Steven Spielberg’s a sly one. He may very well go down in history as the inventor of the “review proof” movie. That’s not to say his films are without their individual flaws, but he certainly doesn’t make writing a few words about them the easiest of tasks. His films are often as rounded as you could possibly make a film with all the bases covered and all potential questions answered. They often go on slightly longer than a person would want them to but you can’t reach the end of what he eventually delivers to confidently declare that it was all a waste of your time. But this feeling of emotional and thematic finality in his work can sometimes be frustrating to the casual watcher and tends to lead to an excessively overwrought and draining viewing experience.
There are times when this emotional completism is perhaps not always necessary and comes up against criticism, especially with Spielberg’s more narrower genre pictures like Jurassic Park and Minority Report, where fairytale conclusions with “The End” (whether literal or metaphorical) branded firmly on their behinds tend to stick out like a, erm, branded bottom.
War Horse is not one of those pictures and it’s powerful emotional journey is as satisfying as it is required.
Your experience of the film may depend entirely on how you view it’s structure. It either has a perfectly straight forward narrative wherein the main protagonist is a horse who has no plainly translated communications with other animals or an internal monologue to connect itself directly with the audience; or it’s a running tableau of barely connected stories strung together using the passing ownership of an animal as it’s binding apparatus. Perhaps it’s a failing on my part that I saw it as the latter, as the original Michael Morpurgo children’s book on which this is based (along with the subsequent stage production) is most definitely written from a first person/equine perspective.
This running narrative which abandons and introduces characters at will can only have been a challenge for the film’s screenwriters Richard Curtis and Lee Hall, who make sure not to rely on just one connecting device to keep things together (although Joey The Horse is certainly the main one). It’s attention deficient narrative manages not to test our patience or become too experimental or showy, in fact it’s as much an exercise in carefully crafted call-backs as it is about moving forward and delivering new experiences. That’s where the screenplay’s success and moral centre lies I suppose - in remembrance.
In simpler terms War Horse is a constant stream of Act 1s that subtly slips you an Act 2 and an Act 3 without you noticing it.
Inevitably in a film such as this there are times where your attention might wander briefly. I think that happened to me about twice during the whole movie, but I was yanked back each time by a burst of poignancy or intense activity. Repeat viewings will reveal the importance of the more subtle and seemingly toilet-break friendly scenes that undoubtedly bring something crucial to the thematic collage of the film. You’re simply required to take in a lot of new information throughout, which isn’t what we’re used to from contemporary Hollywood cinema.
But aside from the complex rolling narrative of wars and horses the overriding theme of the film is an encouraging one. The moments when my emotions came to the surface and I found myself fighting hard to hold back the tears (I didn’t succeed) were not found in the sad and hopeless ones, although there are those for sure, but in the portrayal of the strength and stubbornness of the human spirit and the undefeated love, camaraderie and kindness that’s shared between all living creatures. It’s a novel concept in an art form devised to show us something we’re not accustomed to having shown to us, but War Horse bravely reminds us that the vast majority of people are essentially good and compromising and that the strength of will and charity can overpower all odds and survive even the most unimaginable of horrors.
In that respect it’s probably a good film to have in your collection for days when you feel like the whole world is against you and you find yourself at your lowest ebb.
Visually we’re seeing a new side to Spielberg here. Although he’s always dealt with stories on a large scale and entertained us with his unique visual motifs, War Horse takes a few steps back to paint it’s tale (no pun intended) on a larger canvass than we thought was possible from the director. After helming around twenty-seven visually arresting full length features this is the first one by Spielberg that can truly be described as an epic, whilst somehow remaining uniquely intimate. It’s strongest influence and guiding inspiration has to be one Sir David Lean, which you notice most of all in the bookend scenes set amongst the English countryside where Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski make the environment glow and shimmer as if illuminated by light bouncing off convenient bodies of water. You could argue negatively that in these sequences the reflectors run away from the filmmakers slightly and the light sources erroneously contradict each other, but the overall effect is quite magical, recalling Alex Thomson’s memorable work on Ridley Scott’s Legend.
I don’t think it’d be wrong of me to say that this is perhaps the prettiest film that Spielberg has made to date and is without a doubt lensman Kaminski’s show. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s quite a reservedly directed film that more often than not pauses to painstakingly add brushstrokes to it’s detailed lighting pallet as opposed to indulging in complicated moving concept shots. This reserved quality might also be largely due to the abundant use of animal actors on screen who probably don’t always work well with dancing camera setups, but I suppose that’s a given.
Performance wise War Horse has an impressively sturdy arsenal of character actors on it’s side who really get their day on the battlefield here (pun intended this time). It’s a film of faces you half recognise but might not always be able to put a name to (I think at one point I regrettably said to myself: “oh that’s what’s-his-name from thingy”), but we all know Peter Mullen, Emily Watson and David Thewlis and such stalwarts do well to give the film a very human voice and backbone (there’s a key close-up of Watson after her son receives some bad news in the post that’s possibly my favourite shot in the entire movie). One particular casting highlight for me was that of Tom Hiddleston as a kindly army captain, who’s gentle charisma and natural charm lightens some of the earlier scenes immensely - an appealing trait that’s surely to keep him in rewarding and steady work for quite some time.
