Tag Archives: film

Quantum of Solace opens ten minutes after chucking out time at Casino Royale with a car chase that’s a million miles away from those of creaky old Roger Moore. Once upon a time you could lay money on a Bond film including a chase sequence where a clapped out old vehicle containing a clapped out old couple would be passed furiously by Bond + girl in a fully Q’d up sporty number, and then a few minutes later re-pass the smouldering wreck of same to general hilarity. Not so in Daniel Craig’s universe.

In QoS the emphasis is on grit rather than wit. It’s definitely Bond: a scattering of gadgets, cars, M, scenery and girls leaves you in no doubt. There are even some scenes classically reminiscent of the days of Connery, except without the hats. But this is a Bond post-Bourne: the pace about ten times quicker, the action about ten times more active, the direction about ten times as bewildering.

The product placement needed only neon pointy signs to be more obvious. A certain manufacturer of rubbish phones receives so much visibility I was expecting a “magical tracking system and impossible photo enhancement service sold separately” caption in some scenes. But that’s part of the fun.

Bond himself is a miserable git throughout; I suspect they cut a scene where he phones the Samaritans. We see more of Dame Judi M Dench’s home life than we ever did, or indeed wanted to, in the days of gruff old Bernard M Lee.

To me the film feels like the second in a trilogy, though I appear to be in the minority on that one. There are a few lines that suggest it, nothing overblown, just a hint. Bond will of course return in any case. Whether the producers choose one of the remaining unused Fleming titles I sincerely doubt; I believe they are Risico, The Property of a Lady, 007 in New York and The Hildebrand Rarity. Elements from some of those stories have been used in plots of previous Bond movies, but very few movies have stuck to the original story so that’s not a problem. (Quantum of Solace is an original Fleming title, but the story wasn’t about spying at all and barely includes Bond.)

My guess is that they’ll continue to reintroduce some of the “classic” Bond elements in the next film. Q is due a reappearance, though I’d rather he wasn’t John Cleese. I’ll see if I can make some time in my busy schedule. I eagerly await the offer from Barbara Broccoli or any of her vegetable friends.

Avaragado’s rating: one packet of smokey bacon crisps, and one cheese and onion

The plan was: meet up with Andrew mid-morning and head to Saturday Worship, AKA the Apple Store, to perve over the new MacBooks etc. Then at noon a quick drink with some newchums, Rich and Chris (musical brothers). Then maybe a quiet afternoon and evening in for a change, Friday night having been a late (but sober) one up the pub involving a Dalek/gay hybrid. Long story, not filthy.

Chris texted me at 9.30am, waking me up. Was I interested in seeing the new Coen Brothers film? Followed by food? Yeah, go on then. Easily persuaded. New plan: ditch the evening in.

Borders, Apple, wander, wander, B Bar (with very much the B team serving), tea. Rich and Chris, more tea. Lunch: posh mushrooms on posh toast. Lots of discussion about GarageBand, new Macs, and James Bond. Back to the Apple Store so Andrew could demo GarageBand to the brothers. Then to the Picturehouse for more tea, passing Stephen Hawking and his gang, who were probably just heading to the Grand Arcade to cause trouble and rough up the tourists with street talk about black holes and grand unified theories, bitches.

More tea at the Picturehouse, the four of us keenly anticipating Quantum of Solace and debating the merits of Shawshank Redemption vs Ghostbusters. There was little point going home now, since I’d just sit in the dark for about ten minutes before coming out again. New plan: wander around a bit more. I did, via Heffers, Borders and Waterstones (on a mission, which I failed), before returning to a much busier Picturehouse to meet up with the post-honeymoon newlyweds plus Louise, Adrian and Andy.

Burn After Reading. Reading the activity not the place, or any sequel might reasonably be called Turn Left Before Slough. All Coen brothers tickboxes duly completed, not a lot more to say really. Funny, quirky, really surprisingly shocking in parts (as in “I was shocked” not “shockingly bad”). Ultimately, though, a little unsatisfying and I’m not sure why. Perhaps the ending.

