorrow's Hits is released on Sacred Bones Records *!*

An Oscars Worthy of an Academy Award

 

For those complaining that the Academy Awards is getting carried away with populism, the decision to drop the aforementioned name last year and replace it with the catchier and more vacuous 'Oscars' was the proverbial red rag. OK so: I enjoyed Silver Linings and Bradley Cooper is deceptively good at this acting stuff. I admit it.

Anyone still out there?

Anyway, onto the American mantel goes Oscar next to buddies Tony and Emmy (what's up with a Golden Lion guy?) and does the debate over whether this is an awards or an entertainment product intensify? Who knows and it's probably a silly argument anyway - the irony won't be lost on anyone when the inevitable drama ensues from some no-hoper claiming the Oscars 'has lost its allure'. All except the Americans of course, who we all know have never understood irony, as long as Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld have lived. 

But! What is this garbage, I hear you mumble. Fair point. And now I'll come to it: this year, more than any I can ever remember, I'm sort of excited. Alright, another David O. Russell film (see above for my swooning heart). BUT. What about Steve McQueen, riding into the postmodern American West, hat not on head, cardie round shoulders, shorts above knees, with a film so deserving of superlatives that you can actually use them without fear of unintentional hilarity. Tremendous. Magnificent. Etc. 12 Years A Slave looks rich with promise - and who doesn't want to hear a Steve McQueen acceptance speech?

Elsewhere another of my favourite guys - Alfonso Cuaron - might win something for Gravity (and Sandra Bullock could win another Oscar. Yeah.) And what of films like Blue Is The Warmest Colour, Blue Jasmine, and All Is Lost? Not to mention interesting curios like Upstream Color and Only God Forgives. You can probably count the last two out, sadly. Nevertheless there is - finally - justification for that furious Monday morning scowl and four espressos from your local café after an all nighter getting passionate, alone, with Mr Oscar. About damn time.

Pix thanx to Douban, Style Weekly, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and Sky Sports.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Upon seeing The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, here and forever known as Mitty, It seems as though I broadly disagreed with my favourite source of film trivia and news. But I don't think I'm in the minority here, although I do feel like Peter Bradshaw was excessively mean-spirited towards my birthday - sorry, the film. Which I saw on my birthday.

And of course that explains the general hurt anyone feels when someone or something they respect and have faith in turns on them, however misplaced those sensations are. For Walter Mitty, the titular protagonist, this represents a moment to get on a skateboard and walk out of an office to Arcade Fire. A touch harsh? Well maybe.

This Mitty, the second on screen following Danny Kaye's 1947 version, is played by a Ben Stiller who I will describe as handsome and mild-mannered, neither of which are qualities that particularly stand out in films I really enjoy watching over again.

Mitty is a 21st century version of the character from writer James Thurber's whimsical, sentiment-free short story. He is the sad and logical end of the man who began the start of the 20th century dreaming of conquering the Nazis (as the original Mitty does) and begins the 21st agonising over whether to wink at a pretty lady on a dating site; eHarmony, which is a real thing. The film's got more where that came from - Papa John's also play a big role as Mitty's employer in an earlier, more miserable life. Kickstarter's not for everyone it seems.

The lady, Cheryl, is played by Bridesmaids' Kristen Wiig, and prompts numerous fantasy elements to be introduced to the viewer as Mitty dives into buildings, rescues kittens, walks out of the Antarctic with a weird Latin accent and a parrot and various other bemusing moments.

But the really interesting parts are not the humorous bits. Adam Scott plays Ted, a brand junkie, management-speak-extraordinaire who exudes horrible from every pore as the man come to wreck Mitty's life following the closure of Life the magazine and the opening of Life the website, with the commensurate number of jobs to be shed in the name of 'cost effectiveness'.

Scott is a disgusting guy and the scenes he is in are a delight to watch - for me it also included the best fantasy as Mitty beats the crap out of Ted whilst both are waiting in the lift. The bone of contention? A Stretch Armstrong toy. It betrayed a goofiness in Stiller's direction that I always liked about his other films and just because it is something he has excelled in previously, I don't think it's a good enough reason to try something else.