At it’s heart War Horse is an old fashioned looking film and brings back to the screen the lost art of grand and operatic cinematic sweep in the vein of Gone With The Wind and the work of the aforementioned David Lean. It’s beautiful backdrops and very particular use of silhouettes, shading and emotive blusters of wind reminds us of just how remarkably beautiful the world is around us and how both fragile and resilient life can be.
It’s not a perfect film, but then again perfect films rarely are.
5/5
Monday, 14 May 2012
Saturday, 12 May 2012
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol – film review
I’ve not watched any episodes of the original Mission: Impossible television series so I can’t make any judgements about which of the four motion picture adaptations is the most faithful. All I can say is which I think is the best and Ghost Protocol isn’t it. My guess is that Brian De Palma’s 1996 debut of this Tom Cruise controlled and starring film series is the least faithful, but it remains by far the best and one of the last great Hollywood suspense thrillers of the twentieth century. The tightness and slender form of that first Mission: Impossible outing with it’s conceptual Dutch-angles and claustrophobically minimal use of outdoor locations was so well crafted that I’d trust it’s makers to build me a plane to fly in or a bridge to walk across.
What’s come since hasn’t been so impressive.
Back in 1996 only two gunshots were fired on screen and those two shots really mattered. They were crucial. The whole film seemed to be assembled around the desire to not reduce itself to simple firearm balletics in an era where Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez ruled the land with bullets and brutality. Every frame was meticulously devised and constructed like a more contemporary Wachowski or Snyder film. You really got the feeling that what was on screen was all that was shot; you could feel the visual architecture of the storyboarding process; you could feel the carefully timed walkthroughs to block the shots precisely before even an inch of celluloid was used; you could feel an auteur crafting something that had no room for what it didn’t need. It was lean, it wasn’t mean and it thrilled me to bits.
What’s come since has had some fat on it; it’s been a little mean spirited in places; and it’s most certainly been quite, quite average.
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (or M:I4 or M:I-GP or Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol or however you’re meant to phrase it) is made by people who still appreciate what De Palma did sixteen years ago to vastly underrated success and it pleasantly echoes the feel of those distant achievements. There are signs here and there that the soul of this new one is harkening back to 1996 and that it could very well turn out to be something just as special. But it doesn’t. Ironically it feels sort of like a ghost.
A few reviews I read about Ghost Protocol when it first came out declared that it was stylish. I didn’t find it to be that exactly. Even when watching the trailers (which are meant to be comprised of “greatest hits” moments) I just couldn’t see where this slickness was that all the critics were raving about. Maybe it was to be found in the cinema in glorious IMAX 3D, but on my small screen 2D DVD copy what style probably jumped out at viewers in the theatre has been flattened out totally on home media. I wonder if the music was in IMAX 3D too because that’s flat as well, eventually becoming possibly the most redundantly placid elevator-music take on what a film score should contribute to a film that I’ve ever heard. It was there and it came out of my speakers, but I never “heard it”. Maybe I should invest in an expensive surround sound system.
Brad Bird’s first time helming a live action feature after a successful career directing animation is an impressive start, but it’s undeniably flawed. Not in any distracting way, mind you, as it’s a very confidently shot and choreographed film, so Bird certainly doesn’t lose points for his overall control of the project. What he does fail to do is something that his predecessor J. J. Abrams (who stays on as a producer) also failed to do and continues to fail to do – and that’s construct a coherent action set piece. The more subtle scenes of quiet suspense are outstanding and genuinely gripping, revealing itself to be one of Bird’s greatest strengths (will the projected corridor sequence and the duplicate hotel room scene become the things of legend?), but there were times when I just tuned out altogether as the film failed to communicate visually what was happening during the more bombastic moments.
There are three sequences that may have worked better and felt more impressive on an IMAX screen, but down here on lowly DVD they’re baffling. The tall building climbing scene (after M:I-2’s leap from a tall building and M:I-3’s, erm, leap from a tall building) is nice but for some reason I didn’t feel a nail-biting sense of danger even though the stunt was done “for real” (albeit with safety cables) on the side of the tallest building in the world. The filmmakers bravely chose not to cheat the sequence with blue screens and CGI mattes and yet there’s still something oddly fake about how it looks, especially with the lack of significant air movement and the subconscious assumption that, well, why wouldn’t you fake it if the result of doing it for real looks just as phoney? The sound design of the dust storm chase sequence made it sound like it was exciting but visually it lost me completely (although my failing eyesight didn’t help). The high tech multi-storey car park fight (a futuristic concept actually borrowed from a Thunderbirds episode) is brilliantly conceived but sadly wasted by missing expositional shots informing us where the characters fit in amongst the chaos or what the dangers are within the cinematic space.
One important thing that most definitely works and manages to hold the film together is the first Impossible Mission Force team in sixteen years that actually feels right. Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton make, along with “point man” Cruise, a delightful foursome who bounce off each other’s strengths and weakness with avid glee and humour. They do so well in fact that Cruise’s roll in the film, whilst still very much the lead, seems humbly set back amidst his supporting players who he himself often plays support to. Is this a sign that Cruise is ready to hand the baton onto somebody else? Renner perhaps? Stranger things have happened.
