DISCLOSURE DAY**

Bless his heart! Steven Spielberg still thinks that network news is relevant. Steven Spielberg still thinks that if people watch something on network news that they'll believe it. Steven Spielbering still thinks that Roswell is cool. Steven Spielberg is still obsessed with midwest middle-class childhood Americana. Steven Spielberg still believes that, in the words of Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, "you have to have a little faith in people". FFS. Have you not seen the past decade? In the words of Peep Show's Super Hans, "People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people, Jeremy." Which is not to say that Spielberg hasn't made a simultaneously schmaltzy AND cyncal film. How else to explain the very deliberate care to tell ticket-buyers in Red States that the existence of aliens is compatible with the Book of Genesis?

Okay so what's the plot? Super intelligent aliens have been making contact with man since Roswell, and man - or at least American men - have been hushing it up and exploiting them ever since. A bunch of rebels (Colman Domingo, Josh O'Connor) steal the video proof and rather than just uploading it to TikTok they partner up with Emily Blunt's TV weather girl to put it out on local TV. That's it.

Now there are a bunch of MacGuffins and side hustles involving Blunt's character being able to suddenly speak a bunch of languages, and O'Connor's character being a maths savant, and Eve Hewson's character having a crisis of faith, but it's all just bollocks really. Colin Firth occasionally turns up in a turtleneck as a cross between Dr Evil and Basil Exposition and almost every line reading of a deeply hackneyed script (David Koepp and Spielberg) prompts unintended mirth.

And my enjoyment is not helped by the fact that Emily Blunt now falls into that category of actor (Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Nicole Kidman) whose plastic surgery and over-filled face is a distraction. I spent the entire movie wanting to give her an antihistamine. 

Oh yes, this being Spielberg there's also a weird-ass interlude featuring a Hansel and Gretel house and some poor kid has gone through CGI. I was wondering if Emily Blunt's face is now so waxy and unreal that they were forced to CGI a real kid to make her look like Blunt's younger facsimile.  The CGI is really bad by the way. The CGI animals are rubbish. I have seen a more convincing and emotionally affecting fox on Lego Masters Australia.

It's sad to see an old man stuck in 1987 and churning out sci-fi as if the past thirty years of film-making (or politics for that matter) didn't happen. Has he not watched any Gareth Edwards or Denis Villeneuve? Are we meant to be impressed by car chases that look like the Dukes of Hazzard when we just saw Paul Thomas Anderson break cinematic ground not once but twice in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER? 

Retire, mate. Retire.

DISCLOSURE DAY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 145 minutes. It is on global release.

THE COLOR PURPLE (1985)*****

In preparation for the remake of THE COLOR PURPLE I thought I would revisit the original screen adaptation. It was directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Menno Meyjes and based on Alice Walker's iconic novel of black southern female misery.  At the time this must have seemed like rather an odd combination of director and writer for such material - two white men, known for their work in blockbuster action movies. Indeed, the race of the directorial choice attracted a lot of criticism, as well as Spielberg's coy depiction of its lesbian storyline.  I feel that both of these criticisms fail to consider the context of the time: the need to attract commercial backers and keep a PG-13 rating for the mass market. They also fail to acknowledge the opportunity to see so much black talent in front of and behind the lens - with stunning debut feature central performances from Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, as well as a masterful score from Quincy Jones.*  A more convincing criticism of both book and film is its depiction of black male sexual violence.  Added to this, one might criticise the racism of the film industry. While the film was nominated for eleven Oscars, it didn't win a single one. 

The book and film take place over the first half of the twentieth century in the rural South. Their protagonist is Celie - a black girl so oppressed that she is raped by her father and her incestuous children taken from her.  She is then given to another violent man as his wife, dudgeon and surrogate mother to his children.  The only love in Celie's life is her sister Nettie, but they are cruelly separated by her husband and she spends much of her life believing Nettie is dead.  The only friendship Celie has is with her stepdaughter-in-law Sophia, whose fierce temper and assertiveness are an inspiration and then a tragedy.  And the only lover Celie truly has is Shug, her husband's long-time mistress, who teaches Celie what real sexual pleasure can be.

The standard criticism of Spielberg films is that they are sentimental and gauche. There is sentiment here but it is all earned. Whoopi Goldberg's debut as Celie is so heartbreakingly sincere that one cannot help but glory in her small moments of happiness and love. I was similarly deeply moved by Shug (Margaret Avery), the stunning singer, in her final homecoming to her disapproving pastor father. And there is something quite haunting about Sophia's humbling, portrayed by an otherwise vivacious and scene-stealing Oprah Winfrey. 

There is so much else to admire in this film beyond the economic script and great performances. Allen Daviau's cinematographer portrays both the lush warmth of the South as well as the oppressive claustrophobia. There is both beauty and violence in this film. But for me, it's all about Whoopi Goldberg and Quincy's score. This is tremendously powerful film-making.

THE COLOR PURPLE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 154 minutes.  *I am curious to see how the new film - based on a musical adaptation of the book - will better the final "coming home" of Shug to a thrilling gospel score.) 

