The best of a bad bunch, or yet more proof that I hate fun

Some years ago I was accused of hating fun because I didn't like Pirates of the Caribbean.
I have all sorts of reasons for hating Pirates of the Caribbean, which we can explore fully at a later date if you like, but during this particular argument I was complaining about the sword fighting and how, because of the all the jump cuts and swishy modern editing, you couldn't actually see the fight skills (I suspect this is because there weren't any, but that is because I hate fun). I found this annoying.
This morning, in my own home, I was accused of hating fun again, because I objected to one thing about this otherwise high-quality scene from the new Disney Pixar movie Brave:

The thing I don't like is that all of the guys who are competing for Brave's hand are undesirable. It doesn't require much of a wilful streak not to want to become betrothed to one of these losers. If any of them were even slightly attractive, then her actions would be more impressive. Are we supposed to side with her because she refuses to be shackled? Or are we just supposed to side with her because she refuses to be shackled to one of these eejits?
I know that you could argue that this is just how these guys look to Brave, and Mrmonkey argues that this is just an opportunity to introduce wacky little characters into the margins of the story to provide, you know, fun. But I'd have preferred it if even one of them was just bland, faceless, ordinary. Because otherwise, when she eventually does find love (which I'm not saying she necessarily does by the end of the film, but someday she will, because she's a character in a thing), he's going to be, what? The best of a bad lot? Not dreadful? That's hardly a recommendation, is it?
The scene reminded me of one of my least favourite staple comedy scenes, the interview/dating montage where every one of the people under consideration is a total loser who you wouldn't want around you or your children or your reproductive areas under any circumstances. You know the ones I mean. They're there in Coming to America, Friends (when they're interviewing nannies and end up with Freddie Prinze Jr.), and many more I can't think of off the top of my head, but they're there. There's usually a goth girl who eats her hair and mumbles (dating, job interview, or nanny interview), someone who's a bit of a Nazi (nanny interview, possibly dating),  a comedy homosexual (nanny interview or dating), etc. etc.
It is only acceptable to include this parade of human detritus if you are then going to introduce a character who turns out to be the least worst option, like an Uncle Buck or maybe a St. Bernard dog, and japes ensue. If you follow up the goth/hilarious gay/possible Nazi combo with the person who ends up being the object of your protagonist's affections, then you've done it wrong, because you're basically saying "here you are, you've seen the worst humanity has to offer, now fall in love with the first normal person who comes along". That is hardly the romantic ideal. Surely you should be setting this person up as the best of a good lot? Surely you want them to be the pinnacle of human achievement, rather than simply average?
Shallow Grave, of course, turns this neatly on its head. I personally would have been very happy to share a flat with Cameron. He seemed like fun.
Also, you know, goths are often excellent with children. They just don't really come across very well in an interview setting, is all.

JDIFF roundup (or: The director's here, look like you're enjoying yourself)

In the end I only saw three films in this year's Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, but they were all worth it in their own ways, so it was a bit of a result.
Both mrmonkey and I were excited to see the new Whit Stillman film, Damsels in Distress, because I like Whit Stillman and he likes pretty ladies and we both like films that build a world slightly removed from reality but still recognisable as an internally consistent universe, with its own hierarchies and rules and idiosyncratic language.

The film opens with a standard gambit for a film featuring young women in an educational setting: an established group seeks out a newcomer and tries to change her to fit in with the group and to better fit in with the college as a whole. However, the established group turn out to be more than a little outside the mainstream themselves and have their own problems trying to deal with the manipulative and/or stupid males they're trying so hard to make sense of. The good news is, though, that the members of the group turn out to be genuinely well-meaning, if completely idiotic, and they really do want to help each other make their way in this small world in order to prepare themselves for making their way in the larger one outside. They make some bad choices, they are taken advantage of, they experience some triumphs, and on the whole you find yourself rooting for them, especially since many of the actors come from a particular set of television shows that feed so well into this kind of film: Parks & Recreation, 90210, Gilmore Girls, The OC, etc.
Even still, for a film that is just an hour and a half long, Damsels in Distress outstays its welcome. It's too whimsical, too slight, too insubstantial, with too little to say about anything to bear the weight of watching it in the cinema, never mind watching it in the cinema with the director sitting right over there, waiting for people to ask him questions about it. I just kept wondering what the point of it was. I'll probably love it when I see it again on television.
Stillman seemed like an affable enough guy, but either the interview was badly conducted or he was tired or people just didn't have a lot to ask him, because the Q&A session wasn't particularly interesting or illuminating.
(It didn't help that the cinema was packed and I was sitting beside a young woman who was there on a freebie who could not stop bouncing around in her seat for even five minutes. Bloody kids, grumble grumble.)