Avaragado’s rating: a small plate of macaroni cheese

Chris had thoughtfully booked a table for six at a new restaurant, Asia, on Regent Street. It’s pan-asian cuisine, so the more radical can have a Thai starter and an Indian main, if they so desire. We’d have settled for our table, to be honest. On arrival, smack on schedule, the place was full. The harassed maitre d’ suggested we wait for ten minutes, which we did – failing to get a drink at the bar as nobody would catch our eye, despite Chris’s fluttering about. Or perhaps because of. Anyway, we were then offered a temporary table, but it was one chair short.

It looked frankly unlikely that we’d get served before keeling over from starvation. So we legged it, which I’m sure they were happy about as it freed up a table. Instead we ventured further south on Regent Street to the Curry Garden, where another five minute wait on a temporary table taunted us with deja vu. We persevered and were seated and successfully served.

Of note: a table opposite of about twenty students, all of whom looked like they’d been dressed by their blind grandmothers. First week of term, nobody to stop them, I guess. Still, I’m sure they all thought they looked lovely.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was probably the last half-decent George Lucas film title. Everything since then – and by everything, of course I mean only Indiana Jones and Star Wars films – has had a rubbish title. RotJ, IJatToD, IJatLC, TPM, AotC, RotS and now IJatKotCS. Lucas has also now scandalously enclunked Raiders by calling it IJatRotLA on VHS and DVD.

Honestly, Indy 4 has an awful title. It’s true that a crystal skull is pretty much central to the storyline, but it’s such a neverending, pedestrian title. Would Jaws be seen as a classic if it were called Shark? Hard to tell; Forbidden Planet was a pretty blah title but nobody holds that against it (though Lucas would undoubtedly have called it Dr Morbius and the Invisible Space Monster). Bond titles like Goldfinger and The Man with the Golden Gun are pretty literal, but intriguing; Fleming also gave us You Only Live Twice and other great titles, including the upcoming Quantum of Solace (even if nobody else thinks it’s a good title, I do). And then you’ve got Snakes on a Plane.

I’m not sure what the point of that ramble is. Poorly titled films may be good or bad – AKA, don’t judge a book by its cover. Profound. I demand a PhD, or at least a GCSE in meeja studies.

Back to Indy. Indiana Jones and the Secret of Akator would, at least, have been an interesting and vaguely mysterious title. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull needs ultra-widescreen just to show the BBFC certificate.

But is the film any good? On the down side, nineteen years of development hell is never going to produce a masterpiece, and neither is George Lucas. On the up side, it’s Indy. You can forgive its faults.

The film naturally requires disbelief suspension dialled up to level 9, as did previous Indy films. There’s no point bitching about how Indy survives plot device A, as many people have been doing; in the Indy universe, religion is real – see RotLA and IJatLC – so maybe he just prays. All you can do is sit back and enjoy the ride.

It is a shame that, despite many stories stating how this would be an “old-style” film without heavy reliance on CGI, there’s an awful lot of it. For me, much of the drama was sucked out of the jungle chase set piece because it was so patently obvious they just weren’t there. Just because you can do anything with green screen or CGI body doubles, it doesn’t mean you should. You can make a film or a cartoon, not both (unless you’re, er, making both, like Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks). Oh dear, does that mean I’m turning into a film snob?

There is a plot to the film, though not one to tax the brain – place Macguffin A into Macguffin-slot B – but nobody’s expecting Memento, let’s face it. It’s all about the set pieces. Through the power of search-and-replace the by-numbers villains are Russians rather than Nazis this time, not that you’d notice any difference.

The film benefits in one respect, I think, from the near-twenty year hiatus: twenty years have passed in Indy’s life too, which gives the opportunity for some character progression (though this ain’t a character piece by any stretch of the imagination). And, of course, they leave open the prospect of a fifth film.