Other highlights include the floor huddle where the unfortunate Life staff are informed of their doom - think The Office with added awkward as hand signals and weird emphasis on stuff make for richly satisfying viewing and a charming short scene where Mitty demonstrates incredible skills with a skateboard in the background as the woman he dreams of chats to her ex-husband. I think the stunt double for that scene is Rodney Mullen, incidentally.

The rest of the film follows Mitty as he traverses around northern Europe and the Middle East in search of the aptly named Sean O'Connell, a Life freelance photographer who kicked the whole shebang off back in America with a missing photo, the last to ever grace the Life cover and one that each party within the film is quite interested in. Ted's interested because he'll get shouted at if he doesn't get it. Cheryl is because she needs something to keep talking to Mitty about, and Mitty - well, Mitty because he hasn't really been anywhere but Phoenix, as he tells eHarmony's customer services team, and he basically needs to get the hell on with his life.

The cinematography is absolutely great, there's a lovely scene where Stiller skateboards down the side of a volcano, a very well filmed oceangoing scene with what may be a porpoise or a shark, and a moment with Sean Penn, a good fit for the rugged photographer who Mitty sets out to reach for the accursed photo number 25, which is totally predictable and so easy for Penn he practically sleepwalks his way through, but it's nice to watch two actors doing their own thing.

The film's moments of naturalism blow away the more absurd, intricately concocted elements and I particularly enjoyed the scenes that are not really integral to the story. There's truth in Stiller's work when he does not force the pace, and a lot of this bears the look of a guy forcing it as a fairly green director.

That might feel a little unfair, but it seems as though much of the heart of the original is held up to a clever-clever 21st century perspective that just doesn't possess the same throwaway intellect as its predecessor. A shame, particularly as I'm only 29 once.

Photo: The Guardian

Review: Richer Than God (David Conn)

David Conn's portrait of a club, city and sport transformed by money is required reading for any fan

When reading David Conn's odyssey as a fan of football and Manchester City on my flight out to Rome, I recalled an article I read almost by accident one freezing Saturday afternoon whilst Googling my stream of conscience. I'd suddenly realised I had no idea how my cat knew who I was. Or how any other animal knew what its family consisted of, and what it could mate with. The same day, I watched all 12 rounds of Joe Calzaghe vs Roy Jones Jr without really meaning to.

I didn't get a definitive answer, but I did stumble across an interesting New Scientist piece about kin recognition, which theoretically seeks to explain how a family of animals essentially recognise each other as their own, even if they have never met. There's some, largely inconclusive evidence that it definitely exists.

That faintly primal sensation struck a chord with me when reading the book. This is not the same as identifying with a Haruki Murakami character, in an intuitive, sensual way. It's like I was the person writing this book. Everything described about the club, its tumults, its highs and lows, its wild successes and unbelievable farces, of which there are many; I experienced everything in exactly the same way.

It's somewhat fitting that City started life at a church in Gorton under the direction of Anna Connell, both in spirit and form, as leaving aside the puerile contemporary 'cathedral' metaphors garnered by Sky Sports and the like, support does mean a community of people held fast by steadfast belief in one thing.

It also provides a neat jumping off point for analysing the slow disintegration of the more Corinthian aspects of the game. Conn's forays into the grimy world of early Premier League club policy, and their machinations to slip the grips of an amateurish, complacent Football Association to glean enormous profits for small groups of very wealthy men (and women in the case of Nina Bracewell-Smith) make for revelatory and deeply troubling reading.

Conn's forensic style is well tailored to the broader, less personal elements of the story; how a sport became a business, how whole demographics were priced out of a game they loved and grew up on. The lens pulls back for a wider picture of economic malaise in late 20th century Britain, and how its northern English cities were cut to ribbons by a Conservative government hellbent on implementing economic ideology over pragmatic, means-tested solutions to age old problems.

Walking through east Manchester on the way to the Etihad, newly named and spruced up with Arab money, Conn's nuanced points on wealth distribution jar. How does a local government win finance for a one-off sporting event, as Manchester did with the Commonwealth Games in 2002, and the funds to build an enormous stadium, but it cannot win the same funds to regenerate an area classed as the fifth poorest in the entire country?

