Wong Kar Wei is a director I’ve heard much about, and on seeing Ashes of Time it’s clear why. Visually, this is like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Everything is shot through this dreamy bright haze, like a badass martial arts halluconegenic trip in the desert. Details like sweat, dirt and loose hair on a person’s face are bought to the foreground, amidst backgrounds of bright colours, scorching deserts and dancing shadows. It’s a shame then, that for all it’s amazing visuals, the rest of the film is so lacking.

The film is about a retired depressed swordsman who works as a middle man for other men-for-hire. He was once in love with a woman who ended up marrying his brother, and he encounters various swordsmen coming to him for work, and that’s it regarding the plot. I don’t mind films with small plots that make little sense. I don’t mind stories that are meandering and formless, if there’s a point to it. But often in Ashes of Time, it just didn’t feel like there was a point to any of it. Sure it looked cool, there were some great lines in the script, but ultimately it all felt a little empty. Without much interest in the film’s characters, all I had were the visuals. They were great, and their constant invention kept the film entertaining enough, but I never found myself emotionally invested in the film. Maybe I’m not cinematically educated enough to understand what Wong Kar Wei was trying to do, but who makes films for the cinematically educated? At times it even felt like he was showing off his camera trickery rather than using it as a way of furthering the story.

And the thing is, there was a thimble of a story buried here. It looked like a good idea too, a tale of love lost and longing that was genuinely interesting whenever Wong Kar Wei attempted to show it us, he just didn’t show it to us all that much. Rather than turn me off Wong Kar Wei, Ashes of Time has only served to make me want to watch another of his films. I understand that Ashes of Time is generally thought of as far from his best, but if any of his other films combine the gorgeous visual style with something approaching a interesting world filled with interesting people, I will gladly watch it. Ashes of Time is pretty much all style and no substance. Luckily, the style is just enough to tide it over but even so, I’d rather style and substance.

•  30 May 2012

Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas have been two of my favourite games of the past few years. The generally bleak visual styles of those two games are part of what makes them so good, the sense of constantly finding yourself trawling through long-abandoned houses looking for supplies, the long forgotten skeletons and the desperation combined to make a pretty unique place for a game. My first reaction upon starting The Road was “That reminds me, I need to play Fallout again”. The visual style is very very similar, especially to Fallout 3. I was perfectly happy with that. I don’t mind endlessly bleak desolate landscapes, after all I live in Wales. But beyond the drab, bleak visuals which I enjoyed so much I thought The Road was quite lacking. It was just a fairly boring film.

I’ve no doubt John Hillcoat is a talented director. A part of it is my endless Nick Cave fanboyism, but The Proposition was a very good film. It was well written (dur, Nick Cave), and it was also well directed with strong performances and good cinematography. Now while The Road also has strong performances and the endlessly bleak cinematography, it doesn’t appear to have much in the way of being being well written. I’ve never read any of Cormac McCarthy’s novels, so I can’t speak for the novel, but the screenplay here seems to lack a focused development. The Man and The Boy are on The Road together travelling south, trying to survive against bandits and cannibals.  But while Viggo Mortensen does put in a very good lead performance here as he usually does, and the kid actor Kodi Smit-McPhee is also very good, their characters don’t seem to really develop, we don’t pick up any new dimensions in their behaviour after the first 30 minutes or so. In a film with a slow pacing like this, a film which is clearly based on the central characters, a lack of development is pretty harmful. With no added dimensions to the characters over time, there’s not much to watch. They encounter other travellers, some bad, some good, and these sections are the most interesting. We get to see how they react to other people. The two best scenes in the film are when they meet Robert Duvall’s Old Man, and when they encounter Omar. As a massive Wire fanboy it’s great to see Omar anywhere, although he’s much more terrified and desperate here than he was, but even in his five-minute cameo Michael K. Williams makes a great impact on the screen and in the film.