In another twenty years, when HoloLucas is churning out photo-real pure-CGI features using version fourteen of his computer-generated script software (version one having been beta tested on the Star Wars prequels), there’ll be plenty of room to fill in the gaps in Indy’s story. That’s assuming Harrison Ford Enterprises, Inc. licenses the star’s virtual self. There’ll probably be one film called Indiana Jones and his Amazing Adventures in the Pacific Theater of World War II, Episode One: OSS Recruitment and his First Astounding Mission to Save those Big Statues on Easter Island from the Rapidly Approaching Enemy Fleet. I may trademark it just in case.

Avaragado’s rating: one bad date

I have mixed feelings when watching films and TV shows set in the 1980s. Look at all those silly haircuts! Why did everyone look like they got dressed in the dark? WHERE OH WHERE DID MY YOUTH GO?

The eighties are a popular target for today’s film-makers as that’s when they grew up. Or “came of age” as they like to put it for some poncy reason, usually in a fake American accent voicing over all the best clips. That’s when today’s pros started making films themselves, using cine cameras or clunking great VHS video cameras the size of Cardiff.

For young amateur film-makers the must-watch of those halcyoff early Thatch days was TV’s Screen Test, where for most of the show bespectacled proto-nerds were probed by Brian Trueman (who replaced Michael Rodd) on excerpts from the latest blockbusters. (Except, as I remember, they were never the blockbusters we actually wanted to see – presumably the studios refused permission to show long clips. We watched anyway, hoping that this week, this week would be the week they’d show a clip from Star Wars.)

The quiz was, generally, tedious and overloaded with earnest Children’s Film Foundation tosh. But Screen Test’s Young Film-makers Competition was more interesting. My brother and I never created anything we deemed worthy of submission; shame, really, I think we could have done well. Some of the films they showed, I remember, were rubbish.

I’d like to have made a version of Poltergeist, the pirate video of which scared the bejebus out of me on several occasions (the soundtrack still sends a shiver down my spine). I’m not sure that would have been suitable for tea-time telly, though. And we’d have had trouble with the special effects. Today’s kids could knock up something like that over a long weekend and already be yesterday’s Internet meme by the following Thursday.

So yes. Eighties, Screen Test. Which brings me to Son of Rambow, in which an eighties scruff teams up with a religious extremistmember of the Plymouth Brethren, plus a French exchange student and sundry hangers-on, to make a film – Son of Rambow – for Screen Test, and Hilarity Ensues.

Less hilarity than I was expecting, though; it’s funny, yes, but deeper than that. It’s about how friends and family can collide.

Believable performances all round, I felt. Jessica StevensonHynes plays it straight as Religious Mum, and the two main child actors are pretty good. Adam Buxton has a humorous cameo, not quite as gory as his role in Hot Fuzz.

There are a few authentic scenes from Screen Test in the film: in one of them we see the young film-maker trophy being awarded to some geeky speccy chap. That, it turns out, was Jan Pinkava: he went on to win an Oscar and co-direct Pixar’s recent Ratatouille. Yeah. Geek.

That could have been me, you know. I coulda been a contender. Had I actually entered.

Avaragado’s rating: one Kia-Ora multipack

“Oh, there’s a bit in it that’ll really make you jump,” said the Picturehouse barman as he handed Chris five tickets for The Orphanage (along with the more traditional bar fare, a bottle of wine). A comment like that sets you on edge before the film even begins, albeit an edge dulled by half a bottle of Pinot. But the unspoken implication of such a statement is that there is only one spring-loaded moment.

That’s not a bad thing (nor, in fact, was it strictly true in any case). Too many random shocks and you’re either laughing from the ridiculousness or shrieking in a self-made puddle and being led out by the St John’s Ambulance, depending on temperament. The scary moments are the ones you’re waiting for, the ones in plain sight: it’s all anticipation, of course. (The scariest parts of BBC classic Ghostwatch are the scenes where you happen to spot Pipes subtly inserted into the background.)

