Nobody Knows Anything

Appallingly I’ve slacked off for a month and not written a post. In that time I’ve been on holiday for a week in Greece (see earlier post), during which I saw no movies, and received the James Bond Ultimate Collector’s Set for my birthday, and there’s a new James Bond film coming out October 31st, so what am I going to spend the intervening time doing? That’s right.

Infernal Affairs III (2003)

Reviewing Hong Kong police thrillers. This is my second time watching the third film in the trilogy, and I remain divided on the question of whether or not making the film so difficult to comprehend is down to filmmaker incompetence or my own failed perceptions and inability to follow the plot. Or maybe this disorientation is meant to mirror the disorientation of Lau Kin Ming (Andy Lau) as it becomes clear as the film draws to a close that some directorial slight of hand has been at work. Still, at least my reading of the plot (concerning who’s a cop and who’s a criminal) coincides with online plot summaries that have been difficult to track down, so I might be ready at some stage to declare the trilogy a work of genius. If only Andrew Lau and Alan Mak had done a Coppola with Part III and made a film that clearly wasn’t as good as the two that had preceded it, instead of making a film where it’s kind of hard to tell.

Escape from New York (1981)

I don’t like Escape as much as the two films that surround it in Carpenter’s filmography, The Fog (1980) and The Thing (1982), but it definitely has its moments, and it is, of course, rather more fun when watched with John Carpenter and Kurt Russell’s excellent commentary track selected.

Tropic Thunder (2008) *

Every bit as good as I hoped it would be. It does to stupid Hollywood actors what Zoolander (2001) did to stupid supermodels and the trashy tabloid celebrity-obsessed non-culture in which we all now find ourselves. And it has Tom Cruise in a hairy fat suit but may be a little too pleased with itself for having realised this. At a rough estimate it may be even funnier on later inspection than it seemed at the cinema since it actually has some fairly deep comedic ideas running alongside the endless and mostly good gags. And it probably means that when you read stories about Ben Stiller being a pedantic diva on set on the internet that someone somewhere is just making that shit up. It’s also an object lesson in how to make a proper comedy, and screeners should be sent to the makers of those wretched (fill in the blank) Movie movies forthwith.

Dr. No (1962)

Note presence of full stop after the Doctor. Well, well, just what the internet needs, another blogger wibbling on about the Bond movies and filling their posts with all sorts of anoraky details only interesting to fellow Bond anoraks, who love Bond and all those who’ve ever sailed within her, or in her, or Onatopp of her. Fuck that. Not interesting. I promise: no crappy Onatopp style puns (about from that one); no poor innunendo that makes you grimace like somebody’s just kneecapped you (apart from the title of the posts); the vague possibility that I might have something interesting to say about these films (pretty vague); a firm commitment that I am actually watching every minute of these films, even the weaker Roger Moore efforts that I don’t much like and am somewhat embarrassed to admit I now own.

To begin: although obviously intended for high definition presentation around the time of the next Bond movie (Bond Blu-rays have already been announced for later this year), the scrupulous scanning and correction efforts of Lowry Digital Images bear more remarkable fruit on the first few films in the series than on the later ones which have already been transferred pretty decently to the aftermarket. My memories of early Bond movies in ITV screenings is that they looked like absolute shit; they were quite clearly ancient telecines that had been rerun and rerun until the tapes had started to wear through. DVD resolution only really brings us an exceptional video image though, with, as Lowry Digital staff relate on the excellent featurette on Disc 2 of the Dr. No Ultimate Set, more onscreen detail and texture than has ever been visible on film, even back in 1962. The Blu-rays will presumably up the quality on this even further and deliver some proper film grain as well. It is really startling to see Dr. No with quite so much clarity as this. Does it make the film better? Yes it does.

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

This film leans enormously on the sequenced music of Wang Chung, which dates it precisely but in a good way. It’s the kind of high octane, pedal to the metal cop movie (even though it’s about the Secret Service) that died at the box office in 1985 but has outlasted much else that was released that year. Quality has staying power, and if you make a good film, sooner or later people are going to see it and allow your film a shelf life. In about 2001 I signed an online petition to have this movie released by MGM with a commentary track, a documentary, a sound upgrade and a decent transfer, and in 2003 this actually happened. Pretty cool. But not in the UK, where apparently MGM thought (and still thinks) we don’t like extras on MGM discs. Pretty not cool.