THE FABELMANS**

Hollywood  loves a movie about movies so THE FABELMANS will probably win a ton of Oscars. Michelle Williams gives one of those Oscar-bait performances that's big and tortured and involves her crying for at least fifty percent of the movie in a performance that felt really mannered and fake to me.  This kind of torpedoes the whole film for me, and even without that it's just dull. It's actually worse than AMSTERDAM, which I watched on the same day, because while AMSTERDAM was incoherent, it at least contained flashes of brilliance. By contrast THE FABELMANS is far better made. It's coherent, it's well acted, it looks great, it's just a polished grown-up film. But it's so dull and predictable and blah.  It's just the same old story Spielberg always tells - about the loss of childhood innocence and the trauma of divorce - usually featuring a station wagon and a cute kid sister -  except this time in the guise of a biopic rather than an adventure film. 

The movie focusses on the marriage of Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Williams). He's a really decent guy, with increasing corporate success. But she's a frustrated concert pianist who spends the entire film battling depression and in love with Burt's best friend Bernie (Seth Rogen).  Her unhappiness dominates the family dynamic and puts unrealistic pressure on their son Sammy (Gabriel Labelle) to pursue his dreams of film-making: he is told by both his grand-uncle and Bernie that if he doesn't pursue his art he will break his and his mother's heart.

So the other half of the movie is seeing Spielberg, sorry Sammy, come of age in a school rife with anti-semitism, and make his first tentative steps into the film industry. Contrast the straightforward, polished, frictionless, lifeless way in which prejudice is treated here versus the grungy, nasty, altogether more impactful way in which it is depicted in AMSTERDAM.  At one point in a high school scene I felt the jocks were about to break out into a song and dance number, a la WEST SIDE STORY.

This is the problem with Spielberg. Even when telling the story of his own life he can't avoid smoothing over all of the spiky edges and making something soupy and syrupy and glossy.  

THE FABELMANS is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 151 minutes.

MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Day Eight

MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND is an absolute must-see doc for anyone who loves cinema. It's a fascinating primer on all those behind the lens talents who create the soundscape of the films we watch.  With admirably clear organisation director Midge Costin takes us through the history of sound in cinema, from the silent era, to those mono sound-tracks with unimaginative off-the-shelf sound FX, to the rise of stereo, then quadrophonic sound, to the modern age. We hear from all the greats - whether those who commissioned or created the sound. I was delighted to see Barbra Streisand given real credit for how she pushed the studio to give her the time and money she needed to get the sound just right on her version of A STAR IS BORN.  We hear from her, as well as pioneers such as David Lynch, Lucas, Spielberg and Lassiter. And as for the talents in the sound business, we begin with Walter Murch of APOCALYPSE NOW fame, then onto Ben Burtt from STAR WARS, and onto the contemporary men, AND women, who create the sounds that pique our imaginations.

Not only was the history of sound fascinating, but I also loved the final segment which took us through what each individual part of the sound spectrum did - from recording voices in production, to adding in sound effects, to ambient environmental sound, to the score.  If you ever wondered what ADR was, or what a foley artist did, this is your film.  You also get to see what re-recording mixers do.

I learned so much from this documentary, but what was really wonderful was just feeling the passion and talent of all the interviewees.  This is why I love movies about making movies!  They simply reignite my passion for this craft, and make me appreciate all the more the unsung heroes who make it happen.

MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND has a running time of 94 minutes. The film played Cannes, Tribeca and London 2019. It will be released in the USA on October 26th and in the UK on November 1st.

BRIDGE OF SPIES

I begin with the proviso that I am not a fan of Steven Spielberg's films. Despite the high quality photography and acting, I always feel emotionally manipulated. Worse still, in his latter movies I have begun to feel bored as he constantly reworks the same themes - the search for a father figure, the need for a perfect hero, the idea that goodness must always win, even if the overarching time and tenor is bad.  He seemed to me to create movies that were high gloss schmaltz.  

Everything changes with BRIDGE OF SPIES, and I suspect that this has something profoundly to do with the fact that it was written by the Coen Brothers and stars Mark Rylance in a character of deeply ambivalent motives. The result is a film with a mordant wit, moral ambiguity, and one of the most convincing depictions of post-war Berlin that I have seen on screen. It is a movie of intelligence and nuance. Indeed, apart from the last five minutes where the Spielbergian schmaltz seeps back in, it's damn near perfect.

OSCARS 2013 - Nobody Knows Anything

“When I was your age, television was called books.”

The typical post-Oscar water-cooler conversation is a bitch-fest about who wore what and who gushed most.* But we here at Movie Reviews For Greedy Capitalist Bastards are, in fact, far more concerned with who won what, whether the predictions were right, and who on the Hollywood Power List wins and loses. Coming off of the London Film Festival, I’d strongly tipped Ben Affleck’s ARGO for Oscar gold, on the basis that while it was “just” a straightforward thriller, it showed Hollywood producers’ saving the day, thus pandering to the infamous narcissism of the Academy.  When the nominations were announced and Affleck was snubbed for Best Director, the movie became the sure winner for Best Film purely on the basis that it would attract the sympathy vote.  This left the Best Director award dangerously unpredictable. Would Steven Spielberg, often overlooked, benefit from Affleck’s omission? We can all agree that LINCOLN is basically a vehicle for some great performances and a superb script, but there’s something admirable and almost shocking in the fact that the Master Purveyor of Schmaltz had the balls to show America’s most iconic president as a vote-buying, devious tyrant. .