But once these side characters leave the stage, we’re left with The Boy and The Man again. Their actions and emotions remain very much the same, hell I swear I even heard the exact same lines of dialogue between the two once or twice. The scenes with other characters are interesting because we get to see another side of these two people. Not only do we not know whether these fellow travellers are truly good or bad, hence an added layer of danger, but the seperate reactions of father and son are interesting. Father is always cautious, protective and careful, and The Boy is kind, gentle and helpful, to the point of being overly naive and trusting. This dynamic is more or less lost in the scenes with the two on their own, leaving us with a fairly boring film for the majority of the running time.

Effectively, The Road could have been a lot better. It’s got a good central premise, strong acting from all the cast, Omar, and stark, memorable, bleak landscape. But the screenplay and eventual characterization lets it down and leaves it to become a fairly boring film. I’m definitely looking forward to John Hillcoat’s next film, as it sees the return of Nick Cave on screenplay duty. Nick Cave collaborated on the pretty solid soundtrack here, but seeing as his writing in The Proposition was so strong, I’m excited to see what their collaboration will come up with next. The Road will likely be forgotten fairly quickly, certainly by me and I certainly won’t be watching it again anytime soon.

•  29 May 2012

Jeff Bridges’ Bad Blake is basically every country cliche rolled into one. He’s the epitome of grizzled weary alcoholic loser. And he’s also by far and away the best thing about this film. His performance is so natural and believable that you completely believe that Bad Blake exists somewhere in the arse end of America. Crazy Heart is a bit cliche overall. The visual style is very much your regular widescreen Americana with a nice sweet Hollywood sheen, although it does provide us with some nice vistas and scenery. The plotlines and story arcs are all fairly obvious from the start. Our grizzled alcoholic is a bit of a loser, but a nice guy at heart. He meets a sweet girl in a bar, they fall in love and times are good for a while but he’s constantly on the edge. Eventually he fucks up big time, and it’s at this point he turns himself around. We’ve seen it a million times before, and Crazy Heart doesn’t improve on the formula, but it does have two very simple strong points. Jeff Bridges + good music.

Seriously, I can’t state enough how good Jeff Bridges is here. He’s always been one of the most likeable actors around, he’s got a great beardy heavy presence, and a great drawl of an accent. In this case, it turns out he’s got a very good singing voice as well. The musical numbers in Crazy Heart are pretty great, thanks to the excellent work of T Bone Burnett. Sure, if you don’t like country you won’t like the music and probably neither the film, but if you don’t like country you’re also probably missing a big chunk of your soul. While Bad Blake’s progress as a character is pretty obvious over the course of this film, Jeff Bridges’ performance elevates it to something much more interesting. In Bad Blake we have a man who has long been put out to pasture, a man with no future or career and Jeff Bridges makes him completely enthralling and great to watch. The problem comes with the rest of the cast. Robert Duvall has no problem fitting into almost any role, and he’s as good as you’d expect him to be. Maggie Gyllenhaal however, is a complete non-entity, both her presence and her character. I was interested in what Bad Blake felt about her, but I was never interested in her or what she thought. And lastly, while Colin Farrell is a good actor, he is hilariously awfully miscast here. He sports a horrific haircut and horrific taste in fashion, on top of being completely unconvincing, particularly accent wise. Not to mention the fact that I spent most of his screentime laughing at the fact that Colin Farrell was cast as a big-selling country superstar. That said, unintentional hilarity is always a good thing.

While the film is a bit obvious and Hollywood as well as being Oscar bait, with some very clear flaws in it’s casting and direction, it does have a fairly good script. There are some lines which would have been positively corny coming out of anyone else’s mouth, but Jeff Bridges makes them seem genuine and truthful. If anything, Jeff Bridges is the only reason I care about this film at all. Thanks to him, Crazy Heart is enjoyable and watchable. It is perhaps middle of the road filmmaking, but it’s told by people who care enough about the material to put the effort in. It’s never going to be a cinematic masterpiece, but it is a good way to spend 2 hours, and you could do a hell of a lot worse.