From Russia with Love (1963)

In Basic Instinct (1992), Catherine Tramell delivers an important speech about suspension of disbelief while on her first journey to the police station where she intends to disconcert a roomful of sweaty males with her cunning no underwear strategy. The Bond films have always been about suspension of disbelief, so much so that Roger Moore found himself unable to believe in the character because everybody Bond ever meets around the world from megalomanical supervillains to humble hotel bar staff knows that Bond likes his martini shaken not stirred. Which isn’t going to do you much good if your job description is secret agent. The Bond movies, even this one, are all absurd, they all take place in a different universe to ours even when it may look like they’re trying to represent our own universe, they are all subject to the same easily-levelled criticisms that they don’t make sense on even a very basic level (sample dialogue from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997): Dr. Evil: Scott, I want you to meet daddy’s nemesis, Austin Powers. Scott Evil: What? Are you feeding him? Why don’t you just kill him? Dr. Evil: I have an even better idea. I’m going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death), they recycle the same formula again and again (if you’ve seen You Only Live Twice (1967) you don’t really need to see The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) or Moonraker (1979) since they are essentially the same film), they’re sexist, racist, out of touch, out of date, old-fashioned, we’ve seen it all before, there’s nothing new here, please move along, nothing to see here (this is perhaps why critical response to them can vary so enormously).

And yet I was watching the ski chase from OHMSS (1969) (see below) just last night, and the sheer kinetic energy with which this sequence has been photographed, scored, brought to the screen, and cleaned up by Lowry Digital, was absolutely exhilarating. In short, critical objections to Bond miss the point: despite all of the shortcomings which most Bond fans, including myself, recognise the films have, we are all willing to suspend our disbelief and enjoy visiting this improbable fantasy world because what the Bond films offer is cinema of an almost Bressonian purity: a beautiful man, a beautiful woman, more beautiful women, an evil villain, assorted bad guys, explosions, chases, fucking big sets, and more explosions. It’s formulaic but we don’t care. And there are a lot of us, and we’re growing by the day. And Quantum of Solace (2008) is only going to spread the word of Bond even more.

Goldfinger (1964)

Stephen King in Danse Macabre (1980), his book length answer to all those questions journalists kept asking him about why he wrote this horror stuff, talks about the Set of Reality in serial television. What he means is the difference between scenes that have clearly been filmed on location, and scenes that have clearly been filmed in a studio but are meant to look like a location except they do not, and he mentions the Ponderosa ranch in Bonanza as an example, though he could have referenced that place allegedly outside the house where everybody had breakfast in Dallas. Or the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami at the start of this film. Even in 1964 with Eon Productions having come off two straight successes, they still only had a limited amount of time at the location and ended up rebuilding a Fontainebleau set in Pinewood to finish off the sequence. Poor old Margaret Nolan as Dink, she didn’t even get to fly to Miami, because she delivers her one line on the reverse of Felix Leiter (who as the scene develops goes from standing in front of the real hotel to standing in front of a back projection of it) and this is a studio set and you can tell because the lighting is high key and it doesn’t match the Miami sunshine. This is how it was done because this is how films were made at that time because of a number of factors including the quality of the film stock, the size of the cameras, the size of the lights, how long they had the location for, and so on. Yet now it can look like an amateurish assembly of everything that’s wrong with studio filmmaking. And yet we should remember that since all films were made this way then, no one cared about it at the time and we in 2008 have to suspend our disbelief just to watch the first ten minutes of Goldfinger made in 1964. Tough ask.

Thunderball (1965)

A lot of what makes Thunderball watchable (about from that guy who gets fed to the sharks obviously) are the underwater sequences. I’ve been trying to think whether or not any film made since this one has ever ended up with the extraordinary underwater melee in which what looks like 50 divers are going at each other with knives and spear guns, all on screen, all at once, no CGI, no special effects. And I can’t come up with one. There are some pretty neat shots in The Abyss (1989) that have a lot of blokes underwater on a submersible, but is that it? Is Thunderball the high watermark (low watermark would be a pun: no puns, remember) of underwater action movies? Maybe so.

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Snagging John Barry to work on the music for a lot of the Bond films was definitely one of the smarter decisions that the producers made. For me, the music to this film, in which Bond becomes Japanese by putting on a wig, there’s a giant interior volcano set and a white cat stroking villain, is so good it hides nearly all of the film’s shortcomings. Barry brings a soul to the potential soullessness, a romanticism to the possible routine of Bond’s dalliances with a never ending succession of women, and a driving force to the action sequences. Barry set the bar high, and only David Arnold has stepped up to the mark to meet him there. The most important contribution of Monty Norman, of course, is that bass guitar riff of the Bond theme, which all Bond composers have quite possibly been contracturally obliged to employ at the right moment, and sometimes at the wrong moment, and sometimes not at all (Eric Serra wasn’t asked back after the GoldenEye (1995) score was adjudged too light on proper Bond moments).

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Would this be the greatest Bond film of them all if Sean Connery had stayed in the part for this one and let Roger Moore take over on Diamonds Are Forever (1971)? The question that haunts Bond fandom. George Lazenby is not as bad as has been suggested, and the extreme, almost avant garde editing of the fight scenes is something to behold, as is that ski chase I remarked upon earlier. I could listen to John Barry’s opening title theme forever and if you don’t start feeling a bit misty when Louis Armstrong promises you All the Time in the World, then you’re probably in the wrong cinema. And it’s only a Bond movie, after all. This never happened to the other fellow, indeed.

