Don't do it.

Film Annoying old films you wished you'd forgotten don't get forgotten. They just get rereleased with a new title and using someone elses marketing ideas. Last year some time in an idle (and misguided moment) I sat through a really, really poor romantic drama called Londinium (2001) about a group of slightly self obsessed people in the capital of England (or y'know like whatever). The film featured people like with people like Colin Firth and Irene Jacob and was directed by on Mike Binder who clearly thought he was the next Woody Allen and like Allen cast himself in the film as the American. I'd recorded it one night over Christmas about three years ago because I quite liked the title and Irene Jacob who seems to have an inability to age. In fact she looked the same age here as she did in Three Colours Red fifteen years before.

It begins badly with some fairly obvious voiceovering and just heads downhill on a rocket pack with scenes that go on far too long, inconsistent plotting and performances so dislocated it's almost as though they are being provided in the same way that I believe some animated film voiceovers are recorded now, with the actors showing up when they have the time. It's a luscious looking film, so as always seems to be the way with these things, looks pretty but has nothing to say for itself. I somehow managed to get through to the end, largely to see what Jack Dee and Stephen Fry would be like -- and in fact they were the best value of all. Like all bad films I put it to the back of my mind, pretended it didn't happen and moved on with my life. Then tonight I saw this...



Since I'm analysing Love Actually for my dissertation I was quick to note the similarity of the fonts and the colour scheme and everything ... and that terrible new title which makes the film seem even worse than it probaby is if that's at all possible. If I was one of the Love Actually marketing people I'd be a little bit annoyed. I know that borrowing is a form of flattery but this is pretty ridiculous. Unless this was cooked up by the same people -- in which case shame on them for reusing what was such a prominent campaign and style. Here's a reminder...



Note that there's a quote that actually says "In the tradition of Notting Hill & Four Weddings". Here's a warning. Forget it. Even if you quite like the romantic doodlings of Mr Curtis and Colin Firth. Here's what the featured reviewer at the IMDb has to say:

"Londinium is a terrible, terrible film. Mike Binder thinks he is a Woody Allen for the millennium. He is not. Woody Allen's Bergmanesque films are funnier than this film.

London is one of the greatest cities in the world, but you wouldn't get that if your only frame of reference was this film. It is a slur on its great name, and the writer/ director should never be allowed back within its walls as long as he lives.

All the people involved should be ashamed for being in this film. Particularly Stephen Fry and Jack Dee, two men who are very funny indeed and should know the difference between a comedy script and the steaming pile of effluent that masqueraded as a script for this film.

AVOID THIS FILM AT ALL COSTS. I HAVE SEEN IT SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO."

Really, don't do it. If you have to rent a romantic comedy about an American in London, get Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Lawrence instead. I know that's not well like either but at least it features one of Ray Winstone's best performances...

non-independent independent

Film This excellent interview with Amber Benson is filled with nuggets. Like:

"I know exactly what you're saying, and its already happened...there is no independent cinema anymore. It ceased to exist a number of years ago when every independent distributor was picked up by a major league studio, or they went out of business. I mean, there really is no independent cinema any longer. There are very few people that are working outside the mainstream, and when they do, you don't see their films because they play at one art house theater in LA or New York."

Very true and something which is becoming increasingly obvious. People are talking about the 'independent spirit' as a way of wrestling with the fact that the quirky/art house type of film making has been co-opted by the studios as just another way of making and marketing films. The filmmakers have the best of intentions of course and there have been many, many loveable films made under these circumstances but I simply can't imagine the indie greats of the past like Clerks, Slacker and The Return of the Sacarcas Seven even getting distribution now.

The interview is worth reading because Benson is a tirelessly funny, self depricating figure who seems to know an awful lot more about the business than some might imagine. Spot the moments when she probably falls out with the Lohans and the Gyllenhals...

mini

Film The IMDb is now publishing miniphotos next to their cast lists. For example, Short Cuts and Buffy. Slows down the page download on dial-up really.

