Whatever happened to.. movie tough guys?

Today's update from the Borderlines Film Festival (or at least the films I'm seeing there!) has a theme, of sorts - albeit entirely accidental. The last three films I saw there were NEDs, Of Gods & Men, and True Grit; each examine the nature of what it is to be a man in a particular kind of society, and in each case they are found wanting, in one way or another. 

NEDs feels at least slightly autobiographical, though I've no idea if it is: director Peter Mullen is probably best known for the often harrowing Magdalene Sisters, and this new piece is no less grim, despite several moments of mordant humour.  NEDs are Non-Educated Delinquents, the kids who, for whatever reason, manage to drift through the school system having made no visible progress in academic areas or in their ability to function as 'normal' members of society - at least that's what Mullen's depressing vision portrays.  The main protagonist is John McGill, a  young lad who starts off keen and bookish, and almost by accident slides into a downward spiral of violence and what is now known as anti-social behaviour.  In the film's 70's setting it is simply thuggishness.  This descent is almost inevitable: the boy's father is a drunken bully, and the older brother he half-idolises is well on the way to being a local legend as a 'hard man'.  The portrayal of a bleak and inescapably tough life on Glasgow estates is painfully realistic and involving.  The fight scenes (and there are lots) occasionally invoke Scorsese's 'Gangs of New York' in the way that casual brutality is depicted in an almost fantasy heroic way.  It'd be remiss of me not to mention that this dour, hard-bitten film does end on something of a hopeful note, of sorts.  It ended up reminding me (in a good way) of Shane Meadows - 'This is Scotland', perhaps?

A much more contemplative experience is had in Of Gods and Men, a French film that feels surprisingly apposite in light of the ongoing upheavals across much of the Arab world and especially North Africa at the time of writing.  Set in a Cistercian (no, I don't know either, Google it if you're interested) monastery in Algeria, the story (based on real events) revolves around a small group of monks faced with a dilemma that goes to the root of their faith.  The area is being terrorised by fundamentalist extremists who are punishing behaviour they view as 'out of line with their beliefs' with horrific violence.  When a group of Croatian aid workers are murdered in cold blood the monks realise that it is only a matter of time before their peaceful community is threatened.  Should they leave, as the French and local authorities insist?  Or should they stay and complete 'God's mission' in the area?  The arguments are far from simple, and the portrayals of the various characters is one of the best parts of this intelligent and thoughtful film.  It doesn't fall back on simple 'good vs evil' depictions, nor of the monks as simple martyrs: they and their 'enemy' are portrayed as very human.  One or two of the monks want to leave. Their leader, brother Christian, is convinced that they should stay and face whatever comes.  As with NEDs, there is a depressing inevitability of violence in this story, but it is counteracted here by the depiction of the monk's own lives: quiet contemplation and simple - often surprisingly humorous - conversations, and a lot of singing of religious chants.   The toughest tough guy in this story isn't the man with the AK-47, it's the elderly but jovial brother Luc, the monk's medical expert, defying the violence around him in his determination to continue treating the women and children who need his help. This sounds like a totally depressing film on paper, but for some reason it didn't leave me feeling that way at all.  Beautifully made and acted, and quite moving, perhaps it's not really about religion at all, but about humanity.

Proper movie tough guys, of course, don't come any tougher than John Wayne.  So I was in two minds about the Coen brothers' remake (which of course they insist is not a remake at all) of True Grit, one of Marian Morrison's most memorable 'leathery old coot' films.  Joel and Ethan don't have a terrific track record (despite some fabulous work overall) when it comes to remakes of films they loved - stand up 'the Ladykillers', a film that, despite being made in 2004, probably still has Alec Guinness spinning in his grave.  But I needn't have worried - the Coen's True Grit deserves all the praise it has had from audiences and awards committees alike.  Many have described this as the brothers' most accessible film ever, and this certainly makes for an easier watch than many of their earlier films - but it retains the characteristically quirky ear for dialogue that has marked out films from Fargo to O Brother Where Art Thou.  Yes, this is a frequently very funny film, as well as a rollocking good adventure story. 

