The Films I've Watched This Year #10

Film If this list looks short, it's because last weekend was filled with television and ballet (on television). On Saturday night I continued with Orange Is The New Black (which is firmly in the can't watch more than one episode at a time pile) and began with The Vikings (which one episode in feels a bit Game of Thrones lite) (which it would do), season seven of 24 (because I never did get around to it back then) and Luther (which even after two episodes I can see is Neil Cross's homage to the Pertwee era) (no really).

On Sunday night I sat through an ancient (1990) television presentation of the Kirov ballet's Swan Lake in preparation for the first film on the list but which in no way really prepared me for it thanks to the television directors insistence on cutting away to reaction shots in the middle of movements and entirely missing the main thrust of the action.  Oh and it has a happy ending, apparently imposed during the Soviet era which as this useful review from Ballet Magazine notes, "now looks incongruous and silly".

Black Swan
Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Safety Not Guaranteed
Passion
The Heat
Blackfish

Before I head off into the mainstream of this evening's symposium, I just wanted to note the number of inadvertant connections there are at least between the titles.  On Monday I watched Black Swan, tonight was Blackfish.  On Tuesday I saw Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2 in a double bill with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire which was separated by a day with The Heat, which has its own connection of sorts with the word Passion, which I saw in a double bill with Safety Not Guaranteed which in that context has a whole other set of resonances.  How odd.

It's also true that all but two of the films have female lead characters which was somewhat on purpose once I'd seen Black Swan and The Hunger Games and knew Lovefilm/Amazon/thingy had already posted The Heat, in contrast to last week when a couple of the films would have really benefited from a female protagonist if only the male creators had even considered it.  Probably worth noting though that none of these films were written or directed by women with Catching Fire's source material a tangential contribution.

When I was at film academia, one of the issues I had to wrestle with in gender studies was the structure of films with female lead characters, the likes of Nikita, Amelie and Cédric "The Spanish Apartment" Klapisch's When The Cats Away and how across time in story terms they essentially only have two outcomes: to give in to their natural femininity and couple off or retain a latent masculinity, and if they're independently successful, enter the wilderness or die or stay single, or boiled down to what usually ends up being the concluding visual marker, wearing a dress or trousers.

It's more complex and tricky than that with increased messiness when dealing with women in the action genre in particular where they're essentially treated as male characters in story terms but that's the main thrust of it (and I'd recommend Susan Hayward's essay on gender in Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts if you're really interested).  The main problem seems to be that because there hasn't been the same variety of films with female main characters for film theorists to deal with the concepts have inevitably remained relatively simplistic.

Without giving away anything I hope, all of these films conform to the above trajectory, though in a couple of cases you could also take a side glance towards queer theory (see Hayward's chapter on that too) but what's interesting is how in comparison to the films I looked at back then, the women in these films retain their leadership roles and the directors barely resort to such things as the male gaze in order to create points of identification.  Even in something like Black Swan, I can't remember seeing a reverse shot of Vincent Cassel offering the male gaze.

Of course I wasn't analysing these things and perhaps if I was looking out for a reverse shot of Vincent Cassel offering the male gaze, I'd notice one.  But it still seems like we're shifting towards a space in which women are allowed to be beautiful in films without the need to cut away to some man confirming as much in a scene where this supposed main character is suddenly subordinated for the purpose or we cut to some secondary character making googly eyes just because they have a penis and a labido.

Well, there's Passion, but again we're straying into queer theory and making assumptions and can never win, much as the viewer can't with Passion, which is quite frankly a mess because Brian De Palma can't really decide who the audience's sympathy should be with because for all his attempts at being Hitchcock, he isn't Hitchcock and doesn't really understand the subtleties of what Hitchcock was doing in relation to audience sympathy or visual trickery.  Even Mission: Impossible feels like a very, very long time ago at this point.

But that was really the only bum note of the week (so to speak).  Cloudy 2 loses some of the storytelling complexity of the first film, but retains the wacky surrealism and The Heat underscores Sandra Bullock's flexibility as an actress even if the gag reel on the blu-ray is arguably funnier than the main film which is tonally all over the place merging an Apatow sensibility with the cussing and murder of Lethal Weapon.  Part of me wishes it had been a more grounded earthy piece in the manner of Shane Black, but god bless Melissa McCarthy for bringing some of that anyway.