It would be nice if Henry Czerny and Vanessa Redgrave (who both had all the best lines in the first one) could make a long overdue return in number four (would Emmanuelle Beart be out of the question too? After all, Claire Phelps only looked dead, right?), but I won’t be holding my breath.
My final thoughts on Ghost Protocol are that it’s too long and treads too many paths we’ve seen too many times before, mostly in other Mission: Impossible movies. It’s plot is the half-arsed stuff of an old Bond film that you never watch anymore and it’s bad guys are as insignificant and forgettable as the featured product placements will be in about five years time. It’s still miles better than the second one and only just ahead of the third, but the first and best for now remains solitary in a mythical league of it’s own.
A genuinely nice try, though.
3/5
What’s come since hasn’t been so impressive.
Back in 1996 only two gunshots were fired on screen and those two shots really mattered. They were crucial. The whole film seemed to be assembled around the desire to not reduce itself to simple firearm balletics in an era where Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez ruled the land with bullets and brutality. Every frame was meticulously devised and constructed like a more contemporary Wachowski or Snyder film. You really got the feeling that what was on screen was all that was shot; you could feel the visual architecture of the storyboarding process; you could feel the carefully timed walkthroughs to block the shots precisely before even an inch of celluloid was used; you could feel an auteur crafting something that had no room for what it didn’t need. It was lean, it wasn’t mean and it thrilled me to bits.
What’s come since has had some fat on it; it’s been a little mean spirited in places; and it’s most certainly been quite, quite average.
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (or M:I4 or M:I-GP or Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol or however you’re meant to phrase it) is made by people who still appreciate what De Palma did sixteen years ago to vastly underrated success and it pleasantly echoes the feel of those distant achievements. There are signs here and there that the soul of this new one is harkening back to 1996 and that it could very well turn out to be something just as special. But it doesn’t. Ironically it feels sort of like a ghost.
A few reviews I read about Ghost Protocol when it first came out declared that it was stylish. I didn’t find it to be that exactly. Even when watching the trailers (which are meant to be comprised of “greatest hits” moments) I just couldn’t see where this slickness was that all the critics were raving about. Maybe it was to be found in the cinema in glorious IMAX 3D, but on my small screen 2D DVD copy what style probably jumped out at viewers in the theatre has been flattened out totally on home media. I wonder if the music was in IMAX 3D too because that’s flat as well, eventually becoming possibly the most redundantly placid elevator-music take on what a film score should contribute to a film that I’ve ever heard. It was there and it came out of my speakers, but I never “heard it”. Maybe I should invest in an expensive surround sound system.
Brad Bird’s first time helming a live action feature after a successful career directing animation is an impressive start, but it’s undeniably flawed. Not in any distracting way, mind you, as it’s a very confidently shot and choreographed film, so Bird certainly doesn’t lose points for his overall control of the project. What he does fail to do is something that his predecessor J. J. Abrams (who stays on as a producer) also failed to do and continues to fail to do – and that’s construct a coherent action set piece. The more subtle scenes of quiet suspense are outstanding and genuinely gripping, revealing itself to be one of Bird’s greatest strengths (will the projected corridor sequence and the duplicate hotel room scene become the things of legend?), but there were times when I just tuned out altogether as the film failed to communicate visually what was happening during the more bombastic moments.
There are three sequences that may have worked better and felt more impressive on an IMAX screen, but down here on lowly DVD they’re baffling. The tall building climbing scene (after M:I-2’s leap from a tall building and M:I-3’s, erm, leap from a tall building) is nice but for some reason I didn’t feel a nail-biting sense of danger even though the stunt was done “for real” (albeit with safety cables) on the side of the tallest building in the world. The filmmakers bravely chose not to cheat the sequence with blue screens and CGI mattes and yet there’s still something oddly fake about how it looks, especially with the lack of significant air movement and the subconscious assumption that, well, why wouldn’t you fake it if the result of doing it for real looks just as phoney? The sound design of the dust storm chase sequence made it sound like it was exciting but visually it lost me completely (although my failing eyesight didn’t help). The high tech multi-storey car park fight (a futuristic concept actually borrowed from a Thunderbirds episode) is brilliantly conceived but sadly wasted by missing expositional shots informing us where the characters fit in amongst the chaos or what the dangers are within the cinematic space.
One important thing that most definitely works and manages to hold the film together is the first Impossible Mission Force team in sixteen years that actually feels right. Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton make, along with “point man” Cruise, a delightful foursome who bounce off each other’s strengths and weakness with avid glee and humour. They do so well in fact that Cruise’s roll in the film, whilst still very much the lead, seems humbly set back amidst his supporting players who he himself often plays support to. Is this a sign that Cruise is ready to hand the baton onto somebody else? Renner perhaps? Stranger things have happened.
It would be nice if Henry Czerny and Vanessa Redgrave (who both had all the best lines in the first one) could make a long overdue return in number four (would Emmanuelle Beart be out of the question too? After all, Claire Phelps only looked dead, right?), but I won’t be holding my breath.
My final thoughts on Ghost Protocol are that it’s too long and treads too many paths we’ve seen too many times before, mostly in other Mission: Impossible movies. It’s plot is the half-arsed stuff of an old Bond film that you never watch anymore and it’s bad guys are as insignificant and forgettable as the featured product placements will be in about five years time. It’s still miles better than the second one and only just ahead of the third, but the first and best for now remains solitary in a mythical league of it’s own.