It turns out that, despite watching well over 300 films last year, reading all the trades, and trying to read the runes, that I was almost comprehensively wrong in my predictions. In the event, the Academy almost took the earnest, gold-plated film-making of LINCOLN for granted, and shied away from the controversy surrounding the veracity of ZERO DARK THIRTY. Instead, they awarded prizes to Anne Hathaway, maybe because she wanted it so damn much; to Christoph Waltz, because he’s so damn cool; and to Ang Lee for LIFE OF PI.  This last choice is the one that intrigues me the most.  LIFE OF PI is the quintessential art-house film. With no marquee names and an impossible-to-categorize plot, the film is almost willfully obscure.  Worse still for a voter demographic that skews old and conservative, the movie has a pronounced anti-religious message and an ending that is,  to put it bluntly, a monumental downer. And yet, this is the movie that won the most Oscars, not least Best Director and the most prestigious of the technical gongs, Best Cinematographer for Claudio Miranda.

So, to put it bluntly, how did we all get it so wrong?  (And by we, I refer to the loose fraternity of cinephiles, critics, bloggers and rune-readers). Well, I guess that in the words of the famous William Goldman, “nobody knows anything”.  Nobody knows if a movie’s gonna be a hit. Nobody knows if a movie’s going to make money. If there were any kind of science to this thing, movies wouldn’t be, after airlines, the easiest industry in which to lose money.  But nihilism aside, I suspect that moving Oscar voting online probably skewed the voter demographic younger and edgier. Anecdotally, the e-voting was glitchy and hard to work around.  More substantially, maybe there was a sympathy vote for LIFE OF PI because the CGI studio that did the spectacular work on the movie’s virtual star, the tiger Richard Parker, went bankrupt the week before the ceremony.

Or maybe, it's just another example of the triumph of the Hive Mind over elite judgment? PR company Way to Blue analysed over one million social media mentions in the week leading up to the Oscars, to find that the British cloud chatter correctly predicted the four Majors – Best Film, Director, Actor and Actress – in sharp contrast to most film critics.   The message from the Oscars, as with the US Presidential Election, seems to be that pundits claim to know everything but know nothing; while the Hive Mind claims to know nothing but knows everything.  Which leaves us with the following score-sheet:

Life of Pi 4; Lincoln 3.

Rousseau 1; Hobbes 0.

*I think we can all agree that most of the actresses in white looked like they were wearing wedding dresses; Nicole Kidman needs to dress her age; and that if we were married to a fashion mogul, we’d have dressed better than Salma Hayek. 

Oscar Surprises On The Upside

Gael Garcia Bernal stars in Pablo Larrain's superb Chilean
political dramedy NO - deservedly nominated for Best Foreign Language Film

This may well be the least controversial set of Oscar nominations in decades.  No obviously great works are missed, except in the Best Documentary category, where I would have expected to see WEST MEMPHIS THREE, MEA MAXIMA CULPA and CHASING ICE.  Similarly, the large set of nominations for LES MIS seems, frankly, bizarre, but this is more than offset by the utterly genius inclusion of Pablo Larrain's Chilean political dramedy, NO.  I'm sure it will be beaten by Haneke's AMOUR, but the nomination alone should raise awareness of this funny, politically astute and technically brilliant film starring Gael Garcia Bernal.

All this aside, the  key message was that the early lead established by Ben Affleck's superb thriller, ARGO, has been usurped by Ang Lee's imaginative and visually stunning LIFE OF PI, and Stephen Spielberg's mesmerizing LINCOLN.  I suspect LINCOLN may well sweep the major categories with LIFE OF PI, ARGO and maybe ZERO DARK THIRTY sharing the rest of the spoils.  However, of these first three major films, I'd be happy no matter who takes the Oscars, as all three are stunning pieces of work.  A true upset would be if SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK won anything other than Best Screenplay or LES MIS got any awards at all.

As usual, you can see the full list of noms below. I've put the likely winner in UPPERCASE and placed an asterisk by the nominee I think deserves to win.

Ben Affleck's brilliant political thriller ARGO has lost its early lead to
LINCOLN and LIFE OF PI

BEST PICTURE: Amour; Argo; Beats of the Southern Wild; Django Unchained; Les Misérables; Life of Pi; LINCOLN*; Silver Linings Playbook; Zero Dark Thirty.

BEST ACTOR: Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook; DANIEL DAY-LEWIS*, Lincoln; Hugh Jackman, Les Mis; Joaquin Phoenix, The Master; Denzel Washington, Flight.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Arkin, Argo; Robert de Niro, Silver Linings Playbook; Philip Seymour Hoffman*, The Master; TOMMY LEE JONES, Lincoln; Christopher Waltz, Django Unchained.

BEST ACTRESS: JESSICA CHASTAIN, Zero Dark Thirty; Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook; Emmanuelle Riva*, Amour; Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild; Naomi Watts, The Impossible. 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Adams*, The Master; SALLY FIELD, Lincoln; Anne Hathaway, Les Mis; Helen Hunt, The Sessions; Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook.

Daniel Day-Lewis must be a dead cert for Best Actor as LINCOLN,
and should lead this film to the most Oscar wins.

BEST ANIMATED FILM: Brave, Frankenweenie, PARANORMAN, Pirates!*, Wreck-it Ralph.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Seamus McGarvey, Anna Karenina; Robert Richardson, Django Unchained; Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi; Janusz Kaminski, Lincoln; ROGER DEAKINS*, Skyfall.

BEST COSTUMES: Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina; Paco Delgado, Les Mis; Joanna Johnston, Lincoln; EIKO ISHIOKA*, Mirror Mirror; Colleen Atwood, Snow White and the Huntsman.