My new fascination with ballet brought me back to Black Swan which has arguably become even more potent now that Mila Kunis has become more of a "name" since its release not that you could really point to, with the exception of Friends with Benefits, a particular film which has made that "name", other than Black Swan itself.  The Radio One incident certainly helped.  But watching again, she seems to have gained a statue, more passive aggression and in a curious twist the following year when she and Natalie Portman appeared in films with roughly the same plots hers was better.

But having seen another version of the story and Tamara Rojo's history of the ballet did deepen the experience and emphasise various elements especially that Darren Aronofsky economically didn't simply attempt to retell that story within the ballet world somehow but wanted to create something visually more interesting and psychologically visceral.  There's also the poignant casting of Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey, both of whom in previous decades would have been the obvious choices to play Portman's White Swan.

I wonder what film theorists are making of The Hunger Games and any film series which are even more closely aligned to television "episodes" or installments and in which it's impossible to say what trajectory a character has.  Much as I enjoyed Catching Fire, Jennifer Lawrence and the rest of the cast are so far above the material now that I couldn't help wishing I was seeing them in something else, especially Lawrence and Donald Sutherland as Cordelia and Lear.  Amanda Plummer as Goneril.  Elizabeth Banks as Regan.  Woody Harrelson as the Fool.

Actually that's not quite fair.  As attempts at Orwell for kids go, this is better than most (there is no Macra), and the action sequences are still genuinely exciting and as I suggested much earlier, it is the case that Katniss is the main character and even in scenes like the smoke attack when the tendency might be to cut away from her to cover the other action, it's all about her.  In empowerment terms this is an important choice; there are plenty of examples strewn about of films which are also supposed to be empowering but still end with a bloke saving the day somehow.

The best time I had this week, the moment when I was screaming and cheering was the final few minutes of Safety Not Guaranteed, but to tell you why would be a massive spoiler and unfair so I won't.  It's also the film in the week I knew nothing about beforehand other than that it was a piece of mainstream mumblecore, co-produced by the Duplass brothers and co-starring Duplass Mark and Jake Johnson off of New Girl.  It's a prime example of the kind of film which turns up on Netflix and you ended up watching because the cover is yellow or some such.

Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza plays a magazine intern who's dragged on a "fishing" trip to investigate a wanted ad from a guy who says he's going to time travel and needs a partner.  She becomes his chosen partner.  Meanwhile, Johnson's character looks up an old flame because this also happens to be his home town and before long we're in the usual mumblecore/indie meander though it quickly becomes apparent that writer Derek Connolly and director Colin Trevorrow are playing some genre games with the injection of thriller elements and romance.

Other than Plaza, who's frankly a mighty presence and is now my reason to get around to watching Parks and Recreation, is how the film consistently undercuts our expectations but not without purpose and on reflection everything thematically falls into place.  About the only dodgy element is another intern played by Karan Soni who is just the kind of stereotypical secondary character the Harold & Kumar films are commenting on.  Other than that, you can see why the writer and director have been handed the keys to the Jurassic Park franchise.  Sort of.

After all of this, my opinion that we needed to see even more films with women characters in lead roles is undiminished.  In an industry which often says its desperate for new ideas, there's a whole untapped, underexplored wealth of potential stories featuring female characters outside of the usual genre expectations.  Why is the attitude that we've already seen a "ballet" film when there are presumably a multiplicity of potential films in that world?  Why is The Heat the only recent buddy film featuring women law enforcement?  Why?  Why?

Shadalog.

TV The Internet Archive recently uploaded back issues of what was one of the best sci-fi magazine around, Starlog, which ended publication in 2006. It's not complete, the latest issue is 224, but what's there arguably covers the golden period. It's in Starlog that I originally read about Shada, the Doctor Who story written by Douglas Adams, which was never completed and glancing through, sure enough, here's that very article, published as part of a special time travel issue:

"Instead of making "Shada" a part of season 18, Nathan-Turner decided to make it a Christmas special. First, he had Adams rewrite the script, reducing its length to approximately 100 minutes (or a third less than its original length), as well as making it non-episodic. Next, Nathan-Turner needed one more filming session. Even with the rewrite, the production had to have some additional linkage filming. Finally, he had to bring back the principal actors.

"Although "Shada" was close to being finished, the planned special never came off. The actors were no longer under contract and not all of them could return due to other commitments.

"Besides the cast difficulties, Nathan-Turner wasn't allowed the additional recording session needed to finish the production, effectively writing finis to "Shada."

That same issue also has a look at the original script for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home when it was a vehicle for Eddie Murphy.

Ruthin Gaol.