A genuinely nice try, though.
3/5
Thursday, 26 April 2012
48fps and the death of cinema
There’s a problem with the preview footage shown recently of Peter Jackson’s upcoming film The Hobbit, which is due out this December… but it’s not a new problem, in fact it’s a problem that’s been growing for quite a few years.
It’s to do with the 48 frames per second that the film’s been shot in (which is twice as many as normal) and the look that it’s given it. Some people are saying that it’s a method that spoils the feel of what they’re watching; it takes away the stylistic sheen that we’re used to with movies and makes it look cheap, no matter how expensive and glamorous the production is.
Here’s a quote dated 24 April 2012 from the Ain’t It Cool News website about the “controversial” The Hobbit footage:
“…the big issue people walked out of the room this morning feeling is that the look of THE HOBBIT is not what they associate with filmic, or movie-like, or at all traditionally cinematic. The effect of watching 1970’s BBC television dramas as compared to US TV from the same era was mentioned by various people around me.”
Too much like a dated television show, you say?
Here’s my 19 December 2010 thoughts about Michael Mann’s film Public Enemies that addresses a very similar problem:
“I just can’t get to grips with Michael Mann’s choice and use of tv style digital film stock that makes you feel like you’re watching the behind the scenes documentary on the production.
I know he uses it for stylistic effect and to give his post The Insider output a grittier patina… but it just feels cheap and spoils the vast effort put into every other area of his recent films.
Plus the fly-on-the-wall documentary feel that his work now has doesn’t sit well with dramatic acting and the two art forms really do clash badly, making even the most earnest of performance seem strangely out of place and silly.
I tried watching Public Enemies, more than once, really I did, but I found the cinematography too detached, uninvolved and distracting.”
I hate to say “I told you so”, but… well.
This new digital 48fps filmmaking is taking away what people seem to love and cherish about cinema. It’s flattening out the illusion and taking away the magic.
I only hope that this new controversy will reminded people that just because you can do a thing it doesn’t always mean that you should do a thing.
The BBC also reports on the issue: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17836380
It’s to do with the 48 frames per second that the film’s been shot in (which is twice as many as normal) and the look that it’s given it. Some people are saying that it’s a method that spoils the feel of what they’re watching; it takes away the stylistic sheen that we’re used to with movies and makes it look cheap, no matter how expensive and glamorous the production is.
Here’s a quote dated 24 April 2012 from the Ain’t It Cool News website about the “controversial” The Hobbit footage:
“…the big issue people walked out of the room this morning feeling is that the look of THE HOBBIT is not what they associate with filmic, or movie-like, or at all traditionally cinematic. The effect of watching 1970’s BBC television dramas as compared to US TV from the same era was mentioned by various people around me.”
Too much like a dated television show, you say?
Here’s my 19 December 2010 thoughts about Michael Mann’s film Public Enemies that addresses a very similar problem:
“I just can’t get to grips with Michael Mann’s choice and use of tv style digital film stock that makes you feel like you’re watching the behind the scenes documentary on the production.
I know he uses it for stylistic effect and to give his post The Insider output a grittier patina… but it just feels cheap and spoils the vast effort put into every other area of his recent films.
Plus the fly-on-the-wall documentary feel that his work now has doesn’t sit well with dramatic acting and the two art forms really do clash badly, making even the most earnest of performance seem strangely out of place and silly.
I tried watching Public Enemies, more than once, really I did, but I found the cinematography too detached, uninvolved and distracting.”
I hate to say “I told you so”, but… well.
This new digital 48fps filmmaking is taking away what people seem to love and cherish about cinema. It’s flattening out the illusion and taking away the magic.
I only hope that this new controversy will reminded people that just because you can do a thing it doesn’t always mean that you should do a thing.
The BBC also reports on the issue: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17836380
Monday, 23 April 2012
We Need to Talk About Kevin - film review
Perhaps unfairly I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin a month ago, absorbed it’s artistic darkness and obscurities, took it back to the video library and forgot about it. Yesterday I flipped open my laptop and started writing a review. I’m not sure whether taking that amount of time to come to a decision about a movie is wise, but it seems to have taken that long for my thoughts on the matter to finally become clear.
We Need To Talk About Kevin is a film about a mother trawling through her own biased and subjective memory to find an answer to why her first born child has grown up to be a mass murderer. We only see her side of the story and her take on events, therefore it seems that the film isn’t here to give it’s audience a balanced opinion, it’s here to be un-diplomatic, narrow minded and short sighted, just like many of it’s characters.
As a drama about an American high school shooting (this time with arrows instead of bullets… as if teenagers being brutally gunned down has become some sort of cinematic cliché) it’s not as haunting, mature or disturbing as Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant – which left me numb for days – and struggles to get to grips with what story it’s actually trying to tell. If it’s about a psychotic child/young man growing up to commit an unforgivable atrocity then it’s portrayal of the titular Kevin as an Omen style demon child, complete with high-angle shots of his dark and evil gazes, is ill conceived and borders on comical; if it’s about a woman being victimised by the tragedy’s survivors for bringing the perpetrator into the world then, once you see the key series of events from start to finish and realise that she’s just as much of a victim as the rest, you start to question why she’s so hated by the community; if it’s about a mother trying to work out where she went wrong with bringing up her offspring then there are great gaps in the film’s narrative that can only be described as plot holes which fail to explain important issues that desperately need explaining.