BEST DIRECTOR: Michael Haneke, Amour; Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild; Ang Lee, Life of Pi; STEVEN SPIELBERG*, Lincoln; David O Russell, Silver Linings Playbook.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: 5 Broken Cameras; The Gatekeepers; How To Survive A Plague; The Invisible War; SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN*

BEST EDITING: William Goldenberg, Argo; Tim Squyres*, Life of Pi; Michael Kahn, Lincoln; Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers, Silver Linings Playbook; DYLAN TICHENOR AND WILLIAM GOLDENBERG, Zero Dark Thirty.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: AMOUR, No*; A Royal Affair, War Witch.

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIR: Howard Berger, Peter Montagna and Martin Samuel, Hitchcock; Peter Swords King, Rick Findlater and Tami Lane*, The Hobbit; LISA WESTCOTT AND JULIA DARTNELL, Les Mis.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Dario Marianelli, Anna Karenina; ALEXANDRE DESPLAT, Argo; Mychael Danna*, Life of Pi; John Williams, Lincoln; Thomas Newman, Skyfall.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG: Before my time, J Ralph, Chasing Ice; Everybody needs a best friend, Walter Murphy and Seth MacFarlane*, Ted; Pi’s lullaby, Mychael Danna and Bombay Jayashri, Life of Pi; SKYFALL, Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth, Skyfall; Suddenly, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Herbert Kretzmer and Alain Boublil, Les Mis.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, Anna Karenina; Dan Hennah, Ra Vincent and Simon Bright, The Hobbit; EVE STEWART AND ANNA LYNCH-ROBINSON, Les Mis; David Gropman and Anna Pinnock, Life of Pi; Rick Carter and Jim Erickson*, Lincoln.

BEST SOUND EDITING: Erik Aadahl and Ethan van der Ryn, Argo; Wylie Stateman, Django Unchained; Eugene Gearty and Philip Stockton, Life of Pi( Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers, Skyfall; Paul N J Ottoson, Zero Dark Thirty.

BEST SOUND MIXING: John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff and Jose Antonio Garcia, Argo; Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson and Simon Hayes, Les Mis; Ron Bartlett, D.M. Hemphill and Drew Kunin, Life of Pi; Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom and Ronald Judkins, Lincoln; Scott Millan, Greg P. Russell and Stuart Wilson, Skyfall.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton and R. Christopher White, The Hobbit; Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott, Life of Pi; Janek Sirrs, Jeff White, Guy Williams and Dan Sudick; The Avengers; Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley and Martin Hill, Prometheus; Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Philip Brennan, Neil Corbould and Michael Dawson, Snow White and the Huntsman.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Chris Terrio, Argo; Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild; David Magee, Life of Pi; Tony Kushner*, Lincoln; DAVID O RUSSELL, Silver Linings Playbook.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Michael Haneke, Amour; Quentin Tarantino*, Django Unchained; John Gatins, Flight; Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom; MARK BOAL, Zero Dark Thirty.

LINCOLN

Steven Spielberg's LINCOLN is a masterpiece, and certainly his best film since JURASSIC PARK, and his only good film that attempts profundity and nuance rather than spectacle.  For that we have to thank a screenplay by Tony winning playwright Tony Kushner ("Angels in America") that never dumbs down the nuanced political considerations of the time; never shies away from tarnishing "Honest Abe" with the reality of political vote-getting; and deftly juggles a vast array of characters  It's a screenplay that understands the deep historical import of its material, but finds time to turn an icon into a real man, not to mention allowing for comic relief. Of course, for that transformation we also have to thank Daniel Day-Lewis, who turns in the kind of tour-de-force charismatic, many-layered performance that we have come to almost take for granted. With a little make-up, a careful study of gait and a beautifully pitched voiced, Day-Lewis clothes himself in crumpled world-weariness and a fondness for the laconic anecdote that hides an inner steel and practicality.  His Lincoln gives politicians of all colours a stern lesson is not letting pride and one's vainglorious boasting about one's moral compass blind one to the necessity of real politics - that is, working with the opposition, working the system, lobbying hard and using patronage where necessary - to get the bill passed.

In this case, the bill is the 13th amendment to the US constitution, forbidding slavery in the US and and all lands subject to its laws.  The film shows that Lincoln cares enough about this great work in its own right but also because he sees the potential legal problems with his Emancipation Proclamation. In public he argues that the bill, by crippling the Southern economy, will hasten the end of the war. But the reality is that the war is already near over, and the South willing to negotiate a peace. The key drama of the film is that Lincoln must put off that peace, as much as he desires it, because he knows that as soon as it is negotiated, he will loose support for his Bill from sections of his own party. Second, he must secure crucial swing votes from the opposition, by means fair and foul.

LINCOLN is, then, a film about politics and the raw, unpleasant reality of doing a deal. There is very little battlefield action, although the horrors of war are never far from his, or our mind.  We see the cost of delaying the Southern delegation of peacemakers (led by Jackie Earle Haley) and the lawyer's equivocation that ultimately gets the bill passed. We also see Lincoln's secretary of state, Seward (David Strathairn) hire three lobbyists cum vote buyers played by John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson and most memorably, a rotund and roguish James Spader.  Spader's down and dirty politics is surpassed only for style by Tommy Lee Jones Republican leader and abolitionist Thaddeus Jones.  He is portrayed as a kind of 19th century Malcolm Tucker, full of colourful insults and sneering bullying of callow young politicians. He provides both light relief and real insight into the art of political compromise, and deserves an Oscar nomination as much as Day-Lewis.