•  28 May 2012

I have no idea what I’ve just watched, but it was a Werner Herzog film, so it must be good. Herzog has a unique ability unlike any other director, and this ability is the very thing that makes him probably my favourite director of all time (only Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman are on his level in my opinion). He has this unique way of putting me under a spell and hypnotising me. Maybe I’m like one of Herzog’s chickens, but I often find myself being lost in his films no matter what they are. Fata Morgana is a very strange, experimental film that is really not your average watch. Yet I found myself deep inside the film, dreaming, thinking, contemplating. Maybe not always about the film itself, but no matter. Fata Morgana takes me to a strange place within in my own mind.

There’s not much to this film. It’s a series of shots of various parts of the Saharan desert. There’s awe-inspiring sand dunes that don’t even look real. There’s dead rotting cattle. There’s a sunburnt German showing us a monitor lizard. There’s ancient civilisations and ruined modern machinery strewn about. It’s set to soundtrack of classical music, local African music and three Leonard Cohen songs. There’s also a strange local piano and drums duo who only know one song. And all this is set to a reading of the Mayan creation myth, from creation, to paradise to the golden age. Not your average film at all, but what of Herzog’s oeuvre is?

It’s hypnotic. You have to sit back and let the images and music wash over you. Don’t think about the film as such, it’s purpose is to wander around the desert, charting the classic Herzogian theme of man vs nature. There’s airplane debris scattered around and upturned cars. The native people are there ekeing out a survival, but the vastness of the desert is constantly looming. The film doesn’t feel like a documentary either. It’s some sort of hypnotic blur of images. Fata Morgana is a little dull at times, and it feels a lot longer than the mere 80 or so minutes it lasts, but it serves a purpose. This is effectively ambient filmmaking. It’s not easy to love, but I’m a Herzog fanboy so I immediately like it a whole lot more than I normally would. I mean, if you stuck Herzog’s name on a Hollywood blockbuster, I’d go and watch it (it was called Rescue Dawn).

•  27 May 2012

“It would reputedly lead to his being given “the Most Hateful Student Award” by teachers at Goldsmith’s College in London after performing a La Monte Young piece for piano with his elbows, then developing another composition of his own that required screaming at a plant until it died.”

— On John Cale (via brokennecksfeatherweights)

(Source: markmordue.com, via brokennecksfeatherweights)

•  27 May 2012

After playing a major part in the noise experiments of the first two Velvet Underground albums, and in Nico’s The Marble Index, surely one of the iciest, coldest and strangest albums to eve be made, John Cale suddenly started mellowing out. Funnily enough Lou Reed did the same thing with The Velvet Underground and Loaded. Why the hell were they making such noisy music together, and then buggering off to make equally sweet pop tunes? Why were they both so fucking good at doing both? Paris 1919 is a very hard album to describe, it seems to occupy and do many things at the same time. On first listen, it’s an album of gorgeous half-obscured melodies, a precursor for Dream Pop. But a notion like that just keeps slipping away whenever I try to reach for it.

I mean yeah, it is dreamy and sweet. A lot of the tracks seem to be wrapped in a cocoon of warmth. Yet beneath the surface it’s much colder. The lyrics constantly make references to battles and murders and atrocities, without ever talking about them directly. It’s a distinctly European album. It’s a world of old cities, cobbled streets and green fields, but places that have seen centuries of conflict. The album’s penultimate track, Half Past France describes a German soldiers’ travels in France in WW2. My imagination isn’t clear enough to coherently interpret the other tracks, but they all encourage the same images for me. And all this is hidden beneath a pop sheen. There’s some stunning songwriting going on here. Andalucia, Hanky Panky Nohow and Child’s Christmas in Wales all have stunning melodies, sung in John Cale’s dry transatlantic voice. In fact, seeing as John Cale is far from the most technically capable singer, it’s amazing that he’s written such brilliant melodies that also fit his voice so well. He’s not straining for notes or attempting things he cannot do. It’s something that so many singers seem incapable of understanding (*coughMorrisseycough*)

