I apologise, I've just been informed that Paul Newman was probably the most under-rated actor ever. Supposedly he was one of the finest but James Dean died, Brando hammed it up and Deniro, Pacino, Hackman and Hoffman will now do anything for the money keeping them in the public domain. I'm informed his films were great and he was amazing in them, yet many may not have been the biggest hits and such he's gone kind of ignored at times. Turns out he's also done tons of great work for childrens charities and all the proceeds from, what I am informed is rather excellent, sauce is donated to them. I'm also told he was a bit of a smashing chap.
Sounds like he was awrite eh?
I went and typed the proper name into Youtube and got this:
Every now and then i type the name James Robinson into the imdb, just to see what he is up to. if your wondering who he is, he played Mel Gibson as a young chap in Braveheart. If your wondering what my deal is, its because he is a mate of mine, worked with him in a cafe in our home town and all in all he is a top bloke. i suppose i must add that he has one horrible flaw, he is a Ayr United fan but then you cant have everything.
Most of the time there isnt much to see but lo and behold there is two new things when i check today, new to me anyway, two films, a British indie called Saxon and an American film called Pathfinders: In the Company of Strangers. A tiny bit of research on my part sees that Saxon is touring the festivals as its self financed, it has the chap that played ian Curtis in 24hr party people in it and hopefully if imdb is right it will be released at the end of this year. Pathfinders has an interesting line up of leads, joining the young William Wallace of Braveheart is the young Forrest gump of Forrest Gump fame and the young Henry Hill from Goodfellas! what a terrifically quaint line up! Its a film about paratroopers landing in Normandy in WWII and its looking like a release in 09. I shall get onto him about these i think, maybe send him a wee text or something, see what the down is and post an update, in the meantime here is the trailers for the both of them, to be honest i cant pick him out from them but maybe he can set me straight on that too.
Just in time for Halloween! They're doing Legacy Of Blood, which appears to be a murder mystery. It sounds interesting but given the films CT have covered it won't be. But that serves the riffing so who cares?
When is Eddie Murphy hoing to have a third renaissance? Its a question that played on my mind when watching Meet Dave (Meet Dave is pretty shit by the way). I mean it all started well back in 82 with 48hrs (which is a great film to go back to I found out having seen it recently after a probable twelve year gap) and Trading Places, Beverley Hills Cop, then he did some family friendly pump, a then in 95 he does Vampire in Brooklyn and Metro a few years after and he is edgy again, but apart from really Life (Rays Boom Boom Room would be the shit!) which was great and Bowfinger which was clever the rest since then has been, well to repeat myself family friendly pump, Dr Dolittle, Norbit, Haunted Mansion, Daddy Day Care for Christs sake! So when will he return to the stuff we all know he is capable of?
Meet Dave is one of those family friendly pump films (thats three times i have used that phrase, lazy reviewing or simply the fact i have hit on a terrific saying, i will let you decide) and its not that its particularly bad more the fact what is Eddie Murphy doing in this? Its a film about a spaceship that crash lands on earth manned by a crew looking for a instrument which will save their planet. It just so happens that the spaceship looks like Eddie Murphy and the Captain looks like Eddie Murphy and thats because thats the gag, watch Eddie Murphy inside Eddie Murphy, great! It isnt great though, cue good looking single mom seeing the good in the spaceship even though it acts weird (it takes all its knowledge off (usually misjudged) internet sites) and her moppet son is mollycoddled at home and bullied at school strking up a bond with ths weird alien thing. Without ruining anything for anone with a brain, the ships crew find out that earth is great, they all relax, oh and a baddy tries to wreck it, oops, oh its nearly 80minutes in, lets tie this up with a happy ending and scene! film over. Actually that is a bad film.
Personally there is a few funny moments, but most are skin crawling as Murphy walks funny and says the wrong thing and basically pratfalls as the spaceship and is all stuck up and playing it straight as the ships captain, wrong wrong wrong wrong! The rest of his crew are pretty stereotypical, a gay man in the closet, a great looking burd that fancies the Captain (Murphy) a Baddie, a superfly young black guy, you know how it goes.
Coming up for Murphy is a film by the director of Norbit, an untitled Eddie Murphy/Romeo and Juliet project, a remake of the incredible Shrinking Man, and Shrek 4. Can't really see the return from that slate. So watch Meet Dave if you get the chance, realise that it wouldnt get pummeled so much if it wasnt Murphy in it (ok it would) and watch Life cos its great. Ah the secret of a good review, end up recommending something else!