Broad-minded

TV Sorry I've been away tonight getting over a day of dissertation reading with a night with the Gilmore Girls. Their episode with The Bangles was infinitely more fulfilling than Dawson's daliance with No Doubt in that it was smart and funny and made sense in context. Anyway I'm breaking my silence before bedtime to bring you the funniest paragraph of a film review I've ever read, and after many strong years of reading Charlie Brooker, that's saying somethng...

"Now, we live in a modern, broad-minded open world in which us modern, broad-minded and open folk have our various interests, hobbies and pastimes to keep amused and ... oh, bugger it: In short, if I want to watch two people I don't know engaging in intercourse, I don't have to look very far, and you, gentle reader, don't either. If you want to or not is totally up to you, as is your choice whether or not to settle down to enjoy Love Island. And yet I plead, avoid Love Island like herpes. Because, you see, at least with pornography in general you can give the participants a back story of your own choice, a diverse and enlightening set of traits, a sense of morale and purpose, goals, aims. That sort of old school jive."

John Thorp at Off The Telly, that's incredible.

Abduction of The Girl

Film Somewhere in my dissertation reading about narrative, I found a piece about Ridley Scott's film Alien, in which the writer found herself with the problem of having to talk about the film as an ensemble piece when her brain was retrospectively rewriting the text in hindsight with Ripley as the lead character. Effectively she was saying that even people new to the film with the weight of film history would not be able to watch it in the same way as an audience member when the film first came out.

I had much the same problem watching The Abduction Club because despite editing and plotting that favours the characters played by Alice Evans and Daniel Lapaine I spent much of the film mesmerised by The Girl In The Fireplace's Sophia Myles (and to a lesser extent following Matthew Rhys who has arguably become almost as recognisable in the intervening years). So whilst the Evans and Lapaine are giving perfectly good performances, part of my brain is wondering what the real lead actors are doing. Actually to be fair, Myles does steal most of her scenes and is as good as we've seen her since but again I'm not sure if that's just my brain retrospectively paying attention to what she was doing at the expense of everyone else.

The film is a perfectly good, fun romp in the style of Plunkett & Macleane without the smugness and appearance from anyone from Little Britain. The Abduction Club are a band of young men who kidnap possible wives and then try to convince them to marry overnight. On this occasion it all goes horribly wrong and the abductors, Lapaine and Rhys end up dashing for the countryside with the abductees Evans and Myles.

There's a pleasing straightness to the whole thing -- it just wants to be an adventure film, nothing more, bit of romance, bit of buckleswash, some traitory and tragedy. It's actually somewhat how I'd imagine a pure historical would be like in the new series. The landscapes are gorgeous too. It is predictable but I think it's reveling in cliches like the hassling of the peasants when the outlaws are on the run and the nailing up of the wanted poster.

If there are issues, it's that the editing sometimes gets in the way of the performances and timing and the geography of the countryside isn't all that well laid out considering its importance to the story. Plus there's a moment at the end were a character seems to appear from the clear air in the middle of a scene (again probably because of the editing).

After spending a day watching the twisty-turny non-ploting of Robert Altman's Short Cuts it was refreshing to see something with a proper beginning middle and end with Myles again demonstrating why she'll be the UK's next big thing. I think. Incidentally, the director, Stefan Schwartz once played the Knight Commander in Battlefield. Everyone in the entertainment world is probably connected with everyone else through Doctor Who.

Spilled

Law Starbucks customer sues over spilled coffee "The lawsuit claimed Hernandez suffered "severe and permanent injuries" from the coffee spill, the suit says, which have caused her "great pain and suffering, both physical and mental."

Centric

Elsewhere I've just posted a centric review of The Abduction Club here.

Super!?!

