Filed under: Music, Videos | Tagged: Beach House, Gonjasufi, Headlights, On Fillmore, Prairie Cat, She & Him | Leave a Comment »
The Father of My Children – A Film Review
Posted on Thursday, 11 March 2010 by Longman Oz
A workaholic father who gives new meaning to the concept of being a “weekend daddy” may sound suspiciously like the idea for some cloying Disney film or other. However, this bold and striking work from young French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve is definitely a horse of a different colour. Introduced to the audience as the middle-aged chain-smoking boss of an independent film production company, her protagonist Grégoire (charismatically played by Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) negotiates Friday evening traffic heading out of Paris as he deals with a myriad of colourful work-related problems on his mobile telephone. One detour later, he is at home with his brood of lively children and a loving wife in Sylvia (a somewhat stand-offish Chiara Caselli). However, work never seems to be far from his mind, no matter how much he throws himself into family life.
What makes this film worthy, though, is that it avoids simplistic characterizations and plot developments. Undeniably, Sylvia is not best pleased to see so little of her husband and, yes. the two adorable younger children vie heavily for their father’s rare attention. However, they do not hate him for what he is and Grégoire is not some blinkered executive who puts profit in front of everything else. In fact, it is his inability to make money that is now threatening to be his undoing. Despite a good eye for what will be a critical success, his hopelessly stretched finances ensure that even the most successful of his films makes little or no money for his business though. Indeed, for all of his vibrancy and appetite for life, things are getting on top of Grégoire and he noticeably starts to change in demeanor, as he attempts to juggle the impossible. Read more »
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: Alice de Lencquesaing, Chiara Caselli, Dominique Frot, Le père de mes enfants, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Magne Brekke, Mia Hansen-Løve, The Father of My Children | Leave a Comment »
The Headless Woman – A Film Review
Posted on Wednesday, 10 March 2010 by Longman Oz
This is an unapologetically bewildering work that seems to enjoy teasing the audience with cognitive illusions. Are we supposed to be watching the apparent protagonist or the various extras that fill the edges of the shots? When all of those cross-conversations are taking place, which one are we meant to be following? Just who are all of these people that the central character is interacting with? And did her jaundiced niece just hit on her in that last scene? As with the dark but superb Tony Manero, the suspicion is that there is a much deeper socio-political level to this Argentinian film than the relatively superficial narrative arc that we are invited to try and follow. However, the former was a walk in the park compared to this intriguing attempt to out-Haneke Haneke.
Here, a middle-aged woman called Verónica (María Onetto) drives off from a loud and energetic gathering of mothers and their children. Distracted momentarily, she hits something that was on the road. As the camera focuses on a side profile of her face in the immediate aftermath of the incident, the eye is gradually drawn to the imprint of a child’s hand on the car window. Did that appear there just now or was it there from before? Moreover, when the woman finally gets out, the audience receives just enough visual clues to know that it was the same spot on the road where they had seen three small boys and a dog playing earlier on. However, all that lies there now is the body of a dog – perhaps the same one from before, perhaps not. In any event, will the sudden deluge of rain now wash everything away? Read more »
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: La mujer sin cabeza, Lucrecia Martel, María Onetto, The Headless Woman | 2 Comments »
The Dancer And The Thief – A Film Review
Posted on Tuesday, 9 March 2010 by Longman Oz
A medley of love, crime, art, politics, revenge, humour, and western, with a condor on top, this two-hour long adaptation of Antonio Skármeta’s novel of the same name by well regarded Spanish director Fernando Trueba has it all and suffers for it. Set in Santiago following the fall of the Pinochet regime, a nationwide prisoners’ amnesty has been granted. Amongst those to benefit from early release are the ageing master safecracker Nico Vergara Grey (Ricardo Darín) and the seemingly simple-minded but enthusiastic petty thief Angel (Abel Ayala). Vergara Grey now wants nothing more than to find his wife and son and live out a quiet trouble-free life. By way of contrast, though, Angel is hopelessly enthusiastic about his future and has several major plans that he wants to set in motion.
