Q: What do An Education and A Single Man have in common?
A: Rather a lot, actually. Both are set in the early 1960s, a time of nuclear anxiety, a fear addressed and expressed by the main young character in each film. Both feature a socially transgressive relationship between a youth on the cusp of adulthood and an older man in or close to middle age. In An Education you imagine that Peter Sarsgaard was chosen partly because he was the closest that the film-makers could find to a thirtysomething Colin Firth, who would have been perfect in the role of the supposedly charismatic, slightly sleazy David. Sarsgaard's a decent actor but doesn't project the magnetism that David must surely have been intended to possess to attract and all but derail Jenny (Carey Mulligan who deserves much of the extravagant praise that she has won in recent months). There's something too uncertain about him, a problem rooted in his delivery - some of this nervousness is clearly intentional and subtle, suggesting David's shiftiness, his unease, his latent guilt at his various deceptions - but some is also perhaps down to the actor's struggle to maintain his English accent. Being aware of an actor's struggle to find their character's voice is inevitably a distraction. This has clearly not been a problem at all for many viewers and would presumably not be noticed by non-English audiences anyway.
This reminded me of an interview that Cher did in this country to plug Mermaids. It was the latest American-accented performance from Bob Hoskins who had been outstanding on stage as Nathan Detroit in the National Theatre production of Guys and Dolls and acting against a cast of cartoons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and when asked how it was the Hoskins had so perfectly mastered the accent, his co-star rather brutally, although not without humour, stated that he didn't sound American to her.
Another interesting case was The Crying Game in which the casting of Forest Whitaker as a cockney soldier and Miranda Richardson as an Irish terrorist/freedom fighter seemed to be an interesting, conscious or unconscious clue to the fact that not everything or everyone here was what they seemed - and such coy spoiler-avoidance may not be necessary after all these years, but still...
A Single Man features three of the four central characters adopting transatlantic voices, Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult playing Americans and Julianne Moore playing an uptight and often if not always tight English woman. The tension in these performances, the concentration needed to sustain them is perfectly fitting for a film that is about the obsessive need of the central character George (a quite magnificent Firth) to be and to be seen to be in control. While Goode's and Hoult's accents seem all but faultless to the English ear, Moore's effort to retain her clipped accent - and there is the odd stumble over certain vowel sounds - somehow works. One film scripted, beautifully by Nick Hornby, the other featuring two actors (Hoult and Firth) who've performed notably in adaptations of Hornby novels (About a Boy and Fever Pitch respectively), they are both in not wholly dissimilar ways, very moving films exploring the conflict between restraint and emotional expression, about the elusiveness, the pain of romantic love.
What's the similar connection between Glenn Close & Andie McDowell in Greystoke: Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and Jean Hagen & Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain?
The answer to the question in the last posting was that all four have played movie time-travellers, but three Malcolm McDowell, Guy Pearce and Rod Taylor have played versions of HG Wells' character from The Time Machine (Pearce and Taylor, whose character was in fact called Wells, in the two big screen adaptations of the novel and McDowell playing Wells himself in Time after Time), while Michael J Fox played the teenage time-traveller Marty McFly in the Back to the Future trilogy.
Tuesday 23 March 2010
Friday 12 March 2010
Green Zone v Inglourious Basterds
Q: What connects Inglourious Basterds, Rogue Male, Valkyrie, The Dead Zone?
A: ps would it help if the list also included the 1990 TV movie The Plot to Kill Hitler? Because one way or another they all feature plots or at least the idea to assassinate the fuhrer. Mild spoiler warning here, but in one significant way Inglourious Basterds is the odd one out in this list is to and that is not the only way in which Tarantino's film is an odd work of art or pulp fiction or meta-movie-making or whatever it is. It's a bizarre movie, a deranged hymn to the literally incendiary power of film and, for all its flaws - it's uneven and overlong - is one of the writer-director's most brilliant efforts to date, a fitting companion piece to Pulp Fiction. To say that it plays fast and loose with historical fact is not so much an understatement as to wilfully miss the point of the film. It is a response, whether conscious or not, to the statement, one often made when a given film is shown to be misrepresenting the historical truth it purports to represent, that: "It's only a movie." Tarantino is, aside from serving up a peculiar, singular piece of entertainment, saying that "it's a movie" but there's no such thing as "only" a movie, that a film is powerful and that, whatever a film-maker's obligation to the truth, to facts, to history, whatever the supposed rules of film-making are, a film can be and do whatever its makers want it to be and do. Paul Greengrass, much of whose career has been spent straddling the worlds of movie-making and the relating of politically charged historical events, has come just a little unstuck in his latest attempt to be simultaneously an entertainer and political soothsayer. Green Zone works, to an extent, as a popcorn movie, it's fast-paced in that frenetic, jerky way that has become Greengrass's signature style, but the dialogue is disappointingly cliche-laden and the plot - essentially a one-note WMD conspiracy thriller that rings true on almost no level - is borderline ludicrous. Film-makers don't necessarily have to tell the truth 24 frames a second, but if they are going to lie at least they have to lie openly and honestly.
