Directors Jeunet, Chabrol, Gondry, and Audiard are just four of the reasons to be excited about this year’s French Film Festival in the Irish Film Institute, which runs from 19-29 November.
Using, as always, the scientific techniques that some call gut instinct, past precedent, and blind faith, here are a few films that caught my attention!
MICMACS
There are few directors who do imagination and visual effect as well as Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Yes, he of Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, and Amélie fame! His latest work, MICMACS, has the honour of opening the festival and tells the comic tale of a video clerk who gains an unusual opportunity for revenge against the weapons manufactuers who killed his father, with the help of some (undoubtedly) eccentric characters. The fact that Dany Boon has been cast in the lead role alone is enough to ensure that this will be no strait-laced affair! Read more »
There is always something decidedly irritating about a play that blatantly refers to the work of great writers such as Eugene O’Neill and William Falkner. Perhaps it is the self-aggrandisement that such name-dropping implies. Perhaps it is the insinuation that the audience is too pig ignorant to be able to draw such parallels for themselves without the assistance of some whacking great signposts in the script. Either way, it does take some of the good out of any positive assessment of this work by American playwright Christopher Shinn. That said, though, there is equally some validity to the observation that the play makes at least as many references to mass entertainment vehicles such as The Daily Show and Law & Order. Therefore, on balance, there is conceivably no disruption to the cosmic harmony at all!
Set in New York several years after the destruction of the World Trade Centre, the play examines the events of two different evenings spent in a cold and impersonal-looking apartment. The audience’s interest is initially piqued by an awkward reunion between Kelly (Gemma Mae Halligan) and an unexpected guest, her brother-in-law Peter (Paul Mallon). It is then gradually drip-fed enough information over the course of the play to piece together the dynamics of the triangular relationship formed by Kelly, Peter, and their husband/twin brother respectively Craig (also played by Paul Mallon). He had died a year previously whilst serving in Iraq, but appears now in flashback scenes that depict the last night that he ever spent with Kelly. Read more »
White Knights! Poison Pills! Greenmail! Insider Trading!
Making Money!
The play is called Serious Money. “Shameless greed” would be a more accurate two-word synopsis of this acerbic but utterly riotous portrayal of the City – London’s financial hub – in the late eighties. As with other contemporary works about unadulterated capitalism, be it non-fiction accounts such as Barbarians at the Gate and Liars’ Poker or fictive works such as Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities and Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, Caryl Churchill’s play takes the audience right into the belly of the beast where they are confronted full-on with the roaring, ruthless minions of Mammon.
Loosely structured around two intertwined plot lines regarding, firstly, the hostile takeover of a traditional British manufacturing firm, symbolically called Albion, and, secondly, the investigation into the apparent suicide of a shady deal-maker, the play’s real preoccupation is with assaulting the audience with the fizz and frenzy of high finance, the amoral ambition of the financial markets’ inhabitants, and how this great serpent has coiled itself right around the planet and is now squeezing the life out of the many for the unappeasable enrichment of the few. Mines close in Peru, factories shut in England, and champagne corks pop in London and New York. Read more »
A superficial understanding of contemporary American attitudes would suggest that having a French wife and an abundance of political songs questioning the country’s involvement in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is not likely to make John Vanderslice a terribly popular performer in wide swathes of the USA. Even if this were true, though, one could see how his boyish looks, calm assertiveness, and disarming friendliness might yet win him an encore or two.
Not that John is terribly into such rituals, preferring to carry on playing last night until he hit curfew. Indeed, promoting his new album is apparently not high on his list of priorities either, with only three songs from Romanian Names featuring on the occasionally spontaneous set list, which instead drew eclectically from his prolific output since going solo a decade ago. In a way, this came as a disappointment, as I had really been looking forward to hearing numbers such as Tremble and Tear, Fetal Horses, and D.I.A.L.O. However, with a promise to keep up his annual visits to Ireland, hopefully the chance to hear them will come soon again. Read more »
Opening with a typically lengthy version of Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind, a capacity Dublin audience is given its first reminder in many years of what Ira Kaplan’s idiosyncratic style of guitar playing is like. Specifically, he folds himself almost rag-doll like over the instrument as he gets it to emit a variety of screeches and wails. Alongside him, then, James McNew stands totem-pole like in place, as he repeatedly strums out the same basic but entrancing bass chords.