In the end We Need To Talk About Kevin is surprisingly mundane and, dare I say it, rather boring. We know what the film is inevitably building up to and what our thoughts/feelings are on the subject already, but in carefully structuring a narrative around these known quantities the filmmakers have steered clear of providing any answers, clear or otherwise, on the reasoning behind Kevin’s actions; it also refuses to find a satisfying emotional denouement which we mistakenly think this is all leading us to. In the end the film remains a nicely shot, elegantly arranged but slightly exploitative bore that tries to be deeper and more challenging than it actually is.
I recommend watching the aforementioned Elephant instead, or maybe even the more popcorn friendly The Omen, you’ll have a similar but more truthful and complete experience than if you try labouring through the tedium of We Need To Talk About Kevin, which simply has nothing to say.
2/5
We Need To Talk About Kevin is a film about a mother trawling through her own biased and subjective memory to find an answer to why her first born child has grown up to be a mass murderer. We only see her side of the story and her take on events, therefore it seems that the film isn’t here to give it’s audience a balanced opinion, it’s here to be un-diplomatic, narrow minded and short sighted, just like many of it’s characters.
As a drama about an American high school shooting (this time with arrows instead of bullets… as if teenagers being brutally gunned down has become some sort of cinematic cliché) it’s not as haunting, mature or disturbing as Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant – which left me numb for days – and struggles to get to grips with what story it’s actually trying to tell. If it’s about a psychotic child/young man growing up to commit an unforgivable atrocity then it’s portrayal of the titular Kevin as an Omen style demon child, complete with high-angle shots of his dark and evil gazes, is ill conceived and borders on comical; if it’s about a woman being victimised by the tragedy’s survivors for bringing the perpetrator into the world then, once you see the key series of events from start to finish and realise that she’s just as much of a victim as the rest, you start to question why she’s so hated by the community; if it’s about a mother trying to work out where she went wrong with bringing up her offspring then there are great gaps in the film’s narrative that can only be described as plot holes which fail to explain important issues that desperately need explaining.
In the end We Need To Talk About Kevin is surprisingly mundane and, dare I say it, rather boring. We know what the film is inevitably building up to and what our thoughts/feelings are on the subject already, but in carefully structuring a narrative around these known quantities the filmmakers have steered clear of providing any answers, clear or otherwise, on the reasoning behind Kevin’s actions; it also refuses to find a satisfying emotional denouement which we mistakenly think this is all leading us to. In the end the film remains a nicely shot, elegantly arranged but slightly exploitative bore that tries to be deeper and more challenging than it actually is.
I recommend watching the aforementioned Elephant instead, or maybe even the more popcorn friendly The Omen, you’ll have a similar but more truthful and complete experience than if you try labouring through the tedium of We Need To Talk About Kevin, which simply has nothing to say.
2/5
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Canoe Adventure!
Not a media review, but I thought this write-up about a sporting activity might be of some interest to somebody.
The most important lesson I learned yesterday, whilst undertaking professional canoe training, was: get reasonably fit beforehand, as you’ll feel like a twat if you can’t zip up your wetsuit, and you really do notice your weight as you’re rocking unsteadily about on the water.
Oh and your muscles will hurt like shit the next day, so stock up on ibuprofen!
I went for this water-based adventure with my girlfriend’s doctor friend and two 17-year-olds, which my friend-of-a-friend is acquainted with through their parents. Or something. The teens wanted to do the canoeing for their Duke of Edinburgh awards (fuck knows what that is, but I heard the term floating about when I was at school), whereas I was there just for fun. The teens were a pleasant pair of kids and not too teenager-ish, although the girl did get a bit squeaky in the afternoon. Sigh. We all got on though, and seemed to bond under the physical duress of the whole experience.
Oh and I found out that what I thought was a canoe AKA the long, thin banana you slide into and row about in using a double-ended lightsaber paddle, isn’t technically a canoe at all.
It’s a kayak.
I also found out that my claustrophobia doesn’t like kayaks, so I literally had to bail out of mine before I even went out onto the water. Fortunately for me, the other type of boat we were there to try out was a larger, and more open, Canadian canoe. I’ve been in one of these before many years ago, actually in Canada itself, and am very comfortable inside. You manoeuvre about in these using just a single-ended paddle. The Canadian canoe is, apparently, harder to use and was meant to constitute the latter part of the day, but the instructor was impressed with how much of an affinity I had with it. This will be my one brag of the day. He even recommended that I seriously consider taking it up in the future.
Perhaps it’s my Canadian heritage that enabled me to master this vessel better. It’s in my blood, baby!
Stupidly, I didn’t pack any snacks to feast on throughout the day, as I was so worried about everything else that it just didn’t seem like a priority. I worry about everything all the time, so some things get left out. I was relieved, therefore, that tubes of Pringles were in much abundance amongst the group, so I accepted generous donations with ease.
So there’s another lesson: pack loads of crap to stuff in your face!