Who's the odd one out of Rod Taylor, Michael J Fox, Malcolm McDowell and Guy Pearce?
The answer to the last quiz (a while back) is the role of Brutus in Julius Caesar. McKay played Welles playing Brutus in his 1937 Mercury Theatre stage production, Mason appeared as Brutus in the 1953 film and Robards in the 1970 production.
A: ps would it help if the list also included the 1990 TV movie The Plot to Kill Hitler? Because one way or another they all feature plots or at least the idea to assassinate the fuhrer. Mild spoiler warning here, but in one significant way Inglourious Basterds is the odd one out in this list is to and that is not the only way in which Tarantino's film is an odd work of art or pulp fiction or meta-movie-making or whatever it is. It's a bizarre movie, a deranged hymn to the literally incendiary power of film and, for all its flaws - it's uneven and overlong - is one of the writer-director's most brilliant efforts to date, a fitting companion piece to Pulp Fiction. To say that it plays fast and loose with historical fact is not so much an understatement as to wilfully miss the point of the film. It is a response, whether conscious or not, to the statement, one often made when a given film is shown to be misrepresenting the historical truth it purports to represent, that: "It's only a movie." Tarantino is, aside from serving up a peculiar, singular piece of entertainment, saying that "it's a movie" but there's no such thing as "only" a movie, that a film is powerful and that, whatever a film-maker's obligation to the truth, to facts, to history, whatever the supposed rules of film-making are, a film can be and do whatever its makers want it to be and do. Paul Greengrass, much of whose career has been spent straddling the worlds of movie-making and the relating of politically charged historical events, has come just a little unstuck in his latest attempt to be simultaneously an entertainer and political soothsayer. Green Zone works, to an extent, as a popcorn movie, it's fast-paced in that frenetic, jerky way that has become Greengrass's signature style, but the dialogue is disappointingly cliche-laden and the plot - essentially a one-note WMD conspiracy thriller that rings true on almost no level - is borderline ludicrous. Film-makers don't necessarily have to tell the truth 24 frames a second, but if they are going to lie at least they have to lie openly and honestly.
Who's the odd one out of Rod Taylor, Michael J Fox, Malcolm McDowell and Guy Pearce?
The answer to the last quiz (a while back) is the role of Brutus in Julius Caesar. McKay played Welles playing Brutus in his 1937 Mercury Theatre stage production, Mason appeared as Brutus in the 1953 film and Robards in the 1970 production.
Monday 25 January 2010
Me and Orson Welles and Me
Q: What connects Christian McKay, Liev Schreiber, Angus Macfadyen and Vincent D'Onofrio?
A: All four have played Orson Welles on screen in Me and Orson Welles, RKO 281, Rock the Cradle and Ed Wood, respectively. The other three give fine performances, but McKay's is something rather special. It's balanced brilliantly - in the way that Michael Sheen so often manages - so that it has elements, strong ones, of an impersonation, but remains throughout a fully realised performance. For those - and there are many of us - whose attraction to Welles veers between fascination and obsession, it is an irresistible film, directed by the always interesting Richard Linklater and adapted from a novel with the winsome premise of a young man falling by chance into the world of the Mercury Repertory company in New York City and landing a small but key role in their famous modern dress version of Julius Caesar. At the film's heart (although it is in theory a star vehicle for the likeable Zac Efron of High School Musical fame and infamy) is a performance that is so beautifully pitched, perfectly capturing Welles's innate - and carefully studied - brand of charisma, that it continually threatens to unbalance the story. You just miss him when he's not on screen and McKay (although strangely overlooked in the Golden Globes) should push Christoph Waltz close in the Best Supporting Actor category at the Baftas and, presumably, the Academy Awards (and more on Inglourious Basterds in an upcoming posting). Me and Orson Welles offers an intimate, generally convincing portrait of theatrical life, there's a strong supporting cast several of them playing familiar faces from Welles's stage and screen repertory companies - Norman Lloyd, Geourge Coulouris, Joseph Cotten, John Houseman - but it's somehow not a wholly substantial film and what makes it so very enjoyable is McKay and the set-pieces that he dominates - and the one in which he brings his young protege for company to a radio recording is as entertaining a sequence as has made it to the screen in recent months. The film leaves you wanting more of the same from him. In fact Orson Welles fanatics and fantasists will be hoping that someone somewhere, and an obvious candidate would be Todd Haynes, bringing to the project something of the spirit of both Far from Heaven and I'm Not There, might be inspired to create a full-scale biopic.