Film Filming of Suffragette continues, with the second unit rolling into Denbighshire:

"Camera crews descended on Ruthin Gaol on Monday, where dozens of extras were dressed as wardens and prisoners.

The site was used to replicate HM Holloway Prison in London where 27 women were locked up after a demonstration in Downing Street during their fight for equal voting rights in the early 20th century. [...]

Senior archivist at Ruthin Gaol, Jane Brunning, said it was a coup for the town to be a part of what could potentially be a blockbuster.

“The second unit for the film was shot on Monday from 5.50am until 5.10pm after the crew set up on Sunday,” she said.

“We had 10 extras dressed as warders, prisoners and a doctor filming on the walkways in F Block. We were a small part of what should be quite a prestigious production.”

This video ghost tour gives a decent idea of the interior, as well as being incredibly creepy.

Intentional Partridge.

TV Chris Davies, tv writer, emailed a bunch of corporate presenters and asked them to read quotes from Alan Partridge. These are the results. Here's what happened previously when I gave the pedestrianisation of Norwich city centre some serious consideration.

Like Ives.

Music The Connecticut studio of composer Charles Ives has been painstakingly recreated at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in Washington Heights, New York, even the view from the windows:

"You have to wind through the wide gallery spaces of the Academy to find yourself suddenly back in time in the studio, which is accompanied by a small exhibition with scores and photographs. The pencil shavings have been left in the sharpener, his secret stash of alcohol preserved in its hiding place, a cane is hooked over the piano chair, and rumpled hats rest on top of books and his father’s old cornet. The royalties from his music were previously bequeathed by his wife to the Academy, where they fund scholarships in his name."

UK DVD release for Venonica Mars?

TV No, I still haven't seen the film, but an interesting doodah's cropped up at the BBFC website in the shape of the classification of special features for a potential dvd release. Here's the list. It's a bit ugly. The actual pages are linked here:

VERONICA MARS [Additional Material,SEASON 1 - ADDITIONAL SCENES (DISC 4)]

VERONICA MARS SEASON 1 - ADDITIONAL SCENES (DISC 2) [Additional Material]

VERONICA MARS SEASON 3 - ADDITIONAL SCENES WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY SHOW CREATOR ROB THOMAS [Additional material,Season 3,Additional scenes with introduction by creator Rob Thomas]

VERONICA MARS SEASON 2 - ADDITIONAL SCENES (DISC 4) [Additional material,Season 2,Disc 4]

VERONICA MARS SEASON 2 - ADDITIONAL SCENES (DISC 5) [Additional material,Season 2,Disc 5]

A DAY ON THE SET WITH VERONICA MARS [Additional material,VERONICA MARS,Season 2]

WEBISODE GALLERY - VERONICA MARS: RYAN HANSEN INTERVIEW [Additional material,VERONICA MARS,Season 3]

WEBISODE GALLERY: HANGING WITH HANSEN - TRAILER TOUR [Additional material,VERONICA MARS,Season 3]

WEBISODE GALLERY - VERONICA MARS: HEARST COLLEGE NEW SET TOUR [Additional material,VERONICA MARS,Season 3]

WEBISODE GALLERY - VERONICA MARS: 30 SECOND SET TOUR [Additional material,VERONICA MARS,Season 3]

WEBISODE GALLERY - VERONICA MARS: KRISTEN BELL/CHRIS LOWELL INTERVIEWS WITH EACH OTHER [Additional material,VERONICA MARS,Season 3]

DELETED SCENES (DISC 3) [Additional Material,VERONICA MARS,Season 1]

SEASON 4 PRESENTATION [Veronica Mars,Additional material,Season 3]

GOING UNDERCOVER WITH ROB THOMAS 1 - MAIN TITLES: WHY THE CHANGE? [Additional material,VERONICA MARS,Season 3]

GOING UNDERCOVER WITH ROB THOMAS 4 - VERONICA MARS: MEAN GIRL [Additional material,Season 3,Veronica Mars]

GOING UNDERCOVER WITH ROB THOMAS - THE POLITICS OF VERONICA MARS [Additional material,Season 3,VERONICA MARS]

GOING UNDERCOVER WITH ROB THOMAS - FAVORITE VERONICA/LOGAN MOMENTS [Additional material,Season 3,VERONICA MARS]

GOING UNDERCOVER WITH ROB THOMAS - FAVORITE VERONICA/KEITH MOMENTS [Additional material,Season 3,VERONICA MARS]

GOING UNDERCOVER WITH ROB THOMAS - DO-OVERS? [Additional material,VERONICA MARS,Season 3]

There are Region Two copies knocking around on Amazon but they're from mainland Europe. The show has never been released in the UK on dvd, just download and pay-per-stream services with the various showings on E4 as the main availability. But the film seems to have spurned the studio into corrective action. I had initially thought perhaps these were simply the old dvd material repurposed for a possible shiny-disc of the film (which has also been BBFCed), but the specificity of the disc designations suggests we're looking at boxed sets.