The weather for the day was a mixed bag. I was warm enough with the clothing I’d taken, but had to borrow some gloves from the instructor when the rain and hail arrived to affect my paddling. You need to plan for all conditions when heading out on the water! The wind came and went in random bursts, which really messed-up the ease of navigating on the lake. The canoe I used was more prone to being pushed about and dominated by gales than the sleeker kayaks. This meant that, at one point, when we were way out on the far side of the lake, the instructor had to guide me back to shore with his kayak, as I just couldn’t navigate the canoe effectively. My poor eyesight also had a lot to do with this, unfortunately. It was nice when the sun came out intermittently and warmed us all up. I think, based on this, that it’d be a nicer experience later on in the year when the weather is more consistent.
In my opinion, I was right about the timetable for the day being too intensive. I’d have enjoyed just a morning/afternoon session, but a 9-to-5 ordeal was a bit too much for my schlubby body. I gave up an hour early, as my too-small-for-me wetsuit began digging into my shoulders and caused a lot of pain, plus my energy levels had dropped to the point where I just didn’t care anymore. This turned out to be a wise move, as I missed the diving-out-of-the-kayak-in-the-middle-of-the-fucking-lake-and-swimming-to-shore exercise, which generated some very unhappy and soggy teenagers.
Ha! Serves you right for being young and healthy.
By the end of the day, the instructor still gave me a certificate as, even though I refused to get inside the kayak and missed the dreaded sea-evacuation exercise, he felt I was competent enough to take the award. Yay! What a sweetie.
I’m now looking into local watersport centres, which are quite in abundance around South Yorkshire. There’s one in Rother Valley which looks perfect, with a 90-minute Canadian canoe rental being £12, so maybe I can try and make a fortnightly/monthly excursion out there.
We shall see.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
Monday, 2 April 2012
The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn – film review
I wasn’t sure if I needed to be curious or concerned about whether Steven Spielberg’s visual style would successfully translate to an animated feature or whether The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn would turn out to be a flat but pretty looking trailer for a video game. How relieved I was, then, to have it confirmed that Spielberg’s prowess as a director is not only in his placement of the camera and the framing therein, but also in the manipulation of the three-dimensional (and I don’t mean in terms of 3D filmmaking) world before it. He treats his set, be it real or virtual, like a theatre stage and utilises the space he’s been given to maximum effect. To his credit, Spielberg has not let The Secret Of The Unicorn slip away from him into the hands of digital artists; his puppet master’s strings are pulling on every movement and detail throughout, never allowing you to forget who’s show this is.
When I sat down to watch Tintin after a long and tiring day of fruitless travelling I’d planned only to watch the first five minutes to give my excited little mind a taste of what I’d anxiously been waiting months and months for. About forty five minutes later I was still watching, unable to tear myself away from the stream-of-consciousness, runaway train of a storyline that hardly stops for a breath. The narrative mimics the ever calculating and deducing mind of it’s titular character, who’s always trying to find something positive and constructive in the moment, even when a trail goes dead. Tintin, who sometimes seems to be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder or a condition somewhere along the autism spectrum, needs to report on something, even if he only completes half the adventure; but often that acceptance of “failure” opens up his mind, and the film’s story, to new ideas and possibilities.
In some ways I was startled by the greediness of the plot to utilise every action-adventure mechanism it could without holding back with a profiteering eye for sequels and spin-offs. It guzzles joyous clichés like a big, erm, cliché guzzling machine. But within the non-stop spinning cogs of the plot is a balleticism and poetry to the way each set-piece hands the baton over to the next. It’s not bloated and cold, it’s just eager and full of energy like a young boy playing with his collection of action figures.
The skill apparent in Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish’s screenplay is it’s tendency to allow time for character’s (and our feelings for them) to develop amidst the chaos; in fact they write the intimate scenes as if they too were action scenes. We learn about our protagonists’ back stories and lives whilst they’re dangling from boats and biplanes and cranes. It’s all in there, you just don’t notice it half the time until you’re cheering characters on and rooting for them to escape danger.
Elsewhere the strong vocal talents are an essential weapon in the film’s arsenal, although you can hardly recognise Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the bickering Thompson twins, but I think there’s been a little tweaking going on in the studio to line the two very different sounding actors up. Daniel Craig flexes his vocal range as the dastardly villain and shows us he can do more than just play sombre, monotone secret agents. But at the core of the film is the charmingly destructive trapeze act of a relationship that’s shared between Tintin and Captain Haddock, played by Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis respectively, both of whom turn potentially one-dimension characters into many-faceted eccentrics; both aiding and antagonising the other as external forces constantly threaten to defeat them both.
Amazingly the film manages to make an important point about using or abusing alcohol to forget painful memories or to escape reality; in fact one scene in particular, a confrontation between Tintin and the alcohol dependant Haddock, reminded me of an exchange between me and my father a few years ago when I wasn’t coping with life very well. Yet somehow the tone of this underlining emotional message isn’t preachy or self-righteous (Haddock is endearingly back on the booze by the end once he’s stopped downing it for the wrong reasons), it simply implies that fun, adventure and the answers to a difficult riddle can emerge even when you’re completely sober.