Pity the poor old white upper classes will you? For the last decade and a bit now we've been bombarded with films telling us that financial security and the what not brings with it its fair share of trauma. Oh who cares if you have to choose between eating and paying the fuel bill, Tarquin's grades are dipping after he was put on Prozac. At times these films have actually approached watchability, usually when done from a comic perspective, such as Little Miss Sunshine, or even TV show Arrested Development. But all too often what we are left with is a big whiney heap of shit, full of unlikeable characters and condescending attitudes. Hello Charlie Bartlett. What's that? You're attempting to be the former? You haven't succeeded have you?
Basically this is a film that's asking you to root for a chauffeur-driven brat who's been kicked out of every private school he's attended just because he wants to be loved so much he's decided to win the affections of everyone by breaking the law. Bless. Oh and did I mention he's a bit fucked up because Daddy went away? Not some horrible death, no, rather he's in jail for tax evasion. Doesn't your heart just warm to him? No? Well what if his latest ruse was to sell anti-depressants to all those poor, white high school kids who can't cope? It certainly wins them over. Soon Charlie's the saviour of the student body, and commands the respect of not only the cheerleaders, but the working class bully too. You see if you just reach out to those beneath your social standing they'll come to respect you, tweed blazer and all. Of course it's not the most troubling idea of the film, rather that it seems to be saying that actually we should pump tenes full of pills so they can cope, because anti-depressants are just so amazing.
It's condescending drivel. And worse it's completely unbelievable condescending drivel. Charlie's an utter shit, yet everyone grows to love him. The solution to one kid trying to kill himself? Let's out on a play written by him! Huzzah! This is a world where everything will sort itself out, as long as you put faith on those with money to do it for you. Christ, he even befriends the mentally retarded boy, just to show us he's got a heart. The only saving grace is the acting, which is excellent, but Robert Downey Jr. is wasted as head teacher who can identify with Charlie because he's been through some of the same stuff and all that.
Essentially Charlie Bartlett is another of those "indie" films that are basically blockbusters for the artsy crowd. It ticks every box it's supposed to, you can see where it's going before the first act is over, and it feels the need to bludgeon you with its, pretty unoriginal, message, at one point his mother actually says; "I've treated you as an adult for so long you missed you're childhood and now we're paying for it". Yeah, we got that, THE MOMENT HE TURNED UP IN A FUCKING BLAZER! Sorry, stopped taking my Ritalin today.
Shane Meadows has quietly established himself as one of the finest directors working today. It's a bold statement, but if you haven't go see Dead Man's Shoes, This Is England and Room For Romeo Brass, and you should agree. Well now comes Somers Town, a strange companion piece to This Is England. Whereas that film was a ferocious study on the social climate of England in the Eighties, Somers Town is a gentle insight into multicultural Britain in the present day.
The film follows Tomo, who has decided to run away from his home in Nottingham. He arrives in the titular Somers Town and befriends a Polish immigrant called Marek. They muck about and attempt to chat up a local French waitress. That's pretty much it. There are some sub-plots about Marek's father and the local entrepreneur Graham who uses the boys for some cheap labour, but Somers Town isn't about plot.
Much like the European Neo-realist films that have obviously influenced it (why else shoot the majority of it in black and white?) Somers Town is more interested in the world it is set in and the characters who inhabit it. In that sense it's similar to The Bicycle Thieves, or as it was famously described, a film about a father and son going for a walk around Rome (I'm paraphrasing of course). Through this style the society is then commented on, not through bludgeoning imagery such as the like seen in This Is England, but rather through subtle means, such as the Graham subplot/metaphor or in the scene where the boys taxi Maria home in a discarded wheelchair. This is a classic example of the Neo-realist aesthetic at work. The sequence lasts nearly five minutes and barely, if at all, moves the plot forward. Rather the viewer is asked to drink in the scenery, bleak as it is, as they walk.
Thankfully though this is not a film full of doom and gloom. Rather it's sweet, charming and at times hilarious. Witness Graham gifting Marek an Arsenal shirt that reads 'Terry Henry' on the back, or Tomo's attempts at finding new clothes when a misplaced Biro destroys his only tracksuit. It's these little details that impress and show that Meadows put a lot of thought into his shots, rather than go the more typical realist improvised framing. Great examples include the placing of signs, such as 'Meet Me' above Tomo at the train station, or the 'Children Should Not Play' one on the side of their close.