Radio 4's Hamlet will be in the Afternoon Drama slot.

Genuinely surprised. Here is Hamlet spread across the whole week in the prestigious 2:15pm slot in five parts (an act per day?) starting next Monday 24th March for five days, total duration about three and three-quarter hours which in audio terms is a mass of airtime allowing space for plenty of the play's textual real estate. For comparison, this is just shorter than the Branagh "full text" film and longer than his Renaissance Theatre production broadcast in 1992.

The programme page is here, with full cast list and clips of Jamie Parker talking about the role.  And here.

Notice that it's not listed as being part of the Afternoon Drama strand, which usually features new drama by living writers.  Will this affect its chances of being a downloadable podcast in the Drama of the Week?

Expect a review here in due course, then.

My Onion Biography.

Life The story of ... certainly most private views ...

"Having already spent a considerable amount of time quietly examining items around the apartment and standing on the periphery of others’ discussions until walking away under the pretense that he needed to refill his cup of beer, local introvert Dennis Brewer reported today that there are only 20 minutes left before he gets to leave an acquaintance’s house party."

Previously.

The man of stealing cameras.

Technology At a pinch I'd say I enjoyed this more than Man of Steel. Certainly feels more like the Superman I "know", the one who says things like "citizen" [via].

The Davies/Gardner era.

TB Time once again to link to another Doctor Who essay by Philip Sandifer, on this occasion because he is one of the few to investigate and credit producer Julie Gardner's contribution to the Davies era by reviewing the podcast commentary for The End of Time (part one):

"What is perhaps most clear, however, is that both of them are ruthless perfectionists. They talk several times about some of the more ludicrous things that have been fixed in post-production on the series. Some are at least understandable - the original idea for the Vinvocci was apparently to have the prosthetic blend into a human face, but it looked rubbish, resulting in the Mill coloring them green in every shot. Perfectionist, but at least an effects shot one understands. The CGI effect to make the Nobles’ turkey look cooked after the set department used a raw turkey, reasoning about what time of day it would be if the Queen’s speech is on is, on the other hand, a strong candidate for the weirdest bit of CGI ever, not just in terms of how strange a partially CGI turkey is in its own right, but in terms of the sheer level of obsessiveness involved in spending money to fix something like that."

Best piece of Doctor Who trivia ever?

"We used to be friends."

Film When I backed the Veronica Mars project, I was weary and cautious and in the UK so I chipped in $5 so as to feel like I was part of the epic sweep of the thing without actually spending that much money. I'm poor too. But I also knew I'd end up supporting it anyway through buying a blu-ray at the other end, and I still will. There are streaming and download options, but like recently discovered Doctor Who, I'd like to only pay once for a thing and to actually have a thing in my hand at the end of the process.

All of which said, I can understand the frustration of fans, who having spend the $35 so they could have a digital download on the day of release found themselves stuck with technology everyone hates when people like me and those who didn't have anything to do with funding the project had a choice as to how they watched it. Well, from those of us waiting for the shiny-disc release because unlike "A Field In England" which appeared on dvd at the same time as everywhere else, we're going to have to wait a little bit longer.

Liz Shannon Miller at GigOm (capital O? Small o?) has offered a thorough description of the baroque process she ended up going through in order to get to and enjoy the content. The most frustrating moment is when, having managed to register and log-in to all of these services she might never use again, she then tries to watch the thing on her television but is met with a “licensing and studio restrictions” error, even though this is something she's paid for already, demonstrating why I'm waiting for a physical.  As the first commenter under the article notes aptly: "Only the movie industry could ask you to fund a movie and then treat you like a criminal, multiple times, for doing so."

Any-sigh-way, Warner Bros having noticed that the PR surrounding the release of the film had turned from "This is good" to "Fans who paid for Veronica Mars are having difficulty watching it" are offering refunds. But it's still an example of how  what seems like a perfectly reasonable way of going about things from a consumer point of view, making this thing available on as many of the services we use as possible, becomes dust when faced with the mechanisms of a corporation and its in house distribution systems.