Beyond the serious subtext that intermittently crops up, I found it a good sign that I exclaimed “WOW!!” more than once whilst watching the film. In a period where we’ve seen almost everything that cinema has to offer, Spielberg manages to take a format he himself has perfected in the past (particularly with Indiana Jones) and dazzles us with the novelty of his film’s unrelenting pace, helped greatly by the gravity defying “cartoon logic” that frees up the spirit of the action. And yet beyond the central goings-on there’s always something tinkering away on the periphery; whether it’s a slapstick aside or a layer of background crowd detail, you’ll find the mind-bogglingly complex vistas too much to take in and appreciate on just one viewing, so make sure you have a return visit.
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn has the naïve, impatient and tempestuous drive of a child experiencing the world for the first time, and yet it’s harnessed with the experience and love for the motion of pictures that Spielberg has only gotten better at demonstrating over the years. The treasure for us isn’t the secret of the Unicorn, but that the film exists in the first place and the fact that Spielberg remains one of the few director’s of his generation still with the desire and ability to quench our thirst for cinematic spectacle, be it large or small.
5/5
When I sat down to watch Tintin after a long and tiring day of fruitless travelling I’d planned only to watch the first five minutes to give my excited little mind a taste of what I’d anxiously been waiting months and months for. About forty five minutes later I was still watching, unable to tear myself away from the stream-of-consciousness, runaway train of a storyline that hardly stops for a breath. The narrative mimics the ever calculating and deducing mind of it’s titular character, who’s always trying to find something positive and constructive in the moment, even when a trail goes dead. Tintin, who sometimes seems to be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder or a condition somewhere along the autism spectrum, needs to report on something, even if he only completes half the adventure; but often that acceptance of “failure” opens up his mind, and the film’s story, to new ideas and possibilities.
In some ways I was startled by the greediness of the plot to utilise every action-adventure mechanism it could without holding back with a profiteering eye for sequels and spin-offs. It guzzles joyous clichés like a big, erm, cliché guzzling machine. But within the non-stop spinning cogs of the plot is a balleticism and poetry to the way each set-piece hands the baton over to the next. It’s not bloated and cold, it’s just eager and full of energy like a young boy playing with his collection of action figures.
The skill apparent in Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish’s screenplay is it’s tendency to allow time for character’s (and our feelings for them) to develop amidst the chaos; in fact they write the intimate scenes as if they too were action scenes. We learn about our protagonists’ back stories and lives whilst they’re dangling from boats and biplanes and cranes. It’s all in there, you just don’t notice it half the time until you’re cheering characters on and rooting for them to escape danger.
Elsewhere the strong vocal talents are an essential weapon in the film’s arsenal, although you can hardly recognise Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the bickering Thompson twins, but I think there’s been a little tweaking going on in the studio to line the two very different sounding actors up. Daniel Craig flexes his vocal range as the dastardly villain and shows us he can do more than just play sombre, monotone secret agents. But at the core of the film is the charmingly destructive trapeze act of a relationship that’s shared between Tintin and Captain Haddock, played by Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis respectively, both of whom turn potentially one-dimension characters into many-faceted eccentrics; both aiding and antagonising the other as external forces constantly threaten to defeat them both.
Amazingly the film manages to make an important point about using or abusing alcohol to forget painful memories or to escape reality; in fact one scene in particular, a confrontation between Tintin and the alcohol dependant Haddock, reminded me of an exchange between me and my father a few years ago when I wasn’t coping with life very well. Yet somehow the tone of this underlining emotional message isn’t preachy or self-righteous (Haddock is endearingly back on the booze by the end once he’s stopped downing it for the wrong reasons), it simply implies that fun, adventure and the answers to a difficult riddle can emerge even when you’re completely sober.
Beyond the serious subtext that intermittently crops up, I found it a good sign that I exclaimed “WOW!!” more than once whilst watching the film. In a period where we’ve seen almost everything that cinema has to offer, Spielberg manages to take a format he himself has perfected in the past (particularly with Indiana Jones) and dazzles us with the novelty of his film’s unrelenting pace, helped greatly by the gravity defying “cartoon logic” that frees up the spirit of the action. And yet beyond the central goings-on there’s always something tinkering away on the periphery; whether it’s a slapstick aside or a layer of background crowd detail, you’ll find the mind-bogglingly complex vistas too much to take in and appreciate on just one viewing, so make sure you have a return visit.
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn has the naïve, impatient and tempestuous drive of a child experiencing the world for the first time, and yet it’s harnessed with the experience and love for the motion of pictures that Spielberg has only gotten better at demonstrating over the years. The treasure for us isn’t the secret of the Unicorn, but that the film exists in the first place and the fact that Spielberg remains one of the few director’s of his generation still with the desire and ability to quench our thirst for cinematic spectacle, be it large or small.
5/5
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
The Rum Diary - film review
I wish I could write something worthwhile whilst on a drinking binge, it’d make my life a whole lot easier, but unfortunately I have to be in a period of sobriety, get up very early in the morning and quickly soak myself in bad coffee before my brain starts working and the words start drying up. No rum, wine or beer for me.
Then again, writing isn’t my livelihood, it’s currently just a hobby, but I can imagine that when you’ve got a writing deadline to keep to in order to earn money to buy food and you find yourself just not in the mood to type anything then, for some, alcohol might be the only way forward.
The Rum Diary is set in a world populated by men with furious writer’s block. They work for a newspaper they don’t read and have to write articles about stuff they don’t care about. One day they’ll get out, one day, but right now the editor’s holding their paycheques and nothing’s flowing, so they drink until something does flow. They have to write bullshit and so they get into the state where they talk bullshit.