The Orphanage scores quite highly on the anticipation scale. The orphanage of the title is now owned by a small family; the mother used to be housed there. She and her husband have an adopted child, who has several imaginary friends. But just how imaginary are they? Who is the woman with the thick glasses? And why do they all speak Spanish?

Well, it’s a Spanish film, produced by Guillermo Del Toro. There’s a pointless American remake in production for people unable to cope with subtitles or without casual violence.

We saw it with a talkative audience, but in a good way: the odd “oh no!” heightens the tension.

Without giving anything away, it’s a film about loss. It contains no haunted videotapes or rabid emos climbing out of TVs, but it does contain the creepiest children’s game you’ll see this year.

Avaragado’s rating: five blueberry muffins

A British film about teenage pregnancy would feature the following:

• Bleak, run-down council estates sprinkled with Sky dishes.
• Chain-smoking from all cast members, including the unborn child.
• Kathy Burke.

The “gymslip mum” (© Fleet Street) would grunt monosyllables at the father, a half-tracksuit, half-trainer oik prone to casual violence. A hopelessly miscast Lee Evans would play a well-to-do city type, wrongly named in standard mistaken-identity plot #94 as the baby’s father – with hilarious consequences. The ham-fisted resolution would include a guest appearance by Richard Branson and a pile of used tenners.

Juno, on the other hand, is a Canadian/American film about teenage pregnancy. Made for tuppence, it’s nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture. There’s a Best Actress nomination for Ellen Page’s excellent portrayal of the title up-the-duff character.

I think the film’s operative words are “sweet” and “sassy”. It’s written by someone called Diablo Cody, which is surely all the incentive you need to go and see it. If that’s not enough, two of the cast were in Arrested Development.

Three films in three weeks, all of them crackers. It can’t last!

Avaragado’s rating: four things of orange tic-tacs

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the original King Kong film, the 50th anniversary of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, and the 25th anniversary of Jaws 3-D. Mix them together and stir in a camcorder and you’ve got the first draft of Cloverfield.

King Kong is, of course, a love story; and so is Cloverfield. The creature wreaking havoc in New York is but a monstrous and very expensive macguffin providing the framework for the storyline, a traditional boy meets/loses girl. A very effective macguffin, it has to be said.

Attack of etc concerns a large, unhappy creature; as does Cloverfield. The film contains a great deal of attacking, and I’m sure you’ve seen the clip in which the head of the Statue of Liberty – a tall glum female – splats various residents as it bounces to a halt in a city street.

Jaws 3-D gave people nausea from 3D glasses; Cloverfield does ditto from authentic handheld camerawork.

There are naturally many differences. Cloverfield contains none of King Kong’s biplanes on strings. The large creature is always big, unlike Attack of etc or indeed the kitten from The Goodies or the sheepdog in Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World. And unlike Jaws 3-D, Cloverfield is not rubbish.

It’s exceedingly well-made. The camcorder viewpoint is maintained from the first frame until the start of the closing credits; there’s no film score, lots of odd jump cuts, poor framing, etc. And the effects fit seamlessly – I’d really like to see some of the original footage just to see how they mangled it.

Apparently some critics proclaimed that using unknown actors was a big mistake. Idiots. It was essential to keep the truthiness of the film. And, really, the only effects of casting Tom Cruise or some other loon would be to double the budget and ruin the film.

On the down side, there were a couple of dodgy product NOKIA placements and a general implausibility of certain events (leaving aside the whole creature thing).

But overall, recommended. J. J. Abrams wisely chose Kong, Woman and D as his 25-year influences for Cloverfield: 1933 also brought us Duck Soup, 1958 South Pacific and 1983 National Lampoon’s Vacation. I dread to think what his mash-up of those three would be like. The new Star Trek film, probably.