Another distinctive auteur showing his movie about young women trying to make their way in the world was Kenneth Lonergan, who was on hand to answer questions about his film, Margaret, which stars Anna Paquin as a teenager who is involved in a bus crash that kills a pedestrian. The film charts her attempts to deal with this event while she is negotiating the general life issues associated with someone growing up in New York after 9/11, attending a small private school on a half-scholarship, with parents who are too wrapped up in themselves to really notice what's happening in the lives of their children until the problems become too acute and noisy to ignore any longer.
At two and a half hours, this film is definitely longer than it needs to be, but it is so absorbing and beautiful that it not only gets away with it, but is probably worth a rewatch (and will be getting one as soon as I can get the DVD). Lonergan himself was an entertaining speaker, gracious in accepting praise, honest (or seemingly honest, anyway) and forthcoming about creative decisions, and funny.
Margaret has been pretty comprehensively discussed elsewhere on the Internet so I don't need to go into a lot more detail about it here: here's an article on Hitfix about the authenticity of its treatment of privileged high-school students, here's one from the Guardian about the studio allegedly trying to bury it, and here's a good interview with Lonergan from Movies.ie (the interviewer didn't like the movie one bit).
 The last movie I saw was Headhunters, mostly for research purposes, I will admit. This Norwegian thriller, directed by Morten Tyldum, starring a whole bunch of Norwegian people (and Nicolaj Coster-Waldau), and based on a book by Jo Nesbo, is a good time if you like fast-paced action interspersed with extremely crunchy violence.

The main character, Roger Brown, is a corporate headhunter who, in order to compensate for feelings of personal inadequacy and maintain a lavish lifestyle, steals expensive art works from wealthy clients. His wife introduces him to the mysterious and creepy Clas Greve, and while trying to steal an original Rubens from Greves's Oslo apartment, Brown discovers secrets about Greve, and these secrets don't lead anywhere good for anyone. There's a lot of running about in the Norwegian countryside, a fair amount of tension, menacing looks, nice suits, finger-breaking, and commentary on identity and self-perception.
Warning: contains canine peril.
Overall my experience of this year's JDIFF was reasonably positive, except that both the night-time films I went to started late, which is annoying when you've got to get the last bus home and you don't like standing around in big groups of people for long periods of time, and the website was just too hard to navigate. I couldn't find a search box on the home page, for example (but maybe I'm just thick).
Also, on behalf of people like Dave & Aoife, who've been supporting the festival for years, can I ask the organisers to either book a decent surprise movie or just give up? Hamlet 2, Greenberg, and This Must Be the Place? These are not good films and you shouldn't be charging people festival prices to see them.

Like French silent movies?

Thanks to Twitter pal Paul Duane (@punkyscudmonkey) for posting this. I'm parking it here to look at later, and also so that you can look at it later, should you so wish.

Ménilmontant (1926) was written, directed, produced, edited and co-photographed in Paris by Dimitri Kirsanoff. And it is, on any terms, a remarkable piece of writing, direction, production, editing and cinematography.

From  Notebook.

You could spend all day on Mubi. It's a fantastic time suck of a site.

A special treat for me: Margin Call and Shame at the Screen Cinema

Excitement abounds in Dublin artsy circles (alright, my Twitter stream, but that's got more people from Dublin's artsy circles in it than I've any right to) because the Lighthouse is reopening.
This is good news, of course, but I've never been a Lighthouse person. Even in its original home up on Abbey St., the Lighthouse was never my stomping ground. I've always been a Screen girl. Ever since it stopped being the Metropole and started being the home of first-run, mainly American, slightly left-of-centre movies, the Screen's been my spiritual home. I remember bunking in from She's Gotta Have It to Raising Arizona with my brother and his friends, and my brother almost having to be stuffed under the seat because he was laughing so much he was disturbing the other punters. I went there on a weekly basis in my second year of college because I had a rich friend who was prepared to pay for my ticket (and for a naggin of vodka to split between our small Cokes) just to have someone to go to the cinema with. We laughed a lot more at Talk Radio than I think you were supposed to.
Moving to the country and generally falling out of love with the city and chatty people in the cinema meant a parting of ways between me and the Screen for a while, until I started following them on Twitter and became a bit more organised about going to see things. At Halloween last year they ran a lovely print of Don't Look Now, and there was no yap at all during it. Result. I decided to make an effort to go to more films there in 2012.
So, after the slog of being ill over Christmas and New Year and constantly having to talk to people (even though those people were the ones I love most in all the world), I decided to treat myself last Friday and took myself off to the Screen to see Shame and Margin Call on their opening day. Perhaps not the obvious choice for a double bill, but they've more in common than you might think: both low-budget New York movies, both portraits of a short but pivotal period in the lives of the protagonists, both examining that moneyed lifestyle and frantic duck-paddling that goes on underneath it.