The film’s a mixed bag of Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas hedonism and Withnail & I brotherly comradely. If it all feels like the work of a man who was drinking heavily whilst adapting it to the screen then, fear not, because writer/director Bruce Robinson was (after writer’s block ended a six year sober spell). Robinson is an avid researcher and, if you read the Smoking In Bed collection of interviews with him, a great raconteur; it’s just a shame he’s remembered most for his least researched (but personally experienced) film. The Rum Diary has a lot of background and depth to it, even though it rarely emerges on the surface, but you feel the weight of the thinking behind it, you can feel that there could be a million footnotes to each scene.
But the film struggles to juggle three plots at once: a romance, an insight into journalism and a drama about corruption. Each is paid off and tied up nicely, but none seem to be the driving force of the film or the energy behind it’s creators. The strongest aspect of the film is the world that these plots inhabit; Robinson has deftly carved a real universe for us to indulge in with it’s mix of sweaty alcoholics and sharp suited egomaniacs. We don’t feel like we’re on a set or behind a fenced off location, we’re in there with the characters taking notes and pictures for tomorrow’s paper and risking life and limb to find a bed for the night.
Johnny Depp “reprises” his Raoul Duke from Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, in spirit anyway. He plays frustrated novelist/journalist Paul Kemp on the cusp of inspiration and drug dependency. He’s young, handsome, idealistic and still chasing girls. The collection of layabouts he meets make him seem like the straight laced one, especially the marvellously vile but somehow loveable Moberg, who Giovanni Ribisi plays to terrifyingly brain-fried perfection.
There are a few bumpy rides in the script. Some characters seem to share something we’re not seeing on screen and by the end there are tearful goodbyes from people who don’t seem capable of tearful goodbyes. Have they all really shared so much? They had a few adventures and nearly got sent to prison, but I don’t recall seeing them bonding on an intimate level.
Never mind, I’m sure it all makes sense if you’re drinking.
I recommend The Rum Diary as a ship-in-a-bottle representation of a time, a place and a way of life that few would genuinely want to experience for themselves. The only glamour in this world is found amongst the people who fence themselves off from it and live inside a bubble with no real connection to the outside world. The film shows you the difference between simply existing and experiencing life and all it’s joys and horrors.
Savour it.
Oh and I wrote this review whilst drinking a bottle of red wine… any good?
4/5
Then again, writing isn’t my livelihood, it’s currently just a hobby, but I can imagine that when you’ve got a writing deadline to keep to in order to earn money to buy food and you find yourself just not in the mood to type anything then, for some, alcohol might be the only way forward.
The Rum Diary is set in a world populated by men with furious writer’s block. They work for a newspaper they don’t read and have to write articles about stuff they don’t care about. One day they’ll get out, one day, but right now the editor’s holding their paycheques and nothing’s flowing, so they drink until something does flow. They have to write bullshit and so they get into the state where they talk bullshit.
The film’s a mixed bag of Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas hedonism and Withnail & I brotherly comradely. If it all feels like the work of a man who was drinking heavily whilst adapting it to the screen then, fear not, because writer/director Bruce Robinson was (after writer’s block ended a six year sober spell). Robinson is an avid researcher and, if you read the Smoking In Bed collection of interviews with him, a great raconteur; it’s just a shame he’s remembered most for his least researched (but personally experienced) film. The Rum Diary has a lot of background and depth to it, even though it rarely emerges on the surface, but you feel the weight of the thinking behind it, you can feel that there could be a million footnotes to each scene.
But the film struggles to juggle three plots at once: a romance, an insight into journalism and a drama about corruption. Each is paid off and tied up nicely, but none seem to be the driving force of the film or the energy behind it’s creators. The strongest aspect of the film is the world that these plots inhabit; Robinson has deftly carved a real universe for us to indulge in with it’s mix of sweaty alcoholics and sharp suited egomaniacs. We don’t feel like we’re on a set or behind a fenced off location, we’re in there with the characters taking notes and pictures for tomorrow’s paper and risking life and limb to find a bed for the night.
Johnny Depp “reprises” his Raoul Duke from Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, in spirit anyway. He plays frustrated novelist/journalist Paul Kemp on the cusp of inspiration and drug dependency. He’s young, handsome, idealistic and still chasing girls. The collection of layabouts he meets make him seem like the straight laced one, especially the marvellously vile but somehow loveable Moberg, who Giovanni Ribisi plays to terrifyingly brain-fried perfection.
There are a few bumpy rides in the script. Some characters seem to share something we’re not seeing on screen and by the end there are tearful goodbyes from people who don’t seem capable of tearful goodbyes. Have they all really shared so much? They had a few adventures and nearly got sent to prison, but I don’t recall seeing them bonding on an intimate level.
Never mind, I’m sure it all makes sense if you’re drinking.
I recommend The Rum Diary as a ship-in-a-bottle representation of a time, a place and a way of life that few would genuinely want to experience for themselves. The only glamour in this world is found amongst the people who fence themselves off from it and live inside a bubble with no real connection to the outside world. The film shows you the difference between simply existing and experiencing life and all it’s joys and horrors.
Savour it.
Oh and I wrote this review whilst drinking a bottle of red wine… any good?
4/5
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)