In possibly the film’s most charming few moments, though, Angel firstly runs into Victoria (Miranda Bodenhöfer), a mute and poorly-dressed girl, who has been standing outside of an adult cinema. Gaining her attention initially with a babbling mixture of bluff and bluster, she casts a spell over him by her magical dancing ability. From then on, Angel is utterly smitten, whilst the serious-looking Victoria is clearly beginning to reciprocate his feelings for her. However, she has a troubled past and her impoverished background makes it seemingly impossible for her to become a professional dancer. Meanwhile, Angel hopes to persuade Vergara Grey to do this one big job with him that will allow them all to realize their dreams. Read more »
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: Abel Ayala, Antonio Skármeta, Ariadna Gil, El baile de la Victoria, Fernando Trueba, Julio Jung, Miranda Bodenhöfer, Ricardo Darín | Leave a Comment »
Breathless – A Film Review
Posted on Monday, 8 March 2010 by Longman Oz
You tend not to get half-measures in South Korean cinema and this extreme and graphic depiction of an angry and violent young man is definitely no exception to that particular rule. Written, directed, and starred in by Yang Ik-joon, this brutal and uncompromising character study tells the tale of Sang-Hoon (Mr. Yang) a vicious debt collector whose first instinct is always to beat to a bloody pulp anyone who dares to cross him. As a result, it is difficult, initially to see Sang-Hoon as being much more than a crude and merciless thug who is as likely to punch a woman as he is a man. Despite this, the director is keen to build up a more complex understanding of his protagonist, inspired, as he is, by the sort of community that he grew up in during the eighties and nineties.
The unmarried Sang-Hoon is the product of a broken home and, more specifically, one terrible evening when his father’s uncontrollable rage led to an terrible tragedy. Essentially, Sang-Hoon has never recovered from that event. Rather, it has turned him into a monster in his own right. However, in this respect, Sang-Hoon is not alone, with both domestic and street violence seemingly quite characteristic of this rundown neighbourhood. Moreover, in Yeon-Hue (well played here by Kim Kot-bi), he finally gets to meet a victim who is not afraid of either his foul-mouthed abuse or his alacritous propensity to use his fists and feet. Moreover, it is a telling indication of his own level of emotional maturity that Sang-Hoon starts to fall for this high-school girl with problems of her own. However, they find each other fascinating and thus begin an unlikely yet chaste relationship. Read more »
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: Breathless, Ddongpari, Kim Kot-bi, Kim Sang-won, Lee Jin-suk, Yang Ik-joon | Leave a Comment »
100 Noughtie Films: The Year 2007
Posted on Sunday, 7 March 2010 by Longman Oz
Filed under: Cinema | Tagged: 100 Noughtie Films | Leave a Comment »
A Small Time Player in the World of Pop #38
Posted on Friday, 5 March 2010 by Longman Oz
Filed under: Music, Videos | Tagged: Cold Cave, Sunset Rubdown, The Album Leaf, The Twilight Sad, Villagers | 4 Comments »
Les Liaisons dangereuses (The Gate Theatre, Dublin) – A Theatre Review
Posted on Thursday, 4 March 2010 by Longman Oz
Of course, the irony inherent in Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ well-known eighteenth century novel is that it is the audience who gets to laugh last and longest. The Marquise de Merteuil (Fiona Bell) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Nick Dunning) may cruelly rejoice at how well they can corrupt the young and demean the righteous, gloating all the while about their own bloated sense of superiority. Yet, both are to be scorned and even pitied, for they ultimately amount to little more than dead-eyed slaves to their impulses and joyless victims of their emotions. In other words, to act uniquely out of spite, jealousy, and anger are not the qualities of robust and powerful individuals. Instead, their actions are simply those of the lowly coward, who can only drag others down into the gutter alongside him,
Admittedly, Valmont does surprise himself by achieving some degree of personal growth through his relentless pursuit of the virtuous Madame de Tourvel (Catherine Walker). However, it really is too little too late by the time that he realizes this. Moreover, before his agonizingly slow death (for the audience that is), Valmont is played with a disappointingly mechanical sneer by Mr. Dunning. Quite what makes the Vicomte the master seducer of women is not at all apparent in this wintry yet lecherous characterisation. Rather, as Madame de Volanges (Susan Fitzgerald) intimates early on, he really is a man to be despised in private and tolerated in public.
At the same time, when the likes of Madame de Tourvel and Cécile (Jane McGrath) are as gullible as they are here, perhaps Valmont could well achieve the same results without ever needing to bathe, brush his teeth, or even change his long johns? As he says himself, it is just too easy.