A viewing order For The Fast and the Furious franchise.

Film Having very much enjoyed Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow, not to mention his subsequent Fast & Furious films, I have considered a rewatch of the whole series, except as fans know, and there are a couple, the whole timeline is messed up because of Han's fate in Tokyo Drift, which has been somewhat explained in Fast & Furious 6. Nevertheless, here's a short viewing order for the Fast & Furious films and their various spin-offs.

The Fast and the Furious

{Better Luck Tomorrow}

[Turbo-Charged Prelude]

2 Fast 2 Furious

[Los Bandoleros]

Fast & Furious

Fast Five

Fast & Furious 6

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

Of course watching them in this order for the first time creates a massive plot spoiler for Tokyo Drift in much the same way as The Empire Strikes Back is presumably a bit underwhelming if you've had to sit through the prequels for the first time. There are people who've done this. I've seen the online complaints.

Plus for this to work, you have to assume that all of the films between Better Luck Tomorrow and Tokyo Drift either happen within about four years or that Tokyo Drift was set in the future when it was made. Considering its locale that's not too much of a stretch.

Perhaps if I do rewatch this lot, I will look out for dates and see if the continuity people have been paying attention.

Beyond that, you do have to at least admire that Lin's determination to keep the Han character within the films led to its biggest biox office successes actually being midquels to a franchise outlier with about as much to do with the other films as Season of the Witch does to the other Halloweens. Or judging, by F&F6, at least it did ...

The Films I've Watched This Year #9

Film Surprise. Since this weekend I've decided to binge on Orange is the New Black and some ballet in the evenings, here we are on Friday instead. As you can see it was a bit of an updown week with about a fifty percent success rate, though you could argue that statistic is thrown off slightly by the presence of two best picture nominations at the Oscars and a documentary which has won every award available.  Apart from that one.

Gravity
Summer in February
Captain Phillips
Stories We Tell
The Woman In Black
Kick Ass 2
Pain & Gain

What this selection does prove is that in the best films, the very best films, the filmmakers and that can stretch from writer through director to executive producer to studio are aware not just of the kind of story they want to tell but the best way to focus that story. But on a couple of occasions this week it became obvious that what could and should have been the focus of the story simply wasn't, that the people in that chain hadn't realised what they'd had. That was particularly noticeable in both Kick-Ass 2 and Pain & Gain.

In the case of Kick-Ass 2, we witness a writer-director, Jess Wadlow, who's seen the first film, read the comic books and then fundamentally misunderstood the source material. The first film worked because it purposefully fought against the comic book film cliches whilst simultaneously utilising them as a touchstone and offered in Kick-Ass, a loveable lead character. This sequel, which also suffers from "too late" syndrome (four years in this case), dumps all of that and simply ends up being a cliched comic book film.

As is so often the case when creating sequels to surprise successes, everyone got cold feet. So rather than continuing with the same ballsy attitude, Kick-Ass 2 plays it safe in an attempt to keep the larger, more homogeneous audience who turned up anyway last time, not least in such things as the blanding out of comic book references to only include characters who've appeared in recent film adaptations and choosing a plot rather than character based approach.

But the main problem is the lack of focus. Rather than closely adapting the comic as the first film did and which would have foregrounded Hit Girl, Wadlow is all over the place, keeping Kick-Ass as the narrator when Hit Girl would have been the more natural fit and as I suggested, adding a massive fight scene at the end when the film calls for a much more downbeat ending just as the comic has.

You can see how this might happen. The studio and Aaron Taylor-Johnson presumably couldn't see how a film called Kick-Ass 2 would have him as a supporting character, plus having hired Jim Carrey as the head of Justice Forever, there's the presumed need to give him enough material to justify his salary. So what could and should have been a coming of age story about a teenage girl who just happens to be slightly psychotic and well, kick-ass, it all become a bit of mess with loads of disconnected scenes and cutting back and forth between weaker storylines.  Sigh.

With Pain & Gain, it's possible to blame the whole thing on Michael Bay, the man who destroyed the Transformers franchise, so I will. Here the problem's an even more fundamental misappropriation of a great story, turning what might have been an excellent neo-noir about a retired PI investigating an increasingly ludicrous and unbelievable crime which has been ignored by a disbelieving local police department, the stuff of Robert Towne or David Mamet, into a leery sub-Soderbergh mess.