Q: What connects McKay, Welles, James Mason and Jason Robards?
The answer to the question in the last posting was that each have played the role of the one-eyed lawman Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, Wayne winning an Oscar in the original (he also starred in the 1975 sequel Rooster Cogburn), Oates in the 1978 TV movie, and Bridges in a second remake due for release later this year.
A: All four have played Orson Welles on screen in Me and Orson Welles, RKO 281, Rock the Cradle and Ed Wood, respectively. The other three give fine performances, but McKay's is something rather special. It's balanced brilliantly - in the way that Michael Sheen so often manages - so that it has elements, strong ones, of an impersonation, but remains throughout a fully realised performance. For those - and there are many of us - whose attraction to Welles veers between fascination and obsession, it is an irresistible film, directed by the always interesting Richard Linklater and adapted from a novel with the winsome premise of a young man falling by chance into the world of the Mercury Repertory company in New York City and landing a small but key role in their famous modern dress version of Julius Caesar. At the film's heart (although it is in theory a star vehicle for the likeable Zac Efron of High School Musical fame and infamy) is a performance that is so beautifully pitched, perfectly capturing Welles's innate - and carefully studied - brand of charisma, that it continually threatens to unbalance the story. You just miss him when he's not on screen and McKay (although strangely overlooked in the Golden Globes) should push Christoph Waltz close in the Best Supporting Actor category at the Baftas and, presumably, the Academy Awards (and more on Inglourious Basterds in an upcoming posting). Me and Orson Welles offers an intimate, generally convincing portrait of theatrical life, there's a strong supporting cast several of them playing familiar faces from Welles's stage and screen repertory companies - Norman Lloyd, Geourge Coulouris, Joseph Cotten, John Houseman - but it's somehow not a wholly substantial film and what makes it so very enjoyable is McKay and the set-pieces that he dominates - and the one in which he brings his young protege for company to a radio recording is as entertaining a sequence as has made it to the screen in recent months. The film leaves you wanting more of the same from him. In fact Orson Welles fanatics and fantasists will be hoping that someone somewhere, and an obvious candidate would be Todd Haynes, bringing to the project something of the spirit of both Far from Heaven and I'm Not There, might be inspired to create a full-scale biopic.
Q: What connects McKay, Welles, James Mason and Jason Robards?
The answer to the question in the last posting was that each have played the role of the one-eyed lawman Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, Wayne winning an Oscar in the original (he also starred in the 1975 sequel Rooster Cogburn), Oates in the 1978 TV movie, and Bridges in a second remake due for release later this year.
Monday 18 January 2010
Jeff Bridges
Q: Is Jeff Bridges the greatest American film actor of the past 40 years?
A: Quite possibly.