I don't have a whole lot of insight to add to the mountain of praise that has been heaped on Shame, but I would say this: you know the way that Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott think they're a great partnership? They have nothing on Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender. Fassbender seems to be able to do anything McQueen requires of him, and McQueen returns the favour by making Fassbender look like a work of art even when he's not behaving like one. It's not a perfect film, and I wouldn't go and see it with your mam if I was you, but it is both entertaining and artistic.
Margin Call is a bit more functional. It has a story to tell and it tells it. Some of the characterisation is a bit basic: this one loves his dog, this one has kids, this one is trying to give up smoking (this handing out of the identifying attributes always reminds me of the stories about the Magnificent Seven, how McQueen (the other one) would only relinquish top billing if he was given the rifle, or something), but that's a small quibble.
I've heard other reviewers complain that the top brass keep asking for things to be explained to them in simple terms--"as if you were speaking to a child, or a golden retriever," Jeremy Irons says at one point--because wouldn't these guys know the jargon? But of course, that was part of the problem. The younger guys, the Penn Badgeleys and Zach Quintos, came up with new algorithms and bundles that the people above them didn't understand, but they let the money ride on them anyway because hey, they were covered either way.

The limited number of sets, the fact that the action takes place across a single night, and the coded conversations between vaguely threatening, suited men, all combine to give the feeling of a David Mamet play, or something by Pinter. Do not, whatever you do, take someone to this movie who insists on knowing every single thing that's going on at all times, because the constant whisper of "what are they talking about?" will drive you mad. You don't need to know what they're talking about. Half of them don't know what they're talking about. What the film is trying to get across is that these are just people. They might not be particularly good people, but they're not particularly bad people either, and rather than hating them personally, you might want to think about changing the system that rewards their behaviour.  I'm not sure I believe that, but I'm prepared to accept that others do. Unsurprisingly, Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, and Jeremy Irons are all great in this movie. I wasn't even particularly surprised by how great Zach Quinto and Penn Badgeley were. Simon Baker, though, his performance kind of snuck up on me. I've always written him off as one of those pretty faces whose popularity I don't quite get, but he was really sly and hard and imposing in this. Well done, everyone.
(See how I didn't just talk about Paul Bettany? See? I am getting better.)
Also: did you know the Screen sells wine now? And that you can see a movie there for less than €7? Well, you can. And you should.

Broken Lines

It's almost more annoying to watch a film that could have been good, and has flashes of really good things in it, than to watch one that's just crap from start to finish. Because with a film that could have been good, you give it a lot more thought than it maybe deserves, and you see ways in which it could have been improved in order to make it the award-winning triumph its makers maybe hoped it would be instead of a little-seen labour of love that takes three years to get released.
The film concerns two couples: Jake & Zoe and Becca & Chester. The death of Jake's dad takes him back to Finsbury Park where he meets Becca (or B), who works in her cousin's cafe. They are two trapped and wounded people who seek solace in each other, but also use each other to punish their respective partners. It seems pretty simple. The problem is that the story is not remotely balanced. Paul Bettany, who plays Chester, admits as much in his interview on the DVD. He says that he was lucky in a way to be playing Chester, because Chester has the most interesting predicament. He used to be a boxer, but since he had his stroke he's become an agoraphobic and angry burden on B. She loves him, but he keeps pushing her away while simultaneously guilt-tripping her into remaining with him. It's strong stuff, competently acted by Doraly Rosa as B (who is ridiculously good-looking, as well), and as for PB, well...