Politics aside, the movie shows us Lincoln as a man who connects with people - who is truly beloved and respected - with his personal touch and colourful stories.  It also shows us Lincoln as the doting father, and frustrated but loving husband.  Sally Field as the grieving, angry, stubborn Mary Todd Lincoln gives a stunning and screen-stealing performance - again Award-worthy.  It is fortuitous for Spielberg that his consistent and typically ill-cast obsession with father-son relationships actually works in LINCOLN.  Our grief at his assassination is not just because a great man has been killed, but because a good father has died. Which brings me to the only weakness of the film.  The movie has a natural and elegant final scene about five minutes before it actually ends, with Lincoln walking away from us and into history.  To my mind, we didn't need to actually see the assassination at all.

LINCOLN is on release in the USA, Canada and Chile. It opens on January 18th in Lebanon, Mexico and Spain; on January 24th in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Russia, Slovenia; on January 25th in Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Sweden, and the UK; on January 31st in France, Denmark, Hungary, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal, Guatemala, Iceland, Norway, Panama and South Africa; on February 7th in Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras,  Nicaragua, Turkey and Uruguay; on February 14th in the Dominican Republic; on February 21st in Hong Kong and Singapore; on April 5th in Venezuela; and on April 19th in Japan.

iPad Round-Up 4 - THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

This new adaptation of Herge's famous children's adventure stories is a technical masterpiece. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have come together to create a movie using the latest motion capture, CGI and 3D technology to create a spectacular visual experience.  The problem is that I'm not sure their choices work, and I'm not sure the story can withstand the heavy visuals placed upon it.  

The first problem is that Herge's comics have such a particular style, and the motion-cap work seems to come down somewhere between straightforward animation and live-action, creating a sort of eerie look of humans with plasticine faces and over-large hands.  I  found the mo-cap humans with exaggerated facial features creepy.  

The second problem is that the movie contains so much swash and buckle, so many car-chases, naval-escapades and exotic locales, that I had no idea what was going on or what was at stake.  The whole thing read as a giant MacGuffin, designed to propel us through ever more exciting action sequences. I simply did not care about the clues to treasure that TinTin and his alcoholic sidekick, Captain Haddock, were seeking, nor did I think that they had enough camaraderie to anchor a buddy-action adventure story.

Maybe my whole problem is with the character of TinTin himself? I've never read the comic books and I find this strangely asexual boy-scouty do-gooding journo deeply unengaging.  So much of this film shares the 1920s action serial tropes that made INDIANA JONES so compelling, but without a loveable rogue as the lead character, there's no emotional entry point.

So, count me out for the sequel.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN opened in October 2011 and is now available to rent and own.

iPad Round-Up 3 - THE PEOPLE VS GEORGE LUCAS

THE PEOPLE VS GEORGE LUCAS plays like a slick version of a YouTube fan doc. Alexandre O Philippe basically interviews a bunch of Star Wars fans and gives them a kind of group therapy space to discuss their love of the original trilogy and their sense of betrayal both at the changes that George Lucas has made to it, and to the travesty of the prequels. For me, this was a movie that perfectly articulated my own love-hate relationship with Lucas and made me feel less alone in my frustration.  

Along the way it explores interesting issues. The first is the tragic figure of Lucas - a man trapped in a prison of his own making.  The irony of the indie film-maker who has himself become the guardian of a capitalist franchise.  Francis Ford Coppola is particularly articulate on the idea that George Lucas never made the brilliant artistic films he could've done because he was trapped by the Star Wars monster. The second is the nature of "art"  and who owns it. 

The second big issue is whether the fans right to feel that because they have invested so much into the original trilogy, that Lucas is obliged to respect their feelings and not make any changes? Or is Lucas, as owner of the film rights, perfectly at liberty to do as he pleases?  Indeed, in an age of the internet, when geeks can come together in real time, creating a hysterical response to a cultural work, critiquing every line, are we just setting ourselves up for a fall? I can see this on the current fan forums for George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.  The hype is so great, any new novel is almost guaranteed to be a disappointment. And the emotional investment is so great, even the slightest change in the HBO TV show causes outrage. 

And what about all the collaborators who worked on those original films? Do the special effects guys whose effects have now been replaced with CGI been robbed of their contribution?  In other words, how far is the director really the auteur who can play God with a collaborative art-form?  Lucas clearly things he is God, the Creator, with the right to do as he pleases.  But have generations of film critics created a false perception of just how important the director truly is?  Is the director as deluded as the fans?

THE PEOPLE VS GEORGE LUCAS is thought-provoking, entertaining, and gives you a great sense of camaraderie.  It's well worth a watch, even if you're not a Star Wars fan, because it describes so clearly modern fan culture.  

And for the record, HAN SHOT FIRST!

THE PEOPLE VS GEORGE LUCAS played SXSW 2010 and was released in 2011 in the USA and on YouTube.  It is available to rent and own.

WAR HORSE

I have neither read Michael Morpurgo's children's novel nor seen the acclaimed National Theatre production of War Horse. I came to the material fresh, though wary of Steven Spielberg's attachment to it.  To my mind, Spielberg is a supremely flawed director, for whom story is subservient to sentiment.  His films are peopled with father-less children; heroic underdogs; and they have a quite risible tendency to refocus history on the few good acts rather than the wider evil. I find this inability to look bleak truth in the eye somehow insulting to those that lived through those times - a slippery fiction - and sadly, WAR HORSE is no exception.  For Spielberg has created a drama about a war in which millions died that continually cuts away from tragedy and focuses on sun-dappled scenes of goodness. It is emotional manipulation of the most vulgar kind, despicable, and dishonest. 