Conn's bafflement at the impossibility of City winning the biggest every lottery resonates in every fan of the club, and its this sense of emotional contradiction that really made the book mine personally. Much derided, and infamously coined by that footballing blunderbuss Kevin Keegan, is the City fan's belief in their club's ever-present status as one of the movers and shakers; that, under the heaving weights of debt, inept administration and such essentials as a working gym (Conn's interviews show just bare the cupboard was before the coming of Mansour), a massive club was waiting to take its rightful place at the top table of the league.

In this way the story brings home a familial element; Conn's descriptions of his trips to see City destroy the genuinely great AC Milan and Manchester United 4-0 in the 1970s are stories I've heard from my dad, and thus the emotional connection is given form by bricks, cement, boots and mud.

To his great credit Conn does not tread lightly on history. Former players like Bell, Book and Summerbee are rightly held as the heroes City fans revere them as, but he decimates the myth of the latter-day Franny Lee, a darling in the Championship-winning Sixties but a ruthless corporate man come to oil City's wheels for the slippery rails of the London Stock Exchange in the Nineties. The interview with Lee feels like a watershed moment in Conn's, and the club's, life, and subsequently paints Lee's predecessor, the miserly, scrimping Peter Swales in slightly less darker hues than many fans held him in their hearts. Former owner Thaksin Shinawatra, the disgraced Thai Prime Minister, by turns appears a deeply cynical and perhaps dishonest individual, and becomes another nail in the coffin of Conn's unwavering belief.

To the modern day then, and perhaps Sheikh Mansour provided Conn with the last nudge he needed to annotate his odyssey in the shadow of his god football club. He is no less objective in assessing the merits of a man living thousands of miles, literally and figuratively, from the destitute slums of east Manchester.

And here Conn's assessment is again eerily close to that of thousands; four years in, with an FA Cup, a Premier League title, almost £1 billion spent on footballers, a wholesale renovation of a sagging administrative structure, the greatest irony is that this distant billionaire is both competent and caring of the history he has bought. It feels too good to be true and, given City's former laughable travails (given sharp form by the songs Conn relays - and fans still sing to a title-winning team - about love, death and nothing in between), the emotional schism is again laid bare; a massive club's continuous success should not be blinked at by its own fans, and yet it still is.

In the final pages Conn returns to the roots of football, and visits Andy Walsh of FC United, those disenfranchised, debased fans of City's greatest rivals, and the yardstick which the blue half beat itself half to death with in the darkest days. Walsh talks about the diminished role of fans in the modern game; the idea of shareholder power and a club owned by its fans (as is the case in Germany and Spain). Even with one of the world's oldest and best supported clubs, only 2,000 attended FC United's first meeting at the Manchester Apollo, more befitting of punk than prawn sandwiches.

In a circular fashion the game now returns to its roots; made by normal working people for those people, but with the skyline now dominated not by the factories of Victorian England but the skyscrapers and towers of a country weaned off manufacturing and onto financial services. Earlier in the book Conn makes the point that Germany, still an EU powerhouse, places manufacturing at the heart of its economy, with banks providing the oil to smooth the gears. Manchester, football and Britain now occupy the inverse position, with actual oil now helping turn the gears on a once-great football club with little left to give to its unwavering supporters.

'At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don't come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques,' said Bill Shankly, born a century ago. David Conn's book captures a culture that is older than the oldest club, that gives rise to ancient urges that ripple through Shankly's unflinching assessment, and answers with an admirable lack of grandeur, what happened to a game once described as 'beautiful'.

Picture courtesy of Without A Dream In Our Hearts

Review: Only God Forgives

Pouts, prostitutes and 'pornographic violence' abound in Ryan Gosling's vaguely interesting new film

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a favourite of film director Nicolas Winding Refn. In an interview with the Director's Guild of America, he described it as the definitive formative moment of his career, when he decided on his choice of role in the film industry. He describes the film itself as 'not a normal movie.'