The central performances are all letter-perfect: Hailee Steinfeld is simply terrific as young Mattie, the girl bent on seeing justice done for her murdered father.  The early scenes where she completely outmanouevres a local businessman to get a good deal on some horses shows her as a wily negotiator despite her tender age.  An almost unrecognisable Matt Damon turns in a terrific performance as an ever-so-slightly narcissistic Texas Ranger, continuing to confound those critics who say he can't laugh at himself. 

But acting honours here have to go to Jeff Bridges in the Wayne role of Reuben 'Rooster' Cogburn, the drawling, whisky-loving marshall who, in a hilarious court scene early on, "can't rightly remember" just how many suspects he may have killed while trying to apprehend them.  Loveable but clearly slightly demented, there are hints of a much darker side to Cogburn's character that are never explained fully: reference is made to his having possibly been one of the notorious Quantrill's Raiders, allegedly responsible for atrocities during the American Civil War.  He's not a conventional Western good guy, that's for sure, and the character clearly has seen enough bad things in his life to make him a very thick-skinned individual; but, as per the original movie, you just know that he's going to come good in the end. "Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!"

Whatever happened to.. knitting and watching Bergerac?

..that's what old ladies should be doing all day, surely - not spending hours in the dark at the Courtyard Theatre Hereford, 'whispering' loudly to their friends while I'm trying to watch a movie? One of the good things about being self-employed is that when something like the Borderlines Film Festival comes around I can take some time out and see a few films during the day. But of course that's also when all the seniors choose to go too. I'm not really moaning - at least they're not playing Angry Birds through the credits!

So, continuing my run-down of films I've seen at this year's Borderlines, let's move on to Gerard Depardieu. He's made a bit of a career in small to medium French films in which he essentially plays a slightly exaggerated version of himself - and why not, it's worked well for people as diverse as Steven Segal and Woody Allen for many years? In 'My Afternoons with Margueritte' he plays a slightly simple man in a small town, who is befriended by an elderly lady who reads to him in the park. It's not a film in which a whole lot happens, but that really doesn't matter. The performances are sharp and well-observed, the relationships between all the bar-room buddies and acquaintances are finely depicted and often laugh-out-loud funny, and the whole thing reeks of charm. When I checked today this film was topping the ratings for the festival, and frankly I'm not surprised - it's a hard film to dislike!

Next on my must-see list was Finnish documentary 'Into Eternity'.  Precious few laughs here, but instead a film so thought-provoking that I came out thinking that it should be shown in every school in the UK. The world. Then to all the politicians. Blimey, it's depressing stuff.  It looks at Finland's ground-breaking attempt to solve the problem of what to do with its nuclear waste.  Their solution is to create an unimaginably vast underground chamber called Onkalo (literally 'hiding place'), which will be filled with spent plutonium rods and the like, and then simply sealed up and forgotten about.  For at least 100,000 years, which is the minimum period we currently believe this material will remain dangerous.  The film is a beautifully shot piece, even though much of it is little more than 'talking heads' discussing the issues and the reasons for their approach.  One of the scariest sections considers how (or even whether) the builders should 'mark' the site for future civilisations in case it is discovered.  Comparing this huge radioactive dump with the great pyramids, the thinking seems to be that if we mark it in any way as a special place that must never be opened, human curiosity almost dictates that some future society will find it and wonder what treasure it might contain.  They even considered marking the site with the image of Munch's 'The Scream'.  Imagine how different we are as a race from the oldest humans we know about - then imagine how different again the people of 100,000 years time might be.  Should we really be leaving this awful time bomb in the hope that they simply never find it, or open it?  Scary stuff.