A quick glance at the results of this year's Golden Globes, which either do or do not offer a reliable preview of the Academy Awards, which do not offer a reliable view of the year's greatest films, performances, soundtracks etc, shows that Jeff Bridges has picked up the gong for best actor in a lead role, for his turn as a boozy country and western singer in the upcoming (in the UK at least) release, Crazy Heart. The part sounds like the stuff of cliche, but you pretty much know that it won't be ordinary, or at least not in a bad, dull way. The wonder is that this is the first major acting award that he has won which like so many other instances, proves how absurd the whole business of awards is, weirdly compelling but absurd. He has had a great career, working in and around the mainstream of Hollywood films - sometimes right at its heart - but at his most interesting when more on the margins, working with Peter Bogdanovich, early in his career, with Cimino (twice) before and just after he went a bit loopy, with the Coens, in quite a few directors' first films. He is always good, sometimes better than his material, he's been in his fare share of financial duds, a few duffers (but only a few), can play everything from the deeply sympathetic to the chillingly nasty, and always or almost always with his distinctive understated style. Perhaps to win awards you have to show how much you're doing - there are dozens of instances of Oscar-winning performances in which the effort that went into the performance is there for all of us to see - whereas Bridges is happy to make it look effortless and true. If you cast your mind back over as many of his 60-plus feature performances as you can recall it is hard to think of him ever doing anything flashy or doing anything you didn't believe, even in Against All Odds or King Kong. Few actors would make one relish the prospect of seeing a film about a washed up country singer, but Bridges does and this is all enough to restore a little of one's faith in the idea of these awards.
Question: what connects Jeff Bridges, Warren Oates and John Wayne?
The answer to the question in the last posting was that both are examples of apocryphal film quotations, Cary Grant having never knowingly said "Judy, Judy, Judy" and likewise James Cagney having never said on screen "You dirty rat" (although he did get close to saying it), but both were used as stock phrases by impressionists of two of Hollywood's most impersonated stars.
A: Quite possibly.
A quick glance at the results of this year's Golden Globes, which either do or do not offer a reliable preview of the Academy Awards, which do not offer a reliable view of the year's greatest films, performances, soundtracks etc, shows that Jeff Bridges has picked up the gong for best actor in a lead role, for his turn as a boozy country and western singer in the upcoming (in the UK at least) release, Crazy Heart. The part sounds like the stuff of cliche, but you pretty much know that it won't be ordinary, or at least not in a bad, dull way. The wonder is that this is the first major acting award that he has won which like so many other instances, proves how absurd the whole business of awards is, weirdly compelling but absurd. He has had a great career, working in and around the mainstream of Hollywood films - sometimes right at its heart - but at his most interesting when more on the margins, working with Peter Bogdanovich, early in his career, with Cimino (twice) before and just after he went a bit loopy, with the Coens, in quite a few directors' first films. He is always good, sometimes better than his material, he's been in his fare share of financial duds, a few duffers (but only a few), can play everything from the deeply sympathetic to the chillingly nasty, and always or almost always with his distinctive understated style. Perhaps to win awards you have to show how much you're doing - there are dozens of instances of Oscar-winning performances in which the effort that went into the performance is there for all of us to see - whereas Bridges is happy to make it look effortless and true. If you cast your mind back over as many of his 60-plus feature performances as you can recall it is hard to think of him ever doing anything flashy or doing anything you didn't believe, even in Against All Odds or King Kong. Few actors would make one relish the prospect of seeing a film about a washed up country singer, but Bridges does and this is all enough to restore a little of one's faith in the idea of these awards.
Question: what connects Jeff Bridges, Warren Oates and John Wayne?
The answer to the question in the last posting was that both are examples of apocryphal film quotations, Cary Grant having never knowingly said "Judy, Judy, Judy" and likewise James Cagney having never said on screen "You dirty rat" (although he did get close to saying it), but both were used as stock phrases by impressionists of two of Hollywood's most impersonated stars.
Friday 8 January 2010
Time to go?
Q: What do Steve Martin and Dr Jonathan Hemlock have in common?
A: Both fund their expensive collections of modern art with their nefarious work, Hemlock, the leading character in the Trevanian novels (one of them, The Eiger Sanction, filmed with Clint Eastwood in the lead role) as a hitman, Martin through starring in the likes of The Father of the Bride and The Pink Panther.