Film "This is a glum, lackluster movie in which even the big effects sequences seem dutiful instead of exhilarating. The newsroom of the Daily Planet, filled with eccentricity and life in the earlier movies, now seems populated by corporate drones. Jimmy Olsen, the copy boy, such a brash kid, seems tamed and clueless. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has lost her dash and pizzazz, and her fiance, Richard White (James Marsden), regards her like a deer caught in the headlights. Even the editor, Perry White (Frank Langella), comes across less like a curmudgeon, more like an efficient manager." -- Ebert slams Superman Returns.

Horrifyingly not seen this yet with work prevailing against me. Is Ebert right? Either way, get well soon Rog.

Worry

Psychology "Your MO for handling something that concerns you is to gather as much information about it as you can. It's a sensible strategy ... but don't be too quick to pat yourself on the back. The value of your fact-finding mission depends a lot on the kind of information you seek out. If you're worried about flying and then Google "plane crashes," you'll get dozens of results about terrible accidents, says Leahy. "But what if you Googled 'safe landings'?" he asks. "What would you find then?" It's called confirmation bias: wanting to prove your fear is real and then finding information that confirms it. No matter what your concern (the likelihood of getting the West Nile virus, the dangers of day-care centers, etc.), get into the habit of asking yourself, "Am I collecting useful information, or am I just confirming my fear?" -- Molly Lyons for Redbook

I like to think that I don't worry as much as I once did. Actually I have a worry lifecycle -- I go from abject panic to the realisation that actually if I think about it hard enough it'll actually turn out ok. In other words I don't have to hand my dissertation in for another seven weeks...

Oh my god. Well your website's really, really good.

Film Awalt from SpielbergFilm finally gets to interview his hero -- who then tells him how much he loves his website. I'm surprised he didn't faint and actually managed to draw out some titbits about Indy IV, Jurrasic Park IV and his other new project [via].

Handy

Time Making a Watch by Hand. [via]

Red

Film Just to let the interested know that what in my (mostly) humble opinion is one of the best films about music, The Red Violin is playing in the middle of the night at 3am on Channel 4 tonight. The Guardian's tv listing might describe it a 'patchy', but they would be wrong.

Pick of the pocket

Film This relatively old Slate article has been knocking around my favourites for a while. It's a bunch of filmmakers talking about those films that they've watched the most. I'm wondering how many of these are true. Has Paul Schrader really seen Besson's Pickpocket more than any other film? In the spirit here are the five films I've somehow seen more than any other. In decending order. Not including Star Wars or Lost In Translation. Funny how some of these aren't on my favourite film list.

Adventures In Babysitting

When I was at school and a teenager I watched this as though it was the only film ever made. I think it became a habit. I've probably seen it about fifty times and in fact I've probably seen it more than Star Wars. Certainly I can quote more scenes from this film that anything else. It's a very wierd phenomina. I mean it's not exactly artless and I'd go so far as to call it teen-noir. But really I should not be able to do this fifteen years later ...

"You've got to be kidding me."
"Watch you're mouth."
"Watch my mouth, you've gotta be kidding me. What if I fall."
"I won't let you fall."
"Thanks Sarah."

... note that I wasn't even watching the theatrical release of the film but a cleaned up tv version with some of the worst, wrong voiced dubbing seen this side of the legendary BBC version of Beverly Hills Cop. I now have the film on dvd. I've watched it once in about five years ...

When Harry Met Sally

This is my comfort film. When I'm feeling really down I'll watch this and pretend I'm living in New York. I haven't oddly enough had to see it for a few years. I think I'm phobic now that I've reached the same age as the main characters. I have never made a woman meiow.

All The President's Men

Now you're getting into the road map of my brain. It's simply a perfect screenplay, impeccibly directed and performed. So what if sections of it didn't happen and the story ends half way through. I like to think that there's a bit of Woodstein in all of us.