The tragedy about that is Ed Harris's performance, which has, despite Bay's best efforts, it's usual integrity and whenever he appears you simply wish that the whole film was about him, perhaps with the messy details of the crimes presented in testimonial flashbacks from the key witnesses.  That certainly would have been a more sympathetic approach to the victims in this true story, whose deaths are mainly treated as a joke.

Compare those with Gravity and Captain Phillips, both of which are made by filmmakers which also have, yes, integrity, know exactly what their films are about, focus on a single character, structure the story around them and provide the audience with an tense but thematically resonant entertainments (if that's the right word).  True it's unfair to compare what amount to films for teenagers with films for adults, but why shouldn't the former aspire to greatness?

I've probably said quite enough about Gravity already, but I will quickly recommend the blu-ray release which has a pleasingly nerdy set of documentaries attached which focus on the screenwriting and technical achievement of the thing, only stopping short at naming the brands of camera and software.  Luckily that's here in a thorough interview on the ASC website.

It's also a testament to Sandra Bullock, who having become one of the most famous actresses on the planet, still agreed to spend three months in a light box and on wires, with mostly just her face visible in shot, and totally alone for most of the shoot taking direction via earwigs.  Admittedly she's done well for herself from it (or "the causes that need it"), but it was still a major commitment for someone who could have continued to coast in rom-coms.

If I have to mention something new, it's that I don't think Gravity would have worked as well with Angelina Jolie and Robert Downey Jr.  Although both are capable of playing against type, in tiny narrative and characterisation crawl space the Cuarons had, Bullock has the instant element of vulnerability and Clooney the warmth neither or which quite fit Jolie or Downey Jr, who tend to work more as "character stars", in quite the same way.

It's odd to think of Captain Phillips being made by Ron Howard.  The concept, to present a hijacking from the point of view of the ship's captain as a drama-documentary which investigates exactly why Somali pirates exist is very Paul Greengrass, certainly more than Rush which was the production that he and Howard essentially swapped with each other.  Would Howard have included the initial scenes about the hiring under threat of the lead pirate played by Barkhad Abdi?

What Greengrass's film demonstrates is that it's possible for such a film offer that kind of backstory for other characters without losing focus on who the protagonist is.  In nearly every scene, Phillips has narrative agency, with Greengrass cutting back to Tom Hanks as our viewpoint character and his reaction.  Despite the subtitles, it's always clear that Philips is studying and following his captor's body language, and  Abdi's fisherman's inner conflict.

All of which discussion about telling stories is a reflection of my favourite new film of the week, Sarah Polley's brilliant, brilliant Stories We Tell.  A documentary meditation on how real life becomes a story through the viewpoints and opinions and memories of the people involved, it's a brave, exciting, involving and raw piece of filmmaking that's leaps and bounds ahead of her fictional work, though you suspect that it's also the kind of piece which can only be done once.

It's also something which should be seen without much prior knowledge (if possible), because like one of the best stories from This American Life, for example, the twists and turns are just as important as the fundamentals of what occurred, how information is revealed to the audience and the flipping of our expectations.  Like Gravity, there are moments of pure visual and aural poetry which demonstrate just what films and their creators can be capable of.

Shakespeare at the BBC: More of The Hollow Crown?

At Illuminations, sorry @illuminations, noticed a good case of burying the headline in a Michael Billington column about BBC radio's adaptation of O What A Lovely War. Towards the end he addresses some of my usual complaints about the lack of theatre on television before smuggling what feels like a pretty impressive leak:

"TV, on the other hand, does little to acknowledge the existence of theatre. You might get the occasional news report if there is a startling controversy or the opening of a big musical. The Review Show has been shunted on to a little-seen monthly Sunday-evening slot on BBC4. But, although I'm told there is a second season of Shakespeare history plays being planned for BBC2, it is rare to find a play from the theatrical canon being televised. And none of the big companies, such as the National or the RSC, has established the kind of link with television that they have with cinemas that allows their work to be seen not just around the UK but across the world."

As @illuminations says:

Can BBC2 be planning an adaptation of 3 Henry VIs and Richard III? The Hollow Crown follow-up? @billicritic http://t.co/ww2RpzFKyo
— Illuminations (@Illuminations) March 14, 2014

Let's hope so. The first series did well in international sales, especially in the US where it got huge press, certainly more than it received here. As with the other pieces, it has the perfect shape for a series of films, brilliant parts not least John of Arc and ends with Richard III as the finale. The Jane Howell version for the BBC Shakespeare filmed against a venture playground backdrop with hobby horses with Brenda Blethyn as Joan and Ron Cook as Richard is still a high televisual watermark for this material (and only appearance I think for Henry VI), but it is a very stylised piece and it'd be interesting to finally see it with massive casts and no double (even though as the recent Globe productions and the Howell version have shown that can create interesting thematic resonances).