His classical training comes through as well, especially on the title track, an absolute masterpiece of pop music with classical undertones. That seemingly mocking chorus gives way to a peaceful interlude, and then trips back into the stabbing strings and mild paranoia of the verses. I have no clue what the imagery is about, but it sounds great. But beyond the title track, there isn’t much use of classical instruments here. In fact, for an album which is often lauded as a baroque pop masterpiece, the majority of this is recorded with just bass, drums, guitar and keyboards. There are touches of strings here and there, but most of this is just those four instruments, and somehow they create a musical soundscape that almost never sounds like it’s that simple setup. In my head, Half Past France plays as an orchestral symphony and Andalucia is a chamber piece. John Cale manages to make me forget what this album actually is and I remember it as something entirely different. But when I go back to it, it’s always every bit as good. Only two songs feel out of place here. Macbeth has dated horribly, and feels like an attempt to rock it up by any bland 70s soft rock atrocity. Graham Greene has fared better, and also works to break up the album by giving it a shift in sound. However it comes off like some sort of jarring cod-reggae which doesn’t quite work.

But frankly, Paris 1919 is an absolute masterpiece. The first four tracks are flawless. The title track and Half Past France create entire fictional worlds of their own in 3 or 4 minutes. The final track is a wonderful anticlimax, a short, whispered, cold piece that allows the rest of the album to leave an impression. Excellent.

•  27 May 2012

I thought Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura was one of THE most boring films I’d ever seen. It was way too long, and it featured nasty, rich, bourgeois characters who didn’t even have the good decency to be nasty in an interesting way. They were boring and uninteresting people. However, I was prepared to give Antonioni another chance, and I did with Red Desert. Frankly I’m extremely happy I did. It takes L’Avventura’s only real positive, absolutely stunning visuals, and takes the template of cynical, well-off people and creates a much more interesting world out of it, a world of ugly factories, waste and smoke, and it takes us into a strange, scary world inside Monica Vitti’s head.

Again much like in L’Avventura, not much happens plotwise. Red Desert is more of a character study, a look inside a person’s mind to see what you can find. Guiliana is a strange, eccentric woman, married to a factory owner. She lives a well-off life, but her mind seems to be in other places. She’d rather spend time in her unfinished shop, where she doesn’t even know what she’s going to sell yet, and sometimes she wanders around town as if in a daze. Monica Vitti’s portrayal of her is brilliant. She comes across as someone who is not on this world and doesn’t wish to be, but still seems incredibly frustrated by the behaviour of those in the real world. The real world she and her family inhabit also seems to be somewhat surreal. It’s positively ugly, an absolute fucking industrial dump with no culture, no style and no history. It’s the complete opposite of the Italy many of us have in our minds, an Italy that is even propagated in other Italian films. L’Avventura was set amongst Mediterranean islands and seaside resorts. Even Fellini’s more neo-realist stuff is set amongst places that have a certain old-world charm. This place has no charm. It’s ugly and nasty.

And yet, from this ugly Industrialist wasteland, comes a movie with a visual style that’s already imprinted itself heavily on my mind. There’s something ethereal about this place. Big ships are constantly looming through the fog, smoke pipes itself relentlessly out of the factories and the water looks alien. This place feels very much a dream somehow. Monica Vitti’s mental state and this town are very much interchangeable. Everything jars and looms. Nothing feels or looks like your friend. Indeed, Monica Vitti’s character ends up seemingly being betrayed by everyone she knows, although only in her eyes. A minor occurrence such as her son faking an illness to get out school is seen as a major betrayal for her. It’s the sign of a mind fraught with insecurities and worries. She finds herself attracted to Richard Harris (who wouldn’t eh?), but the relationship is sort of half-stalled and unspoken. He clearly desires her, but she’s got many worries of her own.

There’s a crucial scene in the middle of the film. The cast have a small dinner party in a small cabin on the coast. It’s surrounded by fog and constructed out of thin wood. Frankly it’s a prime setting for a slasher flick, but here the characters instead begin to talk about sex. The other characters flirt and both Monica Vitti and Richard Harris take part with a somewhat bemused look on their faces. Neither looks like they ought to be there, in a tiny red bedroom in the corner of the cabin, hemmed in with 6 people. That seems to be one of the film’s biggest themes. What the hell are we doing here? Why does this ugly place exits? What’s the point of all this? The film is a restrained sigh of alienation and despair, and it is great.