Alec Baldwin, the star of It's Complicated released in the UK last Friday, provoked a minor flurry of publicity by announcing that he is going to retire and has given us plenty of warning because he's not giving up until his contract with the hit TV show 30 Rock runs out in 2012. He has apparently lost his passion for the job of acting and is following in a long tradition of macho screen stars - from Robert Mitchum to Sean Penn, via Steve McQueen, Mickey Rourke and many others - by publicly admitting that play-acting is no way for a real man to make a living. But when is the best time to go? And how should a screen tough guy bow out? Talking of tough guys bowing out, Golden Boy, the biography of William Holden, opens in the aftermath of Holden's strange death with comments from a bunch of his friends, colleagues and co-stars all of them reflecting on how they'd always half-expected him to die early but perhaps from being mauled by a tiger, impaled on an elephant's tusk or shot by a jealous lover or cuckolded husband rather than, as he did, after drunkenly stumbling in his living room and hitting his head on the corner of a coffee table. A more conventional, dignified - and not so decisively final - retirement from the screen is an option for movie stars of course, but a notably rare one. Gene Hackman has done it recently - four years ago - and with little or no fanfare, but he is 20 years Baldwin's senior and he has 40 years of distinguished work to look back on as he kicks back to write his novels and paint. The problem with Baldwin is that he has, as he acknowledges himself, not quite fulfilled his promise as a film actor/star. He's always good and occasionally, or at least once in his cameo in Glengarry Glenn Ross, great, but he could have been a major star and looked set to become one in the aftermath of The Hunt for Red October, and he never seems to have quite recovered from the possibly self-inflicted wound that was his failure to sign up forthe follow-ups, allowing the stubbornly unretiring Harrison Ford to become an even bigger star and bed ever younger female co-stars. At least Baldwin's latest film sees him romancing a woman nearly 10 years older than he is, Meryl Streep as busy and brilliant as ever at retirement age. Many, sadly, have early retirement forced on them by fate and the fickleness of public affection, while the disappearance of those whose careers peter out gradually and then come to a stop is barely discernible and doesn't really count. But there are precious few who actually choose to retire at or close to their peak, and there are others but Garbo, Cary Crant, Grace Kelly and Jimmy Cagney (he was eventually and only temporarily coaxed out of retirement after 20 years to appear in Ragtime) leap to mind and the two men in that short list were close to retirement age anyway. So perhaps Baldwin will stick to his promise, but it's noticeable that for all the threats Sean Penn hasn't actually retired from screen acting as yet and there are two full years for Baldwin to be talked out of it, either by his accountant or someone persuading him that if he doesn't carry on paying the bills with his actomg he may in time have to follow in the path of his younger brother and humble himself on reality TV. And how different, how much greater would be the reputation today (and how much smaller the bank balance and art collection) of Steve Martin, Baldwin's co-star in It's Complicated, if he'd retired 20 years ago?
Answer to the question at the end of the last posting: all of the people mentioned had worked on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!, based on the Ian Fleming children's book and at least one of the Bond films: Albert Broccoli co-produced more than a dozen 007 movies; Ken Hughes directed the first Casino Royale; Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice while Richard Maibaum scripted 13 of the films; Ken Adam provided designs for several Bonds, notably Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me; while Gert Frobe played the eponymous villain in Goldfinger and Desmond Llewelyn became famous as the long-suffering Q.
What connects the movie quotes "Judy, Judy, Judy" and "You dirty rat"?
A: Both fund their expensive collections of modern art with their nefarious work, Hemlock, the leading character in the Trevanian novels (one of them, The Eiger Sanction, filmed with Clint Eastwood in the lead role) as a hitman, Martin through starring in the likes of The Father of the Bride and The Pink Panther.
Alec Baldwin, the star of It's Complicated released in the UK last Friday, provoked a minor flurry of publicity by announcing that he is going to retire and has given us plenty of warning because he's not giving up until his contract with the hit TV show 30 Rock runs out in 2012. He has apparently lost his passion for the job of acting and is following in a long tradition of macho screen stars - from Robert Mitchum to Sean Penn, via Steve McQueen, Mickey Rourke and many others - by publicly admitting that play-acting is no way for a real man to make a living. But when is the best time to go? And how should a screen tough guy bow out? Talking of tough guys bowing out, Golden Boy, the biography of William Holden, opens in the aftermath of Holden's strange death with comments from a bunch of his friends, colleagues and co-stars all of them reflecting on how they'd always half-expected him to die early but perhaps from being mauled by a tiger, impaled on an elephant's tusk or shot by a jealous lover or cuckolded husband rather than, as he did, after drunkenly stumbling in his living room and hitting his head on the corner of a coffee table. A more conventional, dignified - and not so decisively final - retirement from the screen is an option for movie stars of course, but a notably rare one. Gene Hackman has done it recently - four years ago - and with little or no fanfare, but he is 20 years Baldwin's senior and he has 40 years of distinguished work to look back on as he kicks back to write his novels and paint. The problem