As far as the 1970s go, it can be considered the great show-off movie. From the title right through to the brain-splattered ending, there's an almost tangible relish in it's unrelenting attitude, never more visible than in the shocking violence done to other people.

As the director of the Pusher trilogy, Bronson and Valhalla Rising, it's not really surprising to hear Refn's such a fan. In the same interview he describes how he railed against his parents love of French nouvelle vague. It seems he's been railing against that ever since by directing films that are heavy on violence of both the physical and emotional kind.

All those years of Street Fighter 2 were finally justified

Only God Forgives assumes a similarly unambiguous intent. The title calls on big themes: redemption, errors past and present and perhaps some sort of collision between good and evil. Say it out loud - it needs a movie trailer voice behind it. It belongs in the oeuvre of the western or samurai film. It is another example of Refn's very conspicuous sense of style.

And broadly it does trade on those themes, but this is a film heavy on atmosphere but little in the way of story, and even less character. It appears Refn wants to challenge himself first, then his audience, in making a film with no discernible development, only intimated through the above. It also appears there's a funny joke to be had about the rebellious son unconsciously turning into his parents.

Some of it works spectacularly well; the opening, a sweaty, pugilistic scene of intensely violent Muay Thai boxing, is set to thrumming percussion and a swelling bass which brings the heat and pressure to life better than any spoken word. Cliff Martinez, responsible for scoring the superior Drive, deserves lots of credit for an immersive auditory experience.

And Refn's use of colour and place is also exceptional. Ryan Gosling, playing Julian, one half of a drug-smuggling-sibling duo, resides in an apartment saturated in a hellish red with gods carven into grand furniture. Gosling's almost catatonic passivity throughout the majority of the film is amplified by this looming, macho environment.

The fun (my term) starts when Julian's brother Billy rapes and murders a young prostitute and is then murdered himself by the deceased's vengeful father. What follows is a domino-effect tale of revenge as characters are savagely disposed of to get to the film's rock-hard nub of a core.

The film teems with fascinating elements; Kristin Scott Thomas repulses as Crystal, a grief-stricken mother whose relationship with Julian's brother appears Oedipal. In one deeply surreal scene, Crystal infers to his partner that Julian has an inferiority complex based on the size of his brother's penis. Julian's one-man mission to avenge a brother he felt deserved to die suggests a similar Oedipal feeling in the younger brother.

The mainstay of Only God Forgives, and the reason it doesn't completely collapse in a mess of half-explored psychodramas, comes in the form of the 'Angel of Death' Lt Chang, played with insuperable hardness by Vithaya Pansringam. A looming, vaguely atavistic presence, Chang expounds brutal and clinical retribution on those he deems as sinners, regardless of guilt in the eyes of the law, which appears to be a useful enabler for his police officer role.

As is Refn's objective wont, there are no real good and bad guys throughout, only those who have forgotten their morals through violent compromise. Cops are blasted near in half; in one memorably unpleasant scene, an ally of Julian's is staked to his armchair by tongs, then has his eye and ear removed with unflinching efficacy.

And of course Julian himself is nearly pounded into mincemeat by Chang in a scene that, once it gets going, is thrillingly good to watch. Timeliness is a major issue with Only God Forgives; almost 50% of the film is completely silent and no one moves or indeed does anything at all.

As others better qualified have pointed out, there's a good chance that if David Lynch, say, had directed this, we may all be saying something quite different (but this would probably be a radically different film in execution too). And it has prompted some histrionic adjectives; 'sadistic and voyeuristic' from the Mail, 'pornographically violent, neon-dunked nightmare' from the Telegraph. Anything described so loudly is surely worth a look.

But when you can leave a newspaper open to suggesting 'that being a star means you don't have to act anymore, you can just stand there looking moody,' it doesn't really matter what anyone else says. You probably don't have a very good film on your hands. Perhaps they should have brought a chainsaw.

Picture courtesy of  The Daily Telegraph

The Prague Cemetery - Review

Umberto Eco returns to the scene of his crimes to charming (and exhausting) effect

In a typically brief foreword to his critically acclaimed first trio of short stories, the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges once claimed that 'it is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books - setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes.'