Perhaps my old plan to do the whole of Shakespeare in this format doesn't look so silly after all. Um.

Updated  25/03/2013  The Hollow Crown Season Two commissioned.

"Sarah Polley, She Likes To Tell Stories..."

Film One of the hidden gems amongst the morass of God and food channels clogging up Roku and other streaming boxes is the one marked with the odd logo ONF/NFB (you tell that it's under subscribed to because it hasn't floated to the top of availability lists which are sorted by the number of subscribers).

You should subscribe right now.  It's the streaming service for the National Film Board of Canada, their equivalent of the BFI, but unlike BFI Player it's completely free and seems to contain all of their films.  The IMDb has a pretty decent list of the productions they've been involved in and a random check suggests most of it is on there.

It's here for example that last night I watched Sarah Polley's instant classic documentary Stories We Tell, which I'll talk some more about at the weekend when I've let it marinade my braincells, though since I don't throw the words "instant classic" around lightly, I think you can see how much I enjoyed it.

Searching to see if the NFBofC has anything else by Polley, I found this really beautiful short film, Stories Sarah Tells, created by Anne Marie Fleming on the occasions of Sarah receiving National Arts Centre Award from Canada's Governor General. You watch her received the award here and her ensuing speech (click "watch speech").

With apologies for posting.  It's a bit of an earwig.  I've just spent the past twelve hours singing the chorus.  "Sarah Polley, She Likes To Tell Stories... faa dee daa dee daa dee daa... "

Suffragette crewed.

Film The IMDb page for Suffragette has now been fully uploaded (assuming it's accurate). Really, really excellent crew. Here are a couple of highlights.

The cinematographer is Eduard Grau, whose work includes the still awaiting release here Arthur Newman starring Emily Blunt, The Awakening and A Single Man.

Barney Piling previously edited Carey Mulligan in An Education and Never Let Me Go. Also The Grand Budapest Hotel, Quartet, One Day and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day as well as loads of work with Kudos on television including episodes of Spooks, Hustle, Life on Mars and the first two episodes of Outcasts and back in the day As, If on E4.

The Art Director is Jonathan Houlding who was a draughtsman on Love Actually, but I won't hold that against him.

The IMDb is worth glancing through in general because you can see how a crew is knitted together with the same films keep coming up in the various departments and many of the same names on the various shoots, presumably because producers are aware of their skill and are keen to bring them on to the next project.

Piling is arguably the most interesting hire; he's not worked with any of the producers or the director before but crewed on what are arguably Mulligan's previous two key British works.

Seinfeld Without Seinfeld.

Nothing from LJ Frezza on Vimeo.

TV "Scenes from "Seinfeld" (1989-1998) where nothing happens. A supercut of empty shots. A New York without people." Keep watching, keep watching.

How to also abandon books.

Books Last week, which is about as exact as time frame as I'm able to give you since, as is so often the case when you take major life decisions and they don't often happen just like that, like the films, I realised I wasn't going to read everything, or watch everything or listen to everything and that this was in fact ok. Ever since secondary school I've had a deep seated anxiety about this which has only grown since the invention of the internet which has meant that not only is there an infinite amount of interesting stuff to read/watch/listen to, that most of it is available, right now.

But my psyche has also been polluted by a general, genuine inferiority complex because, and this also began in the secondary school but only really began to flourish in the late nineties, everyone else seemed to have read everything, watched everything and heard everything even though their lives were only as long as mine, or even shorter.  Which put me in the position of wondering what went wrong, or at the very least deciding what I got wrong and dedicating myself to spend the rest of my life catching up.

Which led to a lot of doing one thing when I'd much rather be doing something else.  Last week I came to the conclusion, finally, that it's ok to be doing the something else.  If I'm interested in film, early modern drama and Doctor Who, it's ok if I've never read The Mysteries of Udolpho and that it's ok to spend the next week or so reading David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson's Film Art cover to cover rather than the next three months trying to crack The Barchester Chronicles however much people tell me they're very good even if I can't make head nor tail of Trollope.