with Baldwin is that he has, as he acknowledges himself, not quite fulfilled his promise as a film actor/star. He's always good and occasionally, or at least once in his cameo in Glengarry Glenn Ross, great, but he could have been a major star and looked set to become one in the aftermath of The Hunt for Red October, and he never seems to have quite recovered from the possibly self-inflicted wound that was his failure to sign up forthe follow-ups, allowing the stubbornly unretiring Harrison Ford to become an even bigger star and bed ever younger female co-stars. At least Baldwin's latest film sees him romancing a woman nearly 10 years older than he is, Meryl Streep as busy and brilliant as ever at retirement age. Many, sadly, have early retirement forced on them by fate and the fickleness of public affection, while the disappearance of those whose careers peter out gradually and then come to a stop is barely discernible and doesn't really count. But there are precious few who actually choose to retire at or close to their peak, and there are others but Garbo, Cary Crant, Grace Kelly and Jimmy Cagney (he was eventually and only temporarily coaxed out of retirement after 20 years to appear in Ragtime) leap to mind and the two men in that short list were close to retirement age anyway. So perhaps Baldwin will stick to his promise, but it's noticeable that for all the threats Sean Penn hasn't actually retired from screen acting as yet and there are two full years for Baldwin to be talked out of it, either by his accountant or someone persuading him that if he doesn't carry on paying the bills with his actomg he may in time have to follow in the path of his younger brother and humble himself on reality TV. And how different, how much greater would be the reputation today (and how much smaller the bank balance and art collection) of Steve Martin, Baldwin's co-star in It's Complicated, if he'd retired 20 years ago?
Answer to the question at the end of the last posting: all of the people mentioned had worked on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!, based on the Ian Fleming children's book and at least one of the Bond films: Albert Broccoli co-produced more than a dozen 007 movies; Ken Hughes directed the first Casino Royale; Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice while Richard Maibaum scripted 13 of the films; Ken Adam provided designs for several Bonds, notably Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me; while Gert Frobe played the eponymous villain in Goldfinger and Desmond Llewelyn became famous as the long-suffering Q.
What connects the movie quotes "Judy, Judy, Judy" and "You dirty rat"?
Thursday 7 January 2010
Sam Mendes takes on Bond
Question: Is Sam Mendes the right director for the next Bond film?
Answer: Possibly...
So, Sam Mendes is in line to direct the next instalment of the Bond franchise, the release of which will presumably coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first 007 film, Dr No. The logic behind this apparently counterintuitive decision must have been that the last unlikely choice, Marc Forster, another arty European film-maker specialising in emotionally intense dramas, wasn't a total misfire, although it was really a qualified success. Admittedly Quantum of Solace did manage to rake in over half a billion dollars at the box office, but it was a confused, confusing film, at times all but dull - it was the first time that it was possible to be bored, bewildererd and a touch alienated by a 007 movie half-way through reading the title. There is more to the decision than this connection between the two directors of course, with Mendes having over his few films to date shown a gift not just for intimate, painful stories of crumbling relationships, disintegrating families, of ordinary people suffering existential/psychological pain (American Beauty and Revolutionary Road) but also for complex examinations of violent men (Jarhead and Road to Perdition). Significantly it was on the latter that Mendes worked with Daniel Craig in a film that showcased Craig's greatest screen asset (aside from his talent perhaps), his eyes - and with Paul Newman as his screen father Road to Perdition featured four of the greatest eyes in movie history. Sadly - and let's hope this isn't an omen in terms of its mismatching of talent and material - it was also a film with a fatal flaw with the unignorable miscasting of Tom Hanks as the central character, a cold-blooded, but-still-somehow-underneath-it-all decent hitman. It was an interesting idea - to cast perhaps the most fundamentally sympathetic and well liked American film star of the last 25 years as a killer, and there were precedents for this kind of anti-type-casting. The obvious one, possibly an inspiration for Mendes/Hanks, was Sergio Leone's decision to cast Henry Fonda, for 20 years and more Hollywood's embodiment of the decent everyman, as the brutal Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West. Fonda himself demurred, but was eventually persuaded, and Leone clearly saw something sinister in those famous baby blue eyes (Fonda himself laughed when recalling seeing his face in close-up as his character went about doing despicable things on screen) and Once Upon a Time... only makes you think what a great and versatile actor Fonda was, how different his career, as distinguished as it was, could have been if his range could have been exploited more fully. Fonda is a sensational villain, Hanks isn't. You just don't quite believe that he'd do what he does. So will Mendes be similarly out of place as an all-out action director? He will surely bring psychological depth and complexity to the film and will collaborate well with his star and he has a strong, innate sense of narrative and pace, something notably missing in Quantum of Solace. He's an intriguing choice and the film will if nothing else surely be interesting, but will it be as interesting or as fun as a Bond film directed by more obvious candidates like, say, James Cameron or Quentin Tarantino?