Read more »
Filed under: Theatre | Tagged: Catherine Walker, Christopher Hampton, Deirdre Donnelly, Fiona Bell, Jane McGrath, Les Liaisons dangereuses, Michael Barker-Caven, Nick Dunning, Paul Keogan, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Susan Fitzgerald | Leave a Comment »
Colony – A Film Review
Posted on Wednesday, 3 March 2010 by Longman Oz
“Colony Collapse Disorder” reads like the far-fetched plot to some 1950s B-movie or other. A Californian beekeeper goes to check on his hives in the evening time, only to discover that the worker bees have failed to return and there are no any obvious signs that the hives have been interfered with. Meanwhile, in Florida, Montana, and Pennsylvania, the exact same phenomenon is occurring. No one knows why the bees are dying in such huge numbers out in the fields (one-third of the bee population of the United States apparently disappeared in this manner in 2008). However, the implications for food production, if this continues, will extend far beyond being able to spread honey on our toast in the mornings.
Essentially, bees are responsible for the pollination of a significant portion of the fruit and vegetables that we eat. In other words, if the bees continue to die off like this, the more that crop yields will fall and the more costly such foodstuffs will become on supermarket shelves. Intrigued by this mysterious development, first-time filmmakers Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell spent up to eighteen months on the road, interviewing and even living with beekeepers from all over the United States. While no one can say for sure what has caused this dramatic collapse in the bee population, leading theories include advancements in the pesticides being used, monoculture farming, the emergence of new pathogens, and – you have guessed it – climate change. Read more »
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: Bees, Carter Gunn, Colony, Colony Collapse Disorder, Ross McDonnell | 2 Comments »
Hadewijch – A Film Review
Posted on Tuesday, 2 March 2010 by Longman Oz
Hadewijch was a 13th century Christian mystic who’s writings made no distinctions whatsoever between God and love. In this latest film from the ever intense and challenging writer/director Bruno Dumont, a young theological student called Céline (Julie Sokolowski) adopts this name in the convent where she is living. However, when her unswerving and self-mortifying devotion to Jesus proves too much for the firm-but-empathic Mother Superior (Brigitte Mayeux-Clerget), she is asked to leave the monastery in order to try and find her way to Christ in the real world instead. The daughter of a government minister, whose home is a huge, gilded, and ornate apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, in the very heart of Paris, Céline finds herself at a loss, though. As a result, she ends up dividing her time between looking after the family pet and praying intensely.
However, things start to change when she meets Yassine (Yassine Salime). As an unemployed Muslim from a far-flung working-class suburb of Paris, he is from an entirely different universe to Céline. Even when her unwavering devotion to Christ means that she rejects any prospect of a sexual union with him, Yassine still doggedly pursues her. This brings Céline into contact with his brother Nassir (Karl Sarafidis) who is a strong adherent of Islam. Moreover, Nassir’s ability to comprehend and manipulate Céline’s susceptibility and fervour is to have a hugely significant affect on her, even though the detailed manner in which this improbable outcome is achieved is left to the audience to try and justify. Read more »
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: Brigitte Mayeux-Clerget, Bruno Dumont, David Dewaele, Hadewijch, Julie Sokolowski, Karl Sarafidis, Yassine Salime | 4 Comments »
Life During Wartime – A Film Review
Posted on Monday, 1 March 2010 by Longman Oz
Director Todd Solondz picks back up the thread of his characters’ lives a decade after he first brought them so memorably to the world’s attention in Happiness. Crucially, though, each part has been re-cast, life has continued to shape their lives in the interim, and the thematic approach adopted here is quite different. Therefore, watching Happiness is not a prerequisite to enjoying this film, especially as Mr. Solondz does a fine job of re-establishing the characters’ back-stories using only minimalist brushstrokes. While this may lead to some slightly bizarre introductory scenes for the novice viewer, the effect of even that is to turn Life During Wartime into an oddly compelling film in its own right, with perhaps only the reintroduction of the youngest sister Helen (Ally Sheedy) proving to be particularly lumpy.