In The Bleak Midwinter

Every christmas since the mid-90s. It's a ritual now, but an important one. Good message about going for your dreams even when they seem horribly unrealistic and unimportant. Probably going to be really good thing to remember at the start of September when I re-enter the real world again in my usual directionless way.

Love and Other Catastrophies

I think some of us would like to say -- 'Oh yes I've seen Wild Strawberries a hundred times, Bergman's my hero' -- and we do, but often we'd be lying. In the end film becomes the thing that comforts some of us and is our touchstone but also it reflects out personality. It's also like a conversation and it's who you'd like to end up talking to at the end of the day.

Jack's back (and front)

TV Excellent transcript of a Q&A with John Barrowman in which he says he can't talk too much about Torchwood and whatnot then somehow manages to reveal some very telling things. There is the odd spoiler depending on what you consider a spoiler to be. [via]

I'm bound to call this post 'Happy Gilmore'

I'm afraid you're pretty much being ignored again this evening because a new love has entered my life.

I've discovered The Gilmore Girls.

I know. It's only taken about six years to try it, but after getting advice from people whose advice I tend to agree (thanks Keris) I waited patiently for the rental dvds to start flowing.

The premise about the relationship between this single mother and her daughter -- the daughter having reached the age the mother was when she gave birth. They live in a small town. The daughter goes through her angsty problems whilst her mom is the manager of a hotel and has her own problems dealing with her own mother. Sounds really sappy doesn't it. I thought so too which is why it's taken me this long to indulge.

I was hooked after the second minute of the first episode.

A woman, who we later discover has the brilliant name Lorelai Gilmore, walks across the street and on the soundtrack is There She Goes by The Las plays.

Ok I think. Already losing points for using a very overused (but great) pop song in a very, very cliched manner. This isn't a good start.

The woman walks into a coffee shop and approaches the counter. The barista won't serve her coffee. He's cutting her off. She pleads with him and eventually he relents. Somewhere in there I realise that it's being played as though she's a junkie and he's her dealer.

Then I remember that one of the few things that the really cloth headed producers (and Sixpence None The Richer when the covered the song) who use the song never understood is that There She Goes by The Las is reputed to be about heroin. 'The racing through my veins' lyric being a dead giveaway. This show is intertextual. It selects music and then plays a scene based on the audience being able to understand a really, really zetgeisty pop culture references.

Then the real dialogue begins between the woman and her daughter and it's funny. But not in a Friendsian punchliny kind of way (wait for the joke) but in quite a natural, yet smart way. I'll say it again. It's really, really funny. This is one of those occasions when the premise of a show and its potential plotlines are transcended by the script, the performances, the direction, the editing and the production. It doesn't treat the audience like idiots, yet manages to be accessible. Just look at this mile long memorable quotes page at the imdb.

It feels authentic. It has realism. People pay for taxis. They have snappy arguments that don't mean anything in the long term. People have to catch a bus to get places. But there's a wierd undercurrent of darkness too I feel. Something that isn't being said. It's Capraesque that way. Everything seems sweetness and light but ...

It's set in a Bedford Fallsian town and you really get the sense of a community. One of the (very) few problems I always had with Dawson's Creek was that you never got a sense that there was anyone living in the place outside the main cast. Stars Hollow is teeming with people, people saying hello to each other even if (and this is important) they're not a massively important element of the plot of the week).

I'm currently on episode seven of the first season which was made in 2000 -- there's something comforting in knowing that I have six seasons worth to catch up on. It's the kind of show you'd imagine would be cancelled for being too good. Does it continue to be fabulous? I hope so because both Rebecca Kirshner and Jane Espenson, both Buffy alumni are writing for the show in what will for me be a few years.

Dark clouds on the reviews I've skimmed suggest that it goes a bit wonkey when Rory goes to college -- which if they actually split up the central pairing with her mother to accomplish I can see -- it always kills every show stone dead when the central characters are split up -- and the original creators have gone for the sixth season, something that The West Wing never recovered from.