The answer to the question in the last posting was, as all Allen fans will know, Annie Hall, the working title of which was Anhedonia (the term given to the psychological condition in which a person is unable to experience pleasure), which co-starred Allen himself (original name Allen Konigsberg) and Diane Keaton, nee Diane "Annie" Hall.
Q: What is the (at least) double Fleming connection between the following: Albert Broccoli; Ken Hughes; Roald Dahl and Richard Maibaum; Ken Adam; Gert Frobe; Desmond Llewelyn?
A: coming soon...
Answer: Possibly...
So, Sam Mendes is in line to direct the next instalment of the Bond franchise, the release of which will presumably coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first 007 film, Dr No. The logic behind this apparently counterintuitive decision must have been that the last unlikely choice, Marc Forster, another arty European film-maker specialising in emotionally intense dramas, wasn't a total misfire, although it was really a qualified success. Admittedly Quantum of Solace did manage to rake in over half a billion dollars at the box office, but it was a confused, confusing film, at times all but dull - it was the first time that it was possible to be bored, bewildererd and a touch alienated by a 007 movie half-way through reading the title. There is more to the decision than this connection between the two directors of course, with Mendes having over his few films to date shown a gift not just for intimate, painful stories of crumbling relationships, disintegrating families, of ordinary people suffering existential/psychological pain (American Beauty and Revolutionary Road) but also for complex examinations of violent men (Jarhead and Road to Perdition). Significantly it was on the latter that Mendes worked with Daniel Craig in a film that showcased Craig's greatest screen asset (aside from his talent perhaps), his eyes - and with Paul Newman as his screen father Road to Perdition featured four of the greatest eyes in movie history. Sadly - and let's hope this isn't an omen in terms of its mismatching of talent and material - it was also a film with a fatal flaw with the unignorable miscasting of Tom Hanks as the central character, a cold-blooded, but-still-somehow-underneath-it-all decent hitman. It was an interesting idea - to cast perhaps the most fundamentally sympathetic and well liked American film star of the last 25 years as a killer, and there were precedents for this kind of anti-type-casting. The obvious one, possibly an inspiration for Mendes/Hanks, was Sergio Leone's decision to cast Henry Fonda, for 20 years and more Hollywood's embodiment of the decent everyman, as the brutal Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West. Fonda himself demurred, but was eventually persuaded, and Leone clearly saw something sinister in those famous baby blue eyes (Fonda himself laughed when recalling seeing his face in close-up as his character went about doing despicable things on screen) and Once Upon a Time... only makes you think what a great and versatile actor Fonda was, how different his career, as distinguished as it was, could have been if his range could have been exploited more fully. Fonda is a sensational villain, Hanks isn't. You just don't quite believe that he'd do what he does. So will Mendes be similarly out of place as an all-out action director? He will surely bring psychological depth and complexity to the film and will collaborate well with his star and he has a strong, innate sense of narrative and pace, something notably missing in Quantum of Solace. He's an intriguing choice and the film will if nothing else surely be interesting, but will it be as interesting or as fun as a Bond film directed by more obvious candidates like, say, James Cameron or Quentin Tarantino?
The answer to the question in the last posting was, as all Allen fans will know, Annie Hall, the working title of which was Anhedonia (the term given to the psychological condition in which a person is unable to experience pleasure), which co-starred Allen himself (original name Allen Konigsberg) and Diane Keaton, nee Diane "Annie" Hall.
Q: What is the (at least) double Fleming connection between the following: Albert Broccoli; Ken Hughes; Roald Dahl and Richard Maibaum; Ken Adam; Gert Frobe; Desmond Llewelyn?
A: coming soon...
Tuesday 5 January 2010
Questions and Answers
Question: Is Cassandra's Dream really one of the best 26 films of the last decade?
Answer: No.