Somers Town won't be for everyone. Ultimately it's actually quite saccharine in tone, and the ending is far from what you'd expect if you're a fan of the 1940's Italian version of this thing. It doesn't suggest for a second that these people's lives are easy, but it makes a plea that no matter where we are from, we're all in it together, so we should all just get along. Let's be honest, with so little actually happening in life it's probably the only way we can cope. Awww. Well compared to most British output, Danny Boyle and Edgar Wright aside, it's actually quite refreshing to see a realistic portrayal of Britain that doesn't paint us all as miserable alcoholics looking to kill one another. Then again, maybe this is actually a fantasy film.
yep, Jimbo Carrey is back on form from the looks of this two minute clip. cany beat a bit of Carrey rubberman shenanigans.
but there is more to this for me, i am just back my holidays, a weeks break in Yasmine Hammamet in Tunisia, wholey recommend it i must add, on this holiday i read a wee book by a chap called Danny Wallace, the book: Yes Man! you should be seeing the way this is going, the new Jim carrey laughathon is based on this book!
but the book is written by a British chap and is very British in how its carried out, a shoe in for the role would be Simon Pegg, but its been Americanised and from the trailer it takes the concept of "man who says no to everything, changes and decides to say yes more" and thats about it. I thought i would be disappointed by this but im not, on the contrary i feel it is better, i dont want to watcht he movie thinking how its different to howe i imagined it reading it, rather i want to be thinking, the concept is brilliant, lets see how far they go with it!
so december over in the states means maybe december here, or January so that gives you plenty of time to read the book, i fully recommend it.
so thats holidaying in tunisia and reading a danny wallace book. its like wish you were here and the culture show rolled into one on splice this weather.
(and also a chaep american cable sketch show as splices other author has been flexing his chops with his new camera, to varying degrees of success it must be said!)
If thanks to the synopsis of Lars And The Real Girl, loner imagines a sex doll is a real woman and takes it out in public, you thought that it was the new film by the Farrelly Brothers you'd be forgiven for your error. Not only does it sound like their particular type of bad taste comedy, but it is also marketed as a comedy, albeit more like the quirky, "indie" efforts such as Napoleon Dynamite than There's Something About Mary. The thing is it isn't really that funny. Rather it is a humourous drama about how we cope with loss and how we sometimes have to escape into our own little worlds,away from the harsh realities of real life. It's also quite sad, but ultimately uplifting. Think of it as a modern "indie" take on Harvey and you're starting to get close.
Lars is played by the rather excellent Ryan Gosling, an actor that is up there with Bale and Day-Lewis as a modern great. His Lars is at times unbearably awkward, even around the perfect woman he has created for himself. Thanks to a childhood tragedy he has shut himself off from the outside world, apart from work and church, and even then human interaction causes him great grief. Under Gosling's control Lars seems like he is constantly overwhelmed, that he may burst into tears at any moment and that simple things such as shaking hands or joining his brother and his wife for dinner are simply the worst things he's ever had to do. In a year of incredible performances it has gone largely unnoticed, the movie's basic setup may have also contributed to that, but it is one worth seeing.
There are other fine contributions, Emily Mortimer is good as the expectant mother, worried about her failure to mother Lars and Patricia Clarkson is her dependable self as the doctor attempting to pull him through his delusion. Sadly the actors are let down by the plot. The delusion is actually the believable bit, let's be honest we all have them on some level. No the real problem is in the fact that the whole town simply accepts it and plays along, all coming to love "Bianca", Lars ideal girl. Of course the film is looking to be positive, so a bit of curmudgeonly objection from a few old duffers at the church thanks to the type of doll "Bianca" is aside there's nothing in the way of resistance. It's because everyone loves Lars and all that. Shamefully it doesn't quite ring true but if you're willing to forgive the film this then it's a pretty interesting story.
Gosling is the main attraction here, but there are many things to like about Lars And The Real Girl. It's not a shock that it was written by an ex-Six Feet Under writer as it is quirky, dark but ultimately uplifting, much like that show was. The premise may put many off, and vice versa attract those who won't like it, but it is a film worth your attention. It's flawed but charming, and the acting is excellent, especially from Gosling. If for nothing else see it for one of the year's finest performances.
Remember in the misty, sepia toned days of Splice (March last year) I posted a rant I made about Roger Corman and had a little giggle about the version of Fantastic 4 that he made:
Well it turns out he also made an aborted version of Transformers and Splice can present to you now the World exclusive unearthing of what exists of this film, that was in no way made by me whilst bored, honest!