Almost as soon as Into Eternity ended, I had to rush to my seat for 'Black Swan', a film that had far more than its fair share of elderly ladies in the audience, even for this festival. Far, far more. I felt a bit like Tippi Hedren in The Birds, surrounded by all this white hair and sensible woollens.  Somebody had obviously told all these nice ladies that this was a lovely film about a ballet dancer. And I suppose, at its most basic level, it is.  But it's also a shocking psychological thriller about identity, psychosis and sexual repression.  It's also frequently quite viciously violent.  None of which bothered me in the least, but there were frequent and widespread gasps and murmurings from large parts of the audience at some of the more 'made you jump' moments.   The performances are fabulous, as everybody knows already of course. Natalie Portman, who's had a special place in my heart ever since Leon (not in a sleazy way!) is terrific, but so are pretty much all of the supporting cast. Her 'never quite as successful as I should have been because I had you' mother, in particular, is a great creation.  Overall, as studies of the nature of people driven by the desire to excel physically, Black Swan comes pretty close to Aronofsky's The Wrestler. I wouldn't like to guess who'd win in a drag-em-out battle between Portman and Mickey Rourke, that's for sure.

Tune in tomorrow for ultra-violence, 70's style, in NEDs, and muslim-extremist style in Of Gods and Men.  And John-Wayne-style, I suppose, in True Grit! Something for everyone :)

Whatever happened to.. udpating my blog?

Two years? Really? Anybody would think I'd found something better to do with my time.. or maybe people just don't blog any more - after all we now have 'social networks'. Anyway, here I am in the middle of the 2011 Borderlines Film Festival (http://www.borderlinesfilmfestival.org/), thinking "I should really make some notes about some of these films so I don't forget what I saw and when, and whether they were any good.." So, just like my Clash/Rude Boy ramblings back in the day (below) here's my attempts at a miniature Film 2011, just for you dear reader. And you don't even have to listen to Claudia Winkelman! Bonus.. The Borderlines Festival runs over about 3 weeks in venues across Herefordshire, Shropshire and what's cutely called the Welsh Marches. A mix of small independent films, shorts, documentaries and a few 'big hitters' (it is just after Oscar time, after all), it offers a great opportunity for the celluloid junkie (raises hand enthusiastically) to see loads of movies over a short period. An added bonus is that most of the people attending are also 'serious' movie people, so not quite so likely to whisper through the first five minutes, throw popcorn at anyone older than them, or play with their i-Phones in the dark. Not quite so likely. With around 80 full length features on show at over thirty venues, the hard part of attending something like this is deciding which movies to see - and which to miss. In order to maximise my time (I do work, remember!) I had to make some tough decisions: no Nic Roeg in conversation, no 'Winter's bone' or 'Some like it Hot'. Luckily I'd already seen 'the Secret in their Eyes' and 'Samson and Delilah', care of the ever excellent Abergavenny Film Society (http://www.abergavennyfilmsociety.com/). I could live without Megamind. We all could. So what did I see? And what did I think? Glad you asked...


127 hours: I started off with a biggie - having just seen Danny Boyle's amazing stage production of Frankenstein at the NT (in Monmouth!) - care of NTLive, I was keen to see his interpretation of Aron Ralston's story 'Between a rock and a hard place'. Ralston was the silly bugger who, you'll remember, went off on a climbing trip without letting anyone know where he was going, got his arm trapped under a massive falling boulder (as you do) and ended up sawing it off with a blunt penknife in order to escape and survive. So, not a barrel of laughs. In fact quite gruelling and in parts definitely quite yuck. But, as you'd expect from Boyle, it veered between harsh realism and odd fantasy/dream sequences, with an occasionally blasting soundtrack punctuating some of the odder scenes. Ultimately a tale of redemption of sorts, and James Franco in the lead is genuinely excellent: he starts off slightly annoying and smug, as you know Ralston surely must have been, and over a few short days becomes a more self-aware person. There are the obligatory hallucinogenic moments that always seem to appear in US movies set in their deserts, and the whole thing ends with a slightly twee shot of the real Ralston, still doing crazy things, but now able to share his life with a significant other. Ah, bless. Good, but not great.