In a New Yorker blog published towards the end of last year, Richard Brody posted a challenging, provocative and, to many readers, faintly obscure list of his personal favourite movies of the noughties. To this he added a supplementary list of the 16 also-rans including among other controversial titles (Sex Is Comedy! - my exclamation mark) Cassandra's Dream, the Woody Allen drama, a weird reworking of part of the plot of his masterpiece Crimes and Misdemeanours in which Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell are brutally miscast as a pair of East End brothers all but forced by circumstance to commit a cold blooded murder. It's a truly terrible film - it made the top ten films of the week of its release only because there were just seven films opening that week. Brody is, especially when discussing Godard, an intelligent, perceptive writer, but what was he thinking? Even if he didn't spot the bizarrely wayward accents of the two leads, he must have noticed that their performances, their line-readings were inept, the plot and dialogue equally risible. In fact the film provoked a lot of laughs among the (UK) national critics in the screening where I caught it (for review in the FT), but not from me. It was a miserable experience to witness so much talent go to waste, and to see yet more confirmation that the once great Allen was so very far past his best. It wouldn't make my list of the best 26 Woody Allen films - and I quickly compiled one to check - it didn't even make the next 10 in fact.
It is an interesting film but only incidentally in being a case study in the decline of one great film-maker, and the subject of great film-makers/stars/musicians/artists losing it is an endlessly intriguing one to which I will return, quite possibly often. An interest in this artistic phenomenon is not a celebration of failure but quite the opposite, it constitutes a study of how the happy relationship between a given artist and their muse/mojo is often a painfully brief, transient one and the occasionally poignant inadequacy of what follows in their careers shows through its striking contrast the greatness of their golden age only more strongly. It is of course also fun and contentious to try and pinpoint the precise film/performance/album/song/episode or whatever when the magic is gone. Brody's list achieves what it set out to do - to challenge and inspire and infuriate and bewilder - and more, because it proves, apparently, that there is no such thing as an objectively bad film/work of art which I had taken Cassandra's Dream to be an example of.
Thinking back to happier times:
Q: When did Allen Konigsberg and Diane Hall experience anhedonia?
No prizes, I'm afraid, but the answer will feature at the start of the next blog...
Answer: No.
In a New Yorker blog published towards the end of last year, Richard Brody posted a challenging, provocative and, to many readers, faintly obscure list of his personal favourite movies of the noughties. To this he added a supplementary list of the 16 also-rans including among other controversial titles (Sex Is Comedy! - my exclamation mark) Cassandra's Dream, the Woody Allen drama, a weird reworking of part of the plot of his masterpiece Crimes and Misdemeanours in which Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell are brutally miscast as a pair of East End brothers all but forced by circumstance to commit a cold blooded murder. It's a truly terrible film - it made the top ten films of the week of its release only because there were just seven films opening that week. Brody is, especially when discussing Godard, an intelligent, perceptive writer, but what was he thinking? Even if he didn't spot the bizarrely wayward accents of the two leads, he must have noticed that their performances, their line-readings were inept, the plot and dialogue equally risible. In fact the film provoked a lot of laughs among the (UK) national critics in the screening where I caught it (for review in the FT), but not from me. It was a miserable experience to witness so much talent go to waste, and to see yet more confirmation that the once great Allen was so very far past his best. It wouldn't make my list of the best 26 Woody Allen films - and I quickly compiled one to check - it didn't even make the next 10 in fact.
It is an interesting film but only incidentally in being a case study in the decline of one great film-maker, and the subject of great film-makers/stars/musicians/artists losing it is an endlessly intriguing one to which I will return, quite possibly often. An interest in this artistic phenomenon is not a celebration of failure but quite the opposite, it constitutes a study of how the happy relationship between a given artist and their muse/mojo is often a painfully brief, transient one and the occasionally poignant inadequacy of what follows in their careers shows through its striking contrast the greatness of their golden age only more strongly. It is of course also fun and contentious to try and pinpoint the precise film/performance/album/song/episode or whatever when the magic is gone. Brody's list achieves what it set out to do - to challenge and inspire and infuriate and bewilder - and more, because it proves, apparently, that there is no such thing as an objectively bad film/work of art which I had taken Cassandra's Dream to be an example of.
Thinking back to happier times:
Q: When did Allen Konigsberg and Diane Hall experience anhedonia?
No prizes, I'm afraid, but the answer will feature at the start of the next blog...
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