The band then go on to mix it up for a while between material from their new record such as Avalon or Someone Very Similar and Periodically Double or Triple and older numbers such as Stockholm Syndrome and Tears Are In Your Eyes (featuring, of course, Georgia Hubley on lead vocals). The highlight here, though, is probably Mr. Tough, where McNew and Kaplan share the falsetto duties. On the whole, it is good, but the healthy suspicion remains that there is much better yet to come!
The show then moves on to its next phase, which is a three-song set of acoustic numbers and includes an admittedly lightweight sounding version of Tom Courtenay. It is probably not quite what the audience has come for either. Read more »
Canadian singer-songwriter Jenn Grant has been on my radar ever since she released the tuneful Orchestra for the Moon a few years ago, sandwiched by similar solo offerings from compatriot Feist. Jenn has since followed that album up with a new one called Echoes, from which this rather excellent song below is taken.
You can also find new music below from Brakes, Loch Lomond, No Age, and The Swell Season respectively! Yep, I spoil you.
In some ways, this film is a victory for style over substance. A quintessential coming-of-age drama where a smart, pretty, and articulate schoolgirl becomes romantically involved with an older man, An Education also looks to capture London in the swinging sixties. as well as that sense of a generational change in values and outlooks.
More precisely, Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is sixteen years old, living with her parents in the pleasant but dull suburbs of Twickenham, and entirely focused on gaining a place in Oxford University, where she hopes to read English. Jenny also has a fine cultural palette, with a particular appreciation for all things French. However, it is her Audrey Hepburn-type looks that attract the charming and wealthy David (Peter Sarsgaard) to her in the first place.
It does not take long then for Jenny to become besotted by his interest in her and, after he as won over her parents with a cocktail of half-truths, David gives her a taste for all of the social possibilities that drab suburban life has denied her thus far. This leads Jenny down a path where she is confronted by a choice between the possibilities of a life of easy fulfilment and having to graft away for years to come for rewards that she is becoming increasingly disillusioned about. Read more »
Despite its name, this latest offering from the Pixar Animation Studios ends up rolling downhill from a moving and memorable prologue to a limp and predictable epilogue. In between, it tells the tale of Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), a lonely old curmudgeon who decides to fulfil a sentimental childhood dream by travelling to South America. The catch here being that his choice of transport is to make his house airborne through the use of hundreds of Skittles-like balloons. Unbeknownst to Carl, though, is the fact that he has an accidental stowaway onboard in the form of a chubby boy scout called Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai). What follows next are their adventures together and room aplenty for some personal growth, don’t you know.
Having been presented with Carl’s life in an initial series of short but entirely effective silent scenes, the audience definitely empathises with the pain that he is feeling from now being alone and feeling isolated in a relentlessly changing world. Moreover, the fact that he ends up having an odd-couple relationship with Russell, which gives him a fresh perspective on life, does have echoes to it of Clint Eastwood’s impressive depiction of the same theme in Gran Torino. Indeed, on that note, there are also hints of inspiration from other films to be found here – be it from Apocalypse Now to Star Wars or from Indiana Jones to Police Academy. Even several of the Looney Tunes cartoons get a look in! Read more »
With an inheritance of £25,000 burning a hole in his pocket and eschewing the sensible uses that such as a windfall can be put to, first-time director Peter Strickland jetted off to Budapest to prepare work on a self-financed Hungarian-language film set in Transylvania. The fact that he only spoke a little of the language was not seen as an impediment. Rather, the resulting film was to bear an uncanny resemblance to many preceding moralistic dramas from that part of the world.
The story begins with a woman (Hilda Peter in the titular role) being thrown out of her home in a remote part of Romania. Rather than get mad, she decides to get even with the cause of her predicament and sets off cross-country on a horse-drawn cart, with only her young son (Norbert Tanko) for company. Strickland foreshadows how events are going to unfold, though, with a prologue that shows men purporting to be the police knocking on doors in the dead of night in search of Katalin. However, the full story only becomes apparent as the film progresses, with the result being a cautionary tale of how an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Read more »
It was inevitable really. Some band was always going to take the best qualities of several other successful alternative bands (heck, they even nicked Andrew Bird’s whistling!) and turn these combined attributes into something so layered, nuanced, and, quite frankly, overwhelming that you repeatedly felt the need to rub your eyes to check if you were definitely still awake. Indeed, if ever there was a band to go see twice in quick succession, it is Grizzly Bear on this tour. Simply put, it is just not possible to take it all in from a single performance.