Chico & Rita: Now this is more like it! A Spanish/Cuban film about star-crossed lovers in 1948 Cuba - she's a torch singer, he's a jazz/bebop piano player. This is an animated feature in a beautiful vivid style, the visuals perfectly complementing the feel and the sound of a decadent time gone by. The zoot suits are razor sharp, the ladies are all hourglass figures and crimson lips, and it brilliantly evokes an atmosphere of heat, sensuality and most of all wild music. Someone sitting near me made the odd criticism at the end that they couldn't understand why this had been made as an animation rather than live action - for me it simply wouldn't have worked anywhere near as well. The cartoonish style allowed the makers to run off into fantasy realms that rivalled some of the best bits of Fantasia: a pastiche of 'On the Town' when Chico heads to New York is brilliantly done, while elsewhere the animated approach allows us to enjoy cameos from Fidel Castro, Humphrey Bogart, Charlie Parker, Marlon Brando and Fred Astaire. How many other movies have you seen with that kind of guest star selection? A lovely film, and you don't need to be a jazz lover (I'm certainly not!) to fall for its hypnotic charms.


Anybody else have any thoughts on these fillums? Let me know what you thought... I'll update my list shortly, before the 'seen it' list starts to get longer than the 'still to see's...

... BBC 6Music

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mb6music/F1950413?thread=6569304

This is disgusting. For 18 months listeners complain over and over again about the direction that 6Music is taking, its over-reliance on playlists and mediocre so-called 'talent' from John Noel's agency, the dreadful disaster that is George Lamb's radio career, and more, and rather than take the slightest bit of notice of what these people say (almost 12,000 posts on the George Lamb thread alone), the BBC in its new spirit of 'interactivity' close the boards.  If you don't like what people are saying about your station, just put your fingers in your ears, sing 'la-la-I'm not listening' and it's like they're gone! Hoorah!

Temporary closure? Maybe - but if/when they re-emerge I'd bet my bottom dollar the anti-Lamb threads will be gone - expunged from history.

So it's official then, and not just paranoia - 6Music doesn't give a shit about its listeners. Goodbye and good luck to the BBC in its attempts at creating a R1/2 clone that the BBC Trust thinks is sustainable - you'll need it.  But hey, that's just my opinion, and 6Music doesn't want to hear that!

Whatever happened to... whales?

Only joking, of course, because whales aren't extinct or anything. Not yet. Amid the ludicrous and frankly sickening advertisers' feeding frenzy around the World Cup (remember that? England knocked out on penalties - again?) one advert stuck in my mind, to such an extent that I wanted to reproduce the text of it here:

"Since the World Cup kickoff, an area of ocean floor the size of 12,949,640 football pitches has been destroyed by bottom trawling."

Read it again: over 12 million football pitches. Can you imagine that? Picture it? Of course not. Who can? When our wanton destruction of our finite resources is so unimaginably huge, what can we do about it? March on London/Washington/Tokyo? Write to our MP?

In an increasingly 'single-issue' politicised environment, maybe some of these things might help, a bit. If you really want to know, I've got a suggestion: support Greenpeace (the above was one of their ads, of course,not Nike or McDonalds or Budweiser). For this reason I've decided to add a link to them to my list of links - over there on the left of the screen, take a look.

You can become what they rather sweetly call an 'Ocean Defender' (no, you don't have to wear your underpants - or your Speedos - outside your trousers). I'm one, and if you've read this far, maybe you should be too. Go here to find out more: http://ctk.greenpeace.org/mgm/en_EZINE10_2572705

Maybe if enough of us sign up, and send stroppy emails, and wear the t-shirts, then our kids won't end up asking the question I began with. Has to be worth a try, right?

Whatever happened to... original thought?

Don't you just hate it when somebody else expresses that succinct thought much better than you can? I just saw this and decided it was so right it had to be shared. Some guy by the name of Einstein, apparently... if he's not on a reality show I think we can assume he's going to have a fairly short shelf life!

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."

Who are we to disagree? After all he was apparently very close to Marilyn Monroe (I don't mean in physical appearance, obviously) and therefore clearly a man of great taste and discernment. Unless Nicolas Roeg was just pulling my leg? No, what are the chances of that?

Whatever happened to.. Ray Gange?

I have a love/hate relationship with the 'net, as I guess most of us do. For large parts of the time, I curse the day it ever came into being. My inbox is always full of the most ridiculous unsolicited garbage - always. No 'spam killing' products seem to do the job. They won't because they are by definition reactive. Such software won't know to treat 'Do you want v1agara??' as spam until somebody somewhere has told it that it is. By which time of course the genius who sends it out has changed it subtly ('v1agarra', maybe) and your spam filter is back where it started. Perhaps you can hear me tearing out my hair in frustration. Please don't send me emails promoting Rogaine!

