Nobody Knows Anything

No cinema visits this week.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

One of the secrets of modern fiction is the 20 novel series about HMS Surprise written by Patrick O’Brian. This film encouraged me to pick up the first in the series, and it was, rather unfortunately, so good that I’ve resigned myself to reading the other 19. They’re on the list. This is the kind of movie that digital effects were intended for, a highly detailed recreation of a bygone era that, had it been made 30 years ago (and it could have been), would have had highly unsatisfactory models bouncing around in the tank at Pinewood. If you don’t believe me, check out the supertanker in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977); not for a moment is that believeable as a real ship, despite the best efforts of the Thunderbirds-trained effects technicians. There is something highly attractive about this kind of seafaring yarn, and, even better, due to the complex nature of the financing that required Universal, Miramax and 20th Century Fox to come together, there’s unlikely to be a sequel, even though the film’s ending begs for one.

Foxy Brown (1974)

To finally do away with the bad guys at the end of this film, Foxy Brown persuades the local gang of urban terrorists in a seedy basement filled with automatic weapons to help her out. It did strike me that, apart from all of the other stuff you couldn’t get away with nowadays, this is something you really couldn’t get away with nowadays. This is less fun than Coffy (1973), but still has Pam Grier with a shotgun blowing people away, and Antonio Fargas as 1974’s most badly dressed, most sleazy drug dealing relative (he’s Foxy’s brother).

Sin City (2005)

Still looks highly impressive. Although the movie is all on one note, it’s a helluva note, and if you get that note and enjoy listening to it, the movie does not stop delivering for you. This definitely seems to be one of those divisionary movies, so if there’s anything the slightest bit PC about you, the film’s guaranteed to offend. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We need more offensive art in our culture, not less.

Alien (1979)

Probably in preparation for The Week of Blade Runner (1982) (coming soon), I found myself drawn first to Charles De Lauzirika’s three hour making of documentary, then the film, and then the commentary track. The first time I saw Alien was the first time it was shown on ITV, in full screen, in mono, with adverts, back in the 1980s. My memory is that it was shown on a bank holiday and we had to rush back from a beach in Wales at my insistence to catch it. The first time I saw Alien in the cinema was I think at an all night screening in Brixton in the late 1980s. Since the film isn’t terribly great as a screen original (it’s a film as derivative of other media as The Matrix (1999)), most of the pleasure of watching Alien these days comes from admiring the sets and not necessarily the actors or the script. It’s a b-movie elevated through production design, and that’s not all that bad.

Seabiscuit (2003)

As befits a former scriptwriter for Bill Clinton, the films of Gary Ross, as both screenwriter and director, are straight down the middle Democrat fantasias of America, and Seabiscuit is utterly irresistible. Most of the unlikely plot twists of the film are true, and Jeff Bridges is handed the thankless task of providing a whole bunch of gooey exposition about Seabiscuit being the little man given a second chance in the wake of the Great Depression, and a whole bunch of dewey-eyed reporters are assembled around him eating this stuff up. The patriotic hokum at the press conference in The Right Stuff (1983) is subtly flagged by the sotto voce comments of the astronauts and the irony of Philip Kaufman’s script. There’s no irony in Seabiscuit, Gary Ross really believes this stuff, and I think as long as you don’t buy into it too wholeheartedly, so can you. Maybe. The liberal utopia of America will probably always remain a dream, mostly as long as the Democrats seem unable to come up with as convincing a Presidential candidate as Bill Clinton, and we all know what went wrong with that.

No cinema visits this week.

The Truman Show (1998)

The Truman Show fell into that weird gap after DVD had started up in 1997, where film companies weren’t entirely sure about what to do with their new releases in this new home viewing realm. And Paramount have not been that great in realising the potential of the technology. For many years, all that was available in America for this film was a non-anamorphic transfer with a trailer. And even though the Region 2 UK release was anamorphic, I kept holding off buying this title until finally a Special Collector’s Edition with actual extras appeared in 2006. Since I don’t watch television, the whole reality television thing has rather passed me by, thank God, though amusingly I do own a number of movies critical of the genre. There’s nothing new about this in cinema; in the early 1950s with the rise of television, quite a few films had scenes or extended riffs about how terrible TV was in comparison to cinema. In theory, things have changed a bit today, and really interesting TV is being produced in America and, less often, in the UK. But I would still rather watch these productions as DVD boxsets rather than TV transmissions. And in the background to all of this, there is The Truman Show: “You were real. It’s what made you so good to watch.”

Dreamgirls (2006)

Somewhat undervalued at the Oscars, though Jennifer Hudson’s thoroughly justified Best Supporting Actress win made up for a lot of odd omissions, especially recognition for writer/director Bill Condon, who pulled out all of the stops in a notoriously difficult genre to get right. And boy, does Dreamgirls get it right. Strangely, the wrong way to approach this film, I think, is to watch it and think oh that’s why Diana Ross became and that’s what Berry Gordy did; the film is far more successful as a metaphorical exploration of the journey so-called “race music” took from R&B through Motown and Pop to Soul and Disco. The film itself and the film’s music get the details of each era exactly right in a way that those irritating jukebox musicals that are all over musical theatre right now completely fail to do.

Monster House (2006)

Perhaps this was done as a tryout for Beowulf (2007) as a development of what had been learned on The Polar Express (2004), almost as a throwaway. There’s a certain amount of disingenuousness in the DVD supplements about the extent to which performance capture drove the animation in this film. Other DVDs, not least the Lord of the Rings discs, have stressed that performance capture can be a good start, but the animation will more often than not have to be tweaked later, often redone from scratch frame by frame. Having said that, the film’s a lot of fun and actually quite dark in places for an animated feature for, you know, kids.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Cheered me up a lot this week. Thanks, guys.

Mary Sharp (1935-2007)

I feel it would be wrong of me not to mark the passing of my mother, Mary Sharp, who died this week very suddenly and quite unexpectedly. I inherited my cinephilia from her, a woman with many interests, of which film was the one that brought us most closely together. One of her earliest memories was of being taken by her mother out of school along with her brother to see Gone with the Wind (1939); I’m not sure when this occurred, it was probably for one of the later reissues rather than when she was four years old. My parents also went to see Don’t Look Now (1973) on its original release when it was paired with The Wicker Man (1973), something I would have loved to have experienced, but I was only six. She loved old films, especially old black and white films, especially old black and white films with strong women like Bette Davis in them. She also loved animation, especially Disney, especially the genius of Nick Park, especially Pixar, and was very much looking forward to seeing Ratatouille (2007), which we were planning to see today and which she knew more about than me since she’d been watching the previews on Sky. She didn’t think much of The Truman Show, loved Dreamgirls, would have loved Monster House, and Hot Fuzz probably wouldn’t have been her cup of tea, though you never could tell. She would often start telling me about this wonderful film she’d seen late at night, and it would turn out to be Taxi Driver (1976). I’ll see you at the movies, Mom, I’ll see you at the movies.