The story is meant to be one of the triumph of the underdog, and the triumph of love and loyalty.  Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan) is a poor farmer who buys a beautiful thoroughbred rather than a plough-horse to spite his landlord (David Thewlis) and palliate the pain of surviving the Boer War. His son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) turns "Joey" into a working horse against everyone's expectations, but the pony is requisitioned by Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston) and taken to war.  As the cavalry is decimated by German mechanised units, the horse passes into the hands of a deserting German boy (David Kross, THE READER), then into the hands of a sweet French farm-girl and her grandfather (Niels Arestup) before being captured by the Germans to pull artillery.  It is thus fully a hundred minutes before our War Horse finally makes it to the front line, stranded in no-man's land, and cut free by a German and a Geordie (Toby Kebbell) in a scene clearly meant to evoke the common plight of the honest soldier. Finally, she is reunited with Albert, in an ending as endless as THE RETURN OF THE KING - first a reprieve from the doctor (Liam Cunningham), then a reprieve from an auction, and finally a ludicrously over-coloured reunion with mother (Emily Watson) and father back in Devon.  

This film is technically accomplished, particularly in its depiction of the front line. But its substance is confused and contradictory - the fault of Spielberg and his screenwriters Lee Hall (BILLY ELLIOT) and Richard Curtis (of all those awful fantasy-London films such as NOTTING HILL and LOVE ACTUALLY).   On the one hand, Spielberg wants us to sympathise with honest working folk - Ned Narracott and the Grandfather in France who bid in auctions against evil capitalist materialists.  Then again, he has an almost Downton-esque deference towards descent upper-class chaps who promise "man to man" to take care of horses.   No-one is really evil here.  Ned Narracott isn't really a feckless drunk.  Grand-pere isn't a coward but a principled pacifist. Even the German generals just have a job to do.  No-one is killed on screen. And of course, we never believe a major character is really in peril.

There are two scenes in this drawn-out farce that are worth a damn. The first is a scene where Major Jamie Stewart (Benedict Cumberbatch) - a gentleman cavalry officer of the old school - is unhorsed by a German artillery attack and mocked by his opposing officer. This moment - Major Stewart's resignation and realisation - sums up the tragedy and stupidity of the Great War. A generation that had been bred to gallantry - that should have learned from Crimea - finally had their illusions shattered by the first mechanised war.  The second scene is the depiction of going over the top at the Somme and the aerial pull-back showing body upon body impaled on barbed-wire wooden fences and trampled into the mud.  There is the horror of the war.  One doesn't need the deliberate emotional manipulation of a stranded horse to provoke the audience's pity.

WAR HORSE is on release in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil, Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland, Malta, Poland and Spain. It is released on the 19th January in Greece; on January 26th in Denmark, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovenia, Estonia and Lithuania. It is released on February 2nd in Belgium, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Norway and Turkey; on February 9th in Argentina, Hungary and Romania; on February 17th in Germany and Italy; on February 23rd in France, Portugal, Finland and Sweden; and on  March 2nd in Japan. 

Nik points to this comment on INDY 4..

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL - in which Indy jumps the shark

Like Michael Jackson, I'm a lover, not a fighter, so I'm going to start by telling you about all the cool stuff in the new Indiana Jones movie. All the stuff we know and love is there in spades: Indy's hat and whip; nods to Marcus and Henry Jones Senior; cosy University lecture theatres; and that little red line running across the map when Indy gets into a plane. Better still, the writers have done absolutely the right thing in acknowledging Indy's age: there are lots of great jokes about how he's not as young as he used to be, and lots of dialogue filling in the gaps between Holy Grail and Crystal Skull. Turns out Indy was a wartime spy, and since then he has spied on the Communists. I also love that they brought back Indy's feisty sweetheart from Raiders - Marion Ravenwood. And credit where it's due, Shia LaBoeuf brings his A-game as their son, Mutt. Shia and Harrison Ford make a great comedy double-act, and beyond that, when Shia needs to convey vulnerability and emotion, he does really well.

Now to the hater stuff. The problem with Indy 4 is neither the acting, nor the dialogue but the MacGuffin - the crazy-cool doo-dad that provokes all the running around in jungles and whatnot. In Raiders, Temple and Grail the MacGuffin always had a spiritual, mythical dimension, but Spielberg wisely kept that stuff to a minimum. The MacGuffins were enigmatic - had a touch of glamour - but didn't swamp the more earth-bound action adventure. In other words, we only had to stretch our credulity in the final reel. By contrast, Crystal Skull is incredible, ludicrous, absurd from the get-go. It's all Area 51, Aliens, paranormal nonsense and Cate Blanchett in a silly wig and a terrible accent camping it up. Basically, Indy has jumped the shark. He's jumped from action-adventure with a dash of pizazz to sci-fi idiocy with a few car chases (And don't even get me started on the obvious CGI in the car chases. The one with Indy and Mutt early on with the motorcycles through campus - old school fun and japes. The one with Mutt sword-fighting with a Communist standing on the edge of a moving truck while cactuses belt him in the crotch - ludicrous, fake, annoying....)