Look, I know you know I like him. But honestly, really, I'm not kidding you, he is Gary Oldman good in this film. And I know a lot of that is because he's got the really juicy part. But god, he looks and sounds convincingly wounded and seedy and just finished.  The dialogue in the scenes between Chester and B is also believably natural in a low-key, repetitive-to-the-point-of-being-boring way.
By contrast, Jake's  predicament is that he is haunted by his family and his relationship with his parents in some way that's not really clear to me. Something to do with a traditional Jewish upbringing, I'm guessing, given that one of his first actions after attending his father's funeral is to go to a cafe, still wearing his yarmulke, and order a bacon sandwich. DO YOU SEE? There's also something about his mother having had an affair? The trouble is that this is all told rather than shown, and frankly not really all that interesting, even if his mother is Harriet Walter. Also he is trapped by Zoe in some way that's not very clear either. Is she too middle class? Not Jewish enough? I didn't get it. She seems nice, and I think I was expecting her part to be bigger because, hey, it's Olivia Williams, and why would you get Olivia Williams in if you weren't going to give her anything to do?
So, if it was me, I'd have shifted the centre of the story away from Jake & Zoe onto B & Chester, with some Jake on the side. I'd have expanded her family's roles (her aunt is Rita Tushingham, for god's sake), got rid of all of Jake's back story, thrown in a few fucking jokes just because there's only so much drear you can take, and bish bash bosh, job's a good 'un. A better one than this, anyway.
However, in case you think there's nothing to like about it if you don't rate Paul Bettany, it does at least make a nice antidote to Working Title England as depicted in movies like Notting Hill and, oh look, Wimbledon. This movie is like the anti-Wimbledon. 
It also captures pretty well that feeling you have when you walk around the bits of north London your friends live inand wonder who else lives in these nothing little houses and flats and what do they do with themselves all day? Who are the people who work in these anonymous local cafes and carry thin plastic bags around with them everywhere they go? Well, here are some of them. Happy now?

Breaking National Film Board of Canada News

Thanks to Queenie again for supplying the link to the National Film Board of Canada's free online archive. This is an absolute treasure trove of material, some of which will take you back to your childhood when gaps between programmes were filled, not with a tenor singing about car insurance, but with short films from around the world (where "the world" is Canada and Poland).
You can also pay to download many of these films, which I strongly urge you to do.
To get you started, here's The Big Snit.
Also, three recommendations from pal Jonathan (@jonzo1), an actual Canadian: The Log Driver's Waltz (which played on the telly every day when he was a kid), The Sweater (warning: contains comedy accent), and The Cat Came Back (which was nominated for an Oscar, and will certainly end up on the home page of Eoghan's My Cat is an Asshole blog, if he ever makes good on his threat to set that up.)

National Film Board of Canada news!

My sources (hi, Queenie!) tell me that the National Film Board of Canada is going to put its archive on the Internet for free for everyone to look at. This is very exciting news.

In celebration, here is my favourite cartoon in the whole world ever. It is from the National Film Board of Canada.

OMG! It's nearly time...

...for new Star Trek.

From trekmovie.com via the AV Club:

Tonight Paramount pulled off one of the coolest stunts in fan history. Promoted as just a 10 minute preview of the new Star Trek to show along with The Wrath of Khan, tonight fans in Austin, TX were actually shown the entire new Star Trek movie. The event included surprise guests, including the original Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy.

And then, surprisingly:

According to a friend who called in to TrekMovie after the event, the audience reaction was very positive.
Gosh, really? Because I would have expected people to want their money back.

Black Book

Ian reviewed this ages ago, and everyone has been saying that it's a good film, so I recorded it off Film 4 months and months ago, and it's been sitting in the Sky Plus menu for all that time. Given the reception this film got when it was released, as if somehow the technically fine but resolutely shlocky Verhoeven had finally made a worthwhile film, I was concerned that it would be lacking the bonkers full-tilt Verhoeven approach, and that it would somehow be worthy and a bit boring.

Worthy yes. Boring, certainly not. Exciting espionage! Handsome resistance folks! Brave young women! Bad, bad, bad Nazis! Some good Nazis too! An absolutely amazing performance from the leading lady! Typical Verhoeven attitude to having people get their kit off!

One of the things I really loved about the film is the fact that the lead character, Rachel (or Ellis, to give her her alias), has to do a lot of unpleasant things in order to try to find out what has happened to her parents, who has betrayed them, and how to stay alive. This involves a lot of lying and sleeping with people she doesn't care about, which is par for the course for attractive ladies in films. It does, however, also involve other things, like running and shooting and hiding in rivers and other action things that blokes get to do in films. Also, at no point does it look as though the film itself is taking a prurient interest in her. This is simply what a gal had to do to get by in occupied countries, and there are worse things that could happen.