Avaragado’s rating: four tubs of St Ivel Gold

With yer Radcliffes and yer Grints of this world growing up into not-quite-as-rubbish actors in the cash machine that I am legally obliged to call the Potter phenomenon, there’s a new set of kids on the block. No, not the tedious Narnia tosh again, at least not yet; now we’ve got the parallel world of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, as realised in The Golden Compass (Northern Lights being too subtle a title for the U. S. of etc., or maybe they were worried about possible confusion with the 1985 “Canadian supergroup” of the same name).

I do read books, honestly, but I haven’t read Northern Lights. I may get round to it some day, since I have a soft spot for the parallel universe/alternate history genre. However, I suspect that day should have been before yesterday, when I saw the film along with Chris, Melanie, Louise and Mikey.

Unlike JK’s oeuvre, not I understand deeply troubled by the wonders of a multi-layered storyline, there’s a well-known religious allegory in Pullman’s work. And, praise be to Dawkins, it’s not the CS Lewis perspective of magically resurrecting lions seducing buck-toothed children through the preaching of dental treatment or whatever it was. Here we’ve got talking animal demons and a good old adventure romp for the kids, with the talky intrigue and allegory to keep the sniffy grown-ups amused.

But there are flaws in the film: kids, dialogue, pacing. The kid problem is the usual one: I don’t think there’s a convincing British child actor under 13. We don’t have any Dakota Fannings or Haley Joel Osments, sadly. The lead actor, Dakota Blue Richards (what’s with all the Dakotas?), isn’t bad but isn’t that great either.

The dialogue is generally OK, but every now and then it goes a bit Basil Exposition. And I think it does so because they wanted to keep the pace up: cutting the “boring bits” to the bone to keep the running time under two hours. That being, I presume, the maximum time between toilet visits for overexcited preteens. Consequently the film feels a little rushed.

In the cinema I was pleased to note the general absence of noisy kids. Only one screamer dragged out temporarily by a harassed parental unit, but then I too would have been scared aged fourish by the sight of armoured polar bears yards from a front row seat. I did hear a constant subdued commentary from some mini-Motty girls old enough to know better in the row behind us, though it was not enough to rouse me from my traditional British reserve.

As is now apparently law for all film trilogies, there’s an appearance by Christopher Lee. Bizarrely only a single line. I don’t believe he was CGI, though as Mikey said, they’ve probably scanned every inch of him in case he’s, er, corporeally unavailable for sequels.

Though not confirmed, I assume this film will be followed up with adaptations of the other two books. It’s interesting and exciting enough to earn back its $180 million budget (Charlie Chaplin used to make his films alone, you know, for a farthing and a bowl of porridge). And I’d like to see what happens next. Or maybe I should just read the books?

Avaragado’s rating: four gobstoppers

On Saturday night at the Picturehouse we saw Sicko, Michael Moore’s new documentary about the glorious American healthcare system. Part-way through it turns into NHS-worship and Tony Benn is wheeled on to offer an opinion. Then there’s some French healthcare analysis that includes a man’s bottom. Apparently in France you get paid time off work for almost every conceivable activity, including moving house and going on honeymoon.

Moore’s usual tactics are in evidence as he takes some 9/11-affected Americans to Cuba for treatment. He’s typically befuddled-to-order by the horrific spectacle of socialised medicine and its dastardly “free at the point of use” ethic, clearly not the American Way. A short-cut to communist rule, according to sundry fat American cats rolling in the bloodstained cash and discarded body parts of privatised healthcare.

One-sided, of course: nobody could accuse Michael Moore of balance. But true nonetheless. We grumble about the NHS and its problems, but it’s far far better than the US system.

Three days after seeing the film I woke with a cold, the first I’ve had all year I think. I suspect doctors may have sprinkled vials of unidentifiable substances on the cinema seats to make us appreciate the NHS a bit more.

Avaragado’s rating: one bottle of Night Nurse