Instead, the focus here is on the two elder sisters Joy (Shirley Henderson) and Trish (Allison Janney) respectively, not to mention Trish’s disgraced ex-husband Bill (Ciarán Hinds). In a hugely enjoyable series of opening scenes, attention switches from Joy’s relationship with Allen coming under strain, to Trish surprisingly finding love in the short and rotund form of Harvey (Michael Lerner), to Bill being released from a New Jersey penitentiary. In an amusingly clever decision, here, a buttoned-up Michael Kenneth Williams has replaced Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Allen and this works brilliantly during what is a memorable opening exchange! Read more »
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: Allison Janney, Ally Sheedy, Charlotte Rampling, Ciarán Hinds, Dylan Riley Snyder, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michael Lerner, Rich Pecci, Shirley Henderson, Todd Solondz | 3 Comments »
100 Noughtie Films: The Year 2006
Posted on Sunday, 28 February 2010 by Longman Oz
Filed under: Cinema | Tagged: 100 Noughtie Films | 2 Comments »
A Small Time Player in the World of Pop #37
Posted on Friday, 26 February 2010 by Longman Oz
Filed under: Music, Videos | Tagged: Angus & Julia Stone, El Perro del Mar, Tegan and Sara, Vampire Weekend | Leave a Comment »
Enter the Void – A Film Review
Posted on Thursday, 25 February 2010 by Longman Oz
Ever since watching Babel, I have felt that the gaudy Tokyo nightscape would make for a brilliant backdrop to some very whacked-out movie or other. As it happens, either Gaspar Noé or I should be unnerved by that fact that the controversial director seems to have had much the same idea. In this seemingly unending work, he tells a squalid tale of sex, drugs, and grieving from the first-person perspective of its dead protagonist – a young American named Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) who has been paying for his increasing drug addiction with some small-time dealing in the clubs and bars of Tokyo. Making no effort to disguise the plot, the audience is treated early on to Oscar’s friend Alex (a one-to-watch in Cyril Roy) providing an overview of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Before we know it, Oscar has met with his sudden and dramatic end in a filthy barroom toilet and the audience is invited to spend the next two hours in the bardo with their rather gormless protagonist.
In essence, the bardo is a transitional state between one incarnation and the next. Hence, Oscar’s spirit remains on Earth and is able to relive seminal moments from his former life and to observe what happens next to the people that he knew, as he waits and waits and waits some more in this incorporeal limbo. If this sounds a little tame, then that is to do the film a disservice, as several of the scenes are decidedly and provocatively discomfiting. In certain instances, Oscar flits in some psychosexual manner from the sight of his sister’s or lover’s breast to that of his mother when he was an infant. Elsewhere, he witnesses his sister Lisa (a once more rarely-clothed Paz de la Huerta) in highly personal moments – one of which is particularly unpleasant – or returns to a deeply traumatic time when they were both still quite young. However, as his time spent hovering over events past and present drags on, the sense is that Oscar and, by extension, the audience are helpless to do anything other than wait for events outside of their control to take their course. Read more »
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: Benoît Debie, Cyril Roy, Enter the Void, Gaspar Noé, Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Tibetan Book of the Dead | Leave a Comment »
Solomon Kane – A Film Review
Posted on Wednesday, 24 February 2010 by Longman Oz
Solomon Kane, an intriguing Biblical juxtaposition if ever there was one, makes for an interesting case study in cinematic mulch. However, just to get the idea behind the film out of the way beforehand, some evildoer renounces violence but is forced back into action again when a maiden needs rescuing. Oh, you want to know more? Well, it is set in the Elizabethan era, there are demons, witches, and sorcerers running amok around the English countryside and our hero will be damned to spend an eternity in Hell if he cannot save the aforementioned damsel-in-distress. Still not enough information? Dude, the rest of this review is so going to change cinema-going for you forever!
The point is that there must be a dozen of these films churned out each year and the narrative arc rarely differs by more than a nuance or two between them. There is an attention-grabbing action scene to begin with, followed by some ramshackle attempt at establishing more or less the same old plot as always, throw in a few “snakes & ladders” developments in terms of taking on the bad guys, cut to some dark night of the soul for the good guys, before finishing with some badass pyrotechnic denouement. The protagonist will usually have some baggage or other that makes him edgy and the plot is always suitably compressed so that some long-lost family member/best friend/mentor/milkman turns out to be the baddie in order that events become more… um… meaningful… or something. In short, have numbers, can paint. Read more »
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: James Purefoy, Pete Postlewaite, Solomon Kane | Leave a Comment »