Both Carice van Houten and her co-star (and, I think, real-life partner) Sebastian Koch, are excellent in this movie, and I look forward to seeing them both in the biopic of South African poet Ingrid Jonker, which is, according to the IMDB, to be released some time this year.

The Savages

This is a film about two adult siblings (Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who are a bit messed up and kind of rubbish, and the call that they get one day that results in them having to put their father (Philip Bosco) in a nursing home. I think people might be staying away from this film because they think it's going to be about older people with dementia, but it isn't really. The dad has only a minor role (although Philip Bosco is fantastic). Really it's a film about the siblings having to learn to be grown up, and having to deal with their pasts without wallowing in them. I really enjoyed its slightness and lightness of touch, and the fact that it dealt with a number of issues that, in other hands, could have been appallingly mawkish and touchy-feely and huggy-learny. Instead, the Savage sibs learn a little, and hug a little, but in a way that feels more real than in other movies.

I really enjoyed this film.

Also, hats off to the young man who was working at the box office. While I was waiting for S, a woman went up to the box office to ask what films were about to start. "Well, there's The Savages," he said.
"What's that about?" she asked him.
He told her what it was about. Then he said, "there's also Margot at the Wedding."
"And what's that about?"
"It's shit."
"Right. I'll have a ticket for The Savages, then."
That's the kind of service you need more of in Irish cinemas, I think.

Rawr! (do not read if you have not seen Cloverfield)

Here are some things I really liked about Cloverfield:

It's short, and it cuts out all that crappy character development and hugging and learning that really messes up otherwise perfectly good monster movies.

It's loud enough all the way through that even if people are talking in the cinema, you can't hear them.

It's very exciting and genuinely bloody scary. It's also kind of sad. The party scene at the beginning is only short, but it's well written and well acted enough that you accept the basic niceness of the characters. Also, the fact that Robert goes through all that stuff to get to Beth makes you think that maybe, just maybe, they might get away with it, although you know they won't, because of the movie you're watching.

I also love the modernity of it. In the early days of movies, certain signifiers had to be included in order to make films easier for people to follow. If someone was leaving one location to go to another, you would have to see them leave, then see them travel, then see them arrive, because otherwise the audience would be confused about where it was or what was going on. The increased sophistication of audiences is something that Abrams's team has played with in their major TV shows: in Alias, they switched from one place to another with very little explanation of what was going on a lot of the time; in Lost, they switch between the present, the past, and the future with very little warning; in both cases, they simply rely on the audience to keep up or not care that they can't keep up. Cloverfield is the same. Why is there a monster? Don't know don't care. Where did all the other people from the party go? Don't know don't care. How did they get off the Brooklyn Bridge so fast, considering it looked so crowded? Don't know don't... actually, Mister Monkey did wonder about that a little bit.

What they've done is create the spine of a story, and rather than flesh it out themselves, they're going to let everyone who comes along later do that. In a similar fashion to the Max Brooks zombie books, I'm sure there'll be a massive outpouring of Cloverfield spinoff projects that will show up everywhere. It could be really good.

They also resisted the urge to throw in some monster movie tropes, despite setting the scene for them so clearly. Listing building with gaping open windows looking down toward the ground? Surely a great excuse for a fire, or rescuing a child, or a puppy. But there was nothing. Scrambling across the roof with the monster only blocks away? Surely someone is going to end up dangling off the building in a moment or two. Nope. No time, no time.

Also, some critics have complained about it playing on people's memories of 9/11 by using the images of frightened New Yorkers, covered in dust and milling about, as part of its scare tactics. But isn't that kind of what a good monster movie is supposed to do?

Here are some things I didn't really like about it:

The camerawork did give me the nausea a little bit (although that was maybe a function of the enormous, delicious, and hastily eaten Chinese meal that took place beforehand).

I couldn't understand why, the instant the monster hove into view, the women all turned into useless eejits while the men (one of whom, let's not forget, had been in love with the same woman for years and years and never managed to cowboy up and do anything about it) suddenly became all decisive and brave. Other people also have some race issues with the film (where are all the black people at? Oh, they're looting the electronics store), so maybe the movie could have less hidebound in both of those directions.