So, yes, I left twenty minutes before the end. So those twenty minutes may have been so unbelievably amazing as to compensate for the tame action sequences, thin humour and stupid plot concept.......Somehow, I doubt it.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is released this weekend in Belgium, Egypt, France, Morocco, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the US, Venezuela, Bulgaria, Finland, Italy, Latvia and Turkey. It opens on June 21st in Japan.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL - unspeakably bad

The new Indy movie sucks so bad, I've not even seen it, and I know it sucks.

It was so bad that Bina007, our intrepid movie reviewer and huge Indy fan, couldn't make it through the whole movie. In fact, she was so upset about Crystal Skull's rape of her childhood that she couldn't bring herself to write the review.

So she called me, described how bad it was, and asked me to warn you all. So you've been warned - while the acting was passable, and the script was okay, the whole concept lurched from unspeakably boring to painfully unrealistic Spiderman-3-styley.

If you're a fan of Indiana Jones, don't go see it. It's an execrable effort that is not deserving of the franchise.

Even if you're not a fan, and have a tenner spare, you'd be better just leaving your cash on the street and walking away. A beggar might make good use of it. Or they might just buy a quart of vodka. Either way, it'll be money better spent than a ticket for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Avoid.

Thanks

Nikolai, on behalf of Bina007

FATELESS/SORSTALANSAG - one of the more sensitive treatments of the Holocaust

FATELESS is an outstanding feature film about the Holocaust. It is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Nobel-prize-winning Hungarian author Imre Kersetz. He adapted the work for the screen himself and is responsible for a structure that some could find boring or unengaging. Instead of telling the story through flash-backs, or spicing up the narrative with melodramatic events, Kersetz keeps the story linear and simple. Over two hours we follow a fourteen year old Hungarian boy called György Köves. His father is sent to a labour camp and he is forced to work in a brick factory. One day he is rounded up by a kindly looking policeman and packed onto a train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At every stage he is given small precious words of advice. He is told the German for "sixteen" so that he get himself out of Auschwitz and into a labour camp. There he grinds out the rest of the war. His tragedy is to have been born into an evil time and his punishment is to have to serve that time. To mark it, standing in a wet field all day until fainting from hunger.

This is what Kersetz wants to tell us. That there are no sweeping epic moments or emotional flights. There is dull perseverance and hatred. These are shown in tableaux form, one following the other with a kind of harrowing monotony. The impact is greater thanks to a universally good cast, a discreet score and some outstanding photography. Lajos Koltai may be a first-time director but he is a celebrated cinematographer and comes up with the ingenious method of slowly fading the movie from full colour in Budapest to sepia tints in the train to stark black and white as we reach the final camp. The changing colour is so slow you almost miss it, but hits you powerfully toward the end. It mirrors the slow change from little boy to ghost. Even when the camp in which György Köves is held is liberated and he returns to Budapest the film is still in black and white as if to signify that there can be no real return..

FATELESS is a profoundly painful and depressing film. The title itself refers to György Köves feeling that it is better to believe in nothing and to have no fate than to be a believing Jew who accepts the Holocaust as part of his fate of perpetual suffering. Every scene feels authentic, no doubt because Kersetz personally over-saw small details of the production design. I feel it is compulsary viewing in the same way as THE SORROW AND THE PITY and NIGHT AND FOG are compulsary viewing.

As an aside, I originally saw the movie back in January and recently watched the DVD for the first time - forcing it onto Doctor007 in the manner of a low-rent Woody Allen flick. I don't normally comment on DVD extras, but the DVD is well worth viewing because it contains an interview with Imre Kersetz in which he discusses why the film had to be structured as it was. But most interesting is his rant at the expense of Steven Spielberg's SCHINDLER'S LIST. I have always found SCHINDLER'S LIST to be problematic. Everything seemed so heavy-handed and emotionally manipulative. And finally, so optimistic! There is an anecdote I heard - I have no idea whether it is true - that Spielberg showed Kubrick a cut of Schindler's List eager for praise. Kubrick apparently told Spielberg that he had entirely missed the point: "The Holocaust was about 6 million Jews who were murdered. You chose to tell a story about 100 who were saved." Kersetz delivers one of the most articulate and scathing critiques of Schindler's List in his interview. He calls it inauthentic in its historical detail and imagined situations. But this is the least of its problems, according to Kersetz. The greatest charge is that it finds humanity in hell. You don't have to agree with him but it is fascinating to hear his critique....

FATELESS opened in Hungary, Germany and France in 2005. It opened in New York and the UK earlier in 2006 and was released on DVD this week. It opens in Denmark on September 1st, the Netherlands on September 7th and in Belgium on October 25th.

WAR OF THE WORLDS - the greatest B-movie ever made?

In the wake of the over-blown quagmire that was MUNICH, my friend Nik suggested that Spielberg "stick to dinosaurs". It was a good suggestion - after all, JURASSIC PARK is the last genuine blockbuster movie that Steven Spielberg directed, at least in terms of box office success. However, the purpose of this review is to stake a claim for WAR OF THE WORLDS as one of the greatest B-movies ever made. The opening of the movie is high-class, with some nicely-observed modern family dialogue between divorced parent, Tom Cruise, his moody adolescent son and his precocious daughter, played by Dakota Fanning. And then, without wasting too much time, the aliens start attacking the earth and the whole thing just goes popcorn-tastic. Roads are ripped up, burning trains hurtle through railway stations, airplanes fall out of the sky. It's just a giant disaster movie with all the best bits rolled into one. Of course, this is Spielberg so all the whistles and bangs and explosions work well, especially when they ape scenes from Jurassic Park. (Just compare that scene where the tripod tentacle is sniffing round the basement with the raptors stalking the kids in the kitchen.)