No cinema visits this week.

Infernal Affairs (2002)

Odd that it takes Martin Scorsese 50 more minutes in The Departed (2006) to retell the same story that takes a compact 100 minutes in the Hong Kong original.

Infernal Affairs II (2003)

I’ve only very rarely felt terribly sleepy while in the cinema watching a film. The one that really sticks in my memory is my first viewing of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) on its re-release around the time of The Sacrifice (1986). For those who don’t know, Stalker, while obviously a classic and a film I both respect and admire tremendously, is awfully slow in pace and it got the better of me to the extent that I drifted off several times during it. If he ever knew how many cinemagoers he sent off into dreamland, I like to think Tarkovsky would have been pissed off in that doomladen Russian way of his. The one other time I succumbed to some five minute naps was during an all night screening at the Brixton Ritzy, but I think I can be forgiven this one as it was an all night quadruple bill. Incidents since then have mostly revolved around other people falling asleep during movies, particularly old, crusty-looking dudes who may have been using the cinema as a noisy motel for some daylight kip time. I really don’t understand how it’s possible to get any sleep at all with the aggressive 5.1 sound of a Hollywood blockbuster banging away at you. And yet it is. What I’m trying to say here is that I was feeling awfully sleepy throughout this viewing of Infernal Affairs II and this is precisely the kind of film that it’s a really bad idea not to be able to give your full attention to.

The Oscars were a bit disappointing this year. It’s not very impressive when the big shock category is Best Original Song. As is traditional, at least with me, I get up early and watch the Oscars live rather than suffering through later highlights programmes. We could really really do with the Oscars back on the BBC because Sky’s presentation was absolutely terrible. How does this Claudia Winkleman get the work?

Infernal Affairs II (2003)

Following the Oscar winning success of The Departed (I am not going to add to the chorus of disapproval that greeted this decision; I thought The Departed was excellent and in 10 years time everyone’s going to have come round to my point of view, as per usual; people didn’t think Casino was much cop back in 1995 because it was three hours long, very dense, and bombarded you with information; people have come round to Casino and are now generally agreed that it’s some kind of masterpiece; I knew back in 1995; wake up, people!), I thought it was time to check out the two sequels. Or rather the prequel and III which is half prequel and half sequel. Boy oh boy do you have to keep your head straight about who’s on screen and doing what to whom and where their allegiances lie. With every single character and every single plot point.

Being John Malkovich (1999)

They say that there are only seven stories in the world. This is the eighth. What continues to impress about this film is both how funny it is and how it’s one of the most atypical video game director makes his first movie movies. Charlie’s Angels it is not. I had contemplated writing Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich here.

Adaptation. (2002)

Note how I made sure there was a full stop above? Attention to detail. I like the way the film becomes in the second half what it attacks and dismisses in the first as Donald Kaufman takes over the script.

Infernal Affairs III (2003)

And everything becomes even more confusing. I’ve been reading plot synopses on the net and I’m still not sure what the hell was going on. Having been primed by the first two films not to trust anyone, I was now in such a lingering state of uncertainty that I became convinced that maybe the psychiatrist did it, maybe she was behind it all.

Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

I guess my Jennifer Tilly obsession started with The Fabulous Baker Boys, where she played the role of the uniquely unmusical singing waitress to perfection. Two things I know about Jennifer Tilly. 1) In this film, Woody Allen’s direction to her was, “Never stop talking.” And she doesn’t. 2) If you manage to get Jennifer Tilly in your movie, you must have her turn up for the audio commentary. The track on Bride of Chucky where she appears alongside Brad Dourif and Don Mancini is more entertaining than the film; she shows up late on the Bound commentary (where you will discover why the Wachowskis recorded no commentaries for The Matrix Trilogy) and brightens up the track hilarilously.

2010 (1984)

Along with Red October, it’s amusing to look back on this movie three years short of the date in which it’s set. Everybody’s got these big ass computer monitors the size of 40 inch CRTs and everything’s been backlit because that was the cinematography fashion of the time. Yet in some ways I like 2010 more than 2001; I know that in some ways the film has a hokey kind of message (why can’t we all just get along?) but to me at least back when the film came out I thought this was an important thing to say, and I still do.

The Haunting (1963)

Apparently there’s a remake of this. Robert Wise accomplishes more with $1.1 million and nothing resembling a special effect than Jan De Bont with an estimated $80 million worth of CGI. You tell me how that can be right. The remake of this movie is on a big list of films I will never see alongside The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Batman and Robin, First Knight, Pearl Harbor, The Bodyguard and Dirty Dancing etc. I have a weakness for some trashy movies but at least they were made with honesty and intensity. My big list of movies I will never see is full of fakery and bullshit.

So the message is this: watch less. Choose more carefully.