Sadly, I probably don't ever need to see it again, except out of pure academic interest. But it was a really enjoyable experience. I thoroughly appreciated the way they ended it with the scenes at Coney Island as well, given that the film is more like a fairground ride than anything else.

WTF? Heath Ledger's dead!

So weird. Early reports suggest some kind of overdose. He never seemed particularly strange, did he?

He was only 28, too. Poor lad.

No Country for Old Men

Bless the IFI. They may like to keep their cinemas incredibly stuffy, and there's no leg room at all if you slump down in the seat low enough to actually rest your head on the back of it, but at least they had a lovely clean print of the film and the place was reasonably quiet. This is, as Ray pointed out, crucial to your enjoyment of this terse, spare, movie.

The plot concerns a man (Josh Brolin) who finds some money in the desert. Other men (Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, some random Mexicans) are looking for the money, so now they are looking for the man who found the money. One of these men (Javier Bardem) is a little more determined than the others, and is also a total psychopath. A chase ensues. Tommy Lee Jones is also there.

The first 4/5ths of the film are basically amazing. The domestic chat between Josh Brolin and his wife, Kelly McDonald, is beautiful; the way he goes about finding the money and dealing with what he's found is so clinical and everyday; everything--the amount of dialogue, the level at which it's spoken, the amount of movement exhibited by each of the characers--is dialled down to the bare minimum: there is a tool for getting this job done, and that tool is sparsity.

The problem is, though, that the film doesn't want to stop there. As Mister M points out, it suffers from the modern movie drawback of having too many endings. He also tells me that the book is the same, so it's not like the Coen brothers arsed it up or anything. The story stops, but the film carries on past it. This would be really annoying, except that Barry Corbin turns up at the very end, and everyone loves him, right?

Apparently the ending has sparked some debate, over what the film is really about, and who the main character is. Is the film centered on Javier Bardem vs. Josh Brolin, and should it therefore end when their story ends? Or is it about Tommy Lee Jones, in which case, should it end with the end of his story?

It's a valid question, and in theory I like the idea of the action-based story being a single event in a larger story, but I'm not sure it really works in practice, because it does just add time to what is already a long and intense evening in the pictures.

Still, it's pleasant to see a film that's worth a little bit of debate. Also, Texas looks wonderfully bleak in it, and I haven't seen anything so beautifully shot since Brokeback Mountain. Solid stuff.

The trouble with movies

Next week, all things being equal, Mister Monkey and I will take our first trip to the cinema in about three months. We never go to the cinema anymore, because I hate it, for reasons with which you will be well acquainted if you have ever met me.

However, I have agreed to go and see No Country for Old Men, the new Coen brothers movie, with Mister M next week. Mister M is a big Cormac McCarthy fan, and we both love the Coen brothers, even if there is some division in the Monkey House over what constitutes a great Coen brothers movie

(The Hudsucker Proxy is a bad one. Hey! It's my blog.)

One the one hand, I'm kind of excited to see this film. Who doesn't love a critically acclaimed new Coen brothers movie? Many of my friends whose tastes in film I would endorse say it is great. Also, you can never have too much Kelly McDonald in films, nor Barry Corbin neither.

BUT! It could be really boring. A few people have said it was really boring, and the comparisons that people make with Blood Simple (a Coen brothers film I have to admit I find, well, a little boring) make me suspicious of it. Also, I don't like Javier Bardem. Like, really, in an irrational way don't like him.

We shall see.

Alexander

Mother of god, what a mess of a film. I'm not even sure I can wtch it all the way through. The acting is awful, the story is all over the place, and Colin Farrell both looks and sounds ridiculous. He looks like Club Tropicana era George Michael, and sounds awkward, as if he's putting on a fake Irish accent. Don't talk to me about Val Kilmer. Woejious. I still like his horse, though.

Michael Clayton

Last night Mister M and I did something we never do. No, not that. The other thing. Yes, we went to the cinema. We were in town and it was a crappy night, so we figured, why not?

We saw that film Michael Clayton, which has that bloke in it who women want to be with and men want to be like (apparently). In it, he plays a fixer for a law firm who has to clean up the mess left behind when his friend (and, it seemed to me, mentor) has a bipolar episode while working on a really long-running class action suit against a major chemicals corporation. With hilarious results. Well, no. Actually slightly predictable results, really.