For example, it is a decadent luxury to be able to describe last night’s fine opening song of Southern Point as a pleasant way to warm proceedings up with, as you watched how the band went about putting the constituent parts of the song together. However, when they really got going with the harmonies on Cheerleader, the dry observations stopped and the serious aural appreciation took over. A massively pumped up version of Lullabye may have then threatened to spill over into rambunctious excess, with Chris Taylor manfully alternating between clarinet and flute in the middle of some pounding drums and shuddering guitar chords. However, there was to be no masking the irony contained in the sing-song stiff-upper-lip refrain of “chin up, cheer up” either. They then went and absolutely nailed it with a surprisingly strong version of Little Brother. Read more »
Another show in Ireland, another variation on how she goes about her craft. It would be a short list, in any event, but an ability to reinterpret her own music would definitely not be getting included as one of St. Vincent’s weaknesses. Performing solo last night, she compensated for the lack of a saxophone on Actor Out of Work and Marrow respectively by vocally improvising on the former and by replicating the necessary sounds with her guitar on the latter. Neither may be as exhilarating as what the real thing sounded like during the summer, but this is an unfair comparison in the circumstances.
Beyond this, Marry Me now sees the cheesy and slightly demented lyrics performed in a gorgeously rich manner, whilst the later harmonies on The Party also proved to be quite beautiful. Even then, there was still plenty of room in between for a fuzzy electric blues version of The Beatles‘ Dig a Pony that easily blows the original out of the water, whilst the earlier rendition of Jesus Saves, I Spend sounded like two completely different songs in one. Read more »
She Hangs Brightly was probably ten years old before I started listening to the dreamy balladry of Mazzy Star. By then, lead vocalist Hope Sandoval had moved onto a new-but-similar project in terms of Irish-American band Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions, and a fine new album called Bavarian Fruit Bread. However, it would be the best part of another decade later before there would be a follow-up to this debut offering in this year’s Through the Devil Softly. Indeed, one could say that the band is as languorous in the recording studio as it is in terms of how it sounds!
Performing to a near-capacity seated audience in Vicar Street last night, the set up brought to mind another melancholic band in Tindersticks, who performed a similar looking show in the venue a year ago. Here, the lighting was kept to a minimum, with the three accompanying guitarists mere silhouettes, for the most part, whilst Sandoval’s white skirt made her a little easier to spot centre-stage. Colm Ó Cíosóig, at least, was lit up by the screen behind his drum kit, as it hypnotically showed recurring images such as dancers, flames, and various abstract objects. The overall effect of this was to lull the audience into a very quiet and remote place in their minds, as they let Sandoval’s husky, soothing, and unvarying voice wash over them. Read more »
Thirst is yet another genre-merging, tongue-in-cheek breath-of-fresh-air from South Korean cinema. Earlier this year, Kang-ho Song played the fool in Ji-woon Kim’s colourful “noodle eastern” homage The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Here, though, he takes on the role of the straight man in a world about to turn very unorthodox on him.
Simply put, Kang-ho’s character is a caring and morally upright Catholic priest called Sang-hyeon. Born of a desire to help others, he volunteers for an experimental medical treatment that may cure a terrible and fatal disease. However, when he then suffers massive internal haemorrhaging as a result of the experiment, Sang-hyeon is given a blood transfusion that, unwittingly, has been contaminated with vampiric cells. As these take hold of Sang-hyeon, he struggles desperately to maintain control over his growing thirst for blood, not to mention the other pleasures of the flesh that he is now tempted by. Unfortunately for him, though, the pretty but married Tae-joo (Ok-vin Kim) threatens to be his downfall. Read more »
Bank Holiday Weekend + Paris + Sonic Youth = As Good As It Gets!
Looking for a photo that included a now silver-haired Lee Ranaldo, I came across the sleeve art for their Goo album. It seems to capture the band so well – aloof, a touch introspective, forever youthful, and so very, very cool. Indeed, any band that can afford to relegate a bass guitarist of the stature of Mark Ibold to an almost minor role onstage is definitely on a whole other plane of existence. Given this, it was perhaps appropriate, then, that the fully-seated amphitheatre that is the enormous Palais des Congrès had an almost reverential and cathedral-like atmosphere to it last Sunday evening.
Now, we had scored some pretty good seats near the front. However, any concerns that this show was about to turn into some sit-listen-and-politely-applaud fiasco were greatly diminished when the band first arrived out on stage, as this was the cue for dozens of people in the sell-out crowd to race down the steps and throng out the bottom third of the auditorium. No one was doing any sitting-down after that, even if the atmosphere still lacked the energy that only a jostling, heaving mass can provide! Read more »