But for now I'll love. I mean any show with dialogue that likens the fact that the mother hasn't told the daughter that she might be dating her teacher to the Iran-Contra Affair has got to be worth staying with. Best get back to it.

Behind Bars

TV "But, I post here not to lambast this aspect of the show, or say all that much about it, really. Instead, I just want to record the fact that on this edition, all hell suddenly broke loose when a prisoner assaulted a guard. As alarms rang out, Nick and Nadia clearly wished they could be anywhere else, but pressed on regardless with their cheery links to camera." -- Graham on a current daytime tv classic.

Like I ...

Music A brief interview with the Violent Femmes including:

'Q: What was more thrilling: Seeing Claire Danes dance to "Blister in the Sun" on "My So-Called Life" or hearing that song in the John Cusack movie "Grosse Point Blank?"

A: My biggest thrill was hearing Leonard Nimoy sing "Good Feeling" in "Star Trek 3." '

'Let me go oooout ....'

Synchronicity

Life At the beginning of February I made an offer here for anyone who'd like a personalised blog entry posted to them to send me their address and a subject for me to write about. In the end I recieved two requests, from Annette (which you can read about here) and Alex who asked me about the BBC Design quiz and what I would have selected. I eventually got around to posting both and that was that. Unless someone else would like one.

A couple of weeks ago I was travelling home from Manchester one night and as we passed through the new Garston South Park (Way) station I caught the eye of the random commuter sitting opposite me and then verbalised what we were both thinking -- that it was wierd that a main line train didn't stop at this brand spanking new station serving the airport and we agreed that it seemed really desolate and unwelcoming. We chatted all the way back to Liverpool and did my usual and talked about my course and films and my dissertation. I'm not too much of a bore I don't think.

Last night I received an email from Alex thanking me for the letter, apologising for being slow in replying and saying some nice things which I agreed with about the clarity of the London tube map. Then she said ... "By the way I think I met you. I was on a train returning from Stockport, I think you sat opposite me and we spoke about the new but desolate South Parkway station. Was that you?"

I stepped away from the keyboard, I screamed and I ran away to tell someone.

As the narrator says in Magnolia:

'There are stories of coincidence and chance, and intersections and strange things told, and which is which and who only knows? And we generally say, "Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it." Someone's so-and-so met someone else's so-and-so and so on. And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." '

Ain't that the truth?

Edge of Outside

Film I don't think there's anything more exciting than discovering a great film that you'd never heard of but which can change your expectations of what is possible in celluloid. In TCM's excellent new documentary, Edge of Outside, director Darren Aronofsky describes the process of finding Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It after the showing of a Rocky film he wanted to attend had sold out and realising that there was another way of making film with a different aesthetic leading to his own production of the ambitious Pi. This new documentary that surveys the independent spirit over the past century is replete with such stories as filmmakers repay the debt they have to their antecedants.

All of the major independents are covered (Cassavettes, Corman, Welles) but cleverly the definition is widened to include directors who have worked within the studio system but have still been able to keep their independence. Alfred Hitchock for example only shot and printed the footage that he knew he'd want in the film so that when it reached post-production the editor was left with few choices. Martin Scorsese acknowledges Sam Fuller as another example of a maverick working in the studio system and there is a surprising moment in which similar shots from both directors films are intercut to demonstrate the influence Fuller had on the look of Scorsese's films. The documentary is rich with images as the often jerky look of an independent motion picture, with not a camera track or crane available is revealed; it's a shame that none of the many clips are captioned to show which films they're from, although this may have been an artistic choice to allow the cinematography some room to breath.