True to form, he never wrote in fiction anything longer than a short story, and some of these were bracingly quick reads - four or five pages. Often I'll read something and think of that quote, which is surely the ultimate litmus test of any serious writer, but it seems an uncanny critique of Umberto Eco's work - ironic, as his style strongly derives from him.

The Prague Cemetery is more than 400 pages, and was hailed as a return to form when it was first released. It quickly sold over a million copies in - guess what - South America and Europe. And I enjoyed it a lot, but probably for precisely the reasons a few have suggested it slightly flabby and supported by its sense of self-importance, rather than anything traditional like character.

Eco is a semiotician, and a world-renowned one at that, so you can expect some gymnastics in vocabulary, some loose unravelling of a thread that dangles pointlessly but prettily. It's a little unfortunate however that this story has already been told - by Eco himself, in a previous novel.

A tale of conspiracies abound in fin-de-siècle Europe, Eco weaves a charming tapestry of real-life characters around the fictional creation of Simone Simonini and his alter ego Abbe Dalla Piccola. Simonini is the grandson of the (real) Italian soldier and captain of the same name who becomes the spider at the centre of a pulsating web of intrigue, a master forger who sells his trade to Italian generals, French spies and Russians who use his gifts for fabrication to influence real life events.

And so we gallivant round Europe with young Simonini as he sinks fleets, helps imprison the elites and kills the innocent. Europe becomes a brothel with everyone screwing everyone, from the Freemasons to the Jesuits to the 19th century's favourite villain, the Jews. There is an exceptionally black mass that may be the high(low)light of the book, depending on your taste.

It's all in a day's work for an antihero but we've been here before. Eco's fascination with the invented influencing the everyday popped up in 1988 under the name Foucault's Pendulum, when a conspiracy theory propagated by three publishers infatuates the wrong sort of people, leading to murder and dizzying levels of mystery.

It's a shame that this isn't quite as good as that book but this is both a clever and educating read. Eco suggested in an interview in 2012 that people were 'bored' and 'wanted to be challenged' in their lives, hence the prevailing popularity of conspiracies.

For the same reasons, you can easily become bored with this book. If you're not a fan of late 19th century European history this will really drag, saturated as it is with both the events and characters of the time. It's occasionally difficult to discern what is relevant to the story and what isn't and some of the recipes propagated by characters like Alexandre Dumas have more flavour than the numerous villains who flit in and out of the shadows. Much like the corkscrew nature of the plot, you might have difficult keeping their names straight.

The Prague Cemetery is a lovely wind-up toy and, depending on your appreciation (I'm a fan) you'll indulge the author to keep winding long after the toy has run down its gears. It would certainly make a fascinating five minute conversation.

Picture courtesy of Non Modern Blog

Frances Ha: Review

Greta Gerwig is wonderful in a film that's tantalising and frustrating in equal measure

There's a great rolling scene in Frances Ha that offers a crystal clear insight into the ethos of both the character and by extension her film. It's the one where Frances, played by Baumbach's wife Greta Gerwig, careens down a New York street ahead of an approaching bus as David Bowie's Modern Love plays over everything.

Frances is smiling and certainly not running; that would imply an exertion that lacks from her existence, but neither is she lazy; rather, like Bowie's lonely, self-sufficient character, her determination to succeed on her own terms makes hers a lonely furrow to plough.

Greta Gerwig gives a standout performances in Frances Ha

The eponymous focal point of this chewy and slightly gooey film, Frances and her spunky backing group of young, hip New Yorkers chatter, eat, drink and are never discontent, despite her stasis in the ballet company she can't get into, her lack of living space and her spiky, loving friendship with publisher Sophie, a performance par excellence by Mickey Sumner.

The film is divided into a series of scenes framed by Frances' living space of choice; she begins by not moving in with her boyfriend and then leaving him, living with Sophie before Sophie moves in with boyf Patch, moving on to Lev and Benji, a charming pair of New York bohos with aspirations they can't quite catch hold of (Benji and Frances are a particularly cute fit as a result) and then, in moves increasingly forced by lack of income, into shared accommodation with a more successful colleague and finally returning to the school she studied at to complete a homecoming of sorts.