Red Desert is not a fun film, nor is it fast-paced. There are sections of the film where I was reminded of L’Avventura’s long stretches of utter emptiness and boredom, and it’s probably keeping Red Desert from being a genuine classic by my standards. But the majority of the film is a brilliant expression of a woman lost within her mind, and isolated and alienated from the people around her.

•  26 May 2012

And then noticed it had the Apple logo on the bottom right corner.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

•  26 May 2012

queerhairyvag:

Cant decide whether to take your jobs 

or stay on the dole

or simultaneously do both somehow

(via thisisnotafrica)

•  26 May 2012

Whether you like Che the film is largely dependent on your political views. If you feel that Che Guevara was a terrorist and a murderer, you will almost definitely not like this film. It comes across as a little bit biased in favour of Che, what with him constantly helping out poor peasants, giving ideological speeches to men and so on. Crucially though, that heroic visage is shown to work in the first half of the film, and then we see it entirely fall apart in the second part. If you are like me, and very much someone with very strong socialist views (hell, I have no problem with a bit of violent revolution myself - in the right places for the right cause), you will probably be at least positive towards this film. I thought Che was a fairly good film that fell apart in places but had more than enough good points to make it work.

The biggest strength is Benicio Del Toro’s pretty stunning transformation into Che Guevara. A role like that was always going to be difficult. The most important factor is probably screen presence. Che Guevara is a complete icon, a massive towering figurehead for communism or for capitalistic pilfering thanks to that goddamn photo. On film, you need a charismatic presence to portray Che. Benicio Del Toro becomes such a strong towering figure himself, hidden behind hair and beard and determined eyes. It’s a powerful performance, the big thing keeping the whole film together even in it’s weaker moments.

Seeing as the film is over 4 hours long in it’s entirety, it helpfully splits itself into two parts which you can watch seperately. Part One deals with the Cuban Revolution, Part Two deals with the failed Bolivian Revolution. The first part is genuinely pretty great. It is long on it’s own, but it speeds by fairly quickly. The battle scenes are strong, showing smaller individual fights in a city-wide battle, giving you the sense of something bigger happening, while coherently and economically explaining all the seperate strands of a battle. Importantly this is done without any of shaky camera “tricks” so many idiots seem to put into their films. The cinematography is pretty strong and the tropical jungle looks great. Importantly though, the first part is broken up by scenes of Che’s visit to New York in 1964, filmed in black and white. It breaks up the Cuban travels, allowing us to follow another strand of Che’s story without one or the other getting boring. This is one of the biggest problems in the second half. The second half feels long on it’s own. It has nothing to break it up, no extra scenes and it’s often purely narrative. Che goes to the Bolivian jungle, starts war against government, runs around jungle in circles. There’s no extra scenes of interest. Che doesn’t develop from the first part as a person or a figurehead, and it makes the second half a complete drag. You’re effectively waiting for Che Guevara to be captured and killed.

And perhaps Steven Soderbergh’s directing here isn’t particularly good either. I like Soderbergh and I’ve seen plenty of his films which I’ve liked, but I’ve also seen him produce utter garbage. His style just seems a bit monotonous and simplistic to handle a four-hour epic. There’s not enough invention here on his end, it often feels like he is more or less just shooting a script. While the cinematography is pretty good, the film doesn’t have a distinct visual style nor does it draw you into Che’s world. The film does a good job of detailing Che’s dealings with other people, but we never really understand how other people dealt with Che. Maybe that’s the point, this is a figurehead, a man transformed into a living ideal. He commands people and influences them, not the other way round. Regardless, many of the supporting characters are completely uninteresting and devoid of character. There is just Che and only Che. If anything, even as a die-hard Socialist I find that a little uncomfortable.

Overall, this is a decent film. The first half is pretty fun and entertaining, although the second half is a drag. Again, a large part of this film depends on what you think of Che Guevara the man. It’s pretty propagandistic. In my opinion that’s perfectly okay, because I already Che Guevara the man, and I am a socialist. It’s when the right start mythologising their own butchers that I will start to complain.

•  25 May 2012