Some things about this film were just great. George Clooney, for one. He just looked grumpy and out of sorts throughout the entire film; his performance reminded me of Bruce Willis's in Twelve Monkeys, as if he had been given strict instructions not to do The Look, or The Twinkle, or any one of a number of little things he does to try to exude charm. I liked his relationship with his son, and indeed his family as a whole. It seemed kind of normal. I also liked Tom Wilkinson, because who doesn't? Also the overall seventies downbeat nature of the film is great. It's not funny, there are no jokes, there's no snappy dialogue, it just tells the story and that's kind of it.

However, it's nowhere near as good as everybody says it is. It's simply one of those films that is as good as films should be. Tilda Swinton's character has a major flaw, which is telegraphed from miles away. There are several things that happen that kind of don't make any sense. Above all, the character of Michael Clayton himself is a textbook example of told-not-shown.

I don't want to undersell it, though. I certainly enjoyed it and it was in no way stupid or too long or annoying in any way. It's just that maybe it was slightly oversold to me.

Also, whatever you do, don't go to the official site looking for photos to put on your blog post. Jesus, talk about overdesigned.

Lord Flashheart to the rescue

Last night I was finishing up some work for the week and I had a bit of a freak out. Not to do with volume of work or nature of work, but to do with the actual content of the journals and magazines I was reading. This week, two gems stood out for their utterly depressing content against the usual background noise of economics and politics and recommendations for acceptable levels of violence to use against offenders and rehabilitation of the massive U.S. prison population. One was a serious academic journal called Child Abuse and Neglect, the title of which I'm sure says it all. The second culprit was Onearth, which had its usual litany of ochón ochón the sky is falling articles, including a big article about bitumen extraction in Alberta--cheery stuff, I'm sure you agree.

Then, last night, I read this article in the New Statesman and I just got really upset by it. It was the last straw. So I left the work unfinished and came downstairs to immerse myself in the harmless world of movie trailers. And that's where I got my first look at Clive Owen being Sir Walter Ralegh. Look at him! And... AND! as if that wasn't enough, he's on a ship in one clip. You can see it too!

Stranger Than Fiction

Will Ferrell is a boring man whose life is the same every single day. He is alone most of the time, but there is no real sense that he is lonely. Then things start to happen to him that could reasonably be called the beginnings of a story, and suddenly a woman's voice starts narrating his life. It's hard to know which comes first. To tell anything else about the film would be to ruin it, really.

Stranger Than Fiction got okay but not great reviews when it came out, and although I can kind of understand why--there are some bits that could maybe be trimmed from it, the wristwatch as framing device could maybe use a little tweaking and may not work for everyone, and there does seem to be some discussion about the ending--it is basically an excellent film. It's funny and sweet, beautifully shot in bizarrely utilitarian locations around Chicago, and it features some lovely quiet acting by a cast you would normally think of as being pretty hammy. It has one of those modern Brian Reitzell hand-picked soundtracks, which makes it seem a little bit like Lost in Translation at times, but without the incredibly boring bits. It's also got a lot of self-referential and post-modern stuff about the construction of stories in it, but without the kind of DO YOU SEE shiteing on of something like (oh god, how I loathe it) Shakespeare in Love.

Also it has Tony Hale in it, who I consider a mark of quality.

This goes up there as one of the lovely stories, for me anyway.

Ha ha, I am the best wife ever

I was talking to Mister Monkey on the phone the other night and he asked me what I wanted for my birthday.
"I don't really want anything," I said, "honestly, I have all the books and films and music I need."
Then yesterday I bought two new albums off the Internet, and today I was in HMV's 3 DVDs for €30 sale, and I got The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers set that has four films in it, and yes, I know it's sad, but a copy of Wimbledon also.

So I guess there was stuff I wanted after all. Ha ha.

Oscars 2007

Or, who cares anymore?

Maybe that's not fair. I'm glad that Martin Scorsese finally got a best director Oscar, even if it's for a film I haven't seen, but I'm of the opinion that the Oscars started to matter less when

• they stopped saying "and the winner is..." and started saying "and the Oscar goes to..."
• all the men stopped dressing in formal wear and started looking like they were going to one of those soap opera funerals
• I stopped recognising half the people there
• I stopped fancying anyone there

Although my trusty People magazine feed did provide me with this great exchange between Joan Rivers and Michael Sheen, who plays Tony Blair in The Queen.

Rivers: What do you think about Tony Blair? Cause you're English
Sheen: Well, Welsh.
Rivers: I know, but Wales IS in England.
Sheen: Well, over here it is.