But the great thing is that this movie also has some great dialogue that allows the characters to show "real" emotions. Tom Cruise is not a simple action hero - he is often more freaked out than his kids are and while this is clearly not the kind of iconic performance that he gave in Magnolia, it is leagues above the kind of cock-sure twit he usually plays in action movies. Dakota Fanning does what she does well too - she looks cute, is scared and screams a lot. For some reason the costume designer decided to give her the kitsch on-acid wardrobe of a seventies muppet, but that only adds to the charm. There are even some nicely handled patches of humour. "They came from somewhere else. Like Europe? NO, ROBBIE, NOT LIKE EUROPE." And we get the added bonus of seeing the always slightly creepy Tim Robbins as a loon.

Of course, the film does have its flaws, but even these are rather endearing. As we all know, the movie is based on the famous novel by H.G.Wells, wherein a bunch of super-intelligent aliens attack the earth and start exterminating humans using tripods that were buried underground millenia ago. Back when H.G. was writing I bet that spindly-legged tripods seemed really scary, but now, well, they just don't cut it. I reckon Spielberg would have done better to either redesign or show the devestation caused by the tripods rather than the tripods themselves. In addition, while the ending is true to the novel, and made a new and interesting point about evolution back in the day, to me, a contemporary viewer, it seemed a little bit weak. But you know what, this is WAR OF THE WORLDS, and I think you just have to go with it. Ditto the moment where I thought the movie really jumped the shark - when Cruise starts singing a "lullaby" to his daughter. I mean, it's painfully cheesy, but even here there is a certain charm in Cruise being willing to do something quite that ridiculous outside of Oprah.

WAR OF THE WORLDS is available on DVD.

MUNICH - Stick to Dinosaurs, Spielberg

This review is posted by guest reviewer, Nik ...

Steven Spielberg has proven once and for all that being Jewish is insufficient qualification for making a movie about middle-eastern politics. Apparently, MUNICH - based on the events following the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics - is supposed to be controversial. On the one hand it supposedly humanises terrorists and undermines security measures by the Israeli state, and on the other it allegedly panders to the International Zionist Conspiracy(TM). In reality - it does neither - but bores the viewer with pseudo-intellectual pap occasionally punctuated by loud explosions and gun-play. The only significant contraversies are that the cinema took £6.50 from me to watch it, and that the pick-and-mix cost 99p per 100 grams. Damn that Cineworld.

Okay, so some particularly naive Americans might be shocked that Israeli foreign policy isn't all fun, games and torture - the same people for whom the revelation in THREE KINGS that US foreign policy was based on oil prices and increased hegemony in the middle east came out of left-field. The Christian and Jewish right won't much like the idea that there is some sort of ideology and genuine feeling of grievance behind the activities of Palestinian terrorists. Similarly, the leadership of Hamas may feel unhappy that the film portrays heinous acts of terrorism against innocent Israeli civilians in a negative light. But for the rest of us - the ones who've had the intellectual capacity and time to think through the balance of national security and morality in the work of our intelligence services - and who know basic facts about international affairs - this film will be dour and patronising.

The content isn't challenging, the facts it reveals arn't shocking - unless you're easily shocked or deeply ignorant. The film neither captures the poignancy of the internal moral struggle within the lead protagonist - nor the thrill and excitement of spying. It both manages to fall between these two stools AND fail horribly at executing either. And to top it off, the score and camerawork is condescending - trying to impose a paint-by-numbers depth for the hollywood popcorn-munching audiences - who may be unable to cope without such strong editorialisation. In many ways, SCHINDLER'S LIST did the same - but frankly it was a film that had to be made - and whose content had to be respected because of its intrinsic gravity. Munich didn't, doesn't, and won't be.

By the end of the film, I had no sympathy for any of the characters in front of me - no interest in their lives or their teen-angst emotional struggles - and hoped with every passing scene for the film to end, to stop wasting more of my precious time. The gun-play, graphic violence and sex that had kept me carnally interested in the film, at least in passing, had left the building - and with it any semblance of hope for future enjoyment. The final scene of the film was suitably awful, and I walked out wishing I'd been watching gay cowboys making out. Or anything else, really.

I can only imagine the most facile and ignorant of people enjoying this flick - so if you fit that description, save up your pennies. Otherwise, even if you have an interest in the middle east, save your money and buy a good book on the subject, after a few hours of reading you'll have learnt more, thought more, and enjoyed more than your unfortunate counterparts who opted for the big screen instead. And Steven, stick with dinosaurs, extra-terrestrials, and ruggedly handsome all-action archeologists - it's what you do well - very well - it's what we enjoy. And there was me thinking you'd learned your lesson with AI...

MUNICH is on general release in the US and the UK, not that you ought to care. I don't know when or if it'll be released in France or Germany or anywhere else - I can only hope for them that they can read English and visit this blog often enough to be warned.

Bina007 notes that instead of watching MUNICH, which she also found politically obvious and cinematically hackneyed, you could go rent Kevin MacDonald's ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER instead. It is a brilliant and Oscar-winning documentary which covers much the same ground as MUNICH. ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER is released on Region 2 DVD today.