The programme is particular good in describing the compromises that independent film makers have to make to get their vision on screen on a tiny budget - Stanley Tucci noting how the same five or six cars tend to appear in ever street scene of his own low budget period drama hiding contemporary features. Good archive interview footage too of Sam Fuller and particularly Orson Welles who looks like he could charm money out of anyone - as is revealed this wasn't the case as his producer described how he'd be very close to a deal only to have the rug pulled out when Welles took a dislike to possible financier. A longer documentary might have been able to give more space to international cinema although it does quite rightly list the Italian neo-realists and the French New Wave; understandably auteur theory is mentioned briefly but without the jargon - the importance of the director's vision being paramount in the independent scene.

It's probably really difficult to decide what needs to be left into such a short survey and the director Shannon Davies has quite rightly decided to concentrate on those directors whose work is being featured in the month long season which is appearing on the channel, covering only briefly those subjects such as the new Hollywood directors of the seventies which have been served in documentaries elsewhere. That section does provide one of the best quotes of the programme which also seems like an apt description of the whole piece. From Bonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn, on the short period when the studios were literally throwing money at any twenty-something with long hair to make features:

'Didn't last but it was fun!'

Edge of Outside is on Turner Classic Movies in the US on the 19th July and a season of films continues every Wednesday night throughout July. Full listing of movies and more details available here.

It's a godawful small affair

Quiz! Keris suggests a cunning meme or quiz which should stand in well tonight in the absense of inspiration anything exciting happening my life (spent the day dissertation writing -- well I suppose there are degrees of excitement). Here goes:

So what you do is you put your iPod (or whatever) on shuffle and write down the first line of the first 25 songs that come up ("no repeat artists, no foreign muck, no songs where the title is in the first line, and nothing that even you with the title in front of you have no clue what it is" - Marie). Then you put it on your blog and everybody has to identify the songs and artists, and you post the answers as people get them. Or rather no one bothers to guess and in a couple of weeks I post the answers myself and go off in a huff.

Well, here are thirty. Some of them are easypeasy and some not so. Given that WinAmp had almost my entire music collection to play with it's surprisingly Sunday newspaper freebee compilation friendly although there are still some truly ecclectic choices ...

(1) It's a godawful small affair David Bowie - Life On Mars Monkey & Poly_Gianniba magic.

(2) Love to your mother, your brother, I kept thinking of her

(3) You don't know, when love is

(4) Hey sister, go sister, soul sister, go sister All Saints -- Lady Marmalade I'm not at all embarassed to say. Another one for & Poly_Gianniba and the Monkey.

(5) Genius to fall to asleep

(6) Well, you got me shaking through my head to the bottom of my toes

(7) What am I to you?

(8) Even on a day like, when calling on the phone

(9) There is nothing that

(10) Do you have the time?

(11) Say Goodnight, not goodbye, you will never leave my heart behind

(12) I never jumped in and rescued you but I wanted to

(13) Just you, just me, let's find a cozy spot where no one can see

(14) If, if you choose, that we will always loose Sail this ship alone - The Beautiful South -- spotted by Adrian.

(15) Ghost's speaking out from under the stairway, calling your name that's lighter than air

(16) I recommend getting your heart trampled on to anyone It is Alanis, Rasputin, You Learn.

(17) First I was afraid I was petrified I Will Survive - I'm guessing Gloria Gaynor Another one from Adrian.

(18) Everyone around the world will find themselves

(19) Mick came home late last night

(20) It's your thing, do what you wanna do The Isley Brothers -- It's Your Thing Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey!

(21) I can't help feeling they've made a fool of me rather

(22) In the shade of every moment, I played

(23) Why you trying to second guess me?

(24) God is a man

(25) Little field mice living under the house Eels -- Flyswatter. Ra, ra Rasputin!

(26) Sometimes it's hard to make things clear

(27) Leave my lying here because I don't wanna go

(28) I'm waiting for a friend to help me off the ground

(29) When you look at me tell me what you see

(30) Are we on? We're recording now?

... remember no googling -- it's just not fun that way. Some will be bleeding obvious, although you wouldn't believe how many I had to disqualify on the grounds that I couldn't understand the lyric. Gosh, I'm getting old.