That vignette quality never quite goes away and as much as Gerwig creates a wonderfully deep character over the course of the film it's therefore quite difficult to escape from Baumbach's bittersweet concocted world. More so as the whole thing is shot in black and white.

Superficial it ain't but the film's stylistic qualities ironically make it harder for it to seep into the viewer's conscience - whilst there's an immediately obvious Woody Allen reference in the monochrome style, it does very consciously turn in on itself, with the consequence of judging on a lesser set of characteristics.

I hugely enjoyed the performances, particularly Greta Gerwig who's able to convey a thousand disappointments in one brash defensive gesture. At a post-Christmas meal back in New York when, sat with a group of settled, successful lawyers and bankers, Frances quickly gets drunk and starts making the sort of jokes she enjoyed with her now-absent friend Sophie, you quickly and easily empathise with her gloom. Later Frances tries to capture the group's existence - a group she had not met before that night - with a rambling, woozy yet almost poetic speech. Baumbach conveys the audience's sense of pity and wonder perfectly.

Despite the actor and her husband director's best efforts though, this struggles to shake off the weight of the films it harks to. You'll enjoy it, but you might, as Frances does, want to dawdle and watch, rather than keep on running.

Picture courtesy of Mockingbird.com

Love/Hate: S1 Episode 2 Review

Very late thoughts on Episode 2. They're not all positive.

Undoubtedly an incidental fact but the show's title this week perhaps divided its viewers into the two eponymous camps. Admirably quick in getting down to business and setting up new relationships, including some between old flames, it nevertheless promised a great deal more than it delivered and some of the scenes were downright wonky. This week's episode then:

The Party.
Dear God. There's no way of filming this sort of thing successfully if you ask me. Parsing the embarrassment of watching grown men act like children and watching grown men act like grown men acting like children, is a difficult one at the best of times. This was fully like watching TV in the traditional sense, a non-acting hinterland where gurning people shamble around mock props. The blurred lens shots to reflect the coke usage was naff and although the soundtrack was probably dead on (who am I to say?) the whole thing felt deeply superficial.

The Shipment

Nidge: looks menacing, but he's actually called Nigel. Ooooh.

What promises to be the first of many collabs between John Boy and the younger hoods around him wasn't too badly executed, but the chat and camerawork gleamed with a veneer that the show would do well to shake off quickly. There was a great deal of histrionics - a particularly wince-inducing scene between Nigel and Trish was the epitome of the set piece - and again none of it felt particularly close to the bone. Welcome to soap opera territory.

Darren and Rosie
One of the better moments involved Robert Sheehan (again - he's quite interesting to watch) and his on-off partner Rosie (right), abandoned for his continental jaunt and now back within his doe-eyed orbit. This was probably the standout scene and the resumption of their relationship had that inimitable feel of realism. Stumpy, the sharp point of the triangle (way to ruin my metaphor 'Stumpy'), remains a refreshingly unknown quantity with equal displays of faux-gentlemanly behaviour, paranoid suspicion and, at the end, simmering menace.

The Hypnotherapy Guy
Deeply unfair of me but this was a scene The Sopranos could have done in its sleep, and the principal difference is the age gap. When lovely Darren threatens a famous psychic TV personality with extreme violence it's more difficult to believe he'll actually do anything than not, and I guess this is where the boy-band criticism hits home. Tony Sirico would have nailed this. Maybe Sheehan just needs some shell suits and wings in his hair.

 On A Positive Note...
There were some nicely realised character traits. Darren's violent rage at the mystery bin vandal following phone call was intelligent and reasoned, and the ironic scene of Nigel the drug mule accuse the clown hired for his child's birthday of ripping him off was just right. Aiden Gillen powered through the whole thing like he still had David Simon's words ringing in his ears - please don't kill him off! Proof that in small quantities Love/Hate works - but please, less gangster parties.

Pictures courtesy of Irish Independent and Channel 5