Which isn't to say I shouldn't be open to new things.  I've been very much enjoying BBC Four's season about ballet and so will be watching some more ballet.  I was given this opera about King Arthur for Christmas.  But it's the general sense of needing to work my way through the complete works of Thomas Hardy before I can consider myself a whole person who's not been wasting his life.  Even as I type those words, I feel like I'm abandoning all intellectual pursuits.  My hands are literally shaking.  Except shouldn't it be enough for me to have read and enjoyed Return of the Native once?

So I've had clear out, gone through my books and sent to used book stores and charity shops anything which looks like I feel like I should be reading rather than I want to.  That's included some Shakespeare, because having decided to collect the Arden and Penguin complete works, there's little point in keeping other random volumes, of having eighth different editions of Twelfth Night, especially if I've either already read the introductions or have never gotten around to those introductions after letting the book sit on my shelf for five years.

The other strand are books which I've read but will never read again.  Online and on onkindle, once something is read, it's generally gone, the useful bits of trivia stored away.  With books, there's a natural tendency, especially if we've bought them, to keep them around, just in case, at least for me.  Well, there's only so much room for just in case and so I've ruthlessly cleared out a number of "sacred cows", items which I'd never thought I'd get rid of ever but on reflection for all my love, I haven't picked up since I put them down, unless it's to move them to a different shelf.

The process of getting rid of these precious items is motivated and soothed by the internet and that most of it is available, right now.  If I do realise I've made a terrible mistake and there is something I'd much rather I'd kept, there's a more than likely possibility I can get another copy.  Plus past experience from previous similar epiphanies like the great VHS clearout of 2003 have underscored that you can never legislate for the future.  Then I dumped tapes and tapes filled with off-air recording of tv shows which are now readily available in boxes which are a fraction of the same size.

Seven large bags, and I mean the old canvas Habitat bags, have gone.  Ruthless.  Horrible.  Liberating.  I now have empty shelves, where once I didn't have enough shelves for everything and had resorted to piling them up on the back of my table, this table with my computer on.  Paul Magrs writes here about abandoning books in the middle.  This is abandoning the physical objects and it won't stop there.  I still have several piles of books in holding pattern and once they're read, or at the very least attempted, they'll be gone too ...

Suffragette begins shooting.

Film What looks like the official solicitation for Suffragette has been uploaded to industry PR website Show Films First, including a shot of Carey Mulligan looking bitterly cold sat at a picnic table in a park:

"Pathé is delighted to announce that SUFFRAGETTE started principal photography on 24th February 2014.

"Carey Mulligan stars alongside Helena Bonham-Carter, Brendan Gleeson, Anne-Marie Duff, Ben Whishaw and Meryl Streep.

"Suffragette is directed by Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane), based on a script by Abi Morgan (Brick Lane, Shame, The Iron Lady), and produced by Ruby Film’s Faye Ward and Alison Owen (Brick Lane, Jane Eyre, Saving Mr Banks). Executive Producers are Pathé’s Cameron McCracken and Film4’s Tessa Ross. Chris Collins is the lead executive for the BFI Film Fund."

In other words, contrary to reports, Streep isn't "starring" in this. There's some interesting industry stuff at the bottom:

"The film is produced by Ruby Film for Pathé, Film4 and the BFI in association with Redgill Productions and with the participation of Canal+ and Cine-Cinema.

"Pathé will distribute the film in the UK and France and is handling International Sales.""

Surprised not to see BBC Films in there since Pathe have tended to partner with them lately and this seems more like one of their projects. I suppose it depends what they're prioritising at present. Canal+ must be the continental distributors. Ruby Films's recent successes include Saving Mr Banks, Jane Eyre and Tamara Drewe.

Fargotten the female?

TV Much as I'm very pleased to see a television series based on the film Fargo * and that it features Martin Freeman, because Martin Freeman is excellent, it's a shame that the one element which truly made the film memorable seems to have been expunged. It's interesting to borrow the tone and geographical place from the film, another to also lose the chance for a female protagonist:



Presumably the Coens decided that they wanted to offer a contrast to Frances McDormand's Marge Gunderson or that she couldn't be beaten. Or that Fargo's about more than just a policewoman.  I'm making assumptions about creative thought processes based on a bunch of trailers, this I know, but can it actually be possible that they thought, "We can't have another woman because that would be too similar"?

* Which I'll always be fond because it was the film I saw at the cinema the night before my final exam as an undergraduate.  Not for me last minute revising.  If I didn't remember it then, I'd never remember it.