But at the same time I can't help loving the internet and all that it brings us. The access it offers to, well, just about everything, is nothing short of remarkable. Case in point: as any fule kno, the Clash was the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world. Ever. (Feel free to disagree, but obviously you'd be wrong.) But because their heyday was back in the days before we all had digital camcorders that fit in our bondage trouser pockets, there's never been a lot of footage of their live performances available to the general public.

There is of course, the movie 'Rude Boy', so let's divert for a second into the realm of movie reviews. A classic in its own way, but the live stuff therein only serves to focus the viewer's mind on the sheer awfulness of pretty much everything else about the film. We all know the Clash tried pretty hard to make sure it never got released - I suspect this was because they saw how cheesy it made them look (from Strummer's sibilant "the terroristssss..." to Mick's frankly scary "I'm watching you..."). And anyway, the live stuff has clearly been overdubbed significantly. Anyone who ever saw them in the early days will know, that, blistering as they were, they never played that well!! Much like Thin Lizzy's groundbreaking 'Live & Dangerous' double LP, the strength of Rude Boy is that the live stuff has been tweaked just enough to make it sound more listenable, while retaining the live edge.

However, completists like me have always wanted more. And the shoebox of dusty cassette tapes doesn't satisfy in the digital age. Enter eBay! I've been able to build quite a network of saddoes like myself, at the same time as building quite a collection of video performances of my fave band (among others). Of course, it could be argued that, by paying someone for a DVD full of grainy footage transferred from a dodgy VHS of a TV show from Japan, I'm contributing to the sad decline of the entertainment multinationals (altogether now, "Aahhh..."), and robbing my own heroes of their dues. I can't see it that way.

Why not? Well, I have faithfully bought every single damn thing the Clash ever issued officially (even 'Cut the Crap'), in several cases paying more than once for the same material (when buying a compilation just to get the 'previously unreleased' tracks, for instance - told you I was sad). I've also bought stuff on CD that I already bought on vinyl. And - how dumb does this make me sound, given my comments earlier? - I even bought the DVD of Rude Boy, even though many many years earlier I had bought it on VHS - AT A TIME WHEN VHS MOVIES WEREN'T GENERALLY ON SALE!! That's right, I went into my local video rental store and bought their copy, for nearly forty quid. They thought I was mental. My mates thought I was the coolest kid in town. We almost wore out the heads on my parents' Radio Rentals top-loading VCR.

So, buying illicit DVDs of stuff from my youth is a way of reminding myself of a simpler, happier time - hang on? Happier? Thatcher had just come to power, the miners were being systematically destroyed, the unions retreating up their own backsides, the NF were winning London council seats.. can I really have been happier then? Answers on a postcard please...

Whatever happened to.. good old black & white?

OK, so I never suggested for a moment that this blog might cover things like boxing. Or politics. But what the heck, I'm interested in both - though they couldn't pay me enough to actually DO either. But anyway, it's my prattle and I'll preach if I want to.

Being a late night person (as you have to be to get any time to yourself with children!) I find myself watching Channel Five - not something to boast about maybe, but every Thursday they run 'Fight of the Week', and despite my reservations about its essential barbarism, I love to watch boxing.

Last night though my blood boiled, and it was not about unfair judges or blatant fouls. Both boxers happened to be wearing black shorts with white trim, so, explained the commentator, for purposes of clarity, we will point out that Allan is the fellow in the white gloves, and Bonsante in the black gloves. Um, maybe I'm taking the 'too-obvious' route here, but wouldn't it have been so much simpler to say "Allan is the black boxer, Bonsante is white"?

I know we all have to be careful what we say these days, and I daresay the US is more precious about this kind of thing than we are here in the UK (apart from the few remaining Spartist boroughs, of course). But honestly, isn't this kind of pussy-footing around the fact of someone's skin colour actually worse and more insulting than just saying it? Surely it's not racist to say that someone is black or white (or whatever)?

At the risk of sounding like the Daily Mail (or my late great mum), some people don't have the common sense they were born with.